Maps of Hidden Places

This is the Piri Reis Map, which is a genuine document, not a hoax of any kind, that was made at Constantinople in AD 1513. The lower part of the map portrays the Princess Martha Coast of Queen Maud Land Antarctica, and the Palmer Peninsula.

The geographical detail shown in the lower part of the map “agrees very remarkably with the results of the seismic profile made across the top of the ice cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949.”

This means that the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the ice-cap.

“We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled with the supposed state of geographical knowledge in 1513.” -Harold Ohlmeyer Lt Colonel, USAF, after evaluating features of the Pirir Reis World Map.

The best recent evidence suggests that Queens Maud Land, and the neighboring regions shown on the map, passed through a long ice-free period which may not have come completely to an end until about six thousand years ago.

Piri Reis could not have acquired his information through explorers of his time because Antarctica remained undiscovered until 1818, more than 300 years after he drew the map.

Piri Reis himself said he based the map on even older maps.

Map making is a complex and civilized activity.He argued that some of the source maps used, in particular those said to date back to the fourth century BC, had themselves been based on even earlier sources.

Many of these maps that Piri Reis used as his sources, along with many other historical evidence were burned to ash when the great library of Alexandria in Egypt was burned to the ground by the Romans.

The ice free coast of Queen Maud Land shown in the map has remained one of the biggest mysteries to geologists because evidence confirms that the latest date it could have been surveyed and charted in an ice free condition is 4000 BC.

There has yet to be an explanation for who or what could have had the knowledge and technology to make an accurate map six thousand years ago, well before the development of the first true civilizations recognized by historians.