Antarctica without ice. The mystery of the ancient map of Piri Reis. Ancient map of Antarctica Ancient maps of Antarctica without ice

Scientists really don’t like it when inexplicable facts interfere with their well-ordered theories. This undermines the authority of scientific thought, sometimes even forcing us to reconsider judgments that seemed unshakable. Therefore, as far as possible, they try to evaluate such facts critically, or even simply remove them out of sight.

Misplaced Artifact

The library of Istanbul's Topkapi Palace houses an unusual map of the world, compiled at the beginning of the 16th century. It rarely becomes part of public exhibitions, but not because it is poorly preserved or uninteresting to tourists. It’s just that the map doesn’t fit very well into historians’ ideas about what people at that time could and could not know.

In fact, what Dr. Ethem discovered in the former Sultan's library in 1929 was only part of a map made no later than 1513 by an Ottoman admiral known as Piri Reis. It was carefully drawn on pieces of gazelle skin tanned and sewn together. Who and when divided it and where the remaining parts disappeared is unknown.

The Turkish historian was struck by the discrepancy between the accuracy of the image and the drawing technique and the time when Piri Reis lived. The map is marked with a grid of intersecting lines - the so-called loxodrome, which were used to plot a course and were a characteristic feature of medieval nautical charts. Nowadays it would be called a pilot. Such maps were created for sailors sailing only from port to port in the 14th-16th centuries. They were not suitable for long ocean voyages, since they did not take into account the sphericity of the Earth.

Dr. Ethem drew attention to the fact that the coastline of South America was very accurately plotted on the Piri Reis map, although Europeans had not yet climbed that far south. Meanwhile, the document was dated absolutely precisely; fortunately, it was in the completely preserved admiral’s archive and was provided with explanatory notes.

15 years later, one of the high-ranking Turkish officers sent a strange map to the United States for study. In the hydrographic department of the fleet, specialists threw up their hands in surprise. The ancient map was superimposed on the modern map and a perfect match was found. American experts decided that such an accurate map could only be created if its compilers used aerial photography.

In addition, it was possible to create such a map only by knowing spherical trigonometry, the first provisions of which were developed only in the 18th century. Meanwhile, the admiral's map dates back to the 16th century and has been confirmed using the latest research methods. By the way, in addition to both Americas, the Piri Reis map showed the coast of Antarctica, and even free of ice!

Naturally, historians were quick to call the mysterious map an inappropriate artifact. Or, in other words, violating the chronology of evolution and development of technology accepted by the scientific community.

The Man from Nowhere

However, Piri himself admitted: he is not responsible for cartographic and reconnaissance data, his job is just to combine ancient and modern sources into one map. He never hid the fact that he had not seen even a hundredth part of those shores, the outlines of which he depicted with his own hands, and he preferred to sail ships along the coast from port to port.

But the confession of the “armchair” admiral only confuses the whole matter. Neither ancient nor medieval maps that have come down to us could help Piri Reis to compile a document of such accuracy. Maps of the seas in the Middle Ages, although more accurate than land maps, did not develop at all. That is, cartographers simply redrawn more ancient directions.

Since the time of Ptolemy, scientists have assumed the existence of a certain southern continent and even placed its vague outlines on their maps. However, Russian sailors first saw Antarctica at the beginning of the 19th century. It can be assumed that some ancient sailors also sailed far to the south, saw the Antarctic ice and depicted their outlines on the map. But Piri Reis mapped the coast of Dronning Maud Land exactly as it would have looked without the ice cover one and a half kilometers thick! The accuracy of the Turkish admiral's calculations was confirmed in 1953 using sonar and seismic sounding.

To construct a geographical map - displaying a sphere on a plane - you need to know the dimensions of this sphere, that is, the Earth. Even in ancient times, the Greek mathematician, astronomer, geographer, philologist and poet Eratosthenes was able to measure the circumference of the globe, but he did it with a large error. However, a study of the coordinates of objects on the Piri Reis map indicates that the dimensions of the Earth were taken into account without error, not to mention the fact that he represented it as a ball, contrary to contemporary theories.

In addition, research has shown that 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 was a sphere, but also calculated the length of the equator with an accuracy of about 100 kilometers.

Ancient aeronauts

It remains to be found out who and when compiled the same mysterious primary source that the Turkish admiral copied. Some scientists admit that the last time Antarctica was completely or partially free of ice was about 12,000 years ago. Official science believes that at that time there were no civilizations on Earth capable of making such accurate maps using spherical trigonometry, chronographs (necessary for accurately determining longitude), aerial photography, capable of calculating the length of the equator.

