Piri Reis map depicts olso Antarcitc not only America. I don't see the misinterpretation here and speculation. Thing are written black on white. Here
is an excerpt from the answer of HAROLD Z. OHLMEYER Lt Colonel, USAF Commander to Prof. Charles Hapgood in the relation with the Piri Reis map:
8 RECONNAISSANCE TECHNICAL SQUADRON (SAC) UNITED STATES AIRFORCE
Westover Airforce Base
Massachusetts
6 July 1960
SUBJECT: Admiral Piri Reis World Map To: Professor Charles H. Hapgood, Keene College,
Keene, New Hampshire.
Dear Professor Hapgood,
Your request for evaluation of certain unusual features of the Piri Reis World Map of
1513 by this organization has been reviewed.
The claim that the lower part of the map portrays the Princess Martha Coast of Queen Maud Land Antarctica, and the Palmer Peninsula, is reasonable. We
find this is the most logical and in all probability the correct interpretation of the map.
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.
The ice-cap in this region is now about a mile thick.
We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled with the supposed state of geographical knowledge in 1513.
HAROLD Z. OHLMEYER Lt Colonel, USAF Commander
Despite the deadpan language, Ohlmeyer’s letter is a bombshell. If Queen Maud Land was mapped before it was covered by ice, the original
cartography must have been done an extraordinarily long time ago.
In attempting that explanation it is worth reminding ourselves of the basic historical and geological facts:
1 The Piri Reis Map, which is a genuine document, not a hoax of any kind, was made at Constantinople in AD 1513.3
2 It focuses on the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South
America and the northern coast of Antarctica.
3 Piri Reis could not have acquired his information on this latter region from contemporary explorers because Antarctica remained undiscovered until
AD 1818,4 more than 300 years after he drew the map.
4 The ice-free coast of Queen Maud Land shown in the map is a colossal puzzle because the geological evidence confirms that the latest date it could
have been surveyed and charted in an ice-free condition is 4000 BC.
5 It is not possible to pinpoint the earliest date that such a task could have been accomplished, but it seems that the Queen Maud Land littoral may
have remained in a stable, unglaciated condition for at least 9000 years before the spreading ice-cap swallowed it entirely
6 There is no civilization known to history that had the capacity or need to survey that coastline in the relevant period: between 13,000 BC and 4000
BC.
In other words, the true enigma of this 1513 map is not so much its inclusion of a continent not discovered until 1818 but its portrayal of part of
the coastline of that continent under ice-free conditions which came to an end 6000 years ago and have not since recurred.
How can this be explained? Piri Reis obligingly gives us the answer in a series of notes written in his own hand on the map itself. He tells us that
he was not responsible for the original surveying and cartography. On the contrary, he admits that his role was merely that of compiler and copyist
and that the map was derived from a large number of source maps.
Some of these had been drawn by contemporary or near-contemporary explorers (including Christopher Columbus), who had by then reached South America
and the Caribbean, but others were documents dating back to the fourth century BC or earlier.
But Piri Reis is not the only map. We have the map drawn by Oronteus Finaeus in 1531. And here are Hapgoods coments about this map:
1 It had been copied and compiled from several earlier source maps drawn up according to a number of different projections.
2 It did indeed show non-glacial conditions in coastal regions of Antarctica, notably Queen Maud Land, Enderby Land, Wilkes Land,
Victoria Land (the east coast of the Ross Sea), and Marie Byrd Land.
3 As in the case of the Piri Reis Map, the general profile of the terrain, and the visible physical features, matched closely seismic survey maps of
the subglacial land surfaces of Antarctica.
Then we have Mercator and Buache's maps that show the same thing:
The Piri Reis and Oronteus Finaeus Maps therefore provide us with a glimpse of Antarctica as no cartographer in historical times could
possibly have seen it. On their own, of course, these two pieces of evidence should not be sufficient to persuade us that we might be
gazing at the fingerprints of a lost civilization. Can three, or four, or six such maps, however, be dismissed with equal justification?
And is another drawing or map done by Russians.
The combined effect of the Piri Reis, Oronteus Finaeus, Mercator and Buache Maps is the strong, though disturbing, impression that Antarctica may have
been continuously surveyed over a period of several thousands of years as the ice-cap gradually spread outwards from the interior,
increasing its grip with every passing millennium but not engulfing all the coasts of the southern continent until around 4000 BC. The
original sources for the Piri Reis and Mercator Maps must therefore have been prepared towards the end of this period, when only the coasts
of
Antarctica were free of ice; the source for the Oronteus Finaeus Map, on the other hand, seems to have been considerably earlier, when the ice- cap
was present only in the deep interior of the continent; and the source for the Buache Map appears to originate in even earlier period (around13,000
BC), when there may have been no ice in Antarctica at all.
[edit on 17-8-2006 by Telos]
