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The 'Piri Reis map' ("Piri" pronounced //) is a famous pre-modern world map created by 16th century Ottoman-Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. The map shows part of the western coasts of Europe and North Africa with reasonable accuracy, and the coast of Brazil is also easily recognizable. Various Atlantic islands including the Azores and Canary Islands are depicted, as is the mythical island of Antillia. The map is noteworthy for its depiction of a southern landmass that some controversially claim is evidence for early awareness of the existence of Antarctica.

Contents

History of the map

Analysis

Gregory McIntosh

Charles Hapgood

Gavin Menzies

Specific geographical points of contention

Antarctica

South America

See also

References

External links

History of the map

The map was discovered in 1729 while Topkapı Palace, Istanbul, Turkey was being converted into a museum. It is the extant western third of a world map drawn on gazelle skin. The surviving portion primarily details the western coast of Africa and the eastern coast of South America. The map was drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet, and presented to the Sultan in 1517. Piri Reis stated that the map was based on about twenty charts and mappae mundi. According to Piri these maps included eight Ptolemaic maps, an Arabic map of India, four newly drawn Portuguese maps of their recent discoveries, and a map by Christopher Columbus of the western lands.
The Piri Reis map is currently located in the Library of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, but is not usually on display to the public.

Analysis

Gregory McIntosh

Gregory McIntosh, a historian of cartography, has examined the Piri Reis map in depth and published his research in the book ''The Piri Reis Map of 1513'' (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2000).
He claims that the depiction of the Caribbean was developed from at least one of Christopher Columbus's maps. Hispaniola is depicted with a north-south axis similar to depictions of Japan on maps of the same era. At the time it was widely believed that the east coast of the Americas was in fact that of Asia. Columbus believed that Japan and Hispaniola were actually the same island and Cuba was part of a mainland. The mainland in the extreme northwest is labeled with place-names from Columbus's voyages along the coasts of Cuba. McIntosh claims the map shows double sets of Virgin Islands because Piri Reis took them from two maps. Finally, many of the names of ports and geographic points are found in Columbus's written texts.

Charles Hapgood

Charles Hapgood began studying the map in the middle of the 20th Century and published the book ''Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings'' in 1966.
Hapgood claims this and other maps support a theory of global exploration by a pre-classical undiscovered civilization. He supports this with an analysis of the mathematics of ancient maps and of their accuracy, which he says surpassed instrumentation available at the time of the map's drafting.
Hapgood argued that owing to the map being assembled from components, the Caribbean section was rotated nearly 90º from the top of South America. He attributed this to either copying from a polar projection, or to fit in the space available by hinging the map at that location and giving it an "alternate north", of which other examples are known in maps of the era.

Gavin Menzies

Gavin Menzies, in his book '' puts forward a theory that the southern landmass is indeed the Antarctic coastline and was based on earlier Chinese maps. According to Menzies, Admiral Hong Bao charted the coast over 70 years before Columbus as part of a larger expedition under the famous Chinese explorer and admiral Zheng He to bring the world under China's tribute system. Menzies' theory is systematically discredited in the television documentary also named ''1421: The Year China Discovered America''.

Specific geographical points of contention

Antarctica

Scholars believe the resemblance of the coastline to the actual coast of Antarctica to be tenuous. For centuries before the actual discovery of Antarctica, cartographers had been depicting a massive southern landmass on global maps based on the theoretical assumption by Europeans that one must exist, if only to balance the landmass of the North. The landmass in question on the Piri Reis map would thus be simply a continuation of this tradition, with its debatable resemblance to the actual coastline being coincidental. It was widely believed that South America and, once its northern coastline was discovered, Australia, must be joined to this land mass, which was thought to be very much bigger than the real Antarctica. This theoretical southern continent, the Great Southern Land or Terra Australis Incognita (literally Unknown Southern Land), in various configurations, was usually shown on maps until the eighteenth century.
An alternate view is that the "Antarctic" coast is simply the eastern coastline of South America skewed to align east-west due to the inaccurate measurement of longtitude or to fit it on the page.^[1] Close examination of the coastline supports this view, revealing depictions of the basins at the mouth of the Strait of Magellan and the Falkland Islands.^[2] The annotations on the map itself, stating that this region is hot and inhabited by large snakes do not fit with the likely climate and fauna in Antarctica in the 1500s. Similarly the map states that "spring comes early" to the islands off the coast, which is true of the Falkland Islands but not of any islands close to the Antarctic mainland.
Hapgood suggests that the Antarctic section of the map was copied at an incorrect scale to the rest of the map and resulted in the distortion and enlargement of the continent on several ancient maps. This would explain why there is no waterway between South America and Antarctica. He suggests several points of continuity between the Piri Reis Map and modern maps of the continent below the ice caps. Since the Antarctic continent was not officially sighted until 1820 and its full coastline was not known until much later, this claim, if true, would require major revisions to the history of exploration.^[3]

