When did forests grow and rivers flow in Antarctica? Once again about the age of the maps of Piri Reis, Orontius Fineas and Philippe Buache - Earth before the Flood: disappeared continents and civilizations. Lithospheric catastrophe and ancient maps of Antarctica

Lithospheric catastrophe and ancient maps of Antarctica

Map of Piri Reis 1513

In 1929, a map was discovered in the ancient imperial palace in Constantinople, which excited many. It was drawn on parchment and dated 919 according to the Muslim calendar, which corresponded to 1513 according to the Christian calendar. It bore the signature of Piri ibn Haji Mamed, admiral of the Turkish fleet, now known as Piri Reis.

Lithospheric catastrophe and ancient maps of Antarctica. At one time, Piri Reis made other interesting statements about the sources from which he drew information. He used about twenty maps, mainly from the time of Alexander the Great, as well as maps compiled on a strict mathematical basis; scientists who studied his map, discovered in the 1930s, could not trust these confessions. But now their truth is being revealed.

After some time, public attention to the map faded, and scientists rejected it as an analogue of the “Columbus map”. It was not heard of until 1956, when, as a result of happy accidents, interest in it flared up again in Washington. A Turkish naval officer presented the maps as a gift to the American Maritime Hydrographic Office.

The map was then sent to M. I. Walters, cartographer at the naval headquarters.

It so happened that Walters gave the map to his friend, a specialist in ancient cartography and the initiator of new scientific directions at the intersection with archeology. It was Captain Arlington H. Mallery. After a distinguished career as an engineer, nautical specialist, archaeologist and writer, he devoted a number of years to the study of ancient maps, especially Viking maps of North America and Greenland. Taking the map home, he came to some interesting conclusions. In his opinion, its southern part reflected the bays and islands of the Antarctic coast, or rather Queen Maud Land, now hidden under the ice. So someone has already mapped these areas when they were ice-free.

These claims were so incredible that they could not be taken seriously by most professional geographers, although Walters himself felt that Mallery must be right.

Neither medieval masters nor famous ancient Greek geographers could draw such maps. Their characteristics indicate origins in a culture with a higher level of technology than that achieved in the Middle Ages or ancient times.

According to Piri Reis himself, it was a map of the “seven seas” and it also included Africa and Asia, as well as the northern part in addition to the surviving piece.

It was discovered that the position of some points on the Piri Reis map was very accurate, while others were not strictly fixed. Gradually we understood the reason for such inaccuracies. It turned out that this map was compiled from smaller maps of individual areas (possibly drawn at different times and by different people), and errors accumulated as it was created.

Component maps that came from distant antiquity were more accurate and reliable than later images of the earth's surface. And this speaks of the decline of science, from ancient times to modern history.

The longitude and latitude of the coastline are determined quite accurately. This is also true for the North Atlantic islands, with the exception of Madeira. The accuracy of the longitude of the African coast, where it is greatest, can be explained by our assumption of the center and radius of the projection, but with some corrections.

From the modern gridded portolan it is clear that the coasts separated by the Atlantic have approximately the correct corresponding longitude values ​​relative to the center of the projection on the Alexandria meridian. This leads to the belief that the first compiler must have determined the correct longitude throughout the entire space from the Alexandrian meridian to Brazil itself.

It is also important that most of the islands are located at true longitude.

The precise location of the islands suggests that they were already on the ancient map used by Piri Reis.

Piri Reis probably had ancient maps in his possession while in Constantinople, and it is quite possible that some of them reached the West long before him.

In 1204, the Venetian fleet, on a crusade to the Holy Land, attacked and captured Constantinople. And for 60 years after that, Italian merchants had the opportunity to redraw maps from the Byzantine collection.

We have reason to believe that a good map of the St. Lawrence River was available to Europeans before Columbus's voyage in 1492. It even shows the islands near the mouth. The compiler of this map, Martin Beheim, also placed it on the globe, which he created shortly before Columbus returned from his first voyage.

Historian Las Casas testified that Columbus had a world map, which he showed to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, after which they were convinced that the idea was not hopeless.

