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Carter Roy
On the morning of October 9, 1929, a Turkish historian named Halil Edem entered Istanbul's Topkapi Palace. For over four centuries, mighty sultans ruled the vast Ottoman Empire from this very palace. With Edem's help, the Turkish government hoped to turn the palace into a grand museum. But before that could happen, someone had to sort through hundreds of years worth of documents. His eyes danced across the faded yellow pages, but when he unfolded one roll of parchment, he stopped. He held in his hands a map. It was spectacular. The cartographer P? Re? Riis had signed and dated it in 1530. It depicted the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, North America, and South America. Intricately drawn ships sailed towards the New World over the continents themselves. The cartographer had sketched rivers, mountain ranges, and icons of people and exotic animals. It took an extraordinary amount of detail and skill to create such a map, but what struck Etta most was how impossibly accurate the South American coastline was. Europeans had only discovered the continent itself 20 years earlier, in 1492. Somehow, Peary had perfectly drawn a massive portion of the Earth that explorers had never been to before. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at the Conspiracy Pod and we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Stay with us.
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Carter Roy
Born around 1465 in Gallipoli, a Turkish peninsula across the Aegean Sea from Greece, Peary Rees real name was Haji Ahmed Muhuddin Piri. The word Rees actually referred to a rank he acquired later in life as a captain in the Ottoman Navy. From a young age, Peary felt at home on the sea. At only 12 years old, he joined a crew of pirates led by his uncle Kemal. For 14 years, Kemal attacked Christian trading ships in the Mediterranean Sea. With Peary at his side, the Islamic Ottoman Empire was expanding. But it wanted to avoid open warfare with Italy, Spain and Portugal. So it contracted captains like Kemal to work as privateers for the Empire. Peary's uncle taught him how to pilot a ship and navigate using the stars. Together, they fought battles and plundered ships. They even rescued Jews and Muslims fleeing Catholic persecution in the Spanish peninsula. And in 1495, the empire officially inducted Peary and Kemal into the Imperial Ottoman Navy. Kamal died in 1510, leaving 45 year old Peary without his captain and mentor. Freed from obligation, he hung up his pirate boots and turned to his true passion, cartography. He returned to Gallipoli and began work on a map that he hoped would capture the whole world on a single page. This daunting task took three years to complete. Peary gathered more than 200 different charts created over the past 2,000 years. One of his sources was an ancient map supposedly drawn during the reign of Alexander the great, sometime between 336 and 323 BCE. Many others were drawn by Portuguese and Arabic explorers. To combine all these charts, Peary had to match the contours of each continent's coastline to the other, like fitting together pieces of a puzzle. Even with modern technology, this would be difficult, but at the time, the task was nearly impossible. According to 20th century historian J.B. harley, these documents all had to be decoded. A dotted line could mean a road on one map and a river on another. And even when Peary decoded the charts, he still had to deal with their inaccuracies. Back in Alexander's day, most navigators used a technique called dead reckoning. Dead reckoning roughly estimated location based on where a person started, how fast they were traveling, and in what direction they were headed. To make this kind of calculation, a sailor needed to measure three direction, speed and time. But ancient Navigators didn't have the tools we have today. The magnetic compass only came into use for navigation In China around 1000 CE, 1300 years after Alexander died. Even by Peary's time, no technology existed to accurately measure speed or time at sea. And on the open ocean with no landmarks, sailors had a hard time discerning how far they'd traveled. Despite these challenges, many navigators were quite skilled at dead reckoning. And though their charts weren't strictly precise, they were still useful to other sailors. But for Peary, they were likely useful only up to a point. The medieval maps that Peary used, called portolands, also didn't take into account the Earth's round shape. Today, sailors use latitude and longitude to place their location on the east west axis and distance from the equator. But back then, sailors couldn't measure latitude and longitude. They could only guess their location relative to their starting point. For Peary, these challenges