the piri reis map

JonF wrote:

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The map to which you refer was drawn in 1513 by the Turkish geographer, Piri Reis, and discovered in 1929. Nobody knows what his sources were (although some of the notes on the map say it was drawn from European sources), and speculation about his ultimate sources is just that. Of course, it didn't help Columbus, who died seven years before the map was drawn.

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The map is not drawn according to modern conventions, with a latitude-longitude grid. All attempts to correlate the features on the west of the Atlantic involve a certain amount of interpretation, although many of the interpretations are slam-dunks. In general, the farther south you go on the map the more errors appear.

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The map does show more detail in what appears to be Brazil than was apparently available to Piri Reis at the time, and there are some interesting questions about where the information came from.

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The area which some have interpreted as the coastline of Antarctica has essentially no correspondence to Antarctica, except it's at the south end of the map. It is shown connected to South America (and the southern part of South America is not even close to what's shown on the map). If you squint your eyes and ignore a lot of the drawing, the coast bears a very slight resemblance to the coastline of Antarctica under the ice ... but it bears no resemblance to what the coastline of Antarctica would look like if it didn't have all that ice on it pressing it down! The correspondence that has been "found" involved twisting and distorting different portions of the map differently to force a correspondence. So it certainly doesn't show a pre-ice Antarctica. It's virtually certain it doesn't show Antarctica at all.

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See The Piri Reis Map, Minds in Ablation Part Five: Charting Imaginary Worlds, and Fingerprints of the Gods: Re: Piri Reis Map.

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Please avoid posting wildly exaggerated and unsupported claims in the science forums. Thank you.

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http://www.amazon.co.uk/...IN/0553815229/202-0849038-7878233In the book 1421, the Year China Discovered the World, Gavin Menzies gives a very comprehensive discussion of the Piri Reis map which answers nearly all of the points you raise here.tbc...

So let's hear 'em. I'm not buying the book based on as little as that.{added in edit: Have you looked at the map? That's the best refutation of any idea that Antarctica is represented. And North America is a joke.Please make sure that your exposition includes how he interprets the notes on the map}This message has been edited by JonF, 02-04-2005 08:00 AM

I looked at your Amazon reference, and at Menzie's 1421: the Year China Discovered the World web site.The Amazon review includes:"It all makes for a gripping read, even if the sum doesn't quite add up to the whole. For all the detail, Menzies is some way off providing proof. ... So you either accept Menzies as an act of faith or brush him aside with scepticism."User reviews include:"I feel that Gavin Menzies has gotten carried away with his story of chinese admirals and that the strength of the evidence is so far inconclusive. It may be that discoveries in the future (such as a proven chinese wreck of the right age, dna evidence and carbon dating of artifacts) may support his assertion that the chinese discovered america before europeans, at present the jury is out.""At the end I am left thinking that it is an answer, but it is almost a BACKWARD answer, with the hypothesis having been raised, and the book as a justification for the hypothesis. Some with a wide knowledge of cartography have questioned the selectivity of the author, as maps and charts all support his central idea, but there exists other items that do not do this."On Menzies' web site, all of the many references to the Piri Reis map are bare assertions. There is no discussion of the validity of any portion of the map. When you search the "Evidence" section (which contains precious little evidence of any kind), the first hit includes:"(i) The whole world was charted by 1428 - by whom?Portuguese claim they had a chart of the whole world by then. They do not claim to have created that chart.The Pizzigano, Fra Mauro, Piri Reis, Cantino, Caverio, Waldseemueller and Jean Rotz charts show whole world charted before Europeans set sail."Although we do know that the Piri Reis map was based on earlier maps, AFAIK we have no evidence as to what those maps were and when they were drawn. Certainly the last sentence is wrong (hopefully just because of poor writing); the Piri Reis map was drawn after the Europeans set sail.All in all, it doesn't look promising. Why don't you summarize the key evidence he introduces for the Piri Reis map?