Although there was enough material evidence of the existence of civilizations much more ancient than the Sumerian or Indian, until now scientists have been able to cast doubt on them. But this time the evidence of the existence of ancient technologies cannot be disputed. Piri Reis could not have had such knowledge, and this is proven by the presence of a certain ancient map that he copied.

By the way, the Piri Reis map also gives the answer to the question of where those who created it lived. It is compiled in the so-called polar equal-area projection, which means it must have a center. In this case, this is the outskirts of Cairo, or, for example, ancient Memphis. It turns out that historians underestimate the age of Egyptian civilization and the level of its development by at least three times.

The Piri Reis map, and especially the unknown primary source used by the admiral, casts doubt on the hypothesis of linear human progress. About 12,000 years ago, there was a civilization in the Nile Delta whose representatives could not only reach Antarctica, but also did it by air, and their knowledge of mathematics and geography was not much different from modern ones.

Piri Reis Map

Piri Reis Map

Surviving fragment of the first world map of Piri Reis (1513)

Piri Reis Map is the first known authentic map of the entire world, created in the 16th century in Constantinople (Ottoman Empire) by the Turkish admiral and great cartography enthusiast Piri Reis (full name - Haji Muheddin Piri ibn Haji Mehmed). The map shows parts of the western coast of Europe and North Africa with reasonable accuracy, and the coast of Brazil and the eastern tip of South America are also easily recognizable on the map. The map contains various islands of the Atlantic Ocean, including the Azores and the Canary Islands (like the mythical island of Antilia). Many believe that the map contains elements of the southern continent, which is considered proof that ancient cartographers were aware of the existence of Antarctica.

History of the map

Topkapi Palace

The map was discovered in 1929, during the work on the creation of a museum in the Sultan's Topkapi Palace by Dr. Ethem.

The map immediately attracted attention, since it was one of the first maps of America and the only map of the 16th century where the South American continent is located correctly relative to the African one. In 1953, a Turkish naval officer sent a copy of the Piri Reis chart to the US Navy Hydrographic Office. A certain I. Walters became interested in the map. To evaluate the map, Walters, as the bureau's chief engineer, turned to Arlington H. Mallery for help. Arlington H. Mallery), an expert on ancient maps who had previously worked with Walters. Mallery, after spending a lot of time, discovered what method of cartographic projection was used on the map. To check the accuracy of the map, he made a grid and superimposed the Piri Reis map on the world map: the map was absolutely accurate. After his work, he stated that the only way to create a map of such accuracy was through aerial photography. Also, to construct a Piri Reis map, you must have knowledge of spherical trigonometry, which was developed and described only in the 18th century.

The map is currently in the library of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, however, it is generally not on display to the public.

Creating a map

If we take as a basis the version that the map shows Antarctica, then, apparently, Piri Reis redrew the map from more ancient sources, possibly using some materials from the lost Library of Alexandria. This version is based on several facts:

• Piri Reis himself is from a country that was not interested in long-distance travel.
• In his notes, Piri Reis indicated “Alexandrian” sources for the map, and, apparently, he used several sources to compile the map. The remains of ancient knowledge were indeed more accessible than the Ottoman Empire at that moment, since the territory of Egypt at the time the map was drawn up was part of the Ottoman Empire.
• There is no information about any detailed exploration of Antarctica and South America in the 14th-15th centuries.

The card is made from pieces of gazelle leather measuring 90 × 63 cm, 86 × 60 cm, 90 × 65 cm, 85 × 60 cm, 87 × 63 cm and 86 × 62 cm.

Antarctica image on the map

Comparison between the modern image and the version of the image on the Piri Reis map

The idea that the map shows Antarctica may be wrong. This is confirmed by many inconsistencies with the modern geography of the area, which can be mistaken for inaccuracies in the map depicting South America: duplication of rivers, merging at the southern tip with ice-free Antarctica. A closer look at the coast supports the alternative theory that the "extra" landmass is simply part of the South American coast, probably explored by Portuguese navigators and curved to the right. There are some features on the maps that resemble basins at the mouth of the Strait of Magellan and the Falkland Islands; Also, there is an annotation on the map that states that this region is warm and large snakes live there, which contradicts the polar climate and rare fauna that exist today and existed there in the 16th century. Also, the map states that "spring comes early" on the islands off the coast, which is true for the Falkland Islands, not any islands near the Antarctic mainland.

