The story of the Piri Reis map is about how a 16th-century navigational chart ended up at the centre of what some have called a half-baked theory about our planet’s ancient history. If you are a fan of the ‘half-baked’ theory referenced here, then you probably think the entirety of the ancient Mayan culture was comprised of a bunch of dummies as well.
Regardless, I touched upon this subject ever so briefly in my recent post which I titled ‘The Shining Ones’. I have received a few requests to expand on the aforementioned Map in more detail. This Critique is the result.
During the month of October in 1929, the new republican government of Turkey was converting an Istanbul Palace into a museum; someone stumbled upon or discovered a map that was that was later determined to be more than 400 years old The map included only the western third of a portolan chart (a replication of known ports & harbors) of the world, it was drawn on gazelle skin which is a deer like animal usually found in Africa, India, and central Asia. The map / chart covered the Americas , the Atlantic Ocean, the Iberian Peninsula (modern day Spain , Andorra , and Portugal ) and the western part of Africa . Other parts of the chart, which should / would have covered the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Far East are, I imagine, lost forever.
It is not that unusual for such a map or chart to exist, but, and here’s the irregularity, this particular map was extremely accurate in regard to the displayed areas; so accurate in fact that it was then and has since been suggested that only a photograph taken from space could convey such precision. As you are aware, in 1929 such a feat was simply not possible and to boost the mystery even more, the map was shortly thereafter determined to be at least 400 years old! Well that places its origin to the early 1500’s. The next question that begs to be answered: where and when did the author or medieval ‘mapmaker’ of this chart obtain his information? After all, the map depicts stunningly accurate representations of the earth; further, it appears that the mapmaker was somehow looking down from a satellite or spacecraft, this, during a time period when an individual couldn't be found that could climb higher from the ground than a rooftop.
The ‘Piri Reis map’ that was discovered was apparently the handiwork of an Ottoman admiral named Piri Reis (“Reis” was his rank which is = to an admiral), who in 1513 compiled the map from several different sources — some of them were ancient, some more recent; they included Portuguese charts of Asia and charts made by Columbus Columbus
The Piri Reis’s map (copy displayed on the left) is fascinating on its own but it abandons the realm of 15th-century mapmakers and joins the domain of ancient astronauts, ice-age civilizations, and even shifting poles. Such theories have been presented by Charles Hapgood, a recent author who used the Piri Reis map as evidence to argue, in his 1966 book, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, a number of extraordinary things. It is thought that Hapgood was first to notice, at the bottom left of the map, what he considered to be an accurate representation of the ice-free coast of Antarctica . He suggested that the Earth’s poles had shifted in the relatively recent past, leaving Antarctica ice-free, and that, approximately 9,500 years ago, there was an advanced civilization that accurately mapped the Antarctic coastline. Hapgood insisted that among Piri Reis’s referenced sources, were maps that had derived from this ancient civilization.
It turns out that Hapgood wasn’t alone; Erich von Däniken, a huge fan of ancient alien astronauts, argued that Piri Reis’s Map was evidence of previous visits to earth by such beings as The Shining Ones that the Mayan culture’s history / artifacts routinely speak of.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Piri_reis_world_map_01.jpg … http://kurungabaa.net/2010/02/12/ancient-maps-of-oceans-on-gazelle-skin/ …
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