A number of world maps of the 16th century show the Antarctic continent. As will be seen from what follows, Gerhard Mercator believed in its existence. Comparing all the maps, we can identify only one or two main groups, depending on different projections. In accordance with them, Antarctica was copied or re-copied only with some amendments by various cartographers.

Mercator's map of Antarctica

Gerhard Kremer, better known as Mercator, is considered the most outstanding cartographer of the 16th century. There is even a tendency to start scientific cartography in his name. And yet there was no cartographer more interested in antiquity, more indefatigable in the search for ancient maps, or more respectful of the study of long-gone eras.

If Mercator did not believe in Antarctica, then it would be understandable why he did not include the map of A. Finaus in his Atlas. He didn't publish a science fiction book. But we have good reasons to believe that he admitted the possibility of the existence of this continent: Antarctica was drawn on the maps by him personally. One of her images appeared on sheet 9 of the 1569 edition of the Atlas.

The projection on the Mercator map of Antarctica is exactly the one that is named after him. The meridians run parallel from pole to pole, and this, as already noted, greatly exaggerates the size of the polar regions

Earlier, in 1538, Mercator drew a world map, also with Antarctica. Its similarity with the work of A. Finaus is striking, but there are also significant differences. For Mercator, the Antarctic circle is located inside the continent, as for Finaus, but not at the same distance from the pole. In other words, it looks like Mercator changed the scale.

On the Finaus map, as has already been shown, the so-called “circulus antarcticus” was mistakenly presented as the 80th parallel of the original source. Mercator violated the original scale, which is why we cannot reconstruct the latitude grid on this map, as we have already done in other places. The value of longitudes turned out to be extremely accurate.

It seems that Mercator constantly used the ancient primary sources that were available to him. What happened to them subsequently we do not know, but their influence can be detected, at least in those cases where Mercator lacked information from contemporary travelers and depended on ancient materials.

As for the map of South America in 1569, a number of interesting details emerge here.

First of all, in relation to the northern coast, it is quite clear that Mercator was dominated by ancient maps, as well as materials from contemporary expeditions. He placed the Amazon incorrectly in relation to the equator, as was the case on the Piri Reis map. But the flow of the river is shown correctly with a number of bends - meanders. The island of Marajo, correctly aligned with the equator on the Piri Reis projection, is here confused with the island of Trinidad at the mouth of the Orinoco. And Trinidad is thus doubled in size. The southeastern coast of South America from the Tropic of Capricorn to Cape Horn is drawn very poorly, apparently according to the reports of navigators, while the western coast turns out to be distorted in shape.

And at the same time, on the map of 1538, that is, several years earlier, Mercator had already shown more correct outlines of the western coast of South America. What was the reason for this? It can be assumed that in his first map he was based on ancient sources, while in 1569 he already used materials from travelers of his time, who did not know how to correctly determine longitude, but only showed the general direction of the coast.

World map of Aranteus Finaus, 1532

Other portolans from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance have been found, which could show Antarctica. A number of such maps have come to light because, as already mentioned, many cartographers of the 15th and 16th centuries believed in the existence of a southern continent.

“During the Christmas holidays in late 1959, Charles Hapgood was researching Antarctica in the reference room of the Library of Congress in Washington. For weeks on end he had been working there on hundreds of medieval maps.

“I discovered /he writes/ a lot of amazing things that I didn’t even think I’d find, and several maps depicting the southern continent. And then one day I turned the page and was dumbfounded. My gaze fell on the Southern Hemisphere of the world map drawn by Oronteus Finius in 1531, and I realized that this was a genuine, real map of Antarctica!

The general outline of the continent coincides remarkably with that shown on modern maps. The South Pole was practically in place, almost in the center of the continent. The mountain ranges bordering the shores were reminiscent of numerous ridges discovered in recent years, and enough so as not to consider this an accidental result of the cartographer’s imagination. These ridges were identified, some were coastal, some were located in the distance. Rivers flowed from many of them to the sea, very naturally and convincingly fitting into the folds of the relief. Of course, this assumed that at the time the map was drawn the coast was free of ice. The central part of the continent on the map is free of rivers and mountains, which suggests the presence of an ice cap there."

“Charles Hapgood taught the history of science at Keene College, New Hampshire, USA. He was neither a geologist nor an expert on the history of the ancient world.

