The Piri Reis Map of 1513 by Gregory C. McIntosh
As will be discussed below, the Southern Continent on the Piri Reis map is
often supposed to be a depiction of prehistoric Antarctica. Inscriptions 9 and
10, located on the supposed “Antarctica,” give details, such as the land being
hot, in ruins, with large serpents, and sighted by the Portuguese, which defi-
nitely do not apply to Antarctica and should cause anyone to question whether
it is, indeed, Antarctica that is depicted.....
Mallery’s statements of a supposed resemblance of the coastline of the
Southern Continent on the Piri Reis map to that of Antarctica beneath its ice
were used by Pauwels and Bergier to argue that beings from other worlds made
maps, including maps of the Antarctic coastline before it became covered in
ice thousands of years ago.*? Likewise, in 1960 Donald Keyhoe restated Mal-
lery’s claims to say that the Piri Reis map contains a copy of a map made
thousands of years ago by aliens in a spacecraft, that Columbus had a copy
of this map on his first voyage, and that this map showed the coasts of Yuca-
tan, Guatemala, South America to the Straits of Magellan, and a large part of
Antarctica.
Mallery’s amazing theory led Charles H. Hapgood to further study the Piri
Reis map and other medieval and Renaissance maps.** He agrees with Mal-
lery that the only possible explanation for the apparent resemblance of the
Southern Continent on the Piri Reis map to the coastline of Antarctica is that
it was the product of a worldwide prehistoric civilization. In Hapgood’s book,
Maps of the Ancient Sea-Kings, all of the bays, promontories, rivers, and other
coastal features of the Piri Reis map are identified with actual localities, al-
though Hapgood must postulate certain distortions by the original mapmakers
in order to make his identifications fit. His book had a wide influence on popu-
lar writers to be discussed below.**
Shortly afterwards, Erich von Daniken, using material from Pauwels and
Bergier, also claimed that the Piri Reis map of 1513 depicted Antarctica without
ice and, therefore, incorporated a map made by aliens from other planets who
traveled to Earth in prehistoric times.........
John G. Weihaupt, a geology professor (as Hapgood was), independently
arrived at conclusions similar to Hapgood’s regarding the apparent correspon-
dences of the delineation of Terra Australis on Renaissance maps and the actual
outline of Antarctica.’ As with most researchers, however, who have presumed
that the presence of a Southern Continent on a Renaissance map is a depiction
of Antarctica, he seems unfamiliar with the history of the development of the
The Southern Continent t+ 61
geographical theory of Terra Australis from the ancient Greeks, through the
Middle Ages, to Renaissance cartography.”
Not all writers who have examined the relationship of Terra Australis on the
Piri Reis map to the outline of Antarctica have uncritically accepted the theo-
ries of Mallery, Hapgood, Pauwels, Bergier, and von Daniken. Some, such as
Clifford Wilson, Daniel Cohen, Ronald Story, William H. Stiebing Jr., and
David Woodward, have attempted to present more balanced views and repre-
sent that the kinds of depictions shown on the Piri Reis map are not unusual
for its time and can be explained without hypothesizing about vanished civili-
zations and ancient astronauts.»
David C. Jolly made perhaps the most succinct critique of the Mallery—Hap-
good—von Daniken theory regarding the Piri Reis map and the broader claim
that Renaissance maps showing a Southern Continent, such as the Fine map of
1531, are depicting Antarctica, particularly as the theory was stated by Hapgood
and Weihaupt.** Anyone who is interested in a clear-headed review of the con-
troversy regarding the supposed connection between Renaissance maps and
preclassical mapping techniques should read Jolly’s article.
For instance, Jolly examined Hapgood’s comparison of the depiction of the
Aegean Sea on the Ibn Ben Zara map of 1487 with a modern map.*> The 1487
map showed many more islands in the Aegean Sea than the modern map, and
Hapgood concluded that the source map for the Aegean Sea depiction resulted
from a survey made when the sea level was lower, presumably tens of thou-
sands of years ago. Subsequent review has shown, however, that the modern
map used by Hapgood merely happened to omit many of the smaller islands
and if he had compared the 1487 map with a more complete and accurate
modern map he might not have so quickly jumped to his erroneous conclu-
sion. Jolly remarked that the only mystery was how Hapgood happened to
obtain such a bad modern map to use for his comparison test.°* One frequently
encounters sloppy scholarship like this in Hapgood’s book.
