This striking 18th century cartographic document is unusual in that it flaunts Antarctica without ice. Moreover, the French cartographer captured the "icy" continent even before it was discovered by travelers. This allowed fans of unusual theories to assume that the work of the Frenchman is evidence that one of the ancient unknown civilizations painted Antarctica even before it was covered with ice. Based on these works, Philippe Buach made his map. Is it really so? Was Antarctica known before humanity discovered it in the 19th century?
The author of the map was a French geographer named Philippe Buach, who gave it his name. Disciple of another researcher and publisher, Guillaume Delisle. The map was presented to the public on September 3, 1739.
Philippe Buach.
When the mentor died in 1726, his publishing house and work of life went to Buach, who married his daughter. Philip's career took off. Some time later, in 1729, he became the leading geographer of the French Empire, and a year later - a member of the Academy of Sciences. He was invited to the place of Guillaume Delisle.
Buach was a pioneer in the experimental direction of research - theoretical geography. This system was unusual in many ways. His designs were based on hypotheses. Buach studied in detail the latest materials available to him, concerning the latest geographical research, scientific works, astronomical observations. Based on the analysis, the scientist assumed the presence of certain continents. Sometimes this system failed, but it had its own undoubted success. Buach almost unmistakably assumed the presence of Alaska and the Bering Strait. But I was wrong about the reality of the Central Antarctic Sea.
Philippe Buach's map.
In 1966, Charles Hapgood, in his work "Maps of Ancient Sea Kings", suggested that the Buach map describes in detail the subglacial structure of Antarctica. It was he who suspected that the cartographer had seen the maps made by a highly developed ancient civilization. Or even alien cartographers.
One of the facts denying this interpretation is the lack of knowledge about what the subglacial topography of Antarctica actually looks like. It is almost impossible to verify this. Moreover, another explorer, Piri Reis, painted Antarctica without ice. There are big differences between the works of the two experimental cartographers.
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Fragment of the Piri Reis map.
Buach himself indirectly indicated that his map is only a hypothesis, an assumption about what the continent looks like, which at the time when Buach drew it was not yet discovered.
The cartographer was able to express an ingenious guess thanks to the notes of the French geographer and navigator Jean Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, who indicated that he saw many icebergs during his voyage to the south. The further he swam, the more of them became.
Pavel Romanutenko