10 Jan 2002 @ 08:22, by Roni Gemma

Great article! Very detailed, check it out!

[link]

Possible Physical Evidence of Atlantis
Piri Reis Map? Discovery near Cuba? Scott Stones?

The Piri Reis Map of 1513 is the first surviving map that shows the Americas (the Vinland map may be older but only shows a part of North America). The Piri Reis map shows North America, South America, Greenland and Antarctica which had not yet been discovered.

Piri Reis was a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in the sixteenth century. His passion was cartography, he was always on the lookout for new maps and other such documents.ð In 1513 a map had been commissioned him.

Piri Reis was high rank within the Turkish navy which allowed him to have a privileged access to the Imperial Library of Constantinople. He was considered an expert on Mediterranean lands and coastlines, and he even wrote a famous sailing book called Kitabi Bahriye where he described all the details of coastlines, harbors, currents, shallows, bays and straits of the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. He died in 1554 or 1555 being beheaded for unknown reasons.ð

It is saidð that in a now-forgotten sea battle he met, among the prisoners, a sailor who claimed to have been sailing along with Columbus in his three journeys to the new world, and that he was one of his pilots. It turned out that Columbus had a map of the lands he was chasing, and that this map now was in the possession of that pilot.

The admiral Piri Reis got to put hands and eyes on the map; then in 1513 he compiled a world map based on that map and on the other antique charts from his collection - many of which had survived from the days of the Great Library of Alexandria.ð


The map had drawn the attention of scholars in 1929 when it had been discovered in the archives of the Imperial Palace in Constantinople.

The map showed the outline of South America very accurately. This was surprising since Columbus had discovered the New World only 21 years earlier in 1492.

Notes made by Piri indicated he had based his map on earlier maps, including one consulted by Columbus before his famous voyage.

This excited the scholars since there had been rumors that there existed a pre-Columbian map of the New World. Piri's claim that he had possessed the "lost map" intrigued historians.

It wasn't the accuracy of the South American coastline that interested Mallery, though. It was what was shown at the very bottom of the map: a chunk of land that looked very much like Antarctica.

This was surprising since Antarctica had not been discovered until 1820.

Even more intriguing was a section of the coastline of this southern continent.

Part of it looked very much like the coast of Queen Maud Land which was a section of Antarctica.

.........continued at site