Piri Reis Map

Have just re-read Charriots of the Gods. It deals with the Piri Reis Map on pages 29/30/31. Research that was done by USA Navy cartographers seemed to indicate that the map is drawn as seen high up from space. It also depicts the interior, which navigators could not have been aware of and depicts mountain ranges in the Antarctica hidden for thousands of years under ice.

Offered by Stephen.

The Piri Reis Map, which is a genuine document, not a hoax of any kind, was made at Constantinople in 1513 CE. It focuses on the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. Piri Reis could not have acquired his information on this latter region from contemporary explorers because Antarctica remained undiscovered until 1818 CE, more than 300 years after he drew the map. The ice-free coast of Queen Maud Land shown in the map is a colossal puzzle because the geological evidence confirms that the very latest date that it could have been surveyed and charted in an ice-free condition is 4000 BCE. It is not possible to pinpoint the earliest date that such a task could have been accomplished, but it seems that the Queen Maud Land littoral may have remained in a stable, unglaciated condition for at least 9,000 years before the spreading ice-cap swallowed it entirely. There is no civilization known to history that had the capacity or need to survey that coastline in the relevant period, i.e. between 13,000 BCE and 4000 BCE.