An A-Z Guide To The Search For Plato's Atlantis

Latest News

  • NEWS October 2024

    NEWS October 2024

    October 2024 Hi to everyone I’m taking a break during the first two weeks of October, so there will be minimal activity on the site apart from the ongoing project of replacing broken links. Back Soon, Tony     September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we […]Read More »
  • Joining The Dots

    Joining The Dots

    I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Search

Recent Updates

Jean-Pierre Lacroix

Nile River *

The River Nile was considered the longest river in the world, a title now disputed by the Amazon.(a) More important was the part it played in the development of pharoanic Egypt. Understandably, it also played a part in the mythology and religion of ancient Egypt.

In 2019 a paper(d) by Larry Pahl, who looked again at the Orion Correlation Theory and concluded that Robert Bauval should not have confined his theory to Orion’s ‘belt’, but looked at the entire constellation and sought a more extensive reflection on the monuments of ancient Egypt. Prahl then proceeds to do exactly that.

Similarly, Jean-Pierre Lacroix claimed that other Egyptian structures may have been located to reflect the layout of other constellations in the sky. Specifically, he focuses on Aries and Thebes(e) .

Alessandro Berio went further with the claim(f) that the entire Nile was ‘designed’ to be a reflection of the constellations above!

Philip Coppens commenting on how the Incas viewed the valley of Cusco wrote “Modern research suggests that the Sacred Valley of the Vilcamayu and Urubamba rivers symbolised the Milky Way. Identifying rivers with constellations, specifically the Milky Way, is nothing new. Other examples are the Nile, as well as the Po in Italy and the Rhône in France.”(b)

Derek Cunningham claims to have discovered(c) that there is an association between the layout of the Stonehenge complex with the Milky Way!

(a) Nile – Wikipedia

(b) Viracocha’s voyage – Eye Of The Psychic

(c)  https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3055/

(d) https://www.academia.edu/41868838/Expanding_the_Orion_Correlation_Theory_OCT_

(e)   http://www.ancientcartography.net/index1.html

(f) (PDF) The Celestial River: Identifying the Ancient Egyptian Constellations | Magdi Saleh – Academia.edu (archive.org) *

Bauval, Robert *

Robert Bauval (1948- ) was born in Egypt of Belgian and Maltese extraction. He is probably best known as the original promoter of the Orion Correlation Theory (OCT), which claims that the layout of three principal Giza pyramids mirrors ‘Orion’s Belt’ in that constellation. This received widespread coverage when it was outlined in The Orion Mystery [1707] written by Bauval and Adrian Gilbert and in Keeper of Genesis [1050] written with Graham Hancock, published two years later. In fact, Bauval had first published his theory in 1989 in Discussions in Egyptology(a).

Nevertheless, Andrew Collins, in a recent paper(h) has disputed Bauval’s OCT and has instead offered evidence that the alignment of the three principal Giza pyramids matches more closely the ‘wing’ stars of the Cygnus constellation than the ‘belt’ of Orion!

Greg Little in considering the Orion vs Cygnus debate concluded that “the truth is that Cygnus fits the three pyramids at Giza far better than Orion does. Does that mean that Cygnus is correct? No, not really. It means that there is a lot more investigation has to be done. It also means that we may never know. I’m sure that somewhere in the night sky there are three stars that can fit rather precisely onto Giza.” (I).

In 2008, Bauval published a paper(j) on the place of astrology in the ‘Sacred Sciences of the ancient Egyptians. Although this is not a popular view among Egyptologists, Bauval concluded that “it is my opinion that the ancient Egyptians practised an esoteric form of ‘religious astrology’ related to the conception and birth of their kings. It is also my opinion that this ‘religious astrology’ originated many millennia before in prehistoric times in the Eastern Sahara, as the astronomical alignments of the megaliths at Nabta Playa suggest. If this is true, then the stellar observations that originated in the Western Desert of Egypt some time between 8000 – 5000 BC events on earth lie at the root of ‘Astrology’.”