were part of the allure. If he could provide the Ottoman navy with a reliable guide, it would benefit the whole empire. It would mean fewer lost ships and more lives saved. In 1513, Peary finally finished his work. Four years later, he presented his portolan to the Ottoman ruler, Sultan Selim I. The map's exquisite craftsmanship impressed the Sultan, who added it to his archives. But if Peary was dreaming of becoming a hero of Ottoman mapmaking, then he was sorely disappointed. His map was copied at least once. But much to Peary's chagrin, the Sultan never published it. Luckily, Peary's next achievement would be his finest. He created a book on maritime navigation that surpassed any in the world. Compiled from charts, sketches and notes he'd made during his career, the book was an astonishingly accurate atlas of the Mediterranean. The book impressed Ottoman high society. Scholars made dozens of copies by hand, a costly and time consuming endeavor. Peary also presented his latest work to the new Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent. In 1547, Suleiman made Peary the admiral of the Indian Ocean fleet. But he was at least 80 years old at the time, so Peary's days were numbered. Five years later, Peary led 30 ships against the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf. The campaign failed and many of his ships were severely damaged. Peary's fleet retreated to Basra in modern day Iraq. But when Basra's governor demanded a share of his captured loot, Peary refused and fled to Egypt. According to one source, the governor of Basra started a rumor that Peary abandoned his men in battle to keep the treasure for himself. The Viceroy of Egypt believed the governor's accusation and had Peary arrested. Once he entered the country, the Viceroy confiscated Peary's possessions and imprisoned him. A year later, in 1553, he had Peary beheaded. It was an ignoble end to a life filled with purpose. Yet Peary's legacy survived through his atlas and he was eventually recognized as one of the finest cartographers who ever lived. As for Peary's painstaking map, it faded into obscurity. It languished in the archives of the Topkapi palace until Halil Etim unearthed it in 1929. At first, Etam didn't quite know what to do with Peary's impossibly accurate Portolan. He had his hands full trying to prepare the new museum. But realizing its significance, he showed the map to a scholar named Paul Kalla. Kalla was an expert in the history of Islamic cultures and wrote extensively about Middle Eastern literature. When he saw Peary's name on the map, he knew how important it was. Kala was most excited by Peary's 20 sources which had been recorded on the chart. The one Peary had used to draw the Caribbean was a map created by a so called Genoese infidel named Kulunbu. Kulunbu was the Turkish name for Christopher Columbus, one of the most famous explorers in history. It was Columbus who in 1492 opened the door to European colonization by loudly declaring there was land on the other side of the Atlantic. Peary's map included a description of Columbus journeys as well as an explanation of how he'd managed to get the famous explorer's diagrams. Supposedly, his Uncle Kamal captured a Spaniard who'd sailed with Columbus and had stolen the map. In 1933, Kala published a paper revealing the Piri Res portaland to the world using the provocative title A Lost Map of Columbus. It was well received and the map was soon copied and reproduced for study. The paper eventually caught the eye of Arlington Mallory, a former U.S. navy captain. In 1956, Mallory went on a radio show and announced a startling discovery. He'd scrutinized the Peary Rees map and noticed something strange about South America. The lower tip curved westward towards Africa, creating a massive landmass. Etta Munkla had thought this was simply an error. But Mallory noticed that the coastline looked just like Antarctica, which should have been impossible. Antarctica wasn't discovered until 1820, 270 years after Peary Rees died. This episode is brought to you by SimpliSafe. We talk about a lot of complex mysteries and theories on this podcast. So let's take a moment and discuss something simpler. If you want to secure your home, you need Simplisafe. 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Carter Roy
