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PIRI REIS AND THE HAPGOOD HYPOTHESIS

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Bianca
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« Reply #30 on: July 11, 2007, 08:14:04 am »







               A N T A R C T I C A   A N D   T H E   E A S T W A R D - T R E N D I N G   C O A S T




This portion of the map was crucial to Hapgood's hypotheses, yet it too could have been derived from sources other than a forgotten advanced civilization. While none of the maps derived from de Canerio's shows an Antarctic continent, other groups of early maps do. Beginning in the early 15th century, mapmakers often indicated a huge southern landmass that linked Africa to Asia and made a landlocked sea of the Indian Ocean–a geographical notion derived from Ptolemy's references to a "southern land". When Magellan passed through the strait that now bears his name, he sighted Tierra del Fuego to the south and assumed that it was a promontory of Ptolemy's southern landmass; it was not until Drake's southern voyage of 1578 that this idea too was exploded.


The search for terra australis went on for centuries—incidentally leading to the discovery of the land which now fittingly bears the name that so fascinated Renaissance cartographers: Australia. But Antarctica itself eluded the great discoverers.


There are, however, some indications that the coast of Antarctica was sighted before its "official" discovery in 1820. The great Amerigo Vespucci related how, blown off course and driven 500 miles south, he sighted a land which he named Terra da Vista - "Land Seen" - and which was possibly the Falklands or even Antarctica. In 1514, theyear after the completion of the Piri Reis map, two Portuguese ships reported something similar, as did two Dutch ships about the same time: also blown off course, they sighted land and named it "Pressillgtlandt". Whatever land was sighted on these obscure voyages, the accounts prove one thing: there was no inherent impossibility in a 16th-century ship getting a long way south.


There may, in fact, bean even simpler explanation of the presence of "Antarctica" on the Piri Reis map. To start with, as Hapgood admits, about 900 miles of South American coastline are missing from the map: below the Rio de la Plata the coast simply turns eastward. And, interestingly, if this eastward section of coast is looked at vertically - that is, as continuing south instead of east (see page 21) - it does bear a remarkable resemblance to the actual east coast of South America from below Rio de la Plata down to Tierra del Fuego. Some of the smaller coastal features, moreover, jibe with a modern map as well, and the small group of three islands (Ma de Sara) could then be identified as the Falkland Islands, and the wedge-shaped projection at the most easterly point of the line could correspond to the tip of South America.



To put it more simply, Piri Reis, or the scribe who copied his work, may have realized, as he came to the Rio de la Plata, that he was going to run off the edge of his valuable parchment if he continued south. So he did the logical thing and turned the coastline to the east, marking the turn with a semicircle of crenelations, so that he could fit the entire coastline on his page. If that was the case, then the elaborate Hapgood hypotheses - or at least those elements based entirely on the Piri Reis map - would have no foundation whatever.
 


AUTHOR:

Paul F. Hoye, Editor of Aramco World and formerly a reporter and columnist on The Providence Journal, studied Middle East affairs at Columbia University under the Advanced International Reporting Program. Paul Lunde is a graduate of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, and is currently working on Arabic manuscripts in the Vatican Library in Rome.






www.saudiaramcoworld.com
« Last Edit: July 11, 2007, 08:50:49 am by Bianca2001 » Report Spam   Logged

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