I came across an interesting link to the
Piri Reis Map.
In 1929, historians found a map drawn by a Turkish admiral Piri Reis, in 1513. It accurately details the western coast of Africa, eastern coast of South America, and the Northern coast of Antarctica. It is most intriguing how Piri Reis managed to draw the Antarctic coastline 300 years before it was discovered. Geological evidence today tells us that the coastline could have been charted in an ice-free state at the latest sometime around 4000BC, the land has been under ice since then. For the coastline to be as accurate, it must have been mapped before ice did cover it. That seems impossible, since according to traditional history, the first civilizations developed only around 3000BC in the mid-east. It was soon followed by the Indus Valley civilizations about a millenium after that.
Piri Reis, has notes on the map that suggests his role was merely that of a compiler, some of his source maps dating as far back as 4th century BC. Dr.Charles Hapgood in his book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings suggests:
"It appears that accurate information has been passed down from people to people. It appears that the charts must have originated with a people unknown and they were passed on, perhaps by the Minoans and the Phoenicians, who were, for a thousand years and more, the greatest sailors of the ancient world. We have evidence that they were collected and studied in the great library of Alexandria (Egypt) and the compilations of them were made by the geographers who worked there. Most of these maps were of the Mediterranean and the Black sea. But maps of other areas survived. These included maps of the Americas and maps of the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans. It becomes clear that the ancient voyagers travelled from pole to pole. Unbelievable as it may appear, the evidence nevertheless indicates that some ancient people explored Antarctic when its coasts were free of ice. It is clear too, that they had an instrument of navigation for accurately determining the longitudes that was far superior to anything possessed by the peoples of ancient, medieval or modern times until the second half of the 18th century.
This evidence of a lost technology will support and give credence to many of the other hypothesis that have been brought forward of a lost civilization in remote times. Scholars have been able to dismiss most of those evidences as mere myth, but here we have evidence that cannot be dismissed. The evidence requires that all the other evidences that have been brought forward in the past should be re-examined with an open mind."
Experts at the Bureau of Navigation- United Stated Navy admit that the only to draw a map of this accuracy could have been through aerial survey. The precision on determining longitudinal co-ordinates shows that to draw the map, it would have been necessary to know spheroid trigonometry and curvature of the Earth.
Whoever thought the Earth was flat until so far recent?!
What is most thrilling about the map however is, its accuracy of the relative longitudinal co-ordinates. The first instrument to calculate approximately correct longitudes was invented in 1761 by John Harrison.
And the Piri Reis map is just one of several such accurate maps, which supposedly show unknown knowledge to the time they are supposed to have been mapped.
