Buck Rogers, Staff Writer
If conventional wisdom on the history of the human race is correct, then human civilization is not old enough, nor was it advanced enough, to account for many of the mysterious monolithic and archeological sites around the world. Places like Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, the Bosnian Pyramids, and Adam’s Calendar in South Africa, beg the same question: if human civilization is supposedly not old enough to have created all of these sites, then who, or what, had the capacity to create so many elaborate structures around the globe?
It is clear that our understanding of our own history is incomplete, and there is plenty of credible evidence pointing to the existence of intelligent and civilized cultures on Earth long before the first human cultures emerged from the Middle East around 4000BC. The Admiral Piri Reis world map of 1513 is part of the emerging more complete story of our history, one that challenges mainstream thinking in big ways.
Mapmaking is a complex and civilized task, thought to have emerged around 1000BC with the Babylonian clay tablets. Antarctica was officially first sighted by a Russian expedition in 1820 and is entirely covered in ice caps thought to have formed around 34-45 million years ago. Antarctica, therefore, should not be seen on any map prior to 1820, and all sighted maps of Antarctica should contain the polar ice caps, which are supposedly millions of years old.
A world map made by Ottoman cartographer and military admiral, Piri Reis, casts some doubt on what we think we know about ancient civilization.
The Piri Reis map, which focuses on Western Africa, the East Coast of South America, and the North Coast of Antarctica, features the details of a coastline that many historians and geologists believe represents Queen Maud Land, that is, Antarctica. Remarkably, as represented in this map, the frigid continent was not covered in ice caps, but, rather, with dense vegetation. How could a map drawn in 1513 feature a continent that wasn’t discovered until 1820? And if the continent had in fact been discovered by one of the civilizations known to have emerged after 4000BC, why were the ice caps not on the map?
The paradoxes presented by the map were of little significance to the world until Charles Hapgood, a history professor from New Hampshire, USA, claimed that the information in the Piri Reis map supported a different view of geology and ancient history. Hapgood believed that the map verified his global geological theory, which explains how portions of Antarctica could have remained ice-free until 4000BC.
Hapgood’s presentation is so convincing that even famed theoretical physicist and philosopher Albert Einstein wrote the following supportive forward to a book that Hapgood wrote in 1953:
“His idea is original, of great simplicity, and – if it continues to prove itself – of great importance to everything that is related to the history of the Earth’s surface.” –Albert Einstein
Unquestionably not a hoax, the map is certifiably authentic, but the information on the map is of mysterious origin. Piri Reis himself notes that the map was drawn from information sourced from other, older maps, charts and logs, many of which, Hapgood suggests, may have been copied and transcribed repeatedly since before the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, which wiped out the literature of antiquity and vast cultural knowledge.
This hypothesis opens the door to the possibility that some forgotten ancient civilization had the capacity to voyage to the Antarctic, charting the earth, with the technology to make maps, sometime before the ice caps formed. A significant departure from our present understanding of our history.
The absence of the ice caps in the Piri Reis map is peculiar, and in 1960 Hapgood brought his theories on this to the attention of the United States Air Force. Hapgood asked, among other things, if the shape of the continent, as it appeared on the Piri Reis map, was at all similar to the shape of the continent under the ice, as revealed by recent Air Force testing of seismic data on the continent. Their answer was astonishing:
“…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”
If Hapgood’s theory has merit, as even Einstein believed, then there was a period of time from around 13000BC to 6000BC when Antarctica was located more closely to the equator and was more tropical in climate, much like parts of South America. This was caused by a sudden shift of the earth’s entire lithosphere, he theorized, simultaneously moving all of the continents into their present position, a much different view than the widely accepted explanation offered the plate tectonics theory.
If Antarctica had indeed been further North then than it presently is, and was not covered in ice only as recently as 6000BC, then who was around back then that could have mapped it, long before any known civilizations? And who could have done so long before the advent of the marine chronometer in the 18th century, which finally solved the problem of accurately tracking longitude on the high seas?
Had the entire Earth already been mapped by 4000BC, by a civilization that has been forgotten, as analysis of the Piri Reis map and the theories of Charles Hapgood suggest?
About the Author
Buck Rogers is the earth bound incarnation of that familiar part of our timeless cosmic selves, the rebel within. He is a surfer of ideals and meditates often on the promise of happiness in a world battered by the angry seas of human thoughtlessness. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com.
Sources:
– Hancock, Graham. Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth’s Lost Civilization. 1995, Crown Trade Paperbacks.
– http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/pres/map/maphis.html
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Persons might be interested to see what the Foot of All Knowledge has to say about the Piri Reis Map.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_Reis_map
From the second half of the article:
– – –
“Gregory McIntosh, a historian of cartography, who examined the map in depth in his book The Piri Reis Map of 1513 (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2000). … As far as the accuracy of depiction of the supposed Antarctic coast is concerned, there are two conspicuous errors. First, it is shown hundreds of miles north of its proper location; second, the Drake Passage is completely missing, with the Antarctic Peninsula presumably conflated with the Argentine coast. The identification of this area of the map with the frigid Antarctic coast is also difficult to reconcile with the notes on the map which describe the region as having a warm climate.[36]
“It should be kept in mind that maps of the period generally depicted a large continent named Terra Australis Incognita of highly variable shape and extent. This land was posited by Ptolemy as a counterbalance to the extensive continental areas in the northern hemisphere; due to a lack of exploration and various misunderstandings its existence was not fully abandoned until circumnavigation of the area during the second voyage of James Cook in the 1770s showed that if it existed, it was much smaller than imagined previously. The first confirmed landing on Antarctica was not until 1820, and the coastline of Queen Maud Land did not see significant exploration before Norwegian expeditions began in 1891.[38][39] In 1513 Cape Horn had not yet been discovered, and indeed Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage of circumnavigation was not to set sail for another six years. It is unclear whether the map maker saw South America itself as part of the unknown southern lands (as shown in the Atlas Miller),[40] or whether (as Dutch thought) he drew what was then known of the coast with substantial distortion, but in any case serious scholarship holds that there is no reason to believe that the map is the product of genuine knowledge of the Antarctic coast.[36]”
I’m not interested in so-called refutations of what any reasonable person must regard as irrefutable proof of the Space Gods from Atlantis – which would have been the title of my first book, if only I’d not been so unimaginative with the evidence.
I think von Däniken got there first ….
He hadn’t my knowledge of linguistics. I could have given the enterprise a really scholarly gloss.
Well, I suppose we should give him props for trying, and pity the poor soul for not having your linguistic expertise. Trying to punch above his weight, he was.
By the way — what were the Lines of Nazca REALLY for?
They were a socialist “job-creation-initiative”. Half the population not fit for human sacrifice would be dragooned into putting them there, and then the idea was that the other surviving half would be forced to remove them again. But the second bit never happened because the State ran out of other people’s money.
That’s why the Conquistadors were so pissed off with them, and slaughtered them all, because the Exchequer was bare. Cortes found the note that said “Sorry, there’s no money left!”, turned blue-in-the-face, emitted steam from his helmet, and gave the order.
Thanks for explaining it, David. That clears up a lot of stuff for me. 🙂
Quite correct Julie. Maps showed a “balancing” continent in the south (intellectual fashion), so the question then becomes “is the map accurate?”. And it is not.