Bauval and Thomas G. Brophy co-authored two books, Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt [1508B] and Imhotep the African [1509], in which they trace the origins of pharaonic Egypt back to a time before the Sahara became a desert and when dark-skinned people created the Nabta Playa megaliths. When the climate changed these people were forced to move eastward into the Nile Valley developing what we now call Ancient Egypt.

In 2019 a paper(k) by Larry Pahl, looked again at the Orion Correlation Theory and concluded that Bauval should not have confined his theory to Orion’s ‘belt’, but looked at the entire constellation and sought a more extensive reflection on the monuments of ancient Egypt. Prahl then proceeds to do exactly that.

Similarly, Jean-Pierre Lacroix claimed that other Egyptian structures may have been located to reflect the layout of other constellations in the sky. Specifically, he focuses on Aries and Thebes(l).

Alessandro Berio went further with the claim(m) that the entire Nile was ‘designed’ to be a reflection of the constellations above!

Another writer, Wayne Herschel, is claimed to have reinterpreted Bauval’s Orion theory in his book The Hidden Records [1706] and not only claims that the Giza pyramids reflect the layout of stars in Orion’s Belt, but that a similar arrangement of ‘pyramids’ in the Cydonia region of Mars is also to be found. Emilio Spedicato is another supporter of this Cydonia-Giza-Orion association(g)!

Herschel’s volume is a glossy collection of balderdash, which includes such delights as the Martians having a penal colony on Earth, as well as a promise of a sequel that will reveal “two further shocking secrets of the Sphinx.” Eventually, The Alpha Omega Taurus Star Gate was published with a new collection of balderdash. The odd idea of Earth as an alien penal colony has also been put forward by Dr Ellis Silver an American ecologist(f).

During one interview Bauval declared that “To be very honest, I am not a believer in Atlantis.”(b) However, he has no difficulty in adopting the idea of ancient astronaut visitors a la von Däniken, as revealed in Cosmic Womb [1708], written with Chandra Wickramasinghe and reviewed by Jason Colavito(c). This conversion to the idea of ancient astronauts was seen by Len Kasten as a natural progression. In an article published in Atlantis Rising (Issue 5), Kasten noted that Bauval “didn’t start out with the extraterrestrial hypothesis, but arrived at it after a painstaking study of the Pyramid Texts, and a corresponding highly scientific astronomical study of the monuments.”  [Kasten, a UFO researcher, was a regular contributor to Atlantis Rising.]

Zahi Hawass, the former Egyptian Minister of Antiquities has repeatedly clashed with Bauval, particularly in connection with the proposed Orion correlation. In April 2015, Hancock was due to engage in a debate with Hawass on the subject of their conflicting views of ancient history. However, when Hawass saw that Hancock included an image of Robert Bauval in his presentation, he refused to continue with the arranged format(d)(e) and after a lot of shouting, from Hawass, he stormed out. This sort of ‘prima donna’ behaviour, although not very professsional, is consistent with Hawass’s well-known temperamental manner.

The antipathy between Bauval and Hawass reached a new level with the publication of Breaking the Mirror of Heaven [1913]+  written by Bauval and Ahmed Osman in 2012. The authors claim that “it is not merely the story of a man who dominated and controlled  Egyptian antiquities for several decades as if they were his own but also the story of Egyptian archaeology itself and the way modern  Egypt created such a man.  These  topics  need to be  properly reviewed,  first  to  understand how, and why,  Zahi  Hawass  became  what  he is  and,  second,  to  provide  a  new vision  that  is  desperately  needed  to  save  Egyptian  antiquities  from  decline  and perhaps even total destruction.” David Rohl commented that This is a book that needed to be written.”

In 2020, Massimo Barbetta published a review of Bauval’s OCT(n).

