The Mysterious Map of Piri Reis
Sevgi Zubeyde Gurbuz
Turkish Journal, July 2006
Turkish Journal, July 2006
The 1513 Map of the Americas drawn by Ottoman Admiral Piri Reis in his hometown of Gallipoli, Turkey, has been the object of much admiration, scrutiny and debate. The map is unique because it is the oldest surviving map of the Americas that we know of. What
has puzzled the world since its discovery in the Topkapi Palace at Istanbul in 1929, however, is how Piri Reis was able to draw such a map since none of his known voyages ever took him to the Americas! Much research has been done by many scholars over the years in an attempt to answer this very question, but it seems that the more the map is researched, the more intriguing it has become: the map contains features that no one could have possibly known about in the year 1513! Indeed, the mystery surrounding the map has made it a subject of science fiction books and even speculation that information was given to Piri Reis by extraterrestrials!
The most striking feature of the Piri Reis map is the extension of the tip of Argentina into a horizontal curve resembling the northern shores of Antarctica. Today, South America and Antarctica are separate landmasses, but the western extension of Antarctica and tip of Argentina are curved in such a way as to suggest that at one time they may have been connected. Furthermore, a 1960 U.S. Air Force analysis of the map revealed that the lower part of the map was a very close match to a seismic profile made across the top of the ice-cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949. In other words, the coastline of Antarctica depicted by Piri Reis is in fact how the coastline would have looked if there were no icecap over Antarctica. Such a feat seems impossible if you consider that geological researchers estimate that the ice-free period of Antarctica ended about 6,000 years ago, and that Antarctica was not even discovered until 1827 - 307 years after Piri Reis drew his map! Impossible as it may seem, next to the southern tip of South America is a note by Piri Reis that exactly describes how a pre-ice age Antarctica would have been: “It is related by the Portuguese infidel that in this spot night and day are at their shortest of two hours, at their longest of twenty two hours. But the day is very warm and in the night there is much dew.”
The inclusion of Antarctica is not the only seemingly miraculous aspect of the map. Piri Reis also indicated a mountain range on the western region of South America that roughly coincides with the position of the Andes Mountains. Next to the mountains, Piri Reis drew a picture of a creature that very much resembles a llama – an animal exclusive to the Andes Mountains. However, neither the llama nor the Andes Mountains were known of in 1513. In fact, the Andes Mountains were first sighted by Pizzaro in 1827, 14 years after the Piri Reis map was drawn.
These seemingly impossible features led Prof. Charles Hapgood of Keene College, New Hampshire to postulate that Piri Reis must have had access to ancient maps dating back to a time when Antarctica did not have ice-caps. Piri Reis himself states that he used twenty maps - including eight Caferiye maps from the time of Alexander the Great, one Arab map, four Portuguese maps, and a map drawn by Colombus – to chart the entire world. Hapgood postulated that perhaps one of the Caferiye maps were just such an ancient map from an as of yet undiscovered civilization. Furthermore, since the Piri Reis map was amazingly accurate, as revealed by the calculations of an MIT mathematician, Hapgood concluded that this ancient civilization must have been extremely advanced with knowledge of astronomy and geometry long before ancient Greece or any known civilization.
In 1966, Hapgood published his research and conclusions regarding the Piri Reis map in his book, “Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings,” after which the Piri Reis map became famous for its depiction of Antarctica. However, Hapgood’s ideas were not accepted by many scholars and counter-arguments for each of his postulates were made. In particular, the claim that the lower part of the map represented Antarctica was contested and a simpler explanation was offered: on the Piri Reis map, about 900 miles of South American coastline was missing, but if you bent the horizontal curve downwards so that it was vertical, the map would bear a remarkable resemblance to the actual coast of South America. Piri Reis, they postulated, simply ran out of room on the bottom part of the map and just rotated it so that he could fit it in. However, this seems unlikely if consider that Piri Reis was a meticulous cartographer. The author of the book “The Piri Reis Map of 1513”, Gregory C. McIntosh offers a more likely response to Hapgood’s hypothesis: namely, that there were other maps made prior to Piri Reis’s map, such as the map of Oronteus Finaeus, which depicted a southern landmass and that such “imagined” depictions were “common on maps going back to the time of Ptolemy.”
