Comments on: The Piri Reis maps

The Piri Reis maps

synecdoche — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 01:13:49 -0800

Piri Reis Map I am a sucker for those books that hypothesize that Earth was visited by extra-terrestrials in the distant pass. One artifact that is brought up in nearly all of them is The Piri Reis Map, a document that seems to be a map includes parts of the world (such as Antarctica's ice-covered mountains) that were thought to be very recent discoveries. But, are they a hoax?

By: synecdoche

synecdoche — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 01:18:18 -0800

Ugh. That should say PAST rather than PASS. Incidentally, this post was inspired by my current bedtime reading: Robert Charroux's One Hundred Thousand Years of Man's Unknown History. It is fun, even if you don't buy a word of it. :)

By: ursus_comiter

ursus_comiter — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 09:21:07 -0800

I have The Piri Reis Map of 1513 on my shelf. It's the next non-fiction book in my to be read queue. From what I've already read up on the subject, most of the piffle that's claimed about the map is pretty easily debunked. I got interested in the map itself when it was used to prop up the claims in 1421: The Year China Discovered the World that the final Chinese Treasure Fleet had discovered North & South America as well as Australia. It was an interesting read, but utterly fell apart when I started to try to verify the claims and follow the purported evidence.

By: ursus_comiter

ursus_comiter — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 09:28:35 -0800

Here's another detailed treatment. And an article from 1980.

By: Quartermass

Quartermass — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 10:09:03 -0800

I love this! Thanks.

By: coelecanth

coelecanth — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 10:11:57 -0800

Graham Hancock practically leads with the Piri Reis map in "Fingerprints of the Gods." If you explore around the "hoax" site you'll find numerous debunkings of Hancock's other claims. Nevertheless I greatly enjoyed FOG (as Heinreich calls it).

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 10:15:37 -0800

This "totally accurate" (per the first link) map (with coordinates and comments added in this image) shows South America connected to Antarctica, some gigantic lake in the middle of Spain, and a large but completely unrecognizable island off the coast of North America (wait, don't tell me, it's Atlantis).

By: ben-o

ben-o — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 10:50:14 -0800

Can we use the map to find the rest of the Rimbaldi artifacts?

By: greengrl

greengrl — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 11:16:11 -0800

Wow, any way you look at it, it's still interesting reading. I love this kind of stuff. Great post, synecdoche.

By: Sidhedevil

Sidhedevil — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 11:25:29 -0800

Wasn't that 1421 book fascinating? I wish he had written it as a novel, because then the fact that he was dead wrong wouldn't have taken away from the fun of reading it. The thing about things like the Piri Reis map is that people always say "It's absolutely accurate--except where it isn't." (cf. Devil's Advocate's comment above) "Sure, that big landmass doesn't look like Antarctica--it looks like the SEEKRIT ICELESS ANTARCTICA known only to the ALIENS." Etc., etc., etc.

By: zaelic

zaelic — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 13:47:34 -0800

The Piri Reis map has been suspect for a long time. The old Vineland map is till in question, but there is no doubt that the New World was known to Norse, Isris, Basque, and Bristol seamen for a long time. It seems to me to be an extension of a longstanding Eurocentric idea that the world was out there for the world to be plucked like a fruit for the picking. Randy Newman's song, "The Great Nations of Europe" gets it just right: "The Great Nations of Europe Were gathered on the Shore They conquered what was behind them And now they wanted more, So they took to the western ocean They took to the western sea, The great Nations of Europe In the Sixteenth Century. Hide you wives and daughters, Hide your groceries too, The Great Nations of Europe are coming through... The Grand Canary Islands, the first land to which they came They killed off all the canaries there that gave the land its name Then they found these people called GuanchesThey found Guanches by the score But bullets, disease, and Portuguese ain't no Guanches any more They gone, they gone, they really gone you never saw anyone so gone some pictures in museum, some lines in a book but you won't find a live one no matter where you look Columbus sailed for India Found Salvador instead He shook hands with some Indians and soon they all were dead They got TB and typhoid and athlete's foot diphtheria and the flu Excuse me! Great nations coming through!

By: kahboom

kahboom — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 13:51:18 -0800

I've been looking for a poster of this map, but no luck so far...

By: euphorb

euphorb — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 13:52:46 -0800

Here is an incredible collection of maps online, from ancient times to the Renaissance.

By: Satapher

Satapher — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 03:58:10 -0800

It was an interesting read, but utterly fell apart when I started to try to verify the claims and follow the purported evidence. hearsay vs hearsay -- an epic battle

By: malocchio

malocchio — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 08:13:51 -0800

Also of interest: the Oronteus Finaeus map.