Welcome to the World of Antiquity channel.
I’m David Miano, and I am answering voicemails.
Let’s give one a listen.
“Hey, David.
Satori Musica here.
First of all, thanks a lot for creating such a wonderful channel.
I’m enjoying it a lot, and keep doing what you’re doing.
It’s an amazing job.
So thanks a lot.
I would like to have your opinion on the Piri Reis map.
It’s quite a fascinating topic.
It has been used many times by these believers of the lost advanced civilization.
They’re using, many times, this map as so-called “evidence” that there was once a great
civilization, who could sail or even fly, because some believers, they think this map
has been created out of the sky.
Graham Hancock also has a dedicated chapter in his book about this, so I have been diving
into this topic, and it is pretty impressive, actually.
It is pretty mind-blowing, what I saw.
So I wanted to get your opinion on it, and maybe there are some misinterpretations.
Maybe there are some falsities or some noise that you can shine your light on.
Yeah, so, looking forward to hear that then.
Thanks a lot.”
And thank you a lot for your voicemail.
So the basic question, I guess, is whether the Piri Reis map has ancient origins.
As I understand it, Graham Hancock picked this idea up from a book by Charles Hapgood
titled, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, which argues not only that the map has information
in it thousands of years old, but also that it is a piece of evidence that a lost advanced
civilization existed before the last ice age.
For those who haven’t heard of it, the map was made by an Ottoman-Turkish sea captain
named Piri Reis, who lived in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
The map was made in 1513 and was presented as a gift to the sultan Selim the Conqueror.
Only a part of it survives today.
Throughout his naval career Piri Reis collected charts, made notes, and sketched maps of the
islands and coastlines that he visited.
These he assembled into a book, called the Book of the Sea, which he presented to the
sultan Süleyman the Magnificent.
Some people are not aware that he made another world map, different from the first one, in
1528, based on updated information.
Only a portion of this map has survived too.
This style map is called a portolan chart.
This was a new type of map developed in the Middle Ages.
Portolan charts are based upon dead reckoning and the magnetic compass.
They’re characterized by extremely accurate coastlines with criss-crossing rhumb lines.
These are paths with constant bearing as measured relative to true north.
They started out covering only the area around the Mediterranean Sea, but beginning in the
late fifteenth century, during the age of European discovery and expansion, these maps
were expanded to include depictions of the entire world.
Most of the graphical symbols, colors, and illustrations you see on the Piri Reis map,
such as the depiction of people and animals, are typical of portolan charts, as is the
lack of latitude or longitude markings.
Also world maps of the time typically would be adapted to suit the needs of nations who
made them, so different parts of the world might be deliberately made in larger scale
for symbolic reasons.
It was common, for example, for the recently-discovered New World to be shown at a larger scale than
the Old World, and that is what is done here.
By doing that, Piri Reis displaced many American coastal features farther north and south than
they actually were.
The surviving fragment of Piri Reis’s map includes 117 place-names.
Most are typical of portolan charts and easily identifiable.
The map also includes thirty written notes or inscriptions.
All but one are in Turkish language.
The exception is in Arabic and identifies the mapmaker.
This map was drawn by Piri Ibn Haji Mehmed, known as the nephew of Kemal Reis, in Gallipoli,
in the month of Muharrem of the year 919 (that would be mid-March to mid-April of the year 1513).
Other notes give info about the people, animals, mineral wealth,
and other wonders discovered by explorers.
He likes to refer to stories of creatures that sailors talk about in their journals.
So now to the question of what Piri Reis’s sources were.
Here is what he writes in one of his notations:
“In this century there is no map like this map in anyone's possession.
The hand of this poor man has drawn it and now it is constructed
from about twenty charts and Mappae Mundi...”
Mappae mundi were medieval world maps, but they never were meant to be used
as navigational charts.
They don’t even try to show the relative areas of land and water.
They were schematic teaching tools.
There were simple ones, which were basically diagrams meant to convey classical learning
in an easy way.
There were zonal ones, designed to reinforce the idea of the Earth's sphericity
and climate zones.
T-O maps were designed to schematically illustrate the three land masses of the world as it was
known in the Classical era.
And then there were the larger mappae mundi, which probably were what Piri Reis refers to.
They had the space and detail to illustrate further concepts, such as the cardinal directions
of the compass, distant lands, history, mythology, Bible stories, flora, fauna and exotic races.
They were like little encyclopedias of medieval knowledge.
Anyway, he continues: The hand of this poor man has drawn it and
now it is constructed from about twenty charts and Mappae Mundi (these are charts drawn in
the days of Alexander, Lord of the Two Horns, which show the inhabited quarter of the world;
the Arabs name these charts Jaferiye), from eight Jaferiyes of that kind and one Arabic
map of Hind, and from the maps just drawn by four Portuguese which show the countries
of Hind, Sind and China geometrically drawn, and also from a map drawn by Colombo in the
western region.
By reducing all these maps to one scale this final form was arrived at.
So that the present map is as correct and reliable for the Seven Seas as the maps of
our own countries are considered correct and reliable by seamen.
So according to Piri Reis, the map was compiled from fourteen charts.
Since he had 20 documents, the mappae mundi must have been the other six.
The charts that he calls Jaferiye, as you can see, do go back to an ancient source.
He says they come from the days of Alexander the Great, which would be the 4th century
BCE, but to be more precise, he is almost certainly referring to the maps of the most
important ancient geographer Claudius Ptolemy, who lived in the 2nd century CE.
