Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, found
something rather fascinating. Imprinted
on an old Gazelle skin dated 1513 they
uncovered a segment of an amazing map. The
chart seemed to depict part of the Atlantic
Ocean and included the Americas and
Antarctica in perfect detail. The mysterious
thing was it had been drawn up only a few
years after Columbus’ discovery, and three
centuries before Antarctica was even known
about. Over the years since the find, debate
has raged about how the cartographer had
assimilated his knowledge. Did an advanced
ancient race, or aliens, create his source
charts, or have the map’s features been
adapted to fit wishful-thinking theories?
The map came to be named after its creator
– Piri Reis. The word ‘Reis’ actually means
‘Admiral’, and it was discovered that
Muhiddin Piri had originally worked as a
privateer for the Turkish Ottoman empire,
before accepting a role in the imperial navy.
On his travels, he had collected all manner of
charts, sketches, drawings and diagrams of
coastlines and lands in the known world. In
1513, using an exhaustive list of source charts
and data, he drew his first world map, which
is what we now recognise as the Piri Reis
Map. He is known to have compiled another,
quite different, global study in 1528 and
continued to enjoy a distinguished military
career until 1554, aged almost 90, when he
was beheaded by the Ottoman Sultan.
The segment of the map that still exists is
only a portion of the original, and shows the
Atlantic Ocean from the west coast of Africa,
to the east coast of South America, to the
north coast of Antarctica in the south. Piri
also included details about his sources on
the map, claiming some of the reference
charts he used were from the fourth century
or even before. The map is not drawn with
the straight lines of longitude and latitude
found on today’s maps. It was designed using
a series of circles with lines radiating out
from them. These types of charts were called
‘portolan’ maps and were used to explain
sailing routes, guiding ships from port to
port, rather than giving sailors a definite
position in the world. Ancient charts of this
type were widespread, and Columbus is said
to have used one when he set off to find the
Americas.
Many Piri Reis Map enthusiasts believe the
level of geographical detail and mathematical
knowledge needed to create the map
was far beyond the reach of navigators from
the sixteenth or earlier centuries. Indeed,
experts at the United States Air Force in the
1960s found the map so accurate they used it
to replace false information on their own
charts. Some people believe the map could
only have been achieved with the help of
aerial surveys, and suggest alien creatures
mapped the planet thousands of years ago,
leaving their results behind to be copied by
Mankind.
The map’s seemingly accurate depiction of
the geography of Antarctica is its most
fascinating aspect. Antarctica was discovered
in 1818, and the actual land of the
continent was only mapped in 1949 by a
combined British and Scandinavian project
that had to use modern equipment to see the
land underneath the mile-deep icecap. The
theory put forward to compensate for this is
that an ancient race using advanced, but now
lost, technology was able to accurately
record details of the continent before it was
covered with ice.
Most experts suggest Antarctica was icefree
no later than 6,000 years ago, although
others believe ice has covered the continent
for – at least – hundreds of thousands of
years. Similarly, many cartography experts
claim the accuracy of the portolan system of
map drawing is more in the eye of the
beholder, and many maps of this time
included imaginary continents in the south
Atlantic. But there are still some
unexplainably accurate details on the map.
The Falkland Islands are placed at the
correct latitude, despite not being discovered
until 1592, and the unknown Andes
mountain range was included on the map of
America. Similarly, Greenland was shown as
three separate islands, a fact only discovered
this century.
So the debate continues. Did Piri Reis just
strike lucky with cartographic guesswork? Or
did the Turkish admiral have access to charts
and maps created by an advanced race,
living on the planet thousands of years ago?
