Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries

it was discovered. The apparently detailed rendering of the Antarctic coastline on the chart, including what Hapgood believed was an accurate depiction of Queen Maud Land, shows it without glaciers, which would suggest the continent was mapped in remote prehistory, before it became completely covered in ice. But how was Stone Age man able to survey and chart the region of Antarctica at such an early period in human history? Hapgood suggested the existence of now forgotten prehistoric seafaring civilizations, whose achievements included journeying from pole to pole and mapping the entire surface of the Earth at some time in the remote past. Hapgood theorized that these civilizations left a legacy of maps, which were hand copied over thousands of years, perhaps by expert seafaring cultures such as the Minoans and the Phoenicians. For Hapgood, the Piri Reis map was, in effect, a compilation of these ancient maps.
Later, the controversial author Erich von Daniken considered the depiction of a pre-ice-covered Antarctica on the Piri Reis map as evidence to support his ancient astronaut theory, speculating that an extraterrestrial civilization had drawn the original map. In his 1995 book Fingerprints of the Gods, Graham Hancock also postulated that a previously unidentified, highly advanced ancient civilization existed in remote prehistory and passed on its sophisticated knowledge of astronomy, architecture, navigation, and mathematics to various ancient cultures including the Olmecs, Aztecs, Maya, and Egyptians. He also speculated that the Piri Reis map-makers may have used source maps compiled by this ancient super-culture. Both Hapgood and Hancock maintain that the Antarctica represented on the Piri Reis map is highly detailed, showing mountains, rivers, and lakes, and that it may have been based on ancient satellite surveys from the sky above Egypt.
Many scientists and archaeologists are sceptical of Hapgood's theory in the first place because there is no record of such an ancient civilization that had the resources, the technology, or most especially the need to undertake a survey of Antarctica. What possible reason could they have had? Allowing for the existence of this advanced prehistoric culture, does the Piri Reis map convincingly show an Antarctica free of ice? Most proponents of the ancient mariner theory emphasize the accuracy of the map, especially the part showing Antarctica, as evidence of lost geographical knowledge. But how accurate is the Piri Reis map? The absence of the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica means that if the map does show Antarctica, then it depicts it joined to the South American continent, with roughly 932 miles of coast from Brazil to Tierra del Fuego left off. This would be a glaring omission for such a supposedly accurate map.
Examining the rest of the chart, Europe and Africa are shown in a reasonable amount of detail for the time, though peninsulas and inlets are exaggerated, probably due to the necessity at the time of navigating by landmarks. South America is represented as far too narrow although Brazil is fairly accurately shown. North America, on the other hand, is poorly drawn and enormously inaccurate, as if based entirely on hearsay rather than geographical knowledge, something else that would suggest there was no ancient global survey on which to base the map. In fact, there are earlier maps from around A.D. 1500, such as those of Juan de La Cosa and Alberto Cantino, which are more accurate than the Piri Reis map in terms of the positions of islands such as Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. One detail, which is alleged to support the extreme antiquity of the map, is that it shows Greenland before it was covered by ice. However, as can be seen from a quick perusal of the map, the top eastern edge clearly shows the western part of France, which is at about 50 degrees north latitude. Consequently, if France is represented as the most northern country on the map, surely Greenland cannot be depicted, and as the map exhibits no islands which are remotely similar to Greenland, it is difficult to know what evidence there is for this suggestion.
To support his theory that the Piri Reis map depicted Antarctica under the ice, Charles Hapgood used sounding data from Antarctic expeditions in the 1940s and 1950s. But Hapgood's hypothesis, once thought by some as scientifically plausible, is now in serious doubt. The insurmountable difficulty with a pre-ice-covered Antarctica being shown on the Piri Reis map is that when Antarctica was last free of ice, its coastal outline would have looked completely different than its current shape. This is because over time, the continental crust has been forced down hundreds of meters, under millions of tons of ice, thus changing the shape of the underlying shoreline completely. A comparison between the Antarctica shown on the Piri Reis map with a relatively recent sub-glacial bedrock topography map of the continent shows no similarities at all between their coastlines. Furthermore, rather than Antarctica being free of ice by 4000 B.c., as claimed by Hapgood, modern geological evidence
now points to the most recent date for an ice-free Antarctica as being more than 14 million years ago.
But perhaps the most convincing evidence against a prehistoric origin for the chart can be found in the notes written on it by Piri Reis himself. In the early 16th century, when the Piri Reis map was drawn, the Portuguese had sailed across the Atlantic and were claiming substantial parts of South America as their own. In relation to the supposed Antarctica land mass, the captions on the map mention that its coast was discovered by Portuguese explorers, whose ships had been blown off course. A particular note on the map refers to a Portuguese ship that landed on this coast and was immediately attacked by unclothed natives; a further caption refers to very hot weather. These descriptions could clearly apply to South America, but hot weather and naked inhabitants in Antarctica are clearly nothing more than fantasy.
The sources for Piri Reis's map have not all been identified by any means, but would likely have included