Indeed, many Western scholars who reject Hapgood’s hypothesis, believe that the Piri Reis map is simply a copy of the lost map of Christopher Columbus and that Piri Reis was not a gifted cartographer, but “thief” whose uncle Kemal Reis managed to get his hands on the Columbus map during his fighting with the Spaniards. As proof of this, such scholars cite a note on the map next to the southern tip of South America in which Piri Reis writes,
“Now these regions have been opened to all and have become famous. The names which mark the places on the said islands and coasts were given by Colombo, that these places may be known by them. And also Colombo was a great astronomer. The coasts and island on this map are taken from Colombo's map.”
However, recent evidence has come to light which casts doubt on the authenticity of those notes. In the beginning of 2006, researcher Metin Soylu together with scribe expert Fuat Basar noticed that the writing style of this note differed from the notes on other parts of the page. The note concerning Columbus was written with a type of script known as “Nesih Kirmasi” whereas the remaining notes, as well as Piri Reis’s famous Book of Navigation, Kitab-i Bahriye, were all written with “Talik Kirmasi.” Soylu and Basar believe that it was possible for changes or additions to have been made to the map during the investigations of German Prof. Kahle right after the map’s discovery in 1929. Indeed,
Prof. Kahle was the very first scholar to praise the map as being a legacy of Columbus in his 1932 book on the subject. Could this note have been added by someone to lend credibility to the Columbian thesis? Why would a cartographer such as Piri Reis openly praise Columbus, whom he never knew very well, of being a good astronomer? And while the Americas were still new and mysterious, why should he describe them as being “open to all” and “famous”? That would be something one could only appreciate during our time, not during the time of Piri Reis.
Indeed, the degree to which the Piri Reis map actually reflects Columbian ideas can be debated. Piri Reis himself cites the Columbus map as being one of twenty other sources, so it would be normal for the map to be influenced by Columbus’s ideas. However, Piri Reis also states that he never copied from just one map, instead scaling each map and deriving his map from a combination of all maps. He further states: “In this century there is no map like this map in anyone’s possession” and in his Book of Navigation writes:
has puzzled the world since its discovery in the Topkapi Palace at Istanbul in 1929, however, is how Piri Reis was able to draw such a map since none of his known voyages ever took him to the Americas! Much research has been done by many scholars over the years in an attempt to answer this very question, but it seems that the more the map is researched, the more intriguing it has become: the map contains features that no one could have possibly known about in the year 1513! Indeed, the mystery surrounding the map has made it a subject of science fiction books and even speculation that information was given to Piri Reis by extraterrestrials!
The most striking feature of the Piri Reis map is the extension of the tip of Argentina into a horizontal curve resembling the northern shores of Antarctica. Today, South America and Antarctica are separate landmasses, but the western extension of Antarctica and tip of Argentina are curved in such a way as to suggest that at one time they may have been connected. Furthermore, a 1960 U.S. Air Force analysis of the map revealed that the lower part of the map was a very close match to a seismic profile made across the top of the ice-cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949. In other words, the coastline of Antarctica depicted by Piri Reis is in fact how the coastline would have looked if there were no icecap over Antarctica. Such a feat seems impossible if you consider that geological researchers estimate that the ice-free period of Antarctica ended about 6,000 years ago, and that Antarctica was not even discovered until 1827 - 307 years after Piri Reis drew his map! Impossible as it may seem, next to the southern tip of South America is a note by Piri Reis that exactly describes how a pre-ice age Antarctica would have been: “It is related by the Portuguese infidel that in this spot night and day are at their shortest of two hours, at their longest of twenty two hours. But the day is very warm and in the night there is much dew.”
The inclusion of Antarctica is not the only seemingly miraculous aspect of the map. Piri Reis also indicated a mountain range on the western region of South America that roughly coincides with the position of the Andes Mountains. Next to the mountains, Piri Reis drew a picture of a creature that very much resembles a llama – an animal exclusive to the Andes Mountains. However, neither the llama nor the Andes Mountains were known of in 1513. In fact, the Andes Mountains were first sighted by Pizzaro in 1827, 14 years after the Piri Reis map was drawn.