for fucks sake Jon chill out already.This is an FYI thing gods sake not some sort of grand thesis.Now I don't even want to write the bloody thing cos it seems like its destined to turn into another flame war.Yes I have seen the map. Menzies thesis is that the Chinese constructed a fleet of boats to explore the world, literally, because they knew it was round, and more importantly to locate a guide star in the southern hemisphere which would serve the same purpose as the pole star in the north.So to answer the south american question, the thing here is that what they recorded was the ice pack. They did not distinguish between the land and the ice becuase that simply was not their interest, nor mapping convention. They eventually fetched up on the Falklands, took their observations, and left again. The look of south America joined to the antarctic looks weird to us because our maps seldom show the icepack, but instead the underlying geography.The map has not longitude becuase they had not system for such. As to notes on the map, you would have to be more specific - the actual Piri Reis map is thought to be an Arabaian copy of the Chinese map, so who knows who annotated it. This may well be the secret map that Columbus viewed in the posession of the King of Portugal, so might have also been later annotated by Europeans. Menzies suggests the compass star that appears near south America shows the point on the Falklands at which the stellar observations were taken.The point is that this is an entirely mundane explanation of the PR map, despite its frequent appearances in sundry conspiracy theories. I won't defend it as any more than "interesting", and much more plausible than any other theory I have yet encountered for the PR map.

Sorry if I raised your hackles, but ... and then which appear to me to be very different statements. The first appears to be an endorsement of accuracy.OK, maybe it's a plausible hypothesis. The map is wildly inaccurate no matter whether they mapped the ice pack or the land; Antarctica doesn't connect to South America. By a long shot. Neither the edge of Antarctica's ice nor the edge of the land look remotely like the Pirir Reis map. No, since Columbus died years before the Piri Reis map was drawn.I'l stick with the entirely mundane and plausible hypothesis that the Piri Reis map was drawn on the basis of some earlier maps, some of which were accurate and some of which were not, and Reis filled in some imaginary land where it seemed to him to make sense or he had vague descriptions from tales told by travellers of stories they had heard from far awy. That explains the tremendous inaccuracy of most of the map very well.Evidence could change my mind.

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which appear to me to be very different statements. The first appears to be an endorsement of accuracy.

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Actually they are not. A compreshenisve response that rebuts every challenge advance can still be WROING, but that will not mean it is not comprehensive.

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OK, maybe it's a plausible hypothesis. The map is wildly inaccurate no matter whether they mapped the ice pack or the land; Antarctica doesn't connect to South America. By a long shot. Neither the edge of Antarctica's ice nor the edge of the land look remotely like the Piri Reis map.

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Did you read what I wrote?The argument is that the connection between Tierra Del Fuego and antarctica IS pack ice. The "little ice age" begins around 1450, and resulted in the Vikings abanonding Greenland due to it becoming iced over. So to suggest that there was antarctic pack ice all the way to the SA continent is not totally absurd, as this journey is only claimed for 30 years earlier, cooling having begun in 1200. They didn't get around the Horn; they didn't know there would be a sea-lane.

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No, since Columbus died years before the Piri Reis map was drawn.

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Drawn by WHO, the Chinese or the Arabs? Columbus was only born in 1451, 30 years after the map was compiled. Nobody has claimed the physical Piri Reis map is THE original copy - there is a copy in stone in China, according to Menzies (he has photos), in the tomb of the admiral who commanded the expedition, and as I already pointed out, Menzies argues that the Piri Reis map is a copy of a copy held by the arabs.

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That explains the tremendous inaccuracy of most of the map very well.

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Tremendous INaccuracy? Thats bizarre - the whole reason the map draws attention is because it appears to be precociously correct. Even so, I'm stilling allowing there will necessarily be distortions in scale because of the absence of longitudinal correction - some inaccuracy by comparison to modern maps does not rule out the idea that this was land observed by a person and recorded cartographically.Even so, if the orthodox history is observed, who can these "travellers" possibly be, if columbus discovers the new world?At least you should read the book for yourself; all I was trying to point out is that there is a possible authentic provenance for the Piri Reis map - its is not correct to automatically assume it is a forgery or a work of fiction. I'm hesistant to assert Menzies thesis is correct, but he certainly makes a compelling argument - much more so than saying its both fake and accidentally more accurate than any map in the posession of the West for the next century.I don't understand the hostility - this is a nice, conservative theory of provenance. No aliens, no divine revelation, no world-spanning ancient civilisations. The only toe it steps on is the idea that the West discovered the new world first. It IS a mundane origin.This message has been edited by contracycle, 02-04-2005 10:41 AM