In 1929, a Turkish scholar discovered a remarkably accurate world map made by P. Rees. In 1513, more than 400 years after that, former U.S. navy captain Arlington Mallory declared that it showed the coast of Antarctica. This revelation was significant because, according to official history at least, explorers hadn't discovered Antarctica until centuries after Peary Rees died. But myths about a southern continent dated back to ancient Greece. The philosopher Aristotle first posited the idea in the 4th century BCE. He believed that the mass of land above Europe in the northern hemisphere had to be balanced by an equally large continent in the south. He called this place Terra Australis, meaning southern land. In the second century ce, the Roman cartographer cartographer Claudius Ptolemy echoed Aristotle's theory and included Terra Australis on his charts. Over the next thousand years, other cartographers followed suit. By 1513, when Peary Rees first made his map, including Terra Australis on world maps had become a tradition. However, the southern continent on Peary's chart was unique for two reasons. First, it was eerily accurate. In 1956, Captain Mallory took the bottom part of Peary's chart and overlaid it on top of a recently drawn map of Antarctica. Although the two coastlines weren't identical, he said they were in quote, astonishing agreement. The bays and peninsulas were all correct. And second, Mallory noted that Peary didn't believe the continent was covered in ice. Instead, Peary wrote that the region was hot and filled with snakes. For this reason, he claimed, Portuguese explorers had refused to land there. This reference to the Portuguese was strange. As far as historians were aware, no medieval Portuguese expeditions had ever traveled to Antarctica. Mallory showed his research to several geologists and astronomers, and they all agreed that Peary's map should be impossible. Their only explanation was that someone had charted the southern continent when it was still warm. But that couldn't possibly be the case because Antarctica had been frozen for millions of years. Fortunately, Mallory's hypothesis caught the attention of a Harvard educated historian and anthropologist named Charles Hapgood. As it turned out, he was already working on a radical new theory about the Earth's climate. And the Peary Rees map was the missing evidence he needed. In his 1958 book, Earth's Shifting Crust, which included an introduction by Albert Einstein, Hapgood analyzed recent data indicating that the climate had changed radically over the planet's history. For example, in the 1950s, several biologists discovered fossilized tropical plants in Antarctica. This meant that at some point, the southern continent had a much more temperate climate. At first, this didn't make sense to them. Earth's equator is hotter than the poles because it is physically closer to the sun. Since Antarctica surrounds the South Pole, I should have covered it for the entirety of its existence. Unless, of course, it moved. At the time, scientists were just starting to understand continental drift. Everyone had a different theory for how it happened. Some thought each landmass glided like a sled over the bottom of the ocean. Others believe they were spread apart by expanding cracks on the seafloor. But today, geologists accept that the Earth's crust is broken up into chunks called tectonic plates. These float over the mantle and collide with each other, creating mountains and causing earthquakes. For his part, Hapgood believed Antarctica was pushed southwards by centrifugal force. To give you an idea of what he meant, picture a merry go round. As the ride spins, you have to grip harder to not fall off the side. This is because the mass of the merry go round is accelerating inwards towards the center. However, the rider is on the outside of the circle, so it feels like they are being pushed away. The same thing happens when the Earth rotates on its axis. Hapgood believed that thousands of years ago, centrifugal force caused the heavier continents on the surface to slide towards the equator. This effectively displaced Antarctica, which then migrated south. When Antarctica moved to its current position, Hapgood believed it may have been warm enough to support human life. But he'd always been under the assumption that humans had been technologically incapable of getting to Antarctica until he heard about the PE Rees map. Picking up where Mallory left off, Hapgood placed Peary's Antarctic outline over a modern globe. He also found that the two charts mirrored each other remarkably well. Specific features like mountain ranges also seemed to match up perfectly. The only way that was possible, Hapgood wrote, was if one of Peary's sources had been to Antarctica when it was still water. In his 1966 book, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, Hapgood used geologic evidence to show that ice started covering Antarctica sometime around 8000 BCE which meant that Peary's source had to be at least that old. This revelation flew in the face of everything historians knew about human civilization. The oldest known Babylonian city maps were from 2300 BCE and amounted to little more than household blueprints. The oldest surviving world map was a clay Tablet from around 600 BCE as we mentioned, the compass wasn't used