Phyllis Young Forsyth, in Atlantis: The Making of Myth, examines the claim
that the alleged shoreline of an ice-free Antarctica on the Piri Reis map sup-
ports the assertion that Atlantis was located at the South Pole in a more tem-
perate time in the past. She astutely points out that “a sixteenth-century map
vaguely outlining the shores of Antarctica proves nothing at all about Atlantis”
and that “the entire accuracy of the map leaves much to be desired.” *” It is well
to keep these words in mind when examining the more imaginative claims
regarding the Piri Reis map.
................
One of the difficulties of the Mallery-Hapgood—von Daniken theory that
the depiction of Terra Australis, or the Southern Continent, on the Piri Reis
map is a depiction of Antarctica before it was covered in ice is that their sug-
gested solution—that maps of Antarctica were made thousands of years ago
by a lost civilization or by alien astronauts—is an even bigger mystery than
the mystery it attempts to answer. The principle of parsimony precludes the
creation of entities beyond necessity. None of these theories suggest how pre-
classical or prehistoric maps were supposed to have survived for so long. If
they were copied and recopied, how is it that errors apparently did not occur,
as so often happens with the copying of manuscripts and other maps. The
museums and libraries of the world abound with manuscripts of books and
maps copied from others over the centuries, and we can identify and trace the
sequence of many errors. One would expect a large number of errors to oc-
cur ifa map of the coastline of prehistoric Antarctica were copied many times
over thousands of years. If prehistoric and highly accurate maps had survived,
whether in original form or in copies, until the thirteenth century and later,
as Hapgood asserted, then one would expect to see the influence of these ac-
curate maps upon other maps made before the thirteenth century. But we
look in vain. All of the features of portolan charts and Renaissance maps that
Hapgood attributes to prehistoric maps are completely absent from all prior
mapmaking.
Perhaps the supposed resemblance of this coastline on the Piri Reis map to
that of Antarctica should be questioned. Figure 14 shows the coastline of the
Southern Continent on the Piri Reis map superimposed over that section of
the coastline of Antarctica believed by Mallery, Hapgood, and von Daniken to
be depicted. The Piri Reis coastline has been redrawn to the same polar projec-
tion as that of Antarctica, and the tropic of Capricorn has been used to prop-
erly locate the coastline, although it must be admitted that this relies on some
guesswork and interpretation because the Piri Reis map, being a portolan-style
map without longitude or latitude, is not drawn to the mathematics of celestial
coordinates, as modern maps are.
The researches by Mallery and Hapgood into the Piri Reis map included
other maps, primarily portolan charts. This examination of old maps has sub-
sequently been carried on by other researchers.” This is particularly true of
sixteenth-century maps that depicted Terra Australis, such as the South Polar
projection map by Oronce Fine. In fig. 14 is also shown the South Polar projec-
tion of the map of Fine of 1531, claimed by Hapgood and others to record an
The Southern Continent + 63
actual mapping survey of Antarctica. In order to show that the outline of the
Terra Australis on the Fine map “matched” the outline of the real continent of
Antarctica, Hapgood had to rotate the Fine depiction 20° in longitude, drasti-
cally alter its scale (Fine’s Terra Australis is nine times larger than Antarctica!),
change the position of the South Pole by 1,000 miles, and omit the 900-mile-
long Antarctic (or Palmer) Peninsula.® This is reminiscent of the historian
who “proved” that Columbus was really Cleopatra; all he had to do was change
Columbus’s name, nationality, gender, era, etc. As can easily be seen, the coast-
lines from the Piri Reis map, the Fine map, and a modern map are only super-
ficially similar, and they fall short of proving or even strongly suggesting that
the Piri Reis map and the Fine map depict the actual outline of Antarctica.
When one actually examines the map evidence presented by Mallery, Hap-
good, and von Daniken, one can see that there is no basis for the excessively
exuberant conclusions and assertions they made.
