Did the Piri Reis map of 1513 really refer to Antarctica? (hint, no)

 The Piri Reis Map of 1513     by Gregory C. McIntosh                

Publication date 2000

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.