for navigation until the 11th century CE and tools for finding longitude and latitude didn't even exist until long after Peary died. Yet all of these would have been necessary to reach and accurately map Antarctica. So Hapgood believed there must have been an ancient civilization with access to equivalent tools. A race of technologically advanced shipbuilders who explored Antarctica thousands of years before Christopher Columbus was even born. And according to Hapgood, mathematical evidence of these ancient sophisticated seafarers was located right on the map. Peary Rees included several compass roses on the chart. Hapgood used these to create a grid across the map that would allow him to identify the precise longitude and latitude of each geographic feature. After making some mathematical adjustments, he reinforced the notion that Peary's map was indeed extremely accurate. He theorized that Peary's sources used a similar grid method to the one he created. Prior to this, historians had thought grid techniques weren't used until long after Peary died. But according to Hapgood, this was one more sign of a much earlier advanced intelligent civilization. Hapgood looked for evidence of these people in other antique maps, and to his excitement, he found several. The most interesting of which was a 1531 portolan by the French cartographer Orense Finet. Finet's chart not only depicted the same coastline as modern Antarctica, but it also included mountain ranges and rivers on the continent that glaciers have hidden for thousands of years. Hapgood also found a Chinese map from the 12th century CE which had the same mathematical exactness as Peary's. As such, he concluded that the ancient civilization that had influenced Peary's chart must have also reached China. Taken together, this pointed to a complete historical paradigm shift. Thousands of years before recorded history, a global society with advanced technology sailed to the farthest corners of the world. Then they vanished from the face of the Earth. To Hapgood, the answer was obvious. These ancient wanderers belonged to the lost civilization of Atlantis.
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Carter Roy
Historian Charles Hapgood made the explosive claim that Peary Rees created his map with the help of a chart made by an ancient race of seafarers. He suggested these people used highly advanced technology that disappeared the moment they did. In his book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, Hapgood deliberately avoided using the word Atlantis, but the civilization he described could only be just that. Atlantis has fascinated explorers for thousands of years. The Greek philosopher Plato first wrote about it around 360 BCE. He claimed the story originated somewhere in ancient Egypt, long before his time. In Plato's book Timaeus, his mentor Socrates described a huge island city called Atlantis, ruled by a race of technologically advanced people. Their isle was so large, it nearly spanned the entire Atlantic. But the Atlanteans were not content to rule their own land, so they waged war on the rest of humanity. Nations fell like dominoes before their terrible might. Until Athens, Plato's own city state, finally defeated it. As punishment for the Atlanteans warmongering, the gods sent floods and earthquakes to destroy them. Atlantis sank into the sea and disappeared forever. It's important to note Plato almost certainly intended this story to be a lesson in hubris rather than an accurate historical account. He intended to show how a righteous underdog could defeat a more powerful but immoral race of people. But many have wondered if the tale stemmed from real life. Societies all around the world have myths about great floods. Perhaps they all came from the cultural memory of Atlantis demise. Hapgood hypothesized that the Atlanteans were the ones to first discover Antarctica. Then one of their maps somehow survived for thousands of years until Peary Rees time. This would explain the inexplicable accuracies of Peary's map. A few years after Hapgood made this proposal, another researcher took his Atlantis theory one step further. In the summer of 1976, a librarian named Rand Flemmath came across a map from 1665 CE which placed Atlantis between Africa and America. Fascinated by Atlantis, Rand searched for more evidence of its existence. This led him to Charles Hapgood's book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings. Flipping through its pages, Rand stumbled upon an image of Antarctica without ice. The realization hit him like lightning. The Atlantis from his 1665 map looked an awful lot like the southern continent in Hapgood's book, which came directly from the Peary Rees map. After months of research, Rand and his wife Rose wrote a scientific paper comparing the geological features of