The Piri Reis Map seems to contain surprising collateral evidence in
support of the thesis of a geologically recent glaciation of parts of
Antarctica following a sudden southward displacement of the earth’s
crust. Moreover since such a map could only have been drawn prior to
4000 BC, its implications for the history of human civilization are
staggering. Prior to 4000 BC there are supposed to have been no
civilizations at all.
At some risk of over-simplification, the academic consensus is broadly:
• Civilization first developed in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East.
15 Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, 1966 ed., p. 189.
16 Ibid., p. 187.
17 Ibid., p. 189.
18 Einstein's foreword to Earth's Shifting Crust, p. 1
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• This development began after 4000 BC, and culminated in the
emergence of the earliest true civilizations (Sumer and Egypt) around
3000 BC, soon followed by the Indus Valley and China.
• About 1500 years later, civilization took off spontaneously and
independently in the Americas.
• Since 3000 BC in the Old World (and about 1500 BC in the New)
civilization has steadily ‘evolved’ in the direction of ever more refined,
complex and productive forms.
• In consequence, and particularly by comparison with ourselves, all
ancient civilizations (and all their works) are to be understood as
essentially primitive (the Sumerian astronomers regarded the heavens
with unscientific awe, and even the pyramids of Egypt were built by
‘technological primitives’).
The evidence of the Piri Reis Map appears to contradict all this.
Piri Reis and his sources
In his day, Piri Reis was a well-known figure; his historical identity is
firmly established. An admiral in the navy of the Ottoman Turks, he was
involved, often on the winning side, in numerous sea battles around the
mid-sixteenth century. He was, in addition, considered an expert on the
lands of the Mediterranean, and was the author of a famous sailing book,
the Kitabi Bahriye, which provided a comprehensive description of the
coasts, harbours, currents, shallows, landing places, bays and straits of
the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. Despite this illustrious career he fell
foul of his masters and was beheaded in AD 1554 or 1555.19
The source maps Piri Reis used to draw up his 1513 map were in all
probability lodged originally in the Imperial Library at Constantinople, to
which the admiral is known to have enjoyed privileged access. Those
sources (which may have been transferred or copied from even more
ancient centres of learning) no longer exist, or, at any rate, have not been
found. It was, however, in the library of the old Imperial Palace at
Constantinople that the Piri Reis Map was rediscovered, painted on a
gazelle skin and rolled up on a dusty shelf, as recently as 1929.20
Legacy of a lost civilization?
As the baffled Ohlmeyer admitted in his letter to Hapgood in 1960, the
Piri Reis Map depicts the subglacial topography, the true profile of Queen
Maud Land Antarctica beneath the ice. This profile remained completely
19 Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, pp. 209-11.
20 Ibid., p. 1.
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hidden from view from 4000 BC (when the advancing ice sheet covered it)
until it was revealed again as a result of the comprehensive seismic
survey of Queen Maud Land carried out during 1949 by a joint BritishSwedish scientific reconnaissance team.21
If Piri Reis had been the only cartographer with access to such
anomalous information, it would be wrong to place any great weight on
his map. At the most one might say, ‘Perhaps it is significant but, then
again, perhaps it is just a coincidence.’ However, the Turkish admiral was
by no means alone in the possession of seemingly impossible and
inexplicable geographical knowledge. It would be futile to speculate
further than Hapgood has already done as to what ‘underground stream’
could have carried and preserved such knowledge through the ages,
transmitting fragments of it from culture to culture and from epoch to
epoch. Whatever the mechanism, the fact is that a number of other
cartographers seem to have been privy to the same curious secrets.
Is it possible that all these map-makers could have partaken, perhaps
unknowingly, in the bountiful scientific legacy of a vanished civilization?
21 Ibid., pp. 76-7 and 231-2.
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Chapter 2
Rivers in the Southern Continent
In the Christmas recess of 1959-60 Charles Hapgood was looking for
Antarctica in the Reference Room of the Library of Congress, Washington
DC. For several consecutive weeks he worked there, lost in the search,
surrounded by literally hundreds of medieval maps and charts.
I found [he reported] many fascinating things I had not expected to find, and a
number of charts showing the southern continent. Then, one day, I turned a page
and sat transfixed. As my eyes fell upon the southern hemisphere of a world map
drawn by Oronteus Finaeus in 1531, I had the instant conviction that I had found
here a truly authentic map of the real Antarctica.
