Message #19967

[Bianca]

This conversion required years of trial and error and eventually involved a cartographic unit of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). But the results, Hapgood says, were startling. They seemed to show an accuracy impossible at the time Piri Reis drew the map and inconceivable in the time of Alexander the Great when, presumably, Piri Reis' sources drew their maps.


To Professor Hapgood the conversions of the underlying lines of latitude and longitude are vital. "They establish beyond any doubt the extraordinary accuracy of the maps, clearly beyond the capability of any medieval or ancient cartographers known to us."


Hapgood and his students also examined the late medieval and early Renaissance maps called "portulans" or "portolanos." These were highly accurate mariners' charts of the Mediterranean area - sometimes including the Black Sea - made by Portuguese, Venetian, Spanish, Catalan and Arab seamen. They are extremely beautiful maps, but what struck Hapgood was their accuracy. How, Hapgood asked, could medieval sailors, with no navigational aids but the compass, have prepared such accurate charts?