If he was right, a lost sea-faring civilization must have existed thousands of years before previously thought. Antarctica has been under ice for more than 6000 years (Credit: Liam Quinn)īut Hapgood’s conclusions tore up the history books. Such a prospect would have staggering consequences for our history.Īdvanced civilizations were not thought to have arisen until around 3,000BC, with the first sophisticated seafaring cultures developing during the following millennia. These ancient mariners must have made their maps before the glaciers had formed - before 4,000BC. The subglacial topography of Antarctica wasn’t known until seismographic surveys were conducted in the 1940s and 50s. If Hapgood was right, the entire history of our civilization was in error. Hapgood studied not only Piri Reis’ map but others from around the same period and came to some sensational conclusions.Īccording to Hapgood, these maps not only showed Antarctica, but the continent coastline as it would have been more than 6,000 years ago, before the vast ice sheet that still covers it today had formed. Professor Charles Hapgood of Keene State College was intrigued by Mallery’s claims and picked up on his research. How could these early map makers have known about the continent? Mallery’s observation was extremely controversial since Antarctica wasn’t officially discovered until 1820. Does the Piri Reis map show the coast of Antarctica? Mallery noted that what was thought to be the distorted coast of South America along the maps bottom edge bore a remarkable resemblance to the coastline of Antarctica. The map was heralded amongst scholars as a major find as it was then the only known representation of the lost maps Columbus had used to discover America in 1492.īut it remained relatively obscure outside of academia until the 1950s, when a former US Navy captain Arlington Mallery made a startling observation. Some were Columbus’s maps whilst others, the Admiral claimed, dated back as far as 400 BC.
Instead, Reis noted on the map that it was based on older sources. It was signed by an admiral of the Turkish Navy called Piri Reis. In October 1929, on a dusty, forgotten shelf in an ancient library in Istanbul, an old map was found that might just rewrite human history.ĭated to 1513, the map showed the Atlantic ocean and the coastlines of South America, West Africa and Europe.
0 kommentar(er)