 

[1913]+  Available online: Breaking the Mirror of Heaven: The Conspiracy to Suppress the Voice of Ancient Egypt – PDFDrive.com (archive.org) (link broken) *

(a) Discussions in Egyptology, volume 13, 1989, pp. 7-18

(b) https://grahamhancock.com/interview-robert-bauval/

(c) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-cosmic-womb-the-seeding-of-planet-earth-by-chandra-wickramsinghe-and-robert-bauval

(d) https://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/HancockG15.php

(e) https://www.dailygrail.com/2015/04/game-of-groans-egyptologist-zahi-hawass-goes-into-meltdown-during-debate-with-graham-hancock/

(f) https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2020/04/where-are-we-really-from-the-bizarre-theory-of-the-prison-planet/

(g) https://www.q-mag.org/the-pyramids-of-giza-the-belt-of-orion-and-three-volcanoes-on-mars.html

(h) (99+) (PDF) Orion: The Eternal Rise of the Sky Hunter | Andrew Collins – Academia.edu

(i) Is the Supposed Correspondence Between Orion’s Belt and the Three Pyramids of Giza Genuine? (bibliotecapleyades.net)

(j) (99+) (PDF) ASTROLOGY IN ANCIENT EGYPT | Robert Bauval – Academia.edu

(k) https://www.academia.edu/41868838/Expanding_the_Orion_Correlation_Theory_OCT_

(l) http://www.ancientcartography.net/index1.html

(m) (PDF) The Celestial River: Identifying the Ancient Egyptian Constellations | Magdi Saleh – Academia.edu (archive.org)

(n) https://www.larazzodeltempo.it/2020/bauval-piramide/

 

Fix, William R.

William R. Fix (1941- ) graduated from Canada’s Simon Fraser University with degrees in Behavioural Science, History and Philosophy. Although he is not a creationist, Fix is opposed to the theory of evolution and has produced his own account of man’s origins in his 1984 book, The Bone Peddlers.

His earlier book, Pyramid Odyssey[871], presents a case for reappraising the history of civilisation demanded by the existence of structures such as the Great Pyramid and the story of Atlantis as related by Plato. He, rather conventionally, places Atlantis in the Atlantic based on his interpretation of Plato’s text combined with the rather dubious corroboration of Edgar Cayce. He continued his pyramid studies in his next book, Star Maps[872], moving on to the subject of reincarnation, from the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians to the ideas of Cayce and Rudolf Steiner’.

Most interesting for me were Fix’s comments on the Ibn Ben Zara Map (p.161) which is claimed to reflect Europe at the end of the Ice Age and his observations on the orientation of the Temple at Karnak (p.267) which may suggest a greater than accepted antiquity for “the sources of Egyptian civilisation.”

Ivan Petricevic refers to the Ben Zara Map in similar terms(b) Created in 1487, the map displays remnants of glaciers in Britain, but also extremely detailed depictions of islands in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. Today, these islands still exist, but due to rising water levels, these are now underwater.”

Jean-Pierre Lacroix has written a paper arguing that the location of the temples at Karnak and Thebes are a physical representation of the constellation of Aries(a).

(a) https://www.ancientcartography.net/index1.html

(b) 9 Extremely Ancient Maps That Should Not Exist | Ancient Code (archive.org)*

Geodesy

Geodesy is usually defined as the me asurement and mapping of the Earth. James R. Smith, the author of Introduction to Geodesy [1947] has conflated several definitions to produce “Geodesy, from the Greek, literally means dividing the earth, and as a first objective, the practice of geodesy should provide an accurate framework for the control of national topographical surveys. Thus geodesy is the science that determines the figure of the earth and the interrelation of selected points on its surface by either direct or indirect techniques. These characteristics further make it a branch of applied mathematics, one that must include observations that can be used to determine the size and shape of the earth and the definition of coordinate systems for threedimensional positioning; the variation of phenomena near to or on the surface, such as gravity, tides, earth rotation, crustal movement, and deflection of the plumb line; together with units of measurement and methods of representing the curved earth surface on a flat sheet of paper.”

Geodesy as a science can be traced back to Pythagoras (6th cent. BC), who was thought to be the first to propose the sphericity of the Earth. Aristotle & Archimedes were apparently the first the offer a figure for the diameter of the Earth, suggesting 400,000 and 300,000 stades respectively. The difference might be partly explained by the use of a different length of stade. 

Later, Eratosthenes (276 BC– 195 BC) offered another early attempt to determine the dimensions of our Earth and succeeded with remarkable accuracy.