On the other hand, if we take as a basis the fact that Piri Reis used Alexandrian sources to compile his map, then the rule for constructing maps of these sources and the cartographic projection may be different from the one that is accepted today by modern geographers in most publications and was familiar to Piri Reis in XVI century. For example, if you apply an azimuthal projection, then the Piri Reis map no longer looks so inaccurate. If this is so, then Mallery's conclusions were correct, and Antarctica is indeed depicted on the map.

The contours from the Piri Reis map (left picture) and the azimuthal projection of the real globe (right picture) indicate very similar distortions. Today we know nothing about the principles of cartographic projection of ancient sources. But we often come across fundamentally different systems, for example, in the Mayan Calendar, which, in turn, is definitely of great antiquity. If such projections really fell into the hands of Piri Reis (as he himself stated in his notes), then Piri Reis most likely could not understand the system of cartographic projection of these maps and redrew them as is onto his map, which is why inexplicable distortions arose. It should be noted that, if this theory is correct, the sources depicted South America and Antarctica with a continuous coastline. An explanation for this fact could be:

• The presence of a glacier connecting the coastlines of South America and Antarctica at the time of compilation of the ancient source (the last strong climate warming took place about 5-6 thousand years ago). In this case, contradictory notes on the map about the climate of some places could have been taken from other sources used by Piri Reis.
• An inaccuracy in the work of Piri Reis himself, which could have arisen for many reasons.

• Professor Hapgood, who studied the Piri Reis map for a long time, also worked with the US Army, which studied the Antarctic coast after the war. The results of the US military's analysis of the map at that time are reflected in the following letter:

July 6, 1960
Subject: Admiral Piri Reis Card
To whom: Professor Charles H. Hapgood Charles H. Hapgood)
Keene Community College, Keene, New Hampshire

Dear Professor Hapgood,

Your request to evaluate some unusual features on the 1513 Piri Reis map has been reviewed. The claim that the bottom of the map shows the coast of Princess Martha of Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, as well as the Palmer Peninsula is reasonable. We believe that this conclusion is the most logical and, in all likelihood, correct interpretation of the map.

At the bottom of the map, the geographic elements show a very marked resemblance to seismic scanning data from the 1949 Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of the actual geological terrain beneath the glacier there. This indicates that the coast was mapped before it was covered with ice. The glacier in this region today is about a mile thick.

We have no idea how the data on this map might correlate with the supposed level of geographic knowledge in 1513.

Harold Z. Ohlmeer Harold Z. Ohlmeyer), Lieutenant Colonel, Commander, United States Air Force

Notes

Literature

• Afetinan, A. & Yolaç, Leman (trans.) (1954), The Oldest Map of America, Drawn by Piri Reis, Ankara : Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, pp. 6–15.
• Afetinan, A. (1987), Life and Works of Piri Reis: The Oldest Map of America(2nd ed. ed.), Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, OCLC.
• Hapgood, Charles H. (1966), Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age, New York: Chilton Books, ISBN 0801950899.
• Deissmann, Adolf (1933), Forschungen und Funde im Serai: Mit einem Verzeichnis der nichtislamischen Handscriften im Topkapu Serai in Istanbul, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
• Kahle, Paul E. (October 1933), "A Lost Map of Columbus", Geographic Review 23 (4): 621–638, DOI 10.2307/209247.
• Kahle, Paul E. (April 1956), "Piri Re"is: The Turkish Sailor and Cartographer", Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 4 : 101–111 .
• McIntosh, Gregory C. (2000), The Piri Reis Map of 1513, Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, ISBN 0-8203-2157-5.
• Mollat ​​du Jourdin, Michel; La Roncière, Monique & le R. Dethan, L. (trans.) (1984), Sea Charts of the Early Explorers, Thirteenth to Seventeenth Century, New York: Thames & Hudson, ISBN 0500013373.
• Nebenzahl, Kenneth (1990), Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries, Chicago: Rand McNally, ISBN 052883407X.
• Portinaro, Pierluigi & Knirsch, Franco (1987), The Cartography of North America, 1500–1800, New York: Facts on File, ISBN 0816015864.
• Smithsonian Institution (1966), Art Treasures of Turkey, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, OCLC.
• Stiebing, William H., Jr. (1984), Ancient Astronauts, Cosmic Collisions and Other Popular Theories about Man's Past, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, ISBN 0-87975-285-8.
• Tekeli, Sevim (1985), "The Map of America by Piri Reis", Erdem 1 (3): 673–683 .
• Van de Waal, E. H. (1969), "Manuscript Maps in the Topkapǐ Saray Library, Istanbul", Imago Mundi 23 : 81–95, DOI 10.1080/03085696908592335 .
• Yerci, M. (1989), "The Accuracy of the First World Map Drawn by Piri Reis", Cartographic Journal 26 (2): 154–155 .

