For many centuries, historians and geographers haunted "Terra Incognita Australis" - the Unknown Southern Land, as the ancients called it. Starting from the time of the great ancient scientist Claudius Ptolemy (II century AD), up to the discovery of Antarctica (1820), this mysterious land was placed on the world maps in the southern circumpolar space.
Ptolemy, an astronomer, geographer and cartographer (the collective name of such scientists in those days was the cosmographer), who generalized all the knowledge of the ancient world, could not depict this land without good reason.
Map of the universe according to Abraham Ortelius (1571)
It was necessarily placed on their maps by cosmographers of the era of the discovery and development of America, such as Abraham Ortelius.
According to their logic, it turned out: if an unknown continent - America is discovered, why not be on Earth at least one more, especially since the great Ptolemy pointed to it? Australia was named after the mythical continent.
Finally, in 1820, a Russian expedition discovered Antarctica - the real Unknown South Land, fully consistent with the ideas of the ancients!..
The debate about how the ancients could have learned about Antarctica continues to this day. Skeptics argue that Ptolemy was based on the natural philosophical conclusions of the ancient Hellenes that the Southern continent must exist to balance the Earth - in their opinion, the Northern Hemisphere was "overloaded" with Europe and Asia.
Romantics are sure that the ancient world inherited knowledge about the great southern land from civilizations that ceased to exist more than 10 thousand years ago, during the period of global cataclysms, for example, from Atlantis.
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The Piri Reis map, which made a lot of noise in the 50s and 60s of the last century, makes us return to this protracted dispute.
It served as a solid argument in favor of the arguments of the romantics - after all, it depicts the contours of Antarctica, and even without ice cover, that is, the way the polar land looked about 10-12 thousand years ago! But the map is dated 1513 …
The second mystery is the image of individual objects of America, discovered by Europeans much later, for example, the Marajo Islands at the mouth of the Amazon River, discovered only in 1543, and individual rivers flowing into the Atlantic Ocean. The drawings of the South American Cordilleras are primitive, but schematically plausible.
Finally, on the map you can find … a llama, a typical mountain animal, which became known to Europeans only at the very end of the 16th century! No less than Antarctica without ice, the isthmus between America and Antarctica, which disappeared more than 10 thousand years ago, is surprising …
The Swiss researcher Erich von Deniken responded to publications related to these mysteries, citing the Reis map as a strong argument in favor of alien civilizations visiting the Earth …
A detailed study of the document began in the late 1950s. It was then that the expert on ancient maps A. Mallory said that the southern part of the Reis map shows the contours of Antarctica, incredible in their accuracy for such a distant past.
Moreover, the contours correspond to the coastline, which is now hidden by the ice shell. This means one of two things: either Piri Reis had state-of-the-art instruments and instruments that allowed him to carry out the necessary field research, including under-ice sounding, or he used sources more than ten thousand years ago that have survived since Antarctica was free of ice …
Orontius Finney's map. 1531 g.
After the appearance of the Piri Reis map, researchers began to study other authors more closely. It turned out that the map of the French geographer and mathematician Orontius Finney, dated 1531, fully depicts iceless Antarctica with mountain ranges, even rivers …
Moreover, the configuration of the continent is fully consistent with modern ideas about it - but, again, without ice cover. To draw up such a map today, as in the case of the Piri Reis document, requires a large team of scientists and engineers, as well as modern equipment, including seismic sounding and space imagery.
Orontius Finney's map only supported A. Mallory's hypothesis regarding the penetration into ancient Europe of the knowledge of civilizations that had disappeared by that time, including the one that may have been located in Antarctica before the Southern Earth was covered with solid ice …
Find in Istanbul
A. Mallory's research was supplemented by the American scientist C. Hepgood. He tried to find a system for building a map of Piri Reis. Let us recall that only a fragment of the latter has come down to us.
But the compass cards on the field of the map, according to Hepgood, are located in such a way that on the full map they would form a circle with the center in Aswan (Egypt).
Thus, C. Hepgood was able to determine the mathematical basis of the map - projection, that is, the method of calculations used by Piri-Reis (or an unknown ancient author) when depicting the spherical surface of the Earth on a plane.
Having transformed the Piri Reis map according to the rules of modern projections, C. Hepgood discovered that the distorted outlines of many objects acquired a completely familiar form for us; he also became convinced that the map was, as it were, glued together from many original "pieces" compiled according to different mathematical principles, probably by different authors and at different times.
What would this mean, and will it help to unravel the mysteries of the map? It turned out that the answers to many questions can be found at Piri Reis himself …
Where did the map itself come from and who is Piri Reis?
In 1929, while making an inventory of numerous relics in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, with the aim of turning this palace into a museum, its director H. Ethem discovered a map unknown to world science. On the world map of the early 16th century, America was depicted with many details, and, most surprisingly, Antarctica, discovered only 300 years later!
Upon learning of this map, the President of the Republic of Turkey Ataturk said that it was a national relic and that it should be handed over to scientists for careful study.
The map, or rather, only a fragment of a large map of the world, was drawn on parchment (skin of a gazelle) measuring 64 x 86 cm, dated 919 according to the Muslim chronology, which corresponds to 1513, and signed by Piri ibn Haji Mahmed, admiral of the Turkish fleet, known as Piri-reis ("flight" or "reis" means "master, boss"). The map field was streaked with numerous notes.