“Inspecting this map of Antarctica on the grid of parallels drawn by Arantheus Finaus, we discovered that he extended the Antarctic Peninsula too far to the north - up to 15 °. At first it was thought that he simply moved the entire continent towards South America. Further work, however, showed that the Antarctic coastline is abnormally elongated in all directions, in some places even reaching the tropics. The whole problem, then, was one of scale. Using some kind of extensive map, the compiler was forced to stretch the Antarctic Peninsula to Cape Horn, almost completely displacing the Drake Passage. Moreover, this mistake was made much earlier, since we found the same distortion on all Antarctic maps of that period, including the Piri Reis portolan. It is likely that this mistake was made in ancient times on the original map, omitting a significant part of the coast of South America: after all, there was no free space for it.”

The map in question shows the absence of glaciers at a considerable distance from the coast. These are Queen Maud Land, Enderby Land, Wilkes Land, Victoria Land (eastern coast of the Ross Sea), Mary Baird Land. There was a significant lack of points with coinciding coordinates (with the modern map) for the western coast of the Ross Sea, Ellsworth Land, and Edith Ronne Land.

A comparison of the Arantheus Finaus map with the subglacial relief map of Antarctica compiled by various countries during the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1959 explains some of the shortcomings of the medieval work, and also sheds light on the extent of glaciation at the time the original map was created.

IGY expeditions used seismic sounding to recreate the shape of the earth's surface hidden by the current ice cap. And it turned out that there is no western coast near the Ross Sea at all; Moreover, the rocky bed of the continent runs below sea level just between the Ross and Weddell seas. If the ice melts, the same Ellsworth Land will become not land, but shallow ocean water.

If the western coast of the Ross Sea and the coast of Ellsworth Land represent fictitious land, then the absence of certain physical and geographical characteristics of this sector on the map of A. Finaus becomes understandable. But it seems that ice cover, at least in West Antarctica, may have already existed by the time the maps were compiled, since the inland waterways connecting the Ross, Weddell, and Amundsen seas are not shown - everything was already covered in ice.

Of course, it should be remembered that millennia must have passed between the compilation of early and late maps of various parts of Antarctica. Therefore, it cannot be definitely concluded that there was a time when East Antarctica was abundant in ice, while it was absent in West Antarctica. Maps of East Antarctica could have been drawn thousands of years after other maps.

Boucher, a French geographer of the 18th century, left for posterity a map that shows the continent at a time when there was no ice at all... If you get rid of the obvious errors in the orientation of Antarctica in relation to other land masses, then it is easy to imagine that this map shows rivers , connecting the Ross, Weddell, and Bellingshausen seas.

While studying the mysteries of ancient maps, Charles Hapgood was struck by the idea that the accepted theory and timing of ice ages might be different. A hypothesis about the displacement of the poles was born. Not gradual, but spasmodic.

Albert Einstein was among the first to recognize this when he chose to author the foreword to a book written by Hapgood in 1953, several years before the latter began researching the Piri Reis map:

“I often receive correspondence from people who want my opinion on their unpublished ideas. It is clear that these ideas very rarely have scientific value. However, the very first message I received from Mr. Hapgood literally electrified me. His idea is original, very simple and, if confirmed, will be of great importance for everything connected with the history of the surface of the Earth."

These "ideas", formulated in Hapgood's 1953 book, are essentially a global geological theory that elegantly explains how and why large areas of Antarctica remained ice-free until 4000 BC, as well as many others. anomalies in earth science. Briefly, his arguments boil down to the following:

1. Antarctica was not always covered with ice and was once much warmer than it is today

2. It was warmer because at that time it was not physically at the South Pole, but was located about 2000 miles to the north. This "brought it beyond the Antarctic Circle and placed it in a zone of temperate or cold temperate climate"

3. The continent moved and took its current position inside the Arctic Circle as a result of the so-called “crustal displacement.” This mechanism, which should not be confused with plate tectonics or continental drift, is associated with periodic movements of the lithosphere, the outer crust of the Earth, as a whole “around a soft inner body, just as the peel of an orange might move around the pulp if the connection between them were weakened »

4. In the process of such a “journey” to the south, Antarctica gradually cooled, and the ice cap gradually but inevitably grew over several thousand years until it acquired its current shape.