These seemingly impossible features led Prof. Charles Hapgood of Keene College, New Hampshire to postulate that Piri Reis must have had access to ancient maps dating back to a time when Antarctica did not have ice-caps. Piri Reis himself states that he used twenty maps - including eight Caferiye maps from the time of Alexander the Great, one Arab map, four Portuguese maps, and a map drawn by Colombus – to chart the entire world. Hapgood postulated that perhaps one of the Caferiye maps were just such an ancient map from an as of yet undiscovered civilization. Furthermore, since the Piri Reis map was amazingly accurate, as revealed by the calculations of an MIT mathematician, Hapgood concluded that this ancient civilization must have been extremely advanced with knowledge of astronomy and geometry long before ancient Greece or any known civilization.
In 1966, Hapgood published his research and conclusions regarding the Piri Reis map in his book, “Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings,” after which the Piri Reis map became famous for its depiction of Antarctica. However, Hapgood’s ideas were not accepted by many scholars and counter-arguments for each of his postulates were made. In particular, the claim that the lower part of the map represented Antarctica was contested and a simpler explanation was offered: on the Piri Reis map, about 900 miles of South American coastline was missing, but if you bent the horizontal curve downwards so that it was vertical, the map would bear a remarkable resemblance to the actual coast of South America. Piri Reis, they postulated, simply ran out of room on the bottom part of the map and just rotated it so that he could fit it in. However, this seems unlikely if consider that Piri Reis was a meticulous cartographer. The author of the book “The Piri Reis Map of 1513”, Gregory C. McIntosh offers a more likely response to Hapgood’s hypothesis: namely, that there were other maps made prior to Piri Reis’s map, such as the map of Oronteus Finaeus, which depicted a southern landmass and that such “imagined” depictions were “common on maps going back to the time of Ptolemy.”
Indeed, many Western scholars who reject Hapgood’s hypothesis, believe that the Piri Reis map is simply a copy of the lost map of Christopher Columbus and that Piri Reis was not a gifted cartographer, but “thief” whose uncle Kemal Reis managed to get his hands on the Columbus map during his fighting with the Spaniards. As proof of this, such scholars cite a note on the map next to the southern tip of South America in which Piri Reis writes,
“Now these regions have been opened to all and have become famous. The names which mark the places on the said islands and coasts were given by Colombo, that these places may be known by them. And also Colombo was a great astronomer. The coasts and island on this map are taken from Colombo's map.”
However, recent evidence has come to light which casts doubt on the authenticity of those notes. In the beginning of 2006, researcher Metin Soylu together with scribe expert Fuat Basar noticed that the writing style of this note differed from the notes on other parts of the page. The note concerning Columbus was written with a type of script known as “Nesih Kirmasi” whereas the remaining notes, as well as Piri Reis’s famous Book of Navigation, Kitab-i Bahriye, were all written with “Talik Kirmasi.” Soylu and Basar believe that it was possible for changes or additions to have been made to the map during the investigations of German Prof. Kahle right after the map’s discovery in 1929. Indeed,
Prof. Kahle was the very first scholar to praise the map as being a legacy of Columbus in his 1932 book on the subject. Could this note have been added by someone to lend credibility to the Columbian thesis? Why would a cartographer such as Piri Reis openly praise Columbus, whom he never knew very well, of being a good astronomer? And while the Americas were still new and mysterious, why should he describe them as being “open to all” and “famous”? That would be something one could only appreciate during our time, not during the time of Piri Reis.
Indeed, the degree to which the Piri Reis map actually reflects Columbian ideas can be debated. Piri Reis himself cites the Columbus map as being one of twenty other sources, so it would be normal for the map to be influenced by Columbus’s ideas. However, Piri Reis also states that he never copied from just one map, instead scaling each map and deriving his map from a combination of all maps. He further states: “In this century there is no map like this map in anyone’s possession” and in his Book of Navigation writes:
“Now that you understand the compass
listen to how the map is done
Know that both the map and compass are correct
because the Prophet Solomon double checked it.
Man, jinn, animals, birds and ants
they all were subject to him
and the winds were subject to him
Believe this because it is the will of God
The science of sea like all others has been given to him
He knew the sea mile by mile in detail.”
listen to how the map is done
Know that both the map and compass are correct
because the Prophet Solomon double checked it.
Man, jinn, animals, birds and ants
they all were subject to him
and the winds were subject to him
Believe this because it is the will of God
The science of sea like all others has been given to him
He knew the sea mile by mile in detail.”
True to this description, the Piri Reis map is drawn from a bird’s eye view – but I doubt that many people today would be willing to accept Piri Reis’s explanation at face value. What is for sure, though, is that the 1513 Map of Piri Reis will be the object of debate for years to come.