It was believed, however, that Ptolemy based his work on earlier works, such as that of
Eratosthenes, who did incorporate information gained from Alexander’s campaigns.
Anyway, the 2nd century CE is still ancient.
These would not be originals by the hand of Ptolemy himself, because of deterioration.
They would be copies, many generations down.
But Piri Reis had eight of them that he could compare.
In addition to the 8 charts based on Ptolemy, Piri Reis said he used an Arabic map of India
(Hind), four contemporary Portuguese maps of India, Pakistan (Sind) and China, and a
map by Christopher Columbus himself for parts of the Americas.
So 14 charts and 6 mappae mundi make 20.
He probably also had access to journey accounts written by early explorers of the New World,
as most of the notes of his map running along the American coasts come from Portugese and
Genovese accounts.
Now, unless you think that the maps of Ptolemy, which are the oldest, have their origins tens
of thousands of years earlier, there is no basis to conclude from Piri Reis’s words
that he possessed anything older.
His sources are ones that you would expect.
The most important of all his sources would be a map of Christopher Columbus
he claims to have used. Christopher Columbus!
No maps of Columbus have survived, but his may have been a map similar to the one made
in 1500 by Juan de la Cosa, the cartographer that accompanied both Columbus and de Ojeda.
As with most maps of this period, the Piri Reis map has many, many inaccuracies.
Look at his representation of the Caribbean.
It has a large island running north-south that could be Cuba, but it doesn’t match
well at all, even when rotated 90 degrees.
It may be that this is actually Japan.
Remember, in Columbus’ time, it was still believed that the Caribbean bordered on Asia.
There are many maps of this period that incorrectly join the New World with East Asia.
Classical influence was still strong, and the Greeks and Romans had envisioned a much
smaller globe.
The most accurate part of Piri Reis’s map is the coast of Brazil, the details of which
he may have gotten from the Portugese explorer of that coast, Pedro Álvares Cabral.
The rest is pretty bad.
Even in Brazil he wrongly has the Amazon river on there twice.
Now Charles Hapgood claimed that this map suggests knowledge of Antarctica, and since
Piri Reis couldn’t have known about Antarctica, he must have gotten this information from
ancient sources.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking: how would ancient sources know about Antarctica?
Well, this knowledge, he surmises, goes all the way back to an ancient lost civilization
before the last ice age, more than 10,000 years ago, and this civilization, in fact,
not only knew of Antarctica, but resided there.
And the evidence for this is that in Piri Reis’s map, Antarctica is depicted as having
a warm climate.
So somehow, he knew!
But wait a minute.
Did Antarctica ever have a warm climate?
Yes, but much longer ago than what Hapgood was saying.
A study by scientists at Yale discovered that Antarctica was about as warm as California
in the Eocene period, 40-50 million years ago, and another study by scientists from
the UK and Germany suggested that Antarctica was a tropical rainforest in the Cretaceous
period, some 90 million years ago.
In the period that Hapgood wants his civilization to have existed, it was far too cold for one.
For this reason, Hapgood had another hypothesis, which is commonly called the cataclysmic pole
shift hypothesis.
He speculated that polar ice mass accumulated and destabilized the rotation of the earth,
causing displacement of the earth’s crust, while at the same time not disturbing Earth's
axial orientation.
When Albert Einstein showed that this could not happen, Hapgood changed his view slightly
and said that forces that displaced the crust must be located below the surface.
To be clear, this is not plate tectonics he’s talking about, but something else altogether.
This phenomenon has been contradicted by scientific data.
Please note that the primary argument that Piri Reis’s map preserves ancient knowledge
is that it accurately depicts Antarctica.
But because it doesn’t depict the south pole as it was known to ever have existed,
another hypothesis has to be formed in order to make the real Antarctica fit Piri Reis’s
map.
That is what I call “cooking the books.”
It is possible that Piri Reis, however, got the idea of a southern continent
from earlier maps.
There are other 16th century maps that show one connected to South America.
The reason for this is because an imagined southern land appears
in ancient Classical sources.
This was not a land that had been discovered, nor was it a land that is depicted or spoken
about it in pre-classical sources.
It was a land that the Greeks simply surmised existed.
They supposed many fabulous lands to have existed that never did.
They just happened to get lucky here.
But I am not so sure that on Piri Reis’s map, this is supposed to be
the imagined southern continent.
Notice how it doesn’t protrude from Argentina, but from Brazil 2500 miles north of where
it is supposed to be.
Look at the snake depicted at the bottom right edge.
Piri Reis has a note there, which reads, “This country is a waste.
Everything is in ruin and it is said that large snakes are found here.
For this reason the Portuguese infidels did not land on these shores and these are also
said to be very hot.”
Not a very accurate description of Antarctica.
The note just here to the left, also apparently in Antarctica, reads, “And in this country
it seems that there are white-haired monsters in this shape, and also six-horned oxen.
The Portuguese infidels have written it in their maps”
Clearly the Portugese have been to this area,
and he is getting the information from the Portugese.
The Portugese explored South America, but not Antarctica. Look at Juan de la Cosa’s map.
See how South America is deformed and slants to the right?
It may be because he is trying to fit it onto the map.
The same thing seems to be going on in Piri Reis’s map.
If we rotate the map, it seems to match up roughly with the southern part of South America.
So considering these factors, I don’t think it’s Antarctica.
That being said, Piri Reis did consult ancient sources - Classical ones.
But they would have been helpful in reference to places in the sphere of Greek and Roman
activity, not in his depiction of the Americas.
If anyone else would like to leave me a question on my voicemail, you can do so at speakpipe.com/DavidMiano.
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