Einstein summed up Hapgood's discovery this way:

“In the polar region there is a constant accumulation of ice, which is located asymmetrically around the pole. The Earth's rotation acts on these asymmetrical masses, creating a centrifugal moment that is transmitted to the rigid earth's crust. When the magnitude of such a moment exceeds a certain critical value, it causes a movement of the earth’s crust relative to the part of the Earth’s body located inside...”

Charles Hapgood:

“The only ice age that has an adequate explanation is the current glaciation in Antarctica. It explains itself perfectly. It is quite obvious that it exists simply because Antarctica is located at the pole, and nothing else. This fact does not depend on variations in solar heat input, nor on galactic dust, nor on volcanism, nor on currents flowing under the crust, and is in no way connected with land uplifts or ocean currents. This suggests that the best theory to explain the Ice Age is the one that says: because there was a pole in this place. Thus, it is easy to explain the presence of glaciations in the past in India and Africa, although in our time these places are located in the tropics. The origin of any continental-scale glaciation can be explained in the same way.”

What evidence is there that Antarctica was not always an icy continent?

In 1949, during one of Sir Baird's Antarctic expeditions, samples of bottom sediments were taken from the bottom of the Ross Sea. This was done through drilling. Dr. Jack Hoof of the University of Illinois took three cores to study the evolution of climate in Antarctica. They were sent to the Carnegie Institution of Washington (DC), where a new dating method developed by nuclear physicist Dr. W. D. Urey was used.

This method is called ionic for short. In this case, they operate with three radioactive elements contained in sea water in certain proportions - uranium, ionium, radium. However, their decay period is different, and this means that when they fall into the bottom sediment and the moisture cycle stops, the amount of these radioactive elements decreases, but not to the same extent. Therefore, when obtaining and examining bottom samples in the laboratory, their age can be determined by changes in the proportions of these elements in marine sediments.

The nature of bottom sediments varies greatly depending on the climatic conditions that existed at the time of their formation. If they were carried out by rivers and deposited in the sea, then they turn out to be well sorted, and the better the further they fall from the river mouth. If they are torn from the earth's surface by a glacier and carried out to sea by an iceberg, then their character corresponds to coarse clastic material. If the river has a seasonal cycle, flowing only in the summer, most likely from melting glaciers in inland areas, and freezing every winter, then the sediments will form in layers, like the annual rings of trees.

All these types of sediments have been found in bottom cores of the Ross Sea. Most striking was the presence of a series of layers formed from well-sorted sediments carried to the sea by rivers from ice-free lands. As can be seen from the cores, there have been at least three periods of temperate climate in Antarctica over the past million years when the Ross Sea shores should have been ice-free.

The timing of the end of the last warm period in the Ross Sea, determined by Dr. Ury, was of great importance to us. All three cores indicated that the warming ended around 6,000 years ago, or in the fourth millennium BC. This was when glacial sediments began to accumulate on the floor of the Ross Sea during the recent Ice Age. Kern argues that this was preceded by a longer period of warming.

Thus, it turns out that Antarctica was ice-free already during the existence of ancient civilizations, and not hundreds of thousands of years ago, as was previously believed.

Alfred Weneger, the creator of the theory of glaciation, apparently also knew about the “ice clock” mechanism, but did not dare to make his knowledge public. Even during the life of the genius, official science made fun of him to his heart's content. Everyone bullied him, only the really lazy one didn’t “kick” him. He became cautious and suddenly became addicted to traveling to Greenland, where he eventually died tragically.

This is the brief history of the emergence of the theory of lithospheric catastrophes, which became popular among the people under the name “pole displacement.”

But many conclusions follow from this. Since there are ancient maps where Antarctica is shown without icing, then we can assume the presence of a developed civilization capable of carrying out such mapping precisely before this glaciation. But where did this civilization go later?