A controversial aspect of modern geodesy is the claim that many ancient sites were deliberately established at locations that had a specific geodetic relationship to each other and/or the dimensions of the Earth. For example(a) in ancient Egypt, the distance from Giza to the Equator was calculated to be 1/12th the circumference of the Earth, Amarna to the Equator is 1/13th, Luxor 1/14th and Philae 1/15th!

Graham Hancock in his Heaven’s Mirror[855] pointed to similar relationships around the globe suggesting a possible world grid. This idea of a world grid has a number of supporters but is often classified as a ‘fringe’ interest due to the attempt by some to link gridlines with UFOs and their use of the grid as a power source(w). Hancock’s various claims regarding the dimensions of the pyramids and their association with a suggested world grid has been challenged in great detail by a Hall of Maat article by Thomas W. Schroeder(ah), concluded  that “Graham Hancock’s assertion that the Great Pyramid’s dimensions reveal knowledge of earth’s dimensions certainly lacks proof but also fails to hold up to any scrutiny as a viable theory. Each step argued by Hancock; that the Great Pyramid was built to a specific scalar, that the value of the scalar can be definitively demonstrated, that the scalar indicates precession, that the only way ancient Egyptians could estimate precession is to leverage or borrow knowledge from earlier advanced and unrecognized civilizations, are each filled with flaws when taken individually, let alone when strung together to complete his narrative.”

>>The idea of a global grid has been pursued by a number of investigators, often with conflicting results. In the 1980s William Becker and Bethe Hagens published their widely referenced Planetary Earth Grid(aj). They “discussed the code of the Platonic Solids’ positions on Earth, ascribing this discovery to the work of Ivan P. Sanderson, who was the first to make a case for the structure of the icosahedron at work in the Earth. He did this by locating what he referred to as Vile Vortices refer to a claim that there are twelve geometrically distributed geographic areas that are alleged to have the same mysterious qualities popularly associated with the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil’s Sea near Japan, and the South Atlantic Anomaly.”(ak)<<

Possibly related features may be the ley lines identified by Alfred Watkins in Britain(c)(g), the Alesia alignments in France discovered by Xavier Guichard(b) and/or the Heilige Linien of Germany claimed by Wilhelm Teudt(aa). 

Heinz Kaminski claimed to have discovered a megalithic grid system that stretched from Stonehenge across Europe with an east-west and north-south orientation and referred to as the Stonehenge/Wormbach System(h).

Even more exotic is the ancient Raetiastone navigation system rediscovered by Gerhard Pirchl (1942-2013) and outlined in a book by [1831] Thomas Walli(ae).

Ashley Cowie has published a paper(ac) related to Alesia and the work of Guichard and others, as well as his own investigations.

I should also point out that Marcel Mestdagh also identified a form of a road system, laid out in giant ovals with radials in France. At the centre of these ovals was the ancient city of Sens. Philip Coppens informs us [1275.184] that a further strange discovery by Mestdagh was that this ancient road network, centred on Sens, was mirrored by a similar network of roads in England centred on Nottingham!

‘The Way of Virachoca’ in the Andes which runs through Tiwanaku and is oriented exactly 45° west of true north and runs for over 1000 miles, has been studied by Maria Scholten d’Ebneth [1236] in the 1970s and expanded on by a number of Spanish speaking commentators and is now the subject of an article by Dave Truman(x).

In 1973, three Russians, engineers Valery Makarov and Vyacheslav Morozov along with Nikolay Goncharov, an artist, published in Russian an article with the eye-catching title of Is the Earth a Giant Crystal? (y) This was probably the earliest presentation of an earth grid based on ancient historical sites. A brief history of the earth grid theories that emerged around this time is available online(z). There is now a Russian geodesy website with an English translation(ab).

David Hatcher Childress published his Anti-Gravity and the World Grid [1303] in 1993, with the modest claim that he “proves that the earth is surrounded by an intricate electronic grid network offering free energy.” Obviously, Childress’ understanding of ‘proof’ is different to mine, as the only proof required is the production of some of this free energy, which he has not done.