Antarctica to what Plato and others wrote about Atlantis. They concluded that the two locations were actually the same. Antarctica was Atlantis. In their 19944 book, when the Sky Fell, the couple used another of Hapgood's theories to explain why Atlantis disappeared so suddenly. They claim that due to continental drift, Atlantis traveled south towards Antarctica's current location. Then, in 9500 BCE, the North and south poles shifted, causing a sudden ice age that wiped out the at. Traces of Atlantis survived the disaster through myths and bits of technology left behind. In fact, the Falmaths argued that the embers of modern human civilization sprang out of the death of Atlantis. In his 2000 book, the Atlantis Blueprint, Rand claimed that societies like ancient Egypt were far more technologically advanced than than they should have been. For example, they'd perfected advanced metalwork and sophisticated astronomy to account for this. Rand believed historians had made a miscalculation. Experts previously suspected that human Civilization began around 6,000 years ago. But Rand claimed that civilization was actually hundreds of thousands of years old. And after the destruction of Atlantis 12,000 years ago, humanity essentially restarted from scratch. Swiss author Erich von Deniken took the Atlantis hypothesis a step further. He argued that the Peary Rees map was proof that extraterrestrials visited humanity. According to Daniken, the only way someone could have drawn Antarctica so accurately was if they flew over it. In his mind, this meant that either Atlantis developed aircraft thousands of years ago with extraterrestrial help, or they were aliens themselves. Of course, many scholars found the whole notion of aliens in Atlantis extremely far fetched, and they felt that using Peary's map to justify it was ridiculous. One of the most outspoken critics was Dr. Greg McIntosh, a historian and engineer who wrote a book in 2000 entirely about the Pea Rees map. Macintosh challenged the most fundamental assumptions about the chart made by Kalla Mallory Hapgood and the Flamaths. He began with its supposedly astonishing accuracy. Macintosh confirmed that the northwestern coast of South America was fairly accurate. To him, this made sense. Peary claimed to have used Portuguese charts as sources. By 1513, the Portuguese had fully explored that region. But Macintosh noted that Peary's map was not nearly as accurate as some had claimed. For example, Piri drew a large river near modern day Brazil, which Kala identified as the Amazon. But it was in the entirely wrong place. Other features, like Venezuela's Gulf of Paria, were incorrect, too. Some errors were even more blatant. In the Caribbean, Trinidad was missing, and the island of Hispaniola was rotated 90 degrees from its its actual orientation. Mackintosh compared the Peary Reis map with several other portolans from the same period. He found the exact same errors in those maps, too, meaning they likely used the same Portuguese sources as Peary. And some discrepancies likely came from Peary himself. When Charles Hapgood examined Peary's sketch of South America, he was amazed that the cartographer had seemingly drawn the Andes Mountain range, even though the European explorers hadn't discovered it in 1513. But Hapgood failed to notice that Peary's mountains were thousands of miles away from the real Andes. McIntosh believed this was because Peary hadn't known about the Andes at all. The mountains on his map were made up. This was actually common practice in the Middle Ages. In lieu of actual information, mapmakers would make guesses about where mountains and rivers might be. Peary even drew unicorns and headless beasts scattered throughout South America. So perhaps Hapgood should have taken that as an indication that the map's features weren't intended to be taken entirely at face value. But even with the mistakes In South America, McIntosh still had to address the question of Antarctica. There had to be a reason why Pee Wee's coastline looked exactly like the real one. As it turned out, the answer was simple. It didn't. When Macintosh compared the Peary Rees map to a recent chart of Antarctica, the overlay showed wild discrepancies. Features that should have been hundreds of miles apart were right next to each other. Bays and inlets on one map didn't match up with the other. In short, Mallory and Hapgood were simply wrong. Peary's chart did not show Antarctica. And Peary's own words supported this. He had specifically referenced the Portuguese refusing to land in the area Hapgood claimed to be Antarctica. This indicated his source had been Portuguese sailors, not ancient Atlanteans. Which makes sense. Scientists have yet to find any evidence of an ancient civilization on Antarctica. They haven't discovered any buildings, technology