Yes. Have you read The Piri Reis Map? This is your first mention of such. If that connection is pack ice, it goes awfully far north, to something on the order of 25 degrees south latitude. Note that , if that's not ice, the coast of South America is incredibly wrong from Rio de Janeiro south. Er, Piri Reis claimed exactly that. He used other maps as sources, but the original Piri Reis map was drawn in 1530. The coast of Brazil is fairly close to reality. The coast of South America south of Rio de Janeiro is laughably wrong (unless it's ice).There are mountains in the interior of South America; the map shows them far from where they are. All of North America is fiction. Antarctica is, as far as we can tell, completely inaccurate. If someone claims that Antarctica is shown accurately as it was with a significantly larger ice pack, that person has the responsibility of producing evidence of such. I bet that producing enough ice to create the shorelines of the Piri Reis map would significantly lower sea level, maybe even dry ou the Straits of Gibralter. The Piri Reis map was drawn in 1530, 38 years after Columbus' first voyage. Plenty of opportunity for maps and tales to be generated and to travel. It's also possible that people other than Columbus, maybe even the Chinese, visited the Americas. All I ask is evidence. From the reviews and my perusal of the web site, that seems to be lacking. Interesting yarns are just that. I'm not intending hostility, but I am skeptical. We already have a theory of mundane origin for the map, with some unknowns. My understanding is that this new theory also has some unknowns. Which is better? Only a thorough review of the evidence can tell. Menzie's failure to submit his theories to scholarly review could be a warning flag; von Daniken had photographs, too (and I'm not insinuating that Menzies is in the same class as von Daniken, although what I've seen so far indicates he's more towards that end of the spectrum than the scientific and scholarly end).

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Yes. Have you read The Piri Reis Map?

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Oh yes, years ago. But look at the conclusions:

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For 1513, this map shows an astonishing amount of detail. The notes on the map explain that the map was synthesized from about 20 maps, many of which were captured from Spanish and Portuguese ships in the Mediterranean. It was also supplemented by accounts given by captured Spanish and Portuguese sailors.

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Not a map from some ancient Atlantean civilization, not a map created by extraterrestrials, but a first class piece of naval intelligence. Considering that it was created by a sailor whose country never participated in the age of exploration, and that it's drawn wholly from second-hand sources, it's an astonishing piece of work. It seems to contain up-to-the-minute details derived from enemy maps, many of which would have been tightly-guarded secrets.

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There's a class of crank that hates the idea that other people might have real accomplishments, because they never accomplish anything themselves. So Shakespeare didn't write his plays, other people did; Robert Peary didn't reach the North Pole as he claimed, and so on. And Piri Reis wasn't a gifted admiral and good intelligence analyst, but had to get help from ancient lost documents. Get a life, folks.

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Now the main difference I am proposing is that this map is not a work of synthesis by Piri Reis himself, but is in fact an observation by Zheng He. As I have said, no mysterious ancient civilisations required. What this page does concede is the precociousness of the map itself, regardless of course.

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Er, Piri Reis claimed exactly that. He used other maps as sources, but the original Piri Reis map was drawn in 1530.

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Sigh. Yes, John, I am sure Piri Reis drew his map in 1530. This does not rule out the existance of precursor maps from which his work was compiled from a century earlier.That said though, these maps were of course state secrets in the period, so whether Pri Reis is giving the provenance of his sources accurately is open to doubt.

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The coast of Brazil is fairly close to reality. The coast of South America south of Rio de Janeiro is laughably wrong (unless it's ice).There are mountains in the interior of South America; the map shows them far from where they are.

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Yes; Menzies claims that is a common error when observing land from the coast, based on his experience as a naval navigator.

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All of North America is fiction. Antarctica is, as far as we can tell, completely inaccurate. If someone claims that Antarctica is shown accurately as it was with a significantly larger ice pack, that person has the responsibility of producing evidence of such. I bet that producing enough ice to create the shorelines of the Piri Reis map would significantly lower sea level, maybe even dry ou the Straits of Gibralter.

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I suspect thats an exaggeration.

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The Piri Reis map was drawn in 1530, 38 years after Columbus' first voyage. Plenty of opportunity for maps and tales to be generated and to travel. It's also possible that people other than Columbus, maybe even the Chinese, visited the Americas. All I ask is evidence. From the reviews and my perusal of the web site, that seems to be lacking. Interesting yarns are just that.

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Huh? If you allow the chinese visited the Americas, and that it may be their reporting which is synthesised in the PR map, then what precisely is it you are objecting to in Menzies argument, seeing as that is exactly what he is claiming?I didn't gave you a SITE, I gave you an Amazon link to the book itself.And while I appreciate your call for proof, I donlt have the book with me and all I have proposed is a reference that you might find interesting to investigate for yourself. Why does this sort of reccomendation require absolute proof before you will consider examining it? Surely, I would have to advance the argument in order to prove it?