The fact is that the displacement of the earth's crust will cause a movement of water in the oceans, similar to that which occurs in a sharply moved plate. It is this theory that can explain the biblical Flood. And not every civilization can withstand such an event. After this, the survivors are able to slide into barbarism and lose many civilizational achievements. This is also good for understanding where Atlantis disappeared to. She hasn't gone anywhere. After the waves destroyed the established life on it, it began to become covered with ice. Now we know it as Antarctica. Archaeological research under ice more than a kilometer thick is hardly possible. Some of the knowledge of this civilization has survived to this day in the form of maps redrawn from more ancient astronomical concepts and crafts. It is not for nothing that many nations have tales about people who came from across the sea and taught them crafts, writing and much more.

This is the story. So far there is no more compelling evidence of its correctness. But the existing ones no longer allow us to dismiss them.

Sergey Kamshilin

Materials used: http://vzglyadzagran.ru

When Antarctica wasn't covered in ice!

In 1929, in the Imperial Library of Constantinople, an ancient map of the world was found that belonged to the admiral of the Ottoman Turkish navy, Piri Reis. In 1959, Professor Charles H. Hapgood of Kean College drew attention to this map. He noticed the outlines of Antarctica on it and decided to send it for examination.

The conclusion caused the effect of a bomb exploding. It turned out that Antarctica could have looked like this many millions of years ago. The accuracy of determining the longitudinal coordinates indicated that the map used spheroidal trigonometry, which was officially unknown until the mid-18th century. The Piri Reis map is drawn using planar geometry, where latitudes and longitudes are at right angles.

But it was copied from a map with spherical trigonometry! Ancient cartographers not only knew that the Earth is a sphere, but also calculated the length of the equator with an accuracy of about 100 km! Who were those ancient cartographers who were able to map with such accuracy a continent that would be discovered much later than the map itself?

There are other accurate maps of Antarctica, drawn long before its official discovery in 1818, which, in fact, only adds fuel to the fire and makes the existence of the Piri Reis map even more reliable.

The very fact of their existence is amazing, and for some reason is not commented on by official historical science, and in general, is practically unknown to anyone except meticulous researchers. And of course, such things are rarely shown on TV.

If Piri Reis was the only cartographer who had access to such anomalous information, it would be wrong to attach too much importance to his map. However, the Turkish admiral was not the only one who possessed this seemingly incredible and inexplicable geographical knowledge.

Regardless of how this knowledge was passed down through the centuries, it is certain that other cartographers had access to the same curious secrets. Gallery of ancient maps

Quote from the article - Piri Reis Map - an ancient map of Antarctica without ice:

“But the fact that the Piri Reis map shows the coast of Antarctica, not yet covered with ice, is difficult to comprehend! After all, the modern appearance of the coastline of the southern continent is determined by a thick ice cover that extends far beyond the real land. It turns out that Piri Reis used sources compiled by people who saw Antarctica before the glaciation?

But this cannot be, since these people would have lived millions of years ago!

Navigators who lived many years ago and compiled maps that (like the Piri Reis map) were used to refine modern ones? Incredible..."

Boucher's 18th-century map is said to accurately depict the continent of Antarctica as it was before it was covered in ice. In a broader sense, this means that there was an ancient civilization in Antarctica long before the continent was discovered in the early 19th century.

The mysterious map was created by the French geographer Philippe Boucher de la Neuville. The full title of this map is: "Map of the southern lands between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic Pole, showing the new lands south of the Cape of Good Hope, discovered in 1739." The date of publication on the map is September 3, 1739.

Map of Antarctica by Philippe Boucher, engraved on copper (63.5 x 48.3 cm).

Philippe Boucher de la Neuville was a cartographer and map publisher, and "the leading theoretical geographer of his generation." Boucher began his career as an assistant and student of cartographer Guillaume de Lisle. When de Lisle died in 1726, his publishing firm passed to Boucher, who married his teacher's daughter, becoming part of his family. In 1729, Boucher was appointed chief geographer to the king. The following year he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences as successor to Guillaume de Lisle.

Portrait of Philippe Boucher.

To create the maps, Boucher used "geographical knowledge, scientific research, the journals of modern explorers and missionaries, and direct and astronomical observations." He was the first to declare the existence of Alaska and the Bering Strait. However, not all of Boucher's assumptions were correct, including the existence of a central Antarctic Sea.