or signs of pre modern intelligent life. If Peary's controversial coastline wasn't actually Antarctica, then one has to wonder why the tip of South America is so wrong. Remember, the map shows South America curving towards the bottom of the Earth and connecting to the mysterious southern continent. Well, the answer could be politics. In 1513, the Portuguese were already exploring South America at a feverish pace. But they wanted to keep their maps secret. Each European power was desperate to find a route to Asia through the New World. So it would have been in the Portuguese's best interests to make it look like there was no way to sail through South America. It's entirely possible that Portuguese cartographers connected South America to the mythical southern continent on purpose. If they could convince other nations there was no way through, this could allow them time to find a route themselves. Without knowing exactly what Piri's sources were, that's merely speculation. But it's worth remembering that medieval portolans were more than simple guides. They were political tools as well. Even today, Peary's chart continues to serve a larger purpose. For historians, it's a vital clue, a window into a bygone world of kings, sultans, and explorers. And for the general public, it's become something else entirely. By linking the Peary Reis map to Atlantis, scholars like Charles Hapgood have introduced millions of people to an alternate version of history, one where humanity had its time in the sun. Before a cataclysmic fall from grace. In 1513, Peary set out to create a map of the known world. In hindsight, it's easy to judge his errors, but we shouldn't get too secure in our knowledge. 95% of our ocean remain unmapped and unexplored. Perhaps in 500 years, humanity will look back at us and laugh at how little we actually knew about planet Earth. Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram Conspiracy Pod and we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Or email us@conspiracy storiespotify.com for more information on the Pee Rees map. Amongst the many sources we used, we found the Pee rees map of 1513 by Gregory McIntosh extremely helpful to our research. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth. This episode was written by Xander Bernstein with writing assistance by Molly Quinlan and Connor Sampson. Fact checking by Kara Mackerline, researched by Bradley Klein and sound designed by Spencer Howard. Our head of programming is Julian Warau. Our Head of Production is Nick Johnson and Spencer Howard is our post production Supervisor. I'm your host Carter Roy.
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Episode Title: The Piri Reis Map
Host: Carter Roy
Release Date: November 6, 2024
Podcast Description: Exploring the world's most controversial events and the intricate beliefs behind them, from Bigfoot sightings to alien landings.
Carter Roy opens the episode by recounting the discovery of the Piri Reis map in 1929 by Turkish historian Halil Edem at Istanbul's Topkapi Palace.
"[...] someone had to sort through hundreds of years worth of documents. His eyes danced across the faded yellow pages, but when he unfolded one roll of parchment, he stopped. He held in his hands a map. It was spectacular." [00:04]
The map, signed and dated 1530 by the Ottoman cartographer Piri Reis, depicted the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, North America, and South America with remarkable accuracy, especially the South American coastline—a region supposedly unknown to Europeans two decades prior to Columbus's voyages.
Born around 1465 in Gallipoli, Piri Reis (real name Haji Ahmed Muhuddin Piri) rose to prominence as a naval captain in the Ottoman Empire. At 12, he joined his uncle Kemal's pirate crew, engaging in privateering to aid Ottoman expansion without provoking open warfare.
After Kemal's death in 1510, Piri Reis shifted his focus to cartography. Over three years, he compiled over 200 charts from the past two millennia, including ancient maps from Alexander the Great's era and those by Portuguese and Arabic explorers. This monumental effort culminated in the creation of his renowned map in 1513, which he presented to Sultan Selim I in 1517.
"Peary Rees included several compass roses on the chart. Hapgood used these to create a grid across the map that would allow him to identify the precise longitude and latitude of each geographic feature." [03:37]
The map remained obscure until 1929 when Halil Edem unearthed it during efforts to convert the Topkapi Palace into a museum. Recognizing its significance, Edem consulted scholar Paul Kalla, an expert in Islamic history. Kalla’s analysis highlighted the map's sources, including a chart allegedly taken from Christopher Columbus's voyages, captured by Piri Reis's uncle during piracy.