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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..."

A surviving fragment of the Piri Reis map. 1513

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!

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

Turkish Naval Museum. In the Memorial Hall there are plaques with the names of those killed at sea (the oldest date is 1319). Here you can also see a rare collection of ancient navigation maps, and copies of them can be bought in the souvenir shop. The most famous of them is the plan of Admiral Piri Reis (1517)

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...

On July 6, 1960, the US Air Force responded to Professor Charles Hapgood of Keene College in response to his request for an assessment of the ancient Piri Reis map:

July 6, 1960
Topic: Admiral Piri Reis Map
To: Professor Charles Hapgood
Kiin College
Keene, New Hampshire

Dear Professor Hapgood,
Your request to evaluate the unusual features of the Piri Reis map from 1513 has been reviewed by this organization. The assertion that the lower part of the map shows Princess Martha Coast [parts of] Dronning Maud Land in Antarctica, as well as the Palmer Peninsula, has some basis. We found this explanation to be the most logical and possibly correct. The geographic details at the bottom of the map are consistent with the seismological profile of the top of the ice cap taken by the 1949 Swedish-British expedition. This means that the coastline was mapped before it was covered with ice. The ice in this area is approximately 1.5 kilometers thick. We have no idea how these data could have been obtained given the assumed level of geographical knowledge in 1513.
Harold Ohlmeyer, Lieutenant Colonel, Captain, US Air Force.

Official science has been saying all this time that the ice cap of Antarctica is a million years old. The map shows the northern part of this continent without ice cover. Then the map must be at least a million years old, which is impossible, because... humanity did not yet exist then.

Further, more careful research revealed the date of the end of the last ice-free period: 6,000 years ago. There is disagreement about the start date of this period: from 13,000 to 9,000 years ago. The big question is: who mapped Queen Maud Land 6,000 years ago? What unknown civilization had such technology?

According to traditional ideas, the first civilization was formed 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia, and was soon followed by Indian and Chinese. Accordingly, none of these civilizations could do this. But who lived 6,000 years ago and had technologies only available today?

In the Middle Ages, special sea maps (“portolani”) appeared, on which all sea routes, shores, bays, straits, etc. were carefully marked. Most of them described the Mediterranean and Aegean seas, as well as some others. One of these maps was drawn by Piri Reis. But on some of them unknown lands were visible, which the sailors kept in the strictest confidence. It is believed that Columbus was among these chosen sailors.

To draw the map, Reis used several sources collected during his travels. He wrote notes on the map, from which we can understand what kind of work he did. He writes that he is not responsible for intelligence and cartography data, but only for combining all sources. He claims that one of the source maps was drawn by sailors contemporary to Reis, while the others were drawn in the 4th century BC. or even earlier.

Dr. Charles Hapgood, in the preface to his book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (Turnstone books, London, 1979), writes:

It seems that information was transferred between people very carefully. The origin of the cards is unknown; perhaps they were made by the Minoans or Phoenicians, who for thousands of years were the best sailors of antiquity. We have evidence that they collected and studied the great Library of Alexandria in Egypt, and their knowledge was useful to the geographers of that time.

Perhaps Piri Reis received some maps from the Library of Alexandria, a famous and important source of knowledge from ancient times. In accordance with Hapgood's reconstruction, copies of these documents and some other sources were moved to other cultural centers, including. and to Constantinople. Then, in 1204 (the year of the 4th Crusade), when the Venetians entered the city, these maps began to circulate among European sailors.

Hapgood continues:

Most of these charts were for the Mediterranean and Black Seas. But maps of other regions have also been preserved: both Americas, the Arctic and Antarctic. It became clear that the ancients could swim from pole to pole. It may seem incredible, but evidence confirms that some ancient explorers explored Antarctica when it was not yet covered by ice, and that they had an accurate navigational tool for determining longitude, more advanced than what ancient, medieval and modern explorers had until the second half of the 18th century. […]

This evidence of ancient technology will support and complement many other hypotheses about lost civilizations. Scientists have so far been able to refute most of these hypotheses, calling them myths, but this evidence cannot be refuted. It also requires a reconsideration of all previous statements with a broader view.”

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, but 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.

In 1953, a Turkish naval officer sent the Piri Reis chart to the US Navy Hydrographic Office for inspection by Chief Engineer M. Walters, who called in Arlington Mallary, a respected scholar of ancient maps with whom he had previously worked. After much study, Mallary found a type of map projection. To check the accuracy of the map, he put a grid on the map and then transferred it to the globe: the map was absolutely accurate. Mallary argues that such accuracy requires aerial photography. But who had airplanes 6,000 years ago?