The general shape of the continent was startlingly like the outline of the continent
on our modern maps. The position of the South Pole, nearly in the center of the
continent, seemed about right. The mountain ranges that skirted the coasts
suggested the numerous ranges that have been discovered in Antarctica in recent
years. It was obvious, too, that this was no slapdash creation of somebody’s
imagination. The mountain ranges were individualized, some definitely coastal
and some not. From most of them rivers were shown flowing into the sea,
following in every case what looked like very natural and very convincing drainage
patterns. This suggested, of course, that the coasts may have been ice-free when
the original map was drawn. The deep interior, however, was free entirely of rivers
and mountains, suggesting that the ice might have been present there.1
Closer investigation of the Oronteus Finaeus Map by Hapgood, and by Dr
Richard Strachan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, confirmed
the following:
1 It had been copied and compiled from several earlier source maps
drawn up according to a number of different projections.2
2 It did indeed show non-glacial conditions in coastal regions of
Antarctica, notably Queen Maud Land, Enderby Land, Wilkes Land,
Victoria Land (the east coast of the Ross Sea), and Marie Byrd Land.3
3 As in the case of the Piri Reis Map, the general profile of the terrain,
and the visible physical features, matched closely seismic survey maps
of the subglacial land surfaces of Antarctica.4
The Oronteus Finaeus Map, Hapgood concluded, appeared to document
‘the surprising proposition that Antarctica was visited and perhaps
1 Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (henceforth Maps), p. 79.
2 Ibid., p. 233.
; 3 Ibid., p. 89.
4 Ibid., p. 90. These maps were made in 1958, International Geophysical Year, by survey
teams from several different nations.
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settled by men when it was largely if not entirely non-glacial. It goes
without saying that this implies a very great antiquity ... [Indeed] the
Oronteus Finaeus Map takes the civilization of the original map-makers
back to a time contemporary with the end of the last Ice Age in the
northern hemisphere.’5
The Oronteus Finaeus map, showing Antarctica with ice-free coasts,
mountains and rivers.
Ross Sea
Further evidence in support of this view arises from the manner in which
the Ross Sea was shown by Oronteus Finaeus. Where today great glaciers
like the Beardmore and the Scott disgorge themselves into the sea, the
1531 map shows estuaries, broad inlets and indications of rivers. The
unmistakable implication of these features is that there was no ice on the
Ross Sea or its coasts when the source maps used by Oronteus Finaeus
were made: ‘There also had to be a considerable hinterland free of ice to
feed the rivers. At the present time all these coasts and their hinterlands
are deeply buried in the mile-thick ice-cap, while on the Ross Sea itself
there is a floating ice-shelf hundreds of feet thick.’6
The Ross Sea evidence provides strong corroboration for the notion that
Antarctica must have been mapped by some unknown civilization during
the extensively ice-free period which ended around 4000 BC. This is
5 Ibid., p. 149.
6 Ibid., p. 93-6.
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emphasized by the coring tubes used, in 1949, by one of the Byrd
Antarctic Expeditions to take samples of sediment from the bottom of the
Ross Sea. The sediments showed numerous clearly demarcated layers of
stratification reflecting different environmental conditions in different
epochs: ‘coarse glacial marine’, ‘medium glacial marine’, ‘fine glacial
marine’, and so on. The most surprising discovery, however, ‘was that a
number of the layers were formed of fine-grained, well-assorted
sediments, such as are brought down to the sea by rivers flowing from
temperate (that is, ice-free) lands ...’7
Using the ionium-dating method developed by Dr W. D. Urry (which
makes use of three different radioactive elements found in sea water8),
researchers at the Carnegie Institute in Washington DC were able to
establish beyond any reasonable doubt that great rivers carrying finegrained well-assorted sediments had indeed flowed in Antarctica until
about 6000 years ago, as the Oronteus Finaeus Map showed. It was only
after that date, around 4000 BC, ‘that the glacial kind of sediment began
to be deposited on the Ross Sea bottom ... The cores indicate that warm
conditions had prevailed for a long period before that.’9
Mercator and Buache
The Piri Reis and Oronteus Finaeus Maps therefore provide us with a
glimpse of Antarctica as no cartographer in historical times could
possibly have seen it. On their own, of course, these two pieces of
evidence should not be sufficient to persuade us that we might be gazing
at the fingerprints of a lost civilization. Can three, or four, or six such
maps, however, be dismissed with equal justification?
7 Ibid., p. 97.
8 For a detailed description of the process see Maps, P. 96.
9 Ibid., page 98.
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The Mercator map, showing Antarctica’s mountains and
rivers covered by ice.