In 1956, U.S. Navy Captain Arlington Mallory revisited the map and identified an anomalous feature: the southern tip of South America curved westward toward Africa, resembling Antarctica—a continent officially "discovered" in 1820. Mallory posited that this indicated advanced ancient knowledge predating known exploration capabilities.
"Their only explanation was that someone had charted the southern continent when it was still warm. But that couldn't possibly be the case because Antarctica had been frozen for millions of years." [15:29]
Harvard-educated historian Charles Hapgood embraced Mallory's findings, integrating them into his theory of a shifting Earth's crust. Hapgood suggested that Antarctica had migrated southward due to centrifugal forces, making it habitable in Piri Reis's time.
In his 1958 book, Earth's Shifting Crust, Hapgood argued that the precision of the Piri Reis map indicated an ancient civilization's involvement—potentially the mythical Atlantis. He identified grid patterns on the map that mirrored modern latitude and longitude, attributing this to advanced seafaring technology lost to history.
"Hapgood believed that thousands of years ago, centrifugal force caused the heavier continents on the surface to slide towards the equator. This effectively displaced Antarctica, which then migrated south." [15:10]
Inspired by Hapgood, Rand and Rose Flemmath proposed that Atlantis was located in Antarctica. Their 1994 book, When the Sky Fell, linked Atlantis's existence and sudden disappearance to continental drift and a cataclysmic ice age around 9500 BCE. They asserted that remnants of Atlantean technology influenced early human civilizations.
"Rand believed historians had made a miscalculation. Experts previously suspected that human civilization began around 6,000 years ago. But Rand claimed that civilization was actually hundreds of thousands of years old." [25:10]
Swiss author Erich von Däniken extended the Atlantis hypothesis by suggesting extraterrestrial involvement. He argued that the unparalleled accuracy of the Piri Reis map implied aerial surveying capabilities, attributing this to alien technology or influence.
"According to Daniken, the only way someone could have drawn Antarctica so accurately was if they flew over it." [25:10]
Historian and engineer Dr. Greg McIntosh critically examined the Piri Reis map in his 2000 book, The Pea Rees Map. He debunked the claims of Antarctic depiction by highlighting several inaccuracies:
South American Features: McIntosh pointed out misplaced rivers, incorrect orientations, and missing islands, such as Trinidad and a rotated Hispaniola.
Antarctic Representation: Overlaying the map with modern Antarctic charts revealed significant discrepancies in coastline features, undermining claims of accurate representation.
"When Charles Hapgood examined Peary's sketch of South America, he was amazed that the cartographer had seemingly drawn the Andes Mountain range, even though the European explorers hadn't discovered it in 1513." [26:37]
McIntosh concluded that the supposed Antarctic features were either misunderstandings or deliberate political fabrications by Portuguese cartographers to obscure navigation routes.
Despite the controversies, the Piri Reis map remains a pivotal artifact in historical cartography. While initial theories linked it to lost civilizations or extraterrestrial influences, scholarly critique has largely debunked these notions, attributing the map's peculiarities to the limitations and political motivations of medieval cartographers.
"Before a cataclysmic fall from grace. In 1513, Peary set out to create a map of the known world. In hindsight, it's easy to judge his errors, but we shouldn't get too secure in our knowledge." [26:37]
Carter Roy emphasizes the enduring mystery and significance of the Piri Reis map, reminding listeners of the vast unexplored territories that still hold secrets.
"Perhaps in 500 years, humanity will look back at us and laugh at how little we actually knew about planet Earth." [26:37]
Episode Credits:
Written by Xander Bernstein with assistance from Molly Quinlan and Connor Sampson. Fact-checked by Kara Mackerline, researched by Bradley Klein, and sound designed by Spencer Howard. Head of Programming: Julian Warau. Head of Production: Nick Johnson. Post Production Supervisor: Spencer Howard.
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