It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The map drawn by Piri Re‘is dated to the month of Muharrem 919 AH (corresponding to spring 1513 CE) is well known in the fringe literature. Piri Re‘is was an admiral of the Turkish navy and this map, showing the Atlantic Ocean, West Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and lands on the western side of the Ocean, seems to have been based on twenty different maps. One of them has been thought to be a copy of the lost map made by Christopher Columbus, as Piri’s own annotations claim as much. The map was rediscovered by the Director of National Museums, Halil Etem Edhem (1861-1938), when the Topkapi Serail Palace in Istanbul was being converted into a museum in 1929. The map was subsequently studied by a prominent German orientalist, Paul Kalhe (1875-1964), who reported on it at the eighteenth Congress of Oriental Studies in Leiden in 1931.
What does it consist of?
It was drawn on camel skin parchment, using nine different colours of ink; it is 860 mm tall, 610 mm wide at the top (north) and 410 mm wide at the base (south). There is evidence along the top edge that another strip of parchment, which would probably have shown the British Isles, Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, has been lost. The eastern section of the map has also been torn away, leaving a ragged edge, although the change in width from north to south is a product of the natural shape of the skin. It is illustrated with a number of ships, most of which are Portuguese caravels, parrots (referred to as ‘tuti birds’, depicted on the island of Antilles) and mythical images. 117 place-names are shown on the map, most of which are typical of late medieval portolan charts and are easily identifiable.
All in all, the Piri Re‘is map of 1513 is easily explained. It shows no unknown lands, least of all Antarctica, and contained errors (such as Columbus’s belief that Cuba was an Asian peninsula) that ought not to have been present if it derived from extremely accurate ancient originals. It also conforms to the prevalent geographical theories of the early sixteenth century, including ideas about the necessity of balancing landmasses in the north with others in the south to prevent the earth from tipping over (just as Hapgood later hypothesised with his crustal displacement theory). Nevertheless, the map was a remarkable achievement, testimony to the skills of Piri as a cartographer and the only surviving representative of the maps made by Columbus during his first two voyages of discovery. As with so much in Bad Archaeology, it is only made mysterious by the wilful ignoring of evidence that explains its methods of composition (most importantly, the legends written by the mapmaker himself) and by making exaggerated claims about its accuracy while its manifest inaccuracy is overlooked.
originally posted by: simsumre
It's odd that nobody wants to talk about Antarctica. People are all but forbidden from even setting foot in Antarctica. I wonder why? Something is beneath the ice, that's for damn sure. What is it though?
originally posted by: sled735
originally posted by: simsumre
It's odd that nobody wants to talk about Antarctica. People are all but forbidden from even setting foot in Antarctica. I wonder why? Something is beneath the ice, that's for damn sure. What is it though?
Some say there is a time traveling machine hidden there. That would make them keep people out, wouldn't it?!!!
originally posted by: simsumre
It's odd that nobody wants to talk about Antarctica. People are all but forbidden from even setting foot in Antarctica. I wonder why? Something is beneath the ice, that's for damn sure. What is it though?
originally posted by: uncommitted
originally posted by: simsumre
It's odd that nobody wants to talk about Antarctica. People are all but forbidden from even setting foot in Antarctica. I wonder why? Something is beneath the ice, that's for damn sure. What is it though?
Where do you get that idea from? All you have to do is google 'travel to Antarctica' and you get an awful lot of links from travel companies more than happy to take you there. Are you more keen on spreading a rumour/assumption rather than an actual fact, or did you actually check?
An example...
www.rowadventures.com...
originally posted by: simsumre
originally posted by: uncommitted
originally posted by: simsumre
It's odd that nobody wants to talk about Antarctica. People are all but forbidden from even setting foot in Antarctica. I wonder why? Something is beneath the ice, that's for damn sure. What is it though?
Where do you get that idea from? All you have to do is google 'travel to Antarctica' and you get an awful lot of links from travel companies more than happy to take you there. Are you more keen on spreading a rumour/assumption rather than an actual fact, or did you actually check?
An example...
www.rowadventures.com...
I haven't checked in many years, actually. I guess you can go there now. Consider me corrected.