Piri Reis Map
The discovery of the map aroused new interest in the Piri-Reis book, which was kept in several manuscript copies in libraries in Turkey and some European countries.
Piri Reis map. 1513 g.
This medieval tome, known as the Book of the Seas, is 818 pages long, illustrated with maps and contains the complete geography of the world known in the first half of the 16th century. (first part), as well as a detailed description of the Mediterranean (second part).
The surviving handwritten copies of this book indicate that it served as a navigational aid to Turkish sailors for several centuries. The book also contains some episodes from the life of the author himself.
He was born in 1465 in one of the villages on the shores of the Sea of Marmara. At the age of 12, he got on the ship of his uncle, the famous admiral, military and statesman Kemal-Reis.
Peary participated under the command of his uncle, and then independently, as a captain, in the fighting in the Mediterranean; for some time he made pirate raids on the cities of the European and African coasts.
Along with this, he meticulously collected information of a geographical nature, which he later stated in his book and reflected on the map. For the second part of his life, Piri Reis was held in high esteem and glory, enjoyed the favor of the sultans, and at one time served in the Indian Ocean, the Red and Arabian Seas. The admiral died in 1554. Refusing to support the Ottoman wali (governor) of Basra, Qubada Pasha, in another campaign against the Portuguese, Piri Reis was beheaded in 1554, being a decrepit old man over 90 years old. According to other sources, Piri Reis was executed by the Sultan for a lost naval battle.
In the notes to the map and the "Book of the Seas" itself, the admiral mentions several times the sources on which he relied in creating his works. For example, he reports about a certain captive Spanish sailor who possessed hitherto unknown geographical information; or a few little-known Portuguese maps found on a ship he looted, etc.
To this it should be added that the maps, as well as all similar documents, were kept in strict state or commercial secrets, especially at the time of the beginning of the voyages across the Atlantic, since they were the main guarantee of reaching lands rich in gold and slaves. As an example, we can cite the circumstances of the voyage of Christopher Columbus.
As a professional cartographer (after graduating from school in the city of Sagrish, Columbus earned his living by drawing maps), while preparing his expedition, he probably “played” the forthcoming path on maps, alas, hitherto unknown. Did the great navigator not use the same sources as the Turkish admiral?..
So, Piri Reis had the opportunity to periodically appropriate and then use information about newly discovered lands long before its official publication. This explains the individual details of the content of the map, possibly for the first time "declassified" by the admiral, as well as the fact that the entire map is, as it were, cut from separate fragments. Thus, the piracy of the glorious naval commander is somehow justified …
And what about the contours of Antarctica? In part, the answer to this question is given by the same Piri-Reis. In one of the notes on his map, he states that he used 20 maps from "the time of Alexander the Great." Alexander the Great was a politician and conqueror whose activities eclipsed all other events in the world of the 4th century. BC e., - throughout his short life he tried to implement the ideas of his educator, the famous philosopher Aristotle. So, according to the plan of Aristotle, the famous Alexandrian Library was created - the richest collection of all kinds of manuscripts and maps.
It was there that, possibly, the materials of prehistoric civilizations were preserved. Indeed, according to the order of Alexander himself, the library was replenished with manuscripts exported from the conquered countries; and this is the whole Mediterranean and almost half of South Asia.
Later, the library was subjected to robberies and fires, but, apparently, especially valuable manuscripts were reliably protected. For several centuries this institution was considered the main focus of world scientific thought; Claudius Ptolemy was its keeper at one time.
At the beginning of the III Art. BC BC, when Alexander's empire had already collapsed, the Greek mathematician and geographer Eratosthenes worked in the famous library. He is known for being the first to determine the size of our planet. But isn't it surprising that the values he calculated (the circumference of the Earth, the radius) almost coincide with modern values, while later measurements by other scientists gave an error of the order of 30-40% ?! Posidonius, who lived 200 years after Eratosthenes, and the Arab geographers of the VIII century were so wrong.
It is also interesting that Eratosthenes took the baseline located along the meridian between Alexandria and Siena (Aswan) in Egypt as the basis for his measurements. Let's remember that it is in Siena that the central point of the Piri Reis map is located!..
The genius Hellene could well find in the library the works of his predecessors (presumably, representatives of dead civilizations). Seen in this light, determining the size of the Earth looks like a practical test of their methods of thinking …
Much indicates the existence of certain origins of geography, perhaps belonging to the Antarctic civilization, which developed in ancient times and then suddenly disappeared about 10 thousand years ago. Such a hypothesis was put forward by one of the most authoritative researchers of the Turkish admiral's map, mentioned by us C. Hepgud. His idea is by no means new - let us recall Plato's legend about Atlantis.
In both cases, we can talk about a planetary cataclysm, which was accompanied by a sharp climate change unfavorable for people. An indirect confirmation of this is the legends about the global flood, information that can be found in the myths and sacred books of various peoples of the world (the epic of Gilgamesh, the biblical legend of Noah, etc.). The glaciation process could also become catastrophic for people, say, in the same Antarctica … The sacred book of the Quiche Indians - "Popol Vuh", the myths of Mexico and Venezuela, the book of the Aryans "Zend Avesta" are mentioned about sudden glaciations that are destructive for mankind.
The romantics still have a chance to convince their opponents - skeptics - that they are right. We just need to wait for the discovery of other fragments of the Piri Reis map, on which, quite possibly, the mysterious disappeared lands will be drawn.