The hydrographic bureau couldn’t believe their eyes: the map turned out to be more accurate than modern data, so they even had to be corrected! The accuracy of determining the longitudinal coordinates indicated that spheroid trigonometry was used here, which was officially unknown until the mid-18th century.

Hapgood proved that the Reis map was drawn using planar geometry, with latitudes and longitudes 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!

Hapgood sent his collection of ancient maps (and Race's map was not the only one) to Richard Strachan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hapgood wanted to know exactly the level of mathematical knowledge needed to construct such maps. In 1965, Strachan responded that the level should be very high: using spheroid geometry, data on the curvature of the Earth and projection methods.

Look at the Piri Reis map with designed parallels and meridians:

The accuracy of the mapping of Dronning Maud Land, coastline, plateaus, deserts, bays was confirmed by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949 (as Ohlmeyer said in a letter to Hapgood). The researchers used sonar and seismic sounding to determine the terrain beneath the ice, which is about 1.5 km thick.

In 1953, Hapgood wrote the book The Shifting Crust of the Earth: A Key to Some Basic Problems in Earth Science, where he proposed a theory to explain how Antarctica could have been ice-free before 4000 BC. (see Bibliography). The essence of the theory is as follows:
Antarctica was ice-free (and therefore significantly warmer) due to the fact that it was once not near the south pole, but some 3,000 km further north, which Hapgood argued “would have placed it outside the Arctic Circle.” , and in warmer climates."

The shift of the continent further south to its current position could be caused by the so-called displacement of the earth's crust (not to be confused with continental drift and plate tectonics). This mechanism explains how "the entire lithosphere of a planet can sometimes shift over the surface of the softer inner layers, just as the entire peel of an orange moves over the surface of the pulp when it loses firm contact with it." (Quoted from Hapgood’s Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, more details in the Bibliography).

This theory was sent to Albert Einstein, who responded very positively to it. Although geologists did not accept the idea, Einstein was much more open to Hapgood's statements like this: “In the polar regions there is a monolithic deposit of ice, asymmetrically located with respect to the pole. The rotation of the Earth affects these masses, forming a centrifugal moment that is transmitted to the rigid earth's crust. The moment constantly increasing in this way will shift the crust over the entire surface of the Earth when it reaches a certain force.” (Einstein’s Preface to the book “The Earth’s Shifting Crust...”, part one.)

In any case, even if Hapgood's theory is correct, the mystery still remains. The Piri Reis map should not exist. It cannot be that someone could have drawn such an accurate map so long ago. The first tool for calculating longitude with the necessary accuracy was invented in 1761 by John Harrison. Before this, there was no way to calculate longitude so accurately: the errors were hundreds of kilometers. And Reis's map is one of several that demonstrate supposedly unknown lands, impossible knowledge and a magnificent accuracy that surprises even today.

Reis indicated that he was based on ancient maps, which, in turn, were also copied from even older and even more accurate records. For example, Dulcert's Portolano map, drawn by him in 1339, shows the exact longitudes of Europe and the North. Africa, and the coordinates of the Mediterranean and Black Seas are plotted with an accuracy of half a degree. An even more amazing drawing is the Zeno map from 1380. It covers an area as far as Greenland, and its accuracy is amazing. Hapgood writes: "It is impossible that anyone in the 14th century knew the exact coordinates of these places." Another striking map belongs to the Turk Hadji Ahmed (1559), which shows a strip of c. 1600 km long, connecting Alaska and Siberia. This isthmus is now covered with water due to the Ice Age, which raised the water level in the ocean.

Oronteus Fineus is another person who drew a map with incredible accuracy in 1532. His Antarctica was also devoid of ice. There are maps of Greenland as two separate islands, which was confirmed by a French expedition that discovered that the ice cap covered two separate islands.

As we see, many ancient maps covered almost the entire surface of the Earth. They seem to be parts of an older map of the world, made by unknown people using technologies only rediscovered today. While early humans supposedly lived in a primitive way, someone “put down on paper” the entire geography of the Earth. And this general knowledge somehow fell apart into parts, now collected by several people who lost this knowledge and simply copied what they found in libraries, bazaars and other various places.

Hapgood took it one step further by opening a cartographic document that copied an older Chinese map, dated 1137, engraved on a stone pillar. It demonstrated the same high level of technology, the same method of applying a grid and the same techniques of spheroid geometry. It has so many similarities with Western maps that it can be assumed that they had a common source. Could this be a lost civilization that existed thousands of years before?