Tom Brooks(ai) entered the fray with a study of 1500 prehistoric sites and his conclusion that the inhabitants of ancient Britain had designed a navigation system based on a grid of isosceles triangles(i). Brooks has gone a step further and speculatively claimed that the accuracy of this geometry-based system could only have been designed through “extraterrestrial intervention(r).  This concept is explored more fully in his latest book, Seeing Around Corners: Geometry in Stone Age Britain [863]  and in a series of video clips(s).   A more critical view of Brooks’ ideas is also available on the Internet(j).

Some years ago a former employee of a NASA sub-contractor, Maurice Chatelain claimed that within a 450-mile radius of the Aegean island of Delos that 13 mystical sites, when connected by straight lines formed a perfect Maltese Cross(u)!

Others such as Livio Stecchini(d) and Jim Alison(e) using geodetic calculations have identified São Tomé and Cape Verde respectively as the location of Atlantis. I must also include Hugo Kennes, a Belgian researcher with a passionate interest in global grids and sacred geometry(l). Kennes has also informed me of a new Facebook group(q) dealing with all aspects of the subject, as well as another(v) that includes submerged cities and other features.

Anyone interested in pursuing a study of this subject might like to look over James Q. Jacobs’ archaeogeodesy website(f) as well as the BioGeometry website (m).

If you have pursued all the links so far, you can pamper yourself further with a paper(k) by William Becker and Beth Hagens(n).  Another researcher in this field is Dan Shaw whose website(o) gives a good overview of the subject.

Jean-Pierre Lacroix added his weight to the debate with his 1998 paper entitled The Mapmakers from the Ice Age(t).

A global network of sacred sites was also put forward by Rand Flem-Ath & Colin Wilson in The Atlantis Blueprint [063]. This book was intended as a sequel to When the Sky Fell [062], but generally wandered off into other areas after the first couple of chapters.

I am somewhat sceptical about certain aspects of geodesy, particularly some of the claims of a world grid. However, it does raise many questions that require further study and explanation. In this connection, I would recommend John Sase’s Curious Alignments [1589]  as a good starting point. He confirms the work of Guichard and also offers a range of his own discoveries in the Great Lakes region.

In February 2020, Frank Maglione Nicholson, Ken Phungrasamee & David Grimason, collectively known as The Nazca Group(ad), published The Nazca Great Circle Map Hypothesis. Their claim is that “The lines and geoglyphs carved into the Nazca plateau represent a map of the Earth. The map is a Great Circle Map: a gnomonic projection with the center of the Earth as its cartographic viewpoint. Each line on the Nazca Plateau represents a great circle of navigation centred at the centre of the Earth and encircling the entire planet. The majority of the lines on the Nazca Plateau radiate from five loci of origin called radial centres.” I found this rather esoteric proposition difficult to absorb.

Arturo Villamarin has published many books [1864] and papers(af)(ag) in which the geometry and astronomy of archaeological monuments; Göbekli Tepe, Stonehenge, Teotihuacán and Mohenjo Daro, among others, are discussed.

(a) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/geodesy.htm

(b) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/xavierguichard.htm

(c) http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/leylines.htm

(d) http://www.metrum.org/mapping/atlantis.htm (link broken Dec. 2020)

(e) http://home.hiwaay.net/~jalison/concl.html

(f) https://web.archive.org/web/20200917015056/http://www.jqjacobs.net/index.html

(g)https://liminalthresholds.blogspot.ie/2008/04/earth-energy-ley-lines.html

(h) https://atlantisforschung.de/index.php?title=Die_%22ganzheitliche_Atlantisforschung%22_des_Prof._Heinz_Kaminski

(i) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20160628154229/https://www.prehistoric-geometry.co.uk/

(j) https://www.badscience.net/2010/01/voices-of-the-ancients/

(k) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/antigravityworldgrid/ciencia_antigravityworldgrid02.htm

(l) https://web.archive.org/web/20210518205346/http://users.telenet.be/kenneshugo/alternative history sciences.htm

(m) https://web.archive.org/web/20170328094319/https://www.biogeometry.org/page34.html

(n) Bethe Hagens – Geometry, Anthropology anf the Arts of Consciousness (archive.org)

(o) https://www.vortexmaps.com/grid-history.php

(q) https://www.facebook.com/groups/175027289350368/

(r) https://www.prehistoric-geometry.co.uk/ [See (i)]