South America

There are many difficulties in the map of South America, including duplication of rivers, and the continent's southern end merging with Antarctica. These problems are explored in detail by Charles Hapgood.

See also

★ Ancient world maps

★ World map

★ Waldseemüller map, made in 1507. A different, smaller version of the same geographical concepts was published in the Ptolemy of 1513.

★ Johannes Schöner globes, made in 1515 and 1520. Also shows a Southern Continent at the South Pole.

★ Timeline of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact

★ Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact

References

1. http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/PiriRies.HTM Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, The land mass at the bottom is a skewed plot of South America.
2. http://xoomer.virgilio.it/dicuoghi/Piri_Reis/PiriReis_eng.htm Diego Cuoghi, Thorough article on Piri Reis and Oronteus maps refuting the Antarctica claims.
3. http://world-mysteries.com/sar_1.htm

External links

★

★ Mysterious Approach to Piri Reis Map

★ McNeese State University: The oldest map of America drawn by Piri Reis; by Prof. Dr. Afetinan

★ The Piri Re'is Map Includes high resolution images, commentary on the modern disputes about the significance of the map and translation of the map commentary.

★ McNeese State University: The Piri Reis map of 1513 contains notes written on the map in Turkish Citat: "...IV. This map was drawn by Piri Ibn Haji Mehmed, known as the nephew of Kemal Reis, in Gallipoli, in the month of muharrem of the year 919 (that is, between the 9th of March and the 7th of April of the year 1513)...."

★ Fra McNeese State University: "Piri Reis and the Columbian Theory" in "Aramco World Magazine" (Jan-Feb 1980) by Paul Lunde Citat: "...There may, in fact, be an even simpler explanation of the presence of "Antarctica" on the Piri Reis map..."

★ McNeese State University: 3 MB Piri Reis kortet - høj opløsning

★ Piri Reis Map @ Mysterious Earth

★ Re: Piri Reis Map Citat: "...William Miller wrote:...The examinations that I have made of it show all sorts of errors that certainly falsify any claim of unusual accuracy for this map..."

★ The Mysterious Origins of Man: The Oronteus Finaeus Map of 1532, by Paul Heinrich Paul Heinrich kritiserer her Dr. Charles Hapgood's Antarktis fortolkninger.

★ Thorough article On Piri Reis and Oronteus maps debunking the Antarctica claims.

★ Webarchive backup: Survive 2012: Piri Reis Citat: "...The projections originate from a point at the intersection of the meridian of Alexandria (30°E) and the Tropic of Cancer....Longitudes were not able to be accurately calculated until the 1770's when John Harrison invented his Chronometer No.4. However, the Piri Reis map has correct and accurate relative longitudes...Maps by Mercator, Oronteus Fineaus and Phillippe Buache also show the pre-glacial Antarctica - before it was discovered ..."

★ Webarchive backup: Commander Ohlmeyer's letter Citat: "...The geographical detail shown in the lower part of the map agrees very remarkably with the results of the seismic profile made across the top of the ice-cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949. This indicates the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the ice-cap...."

★ Piri Reis map (black and white with comments)

★ Piri Re'is Map of 1513 Citat: "...The knowledge of longitude suggests either a people, or a mechanism, that are currently unknown to us. (This is because the ability to determine longitude with any degree of accuracy is not known before AD 1700 (?) ). The map is based on an equidistant projection with its center on the meridian of Alexandria in Egypt....The degree of accuracy contained in the Piri Re'is map is extraordinary...."

★ Antarctica Citat: "...One such map is the Orontius Finaeus World Map of 1532. The section of this map indicting Antarctica is shown below..."

★ Piri Reis himself explains how he actually drew this map

★ Shows how the land mass at the bottom is actually the continuation of South America

★ Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, The land mass at the bottom is a skewed plot of South America