Legends

Some researchers, based on Charles Hapgood’s book “Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings. Evidence for the Existence of an Advanced Civilization During the Ice Age" (1966), Boucher's map is said to accurately depict the subglacial terrain of Antarctica. There are suggestions that Boucher used maps made by a highly advanced ancient civilization or even by aliens.

Book cover by Charles Hapgood

"Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence for an Advanced Civilization During the Ice Age." Photo: Amazon However, no one knows for sure what the relief of subglacial Antarctica actually looks like. There is currently no way to confirm the veracity of the claim that Boucher's map is accurate. In addition, there are numerous differences between the maps of Boucher and those of Piri Reis, the Turkish admiral and cartographer.

The French inscriptions that cover Boucher's map provide clues to how the map can be read and understood. For example, the words conjecturée (hypothesized) and soupçonnée (presumably) can be found on parts of the map depicting the southern continent. This suggests that they were not copied from some ancient map. French explorer Jean Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lauzières reported seeing many icebergs during his journey south. Therefore, Boucher assumed that the icebergs were in the south.

World map by French cartographer Philippe Boucher, 1753

There are two versions of Boucher's map: the second depicts a hypothetical Antarctica, and the first does not. The former version is the more common and possibly earlier, while the latter is believed to reflect Boucher's later ideas. There are suggestions that Boucher's map of Antarctica was published by another cartographer fraudulently or that it is a modern fake.

Watch an interesting video about the mysteries of Antarctica:

Most people cannot imagine that it is possible to see a map of Antarctica without ice. Yes, what's there, Most of us cannot even imagine this continent without ice cover. It seems impossible. After all, we are used to seeing the majestic Antarctica under centuries-old layers of ice. But scientists from NASA managed...

The continent of Antarctica is the largest area on planet Earth that is completely covered with ice. But what is underneath it? NASA specialists conducted project called BedMap2. During the project, scientists calculated the total volume of ice in Antarctica. These calculations were carried out in order to establish a forecast for sea level rise in the future. To pull this off, experts needed to have a thorough knowledge of the entire topography of the continent, including its vast valleys and well-hidden mountain ranges.

So scientists have created a new map of Antarctica without ice. The most impressive discovery was the valley under the Bird Glacier. Note that this valley is the deepest point among all continents. The valley is located below sea level at a distance of 2780 meters. Scientists were also able to obtain detailed images of the mountains for the first time. Gamburtseva. But the Gamburtsev Mountains are under a layer of ice 1.6 km thick.

A unique, new map was created based on data on the level of surface elevation, base topography, and ice thickness. This data was obtained using satellite photography, as well as aerial and ground photography. In addition, electromagnetic instruments, radars, and sound waves were also used. All these efforts helped create a map of Antarctica without ice.

Few people know that deep under the Arctic ice lies the largest telescope in the world. It is installed in a neutrino observatory called the Ice Cube.

Tourists crossing the Dardanelles in the Canakkale area are usually so engrossed in stories about the armies of Xerxes and Alexander the Great who crossed the Dardanelles many centuries ago that they completely ignore the modest bust erected on the European side of the strait next to the crossing. Few people know that the modest signature “Piri Reis” under the bust connects this place with one of the most intriguing mysteries of history.

In 1929, a map dated 1513 was discovered in one of the ancient palaces of Constantinople. The map might not have aroused much interest if it were not for the image of the Americas (one of the earliest in history) and the signature of the Turkish admiral Piri Reis. Then, in the 20s, on the wave of national upsurge, it was especially important for the Turks to emphasize the role of the Turkish cartographer in creating one of the earliest maps of America. They began to study the map closely, as well as the history of its creation. And this is what became known.

In 1513, the admiral of the Turkish fleet, Piri Reis, completed work on a large map of the world for his geographical atlas, Bahriye. He himself did not travel that much, but when compiling the map, he used about 20 cartographic sources. Of these, eight maps dated back to the time of Ptolemy, some belonged to Alexander the Great, and one, as Piri Reis writes in his book “The Seven Seas,” was “recently compiled by an infidel named Colombo.” And then the admiral says: “An infidel named Colombo, a Genoese, discovered these lands. A book fell into the hands of the said Colombo, in which he read that on the edge of the Western Sea, far in the West, there are shores and islands. All kinds of metals and precious stones were found there. The above-mentioned Colombo studied this book for a long time... Colombo also learned about the natives’ passion for glass jewelry from this book and took them with him to exchange them for gold.”