(s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R35A80kV0AU&feature=relmfu 

(t) https://ancientcartography.net/geoAN.html

(u) https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg28306.html

(v) https://www.facebook.com/groups/493298404177687/

(w) https://predictionsmargiekay.blogspot.ie/2014/08/lines-of-latitude-and-ufoparanormal-hot.html

(x) https://grahamhancock.com/trumand1/

(y) https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3193/

(z) https://www.vortexmaps.com/grid-history.php

(aa) https://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/repubs/teudt_hl/pages/index.html

(ab) http://geolines.ru/eng/

(ac) Solstice Axis Of The Ancient Gauls — ASHLEY COWIE (archive.org)

(ad) The Nazca Solution – The final solution to what the Nazca Lines represent (archive.org)

(ae) https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146413597

(af) (99+) (PDF) THE GEOMETRY AND ASTRONOMY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL MONUMENTS | Arturo Villamarin – Academia.edu

(ag) (99+) (PDF) THE GEOMETRY AND ASTRONOMY OF GOBEKLI TEPE | Arturo Villamarin – Academia.edu

(ah) https://www.hallofmaat.com/numerology/a-critique-of-graham-hancocks-forced-numerical-relationship-between-the-great-pyramid-of-giza-and-earths-dimensions-1/

(ai) Prehistoric man ‘used crude sat nav’ | Stonehenge Stone Circle News and Information (stonehenge-stone-circle.co.uk) *

(aj) Microsoft Word – antigravity.doc (montalk.net) *

(ak) https://www.crystalinks.com/grids.html  *

 

 

Piri Reis Map

The Piri Reis Map (1513)(c)  was a world map drawn on a gazelle skin of which only the left-hand side still exists. It was a composite of detail gleaned from a large collection of maps, including one allegedly captured from Christopher Columbus(i), that were collected by Piri Ibn Haji Mehmed (1465/70–1553), an admiral or ‘reis’ in the Ottoman navy and noted by Rand Flem-Ath as a former pirate. Flem-Ath wrote a lengthy article for Atlantis Rising magazine #38, which I have used here(k) and which contains a lot of interesting background information. 

It was discovered in 1929 in the Topkapi Palace Library in Istanbul by Gustav Deissmann (sometimes attributed to Library director Halil Edhem).

Ferdinand Speidel has written an interesting article for Atlantisforschung on the background of Piri Reis as well as a translation of the handwritten notes on the map itself(l).

Apart from a Conference in 1931, the general public was not made aware of the map until the following year.

Piri Reis wrote on the map “It is the only chart of its kind existing now. I, personally, drew and prepared it. In preparing the map I used about twenty old charts and eight ‘Mappa Monde’ (i.e., the charts called ‘Jaferiye’ by the Arabs, and prepared at the time of Alexander the Great, in which the whole inhabited world is shown); the charts of the West Indies; and the new maps made by four Portuguese, showing the Sind, Indian, and Chinese Seas geometrically represented. I also studied the chart that Christopher Columbus drew for the West. By reducing all these charts to a single scale, I compiled the present map.”

In 1956 a Turkish naval officer presented the map to the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office. From there, it was first fully investigated by Captain Arlington H. Mallery, who had spent years studying ancient maps. He is now better remembered as a controversial amateur archaeologist[666]. Mallery concluded that the map accurately depicted an ice-free Antarctica.

piri reisThis map has become one of the controversial elements in the theory of an Antarctic Atlantis so strongly promoted by Rose and Rand Flem-Ath[062]. They followed the views of Charles Hapgood[369], who, having studied a range of ancient maps, were convinced that they showed parts of Antarctica as ice-free. However, the principal argument against this idea is that the removal of the massive Antarctic ice cap would have had two effects:

(i)  The consequent isostatic rebound would have altered the coastline dramatically and unpredictably.

(ii)  The melting of the icecap would have raised sea levels, producing further changes to the coastline of the exposed continent.

However, Jason Colavito has pointed out(h) that as scholars have known for decades, the segment of the map identified by Hapgood as “Antarctica” was in fact the southern part of South America, bent to fit the shape of the skin on which it was drawn.”!

