In 1929, A Group Of Historians, Whilst Searching Old Documents In Constantinople, Found A Map On A Dusty

In 1929, a group of historians, whilst searching old documents in Constantinople, found a map on a dusty old shelf hidden away in the archives. It had been painstakingly created on a piece of gazelle skin.

Research has since confirmed that it is a genuine document drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet during the sixteenth century.

His passion was cartography. His high rank within the Turkish navy allowed him privileged access to the Imperial Library of Constantinople, from whence he obtained ancient source maps which enabled him to compile an archeological wonder, today known as the Piri Reis Map.

The Turkish admiral admits in a series of notes he wrote on the map that he compiled and copied the data from a large number of source maps, some of which dated way back to the fourth century BC and much earlier

The map was of immediate interest as it accurately portrayed the coastlines of South America and Africa, at their correct relative longitudes and latitudes. As the map was dated 1513, only 21 years after the official discovery of the Americas by Columbus in 1492, it seemed improbable that the map was compiled from cartographical data obtained by Columbus. The legend on the map itself in fact, gave it a source far older than 20 years, revealing that it was a section of a world map composed from more than twenty source maps, some drawn in the time of Alexander the great.

Despite the mystifying problem that the map included accurate longitude measurements – a task deemed impossible until the invention of the chronometer in 1760, there was something else displayed on the map that made its origin and history even more perplexing.

The Piri Reis map, in addition to accurately charting the coastlines of western Africa and eastern south America also included a third continent in its cartography. This map accurately portrays the coastline of Antarctica – a continent supposedly undiscovered until 1820, over 300 years after the maps creation!

However, the mystery doesn’t end there. Not only did the map illustrate accurately the coastline of Antarctica, it illustrated the coastline when the continent was ice free. Only recently, with the aid of satellite technology and GPS mapping, have science and cartographers managed to accurately plot the actual coastline of Antarctica minus the ice. However, if one were to superimpose the Piri Reis map over a modern map of an ice free Antarctic coastline, one would find the outlines almost identical.

But this presents a massive problem for historians. According to recent geological surveys of ice samples taken from Antarctica, the last time it was free of ice was between 6,000 and 12,000 years ago. So whoever created the source maps used by Piri Reis, must have had detailed knowledge of not just the area during this period – a period when, according to mainstream historical accounts, advanced civilizations did not exist – but advanced knowledge of navigation, cartography, and sophisticated mathematics.

Furthermore, not only did the source maps accurately depict latitude and longitude, but also included a mercatorial projection. A mercatorial projection is a geometric formula used to account for a 3D globe being represented as a 2D image. Such high levels of geometry had not been seen since the time of the Greeks and it was not until the work of Gerald Mercator in 1569, that European’s began to include a projection for the curvature of the earth into their maps.

In all probability, the discovery of the Piri Reis map should completely discredit mainstream historical accounts of the origins of modern civilization. Moreover, historians of integrity should be questioning official accounts and investigating the possibility that hitherto unknown highly advanced societies most likely existed thousands of years before our current historical accounts were formulated.