Let's leave Columbus and his mysterious book aside for now, although the direct indication that he knew where he was sailing is already amazing. Unfortunately, neither this book nor Columbus’s map has reached us. But several sheets of maps from the Bahriye atlas miraculously survived and were published in Europe in 1811. But then they were not given much importance. It was not until 1956, when a Turkish naval officer presented the maps as a gift to the American Naval Hydrographic Office, that American military cartographers conducted research to confirm or disprove the seemingly impossible: the map depicted the coastline of Antarctica - 300 years before its discovery!

A report was soon received: “The assertion that the lower part of the map shows the Princess Martha Coast [part of] Dronning Maud Land in Antarctica, as well as the Palmer Peninsula, is well founded. We found this explanation to be the most logical and possibly correct. The geographic details depicted at the bottom of the map are in excellent agreement with seismic data taken through the ice cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition in 1949. This means that the coastline was mapped before it was covered with ice. The ice in this area is approximately 1.5 km thick. We have no idea how these data could have been obtained given the assumed level of geographical knowledge in 1513.”

So the Piri Reis map began to reveal its secrets. Here are just a few of them.

The map shows the exact coastline of Antarctica

Antarctica as a continent was discovered in 1818, but many cartographers, including Gerardus Mercator, even before that time believed in the existence of a continent in the far south and plotted its supposed outlines on their maps. The Piri Reis map, as already mentioned, accurately depicts the coastline of Antarctica - 300 years before its discovery!

But this is not the biggest mystery, especially since several ancient maps are known, including Mercator’s map, which, as it turns out, depict, very accurately, Antarctica. Previously, this was simply not paid attention to, because the “appearance” of a continent on a map can be greatly distorted depending on the map projections used: it is not so easy to project the surface of the globe onto a plane. The fact that many ancient maps accurately reproduce not only Antarctica, but also other continents became known after calculations made in the middle of the last century, taking into account various projections used by old cartographers.

But the fact that the Piri Reis map shows the coast of Antarctica, not yet covered with ice, is difficult to comprehend! After all, the modern appearance of the coastline of the southern continent is determined by a thick ice cover that extends far beyond the real land. It turns out that Piri Reis used sources compiled by people who saw Antarctica before the glaciation? But this cannot be, since these people would have lived millions of years ago! The only explanation for this fact accepted by modern scientists is the theory of the periodic change of the Earth's poles, according to which the last such change could have occurred approximately 6,000 years ago, and it was then that Antarctica began to be covered with ice again. That is, we are talking about navigators who lived 6,000 years ago and drew up maps that (like the Piri Reis map) were used to refine modern ones? Incredible...

The map is linked to Cairo

Interestingly, the Piri Reis map also gives the answer to the question of where these ancient sailors lived. (Or not navigators, if they used other means of transportation?) The fact is that a professional cartographer, by studying an ancient map and comparing it with modern ones, can determine what type of projection the map creator used. And when the Piri Reis map was compared with the modern one, compiled in a polar equal-area projection, they discovered almost complete similarities. In particular, the map of the 16th century Turkish admiral literally repeats the map compiled by the US Air Force during the Great Patriotic War.

But a map drawn in polar equal area projection must have a center. In the case of the American map, it was Cairo, where an American military base was located during the war. And from this, as shown by the Chicago scientist Charles Hapgood, who thoroughly studied the Piri Reis map, it directly follows that the center of the ancient map, which became the prototype of the admiral’s map, was located exactly there, in Cairo or its environs. That is, the ancient cartographers were Egyptians who lived in Memphis, or their more ancient ancestors, who made this place their starting point.

Mathematical apparatus of cartographers

But whoever they were, they were skilled at their craft. As soon as researchers began to study the fragments of the Turkish admiral’s map that have come down to us, they were faced with the question of the authorship of its original source. The Piri Reis map is a so-called portolan, a nautical chart that allows you to build “lines between ports,” that is, navigate between port cities. In the 15th–16th centuries, such maps were much more advanced than land maps, but, as one of the leading scientists in this field, A.E. Nordenskiöld, noted, they did not develop. That is, the maps of the 15th century were of the same quality as the maps of the 14th century. This, from his point of view, indicates that the skill of cartographers was not acquired, but borrowed, that is, simply put, they simply redrew older maps, which in itself is natural.