Nevertheless, the late Robert Argod[065] supported the antiquity of the original maps upon which the Piri Reis Maps and other medieval charts were based and he also supported the idea of an inhabited ice-free Antarctica.

A view contrary to the Flem-Aths can be found in a recent book by Gregory McIntosh[510].  Professor Steve Dutch of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay offers a paper(b) debunking the value of the Piri Reis map, which should be read to get a more balanced view of the controversy. Paul V.Heinrich has also added a highly critical paper with many references(a).>Paul Lunde was equally critical in the Jan-Feb 1980 edition of Aramco World Magazine(n).

Professor Steven Earle uses an assignment entitled ‘Project Atlantis(g) for his geology students in order to hone their critical thinking, which focuses on the Flem-Ath’s preferred variant of Pole Shift Theory known as Crustal Displacement.

>Diego Cuoghi has produced a four-part paper on the Piri Reis Map that is highly critical of those authors who have apparently rushed to adopt Hapgood’s interpretation of the chart without proper investigation with the following comments –

“But what mystery lovers are most enthusiastic about is the bottom edge of the map, which is said to represent Antarctica. Some claim that Queen Maud Land and other features of Antarctica are clearly recognizable on the map, even though that continent was not explored but many centuries later. Unfortunately, these people, including Hancock, claim the above hypothesis without making any cartographic comparison or first-hand check: they just accept Charles Hapgood’s statements as true. Hancock in particular does not mention any book about the history of cartography within the notes of the first two chapters of his book “Fingerprints of the Gods” (the very chapters about geographic charts). He just quotes Hapgood’s work, thus clearly showing that he didn’t even make an attempt to learn on the subject.”

Cuoghi also tackles the Oronteus Finaeus Map (Part 2), the Philippe Bauche Map (Part 3) and Atlantis (Part 4)(m).<

What the Piri Reis Map has done for Antarctica, the Nicolo Zeno Map of 1380 has done for Greenland which appears to show a deglaciated landmass. Features, hidden by ice but confirmed by modern seismic soundings, are shown. However, controversy has dogged the Nicolo Zeno Map as much as the Piri Reis chart.

Phillipe Buache the renowned French geographer also published a map of ice-free Antarctica in 1737, long before its recorded discovery and centuries before seismic surveys revealed the topography of the sub-glacial landmass. The source of the data for this map is so far unexplained.

In 2004, Jean-Pierre Lacroix & Robert Bywater presented a paper(d) to the International Piri Reis Symposium in which they made the radical claim that the western part of the Piri Reis map was a depiction of the outline of east and southeast Asia, rather than the Caribbean.

The ancient-origins website(e) has several papers relating to the Piri Reis Map.

The most recent studies(f) include a map showing the effects of just a partial retreat of the ice sheet, showing exposed coastlines, during the Pliocene era, which again indicates an outline of the landmass at variance with the Piri Reis Map.

A 2021 study(j) of the Map urges caution when interpreting its details.

(a) Piri Reis Map (archive.org) *

(b) https://old.world-mysteries.com/steven_dutch1.htm

(c) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/atlantida_mu/esp_atlantida_23.htm

(d) https://www.ancientcartography.net/PiriReis/PiriReis.pdf

(e) https://www.ancient-origins.net/antarctica-ancient-technology/piri-reis-map-evidence-ancient-technology-00276

(f) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/09/20/scientists-may-have-just-solved-a-riddle-about-antarctica-and-youre-not-going-to-like-the-answer/?utm_term=.9f704722ef47

(g) Wayback Machine (archive.org) *

(h) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-ancient-aliens-s14e01-return-to-Antarctica

(i) Saudi Aramco World : Piri Reis and the Columbus Map (archive.org) 

(j) Pîrî Reis Map of 1513 · Dubious History 

(k) Atlantis Rising magazine  #38  http://pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/At 

(l) What the Piri Reis card reports – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog) 

(m) https://www.diegocuoghi.com/Piri_Reis/PiriReis_eng.htm 

(n) https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/198001/piri.reis.and.the.hapgood.hypotheses.htm *