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We already have a theory of mundane origin for the map, with some unknowns. My understanding is that this new theory also has some unknowns. Which is better? Only a thorough review of the evidence can tell. Menzie's failure to submit his theories to scholarly review could be a warning flag; von Daniken had photographs, too (and I'm not insinuating that Menzies is in the same class as von Daniken, although what I've seen so far indicates he's more towards that end of the spectrum than the scientific and scholarly end).

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And I'll admit I was similarly sceptical, and was actually given the book as apresent rather than buying it myself. But it is much more comprehensively argued than I expected. I'm also aware of possible challenges, but unlike most of the conspiracy theorists, he is making himself a hostage to fortune by predicting that a chinese obelisk will be found on the Falklands. Menzies is no academic and may simply not know how to begin.

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Here is a little CNN article that mentions things that I forgot: one of Menzies arguments is that there is an Asian chicken species in Brazil, for example.

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CNN.com - Did the Chinese discover America? - Jan. 13, 2003

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The only toe it steps on is the idea that the West discovered the new world first.

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Uh, we already know that the West wasn't the first to discover the new world.The Native Americans crossed the land bridge between Asia and the Americas at leat 10,000 years ago. Some say up to 30,000 years ago.

It also goes into great detail about the many errors on the map. It's astonishingly accurate for the time and place but, as a map, it's almost all terrible. The bit about the straits of Gibralter may be. The rest of my comment is not. I notice you did not respond to:

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If that connection is pack ice, it goes awfully far north, to something on the order of 25 degrees south latitude. Note that, if that's not ice, the coast of South America is incredibly wrong from Rio de Janeiro south.

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What is your reaction to that? I allow that it is possible that the Chinese visited the Americas. It's also possible that the ancient Egyptians visited the Americas on reed boats. Based on the evidence to date, neither seems probable. Yep. I dug up his website all by myself, and gave the link to it, and commented on it. Are you saying that his website is not an accurate precis of the book? It doesn't. It requires some likelihood before I wil investigate it seriously. If I can get the book from my library, I might read it for entertainment.

Thanks for the link, contra. That induced me to head over to Menzies' website and check out some of the evidences for myself. I mean, what do I know from maps? I do enjoy looking at peoples' bio claims, however.From Menzies evidence page, I picked out a few interesting tidbits he cites as support for his Chinese fleet to examine.

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(t) Australian Wood Rat - These curious rats are confined solely to Bahia Honda Key, FL, and are now a protected species because of their small numbers and isolated location. Maybe the Australian wood rats were on a Chinese Junk that sank or was marooned on the Key. Maybe they were pets of the crew or kept as gifts or for the zoo in China. Can anyone help us to find out more about these strange creatures? - W. Todd Robertson

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Ain't no such animal in Florida. There is an endangered wood rat subspecies (the Key Largo Wood Rat Neotoma floridana smalli) which has a small refuge on Key Largo (not Bahia Honda Key). However, the species itself (the Eastern Wood Rat) is not endangered, and is native to the US east coast all the way to the Alleghenies. I guess that answers the question...

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(u) New Zealand has bats (DNA linked to Peruvian Sea Bats) which are alleged to have "migrated" from South America by being caught in a sea storm off Peru and thus swept to NZ — a bit fanciful some might say! Perhaps the Chinese fleets had unwanted passengers? - Louis Hissink M.Sc. M.A.I.G.

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This one's a bit more complicated. New Zealand has two living (and one extinct) bat species in two genera. The Short-tailed Bat (Mystacina tuberculata and its near cousin the Greater Short-tailed Bat M. robusta), and the Long-tailed Bat (Chalinolobus tuberculatus). The long-tails are apparently Australian in origin (the genus is common there), and are believed to have been "blown" to New Zealand as the quote suggests. However, as to the Mystacinidae, the family is an endemic which evolved on New
Zealand and exists nowhere else. The molecular phylogeny of this family indicates that it is a member of the Superfamily Noctilionoidea, which contains three other families of microchiropterans - all confined to the Western Hemisphere. Since the Mystacinidae are highly derived (they're ground-burrowing bats, meaning they had to have evolved in the absence of other mammalian predators), their affinity with any S. American species is pretty remote. So the article is correct that their "nearest relatives" are S. American chiropterans, but the relationship only exists at the superfamily level, so is pretty distant.As a second note to this article, there ain't no such animal as the Peruvian Sea Bat. The nearest I can come is a subspecies of Desmodus (common vampire bat) that specializes on basking seals and sea lions, but isn't known (as far as I can tell) as a "sea bat".And last but by no means least, there's this gem:

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(v) The Elephant bird aka Vouron Patra (Aepyornis maximus) — this was an huge flightless bird, much similar to the Moa of New Zealand. Despite its originating in Madagascar, eggs and a skull of the elephant bird were found in Australia in 1968. For more information on the find please visit the following link: Missing Link | Answers in Genesis

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Please note the "reference" cited on this one. In any event, I have been able to find no reference to any Aepyornis skeletons found in Australia. I believe the AiG article confused these Madagascan endemics with the Australian-born Dromornithidae (like Genyornis). TO may have better info, but it appears that not only is the article incorrect, but the reference is to bogus information as well.Now, I have no clue as to the validity of Menzies' maps, or the validity of his Chinese Fleet hypothesis. But if much of his "evidence" is revealed to be as bad as the above, I think we're justified in taking his claims with a rather large grain of salt.

I wonder if a caught a bit of a documentary on based in part on his book.I was rather impressed with the documentary since it actually included rebuttal augments.My impression after hearing the rebuttals was that it was a shame that some interesting points were being overshadowed by his grasping to connect Asian sea travel past Africa.I think he made a case that there should be further exploration about an Asian ship crashing off the coast of Africa.From the rebuttals (as I recall them):They questioned his claim of the map showing Puerto Rico. I don’t remember the reasons. I want to say angle and position was off.He actually was citing "the bimini road" along with underwater marble debris (usually attributed to dumped ballest) as proof.Where he lost me was in attributing a structure in North American as being of Asian origin without explaining why the style would be considered to be Asian. The rebuttal was that it was something like an old mill. It appeared that he didn’t even do basic research into what was known about the structure.>>Now what I personally would have like to see would be follow up DNA tests on the African descendants rumored to have been shipwrecked survivors of an Asian ship.

I love stories and hypotheses like the Chinese Fleet stuff. When I was a kid I sort of wanted to grow up and become a cryptozoologist and search for yetis or the Loch Ness Monster, . I've always had a soft spot for these kinds of things. However, the sad fact is that, although the idea of early Chinese exploration of N. America is plausible, shoehorning unrelated bits of data or misrepresenting data to support the idea is intellectually dishonest. Even if there WERE data points to support the claim, all the extraneous, erroneus other data more than obscures the real information (assuming it exists), it utterly destroys any validity in the hypothesis and its originator.

Frankly, the reality of what the early chinese did in the way of exploration is fantastic enough. It is also interesting to see the hints of what were real obstacles such as the passages through the Madagascar Strait (Mozambique Channel)or the route outside around it and to speculate on how such a seafaring nation could suddenly simply pull back a stop. For me, that has always been one of the great mysteries of history.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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It doesn't. It requires some likelihood before I wil investigate it seriously. If I can get the book from my library, I might read it for entertainment.

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Well the, you have succesfully discerned the secret message of my post!Thats all I was suggesting. But further, I think comparing this to Egyptians in reed boats is blatently ridiculous. At least compare like with like.Quetzal, while I can not and will not vouch for every claim Menzies makes, we have to bear in mind this guy is retired navigator, a pensioner writing a vanity book about a puzzle he found personally intriguing. It is not, and is not claimed to be, up to academic standards. I suspect Menzies just isn't interested to that degree; noe of his claims cause a major reqriting of history, nor imply special or ocuult knowledge, nor form the basis of any cult.Its not von Daniken, does not read like von Daniken. It might still be wrong, of course, I'll happily allow that; but I seriously ddo NOT think this is remotely in the same category as cryptozoology. In fact I find the suggestion wquite distasteful, as if nothing written by an amateur can ever be other than an effort to defraud the public.China had very large boats from the 4th century AD, mostly on rivers. Trans-oceanic shipping a thousand years later is not remotely the same as hypothesising the Egyptians crossed the atlantic on reed boats with no navigation, because that implies *magic*. Marco Polo described ocean-going ships with 4 masts, 300 crew and watertight bulkheads.While it does change our view of what was going on in the middle of the last millenium, it is not a conspiracy theory.