But what I can’t get my head around is the accuracy of the constructions and the mathematical apparatus, without which these constructions are simply impossible to carry out. I will give just a few facts.

It is known that in order to construct a geographical map, that is, display a sphere on a plane, it is necessary to know the dimensions of this sphere, that is, the Earth. Eratosthenes was able to measure the circumference of the globe back in ancient times, but did so with a large error. Until the 15th century, no one clarified these data. However, a thorough study of the coordinates of objects on the Peary map indicates that the dimensions of the Earth were taken into account without error, that is, the compilers of the map had more accurate information about our planet at their disposal (not to mention the fact that they represented it as a ball). Researchers of the Turkish map also convincingly showed that the compilers of the mysterious ancient source knew trigonometry (the Reis map was drawn using planar geometry, where latitudes and longitudes are at right angles. But it was copied from a map with spherical trigonometry! Ancient cartographers not only knew that the Earth there is a ball, but they also calculated the length of the equator with an accuracy of about 100 km!) and cartographic projections that were not known to either Eratosthenes or even Ptolemy, and they theoretically could have used ancient maps stored in the Library of Alexandria. That is, the original source of the map is definitely more ancient.

The map shows both Americas

The Piri Reis map is one of the first to show the Americas. It was compiled 21 years after Columbus’s voyage and the “official” discovery of America. And it shows not only the exact coastline, but also rivers and even the Andes. And this despite the fact that Columbus himself did not map America, sailing only to the Caribbean islands!

The mouths of some rivers, in particular the Orinoco, are shown with an “error” on the Piri Reis map: river deltas are not indicated. However, this does not indicate an error, but rather an expansion of deltas that occurred over time, as happened with the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia in the last 3,500 years.

Columbus knew where he was going

Piri Reis claimed that Columbus knew well where he was sailing, thanks to the book that fell into his hands. The fact that Columbus’s wife was the daughter of the Grand Master of the Templar Order, which had already changed its name by that time, and which had significant archives of ancient books and maps, indicates a possible way to acquire the mysterious book (today, much has been written about the Templar fleet and the high probability of their regular voyages in America).

There are many facts that indirectly confirm that Columbus owned one of the maps that served as the source for the Piri Reis map. For example, Columbus did not stop his ships at night, as was customary for fear of hitting reefs in unknown waters, but sailed under full sail, as if knowing for sure that there would be no obstacles. When a riot began on the ships due to the fact that the promised land still did not appear, he managed to convince the sailors to endure another 1000 miles and was not mistaken - exactly 1000 miles later the long-awaited shore appeared. Columbus carried with him a supply of glass jewelry, hoping to exchange it for gold with the Indians, as recommended in his book. Finally, each ship carried a sealed package with instructions on what to do if the ships lost sight of each other during a storm. In a word, the discoverer of America knew well that he was not the first.

The Piri Reis map is not the only one

And the map of the Turkish admiral, the source for which was also the maps of Columbus, is not the only one of its kind. If you set out, as Charles Hapgood did, to compare images of Antarctica on several maps compiled before its “official” discovery, then there will be no doubt about the existence of a common source. Hapgood meticulously compared the maps of Peary, Arantheus Finaus, Hadji Ahmed and Mercator, created at different times and independently of each other, and determined that they all used the same unknown source, which made it possible to depict the polar continent with the greatest reliability long before its discovery.

Most likely, we will no longer know for sure who created this primary source and when. But its existence, convincingly proven by researchers of the Turkish admiral’s map, indicates the existence of some ancient civilization with a level of scientific knowledge comparable to modern ones, at least in the field of geography (Piri’s map, as already mentioned, made it possible to clarify some modern maps). And this casts doubt on the hypothesis of the gradual linear progress of humanity in general and science in particular. One gets the feeling that the greatest knowledge about nature, as if obeying an unknown law, at a certain stage becomes available to humanity, only to then be lost and... reborn again when the time comes. And who knows how many discoveries the next discovery will contain?