Is it safe, or reasonable, for example, for us to continue to ignore the
historical implications of some of the maps made by the sixteenthcentury’s most famous cartographer: Gerard Kremer, otherwise known as
Mercator? Best remembered for the Mercator projection, still used on
most world maps today, this enigmatic individual (who paid an
unexplained visit to the Great Pyramid of Egypt in 156310) was reportedly
‘indefatigable in searching out ... the learning of long ago’, and spent
many years diligently accumulating a vast and eclectic reference library of
ancient source maps.11
Significantly, Mercator included the Oronteus Finaeus map in his Atlas
of 1569 and also depicted the Antarctic on several he himself drew in the
same year. Identifiable parts of the then undiscovered southern continent
on these maps are Cape Dart and Cape Herlacher in Marie Byrd Land, the
Amundsen Sea, Thurston Island in Ellsworth Land, the Fletcher Islands in
the Bellinghausen Sea, Alexander I Island, the Antarctic (Palmer)
Peninsula, the Weddell Sea, Cape Norvegia, the Regula Range in Queen
Maud Land (as islands), the Muhlig-Hoffman Mountains (as islands), the
Prince Harald Coast, the Shirase Glacier as an estuary on Prince Harald
Coast, Padda Island in Lutzow-Holm Bay, and the Prince Olaf Coast in
Enderby Land. ‘In some cases these features are more distinctly
recognisable than on the Oronteus Finaeus Map,’ observed Hapgood,
‘and it seems clear, in general, that Mercator had at his disposal source
10 He left his graffito there. See Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, Harper &
Row Publishers, New York, p. 38, 285.
11 Maps, p. 102.
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maps other than those used by Oronteus Finaeus.’12
And not only Mercator.
Philippe Buache, the eighteenth-century French geographer, was also
able to publish a map of Antarctica long before the southern continent
was officially ‘discovered’. And the extraordinary feature of Buache’s map
is that it seems to have been based on source maps made earlier,
perhaps thousands of years earlier, than those used by Oronteus Finaeus
and Mercator. What Buache gives us is an eerily precise representation of
Antarctica as it must have looked when there was no ice on it at all.13 His
map reveals the subglacial topography of the entire continent, which even
we did not have full knowledge of until 1958, International Geophysical
Year, when a comprehensive seismic survey was carried out.
That survey only confirmed what Buache had already proclaimed when
he published his map of Antarctica in 1737. Basing his cartography on
ancient sources now lost, the French academician depicted a clear
waterway across the southern continent dividing it into two principal
landmasses lying east and west of the line now marked by the TransAntarctic Mountains.
Such a waterway, connecting the Ross, Weddell and Bellinghausen Seas,
would indeed exist if Antarctica were free of ice. As the 1958 IGY Survey
shows, the continent (which appears on modern maps as one continuous
landmass) consists of an archipelago of large islands with mile-thick ice
packed between them and rising above sea level.
The epoch of the map-makers
As we have seen, many orthodox geologists believe that the last time any
waterway existed in these ice-filled basins was millions of years ago.
From the scholarly point of
view, however, it is equally orthodox to affirm
that no human beings had evolved in those remote times, let alone
human beings capable of accurately mapping the landmasses of the
Antarctic. The big problem raised by the Buache/IGY evidence is that
those landmasses do seem to have been mapped when they were free of
ice. This confronts scholars with two mutually contradictory propositions.
12 Ibid., pp. 103-4.
13 Ibid., p. 93.
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The Buache map, with landmasses which show Antarctica very much
as it would have looked before it became covered by ice.
Which one is correct?
If we are to go along with orthodox geologists and accept that millions
of years have indeed elapsed since Antarctica was last completely free of
ice, then all the evidence of human evolution, painstakingly accumulated
by distinguished scientists from Darwin on, must be wrong. It seems
inconceivable that this could be the case: the fossil record makes it
abundantly clear that only the unevolved ancestors of humanity existed
millions of years ago—low-browed knuckle-dragging hominids incapable
of advanced intellectual tasks like map-making.
Are we therefore to assume the intervention of alien cartographers in
orbiting spaceships to explain the existence of sophisticated maps of an
ice-free Antarctica? Or shall we think again about the implications of
Hapgood’s theory of earth-crust displacement which allows the southern
continent to have been in the ice-free condition depicted by Buache as
little as 15,000 years ago?14
14 For a fuller discussion of the evidence behind this theory see Part VIII of this book and
Hapgood's Earth's Shifting Crust.
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Above left and right Redrawings of the Mercator and Oronteus
Finaeus maps showing the progressive glaciation of Antarctica. Below
left Redrawing of the Buache map. Below right The subglacial
topography of Antarctica, according to modern seismic surveys.
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An early nineteenth-century Russian map showing that the existence
of Antarctica was at that time unknown. The continent was