"Piri Reis and the Columbian Theory" in "Aramco World Magazine"
(Jan-Feb 1980)
by Paul Lunde
 
     Until the discovery of the Piri Reis map, there were only
two cartographical sources, both indirect, for how Columbus
viewed his discoveries.
     One was a sketch made about 1525 by a certain Alessandro
Zorzi of Venice, who said it was based on a map brought to Italy
by Columbus' brother Bartholomew in 1506.  Unfortunately, Zorzi's
map also embodies information not known in 1506 and cannot,
therefore, be used as evidence of Columbus' geographical notions,
although it does show the New World as a part of the Asian
mainland.
     The only other surviving map going back to Columbus' own
voyages is one drawn by Juan de la Cosa, who was a member of
Columbus' first expedition of 1492 and who later sailed with
Vespucci.  But this map too, traditionally dated 1500, incor-
porates information that was not known to Columbus.  For example,
it shows Cuba as an island--yet Columbus not only believed Cuba
to be part of the mainland of Asia but made each of his crew
members swear that it was not an island.
     This is why Kahle's 1931 lecture on the Piri Reis map so
electrified his audience.  It seemed almost miraculous that the
only direct cartographical record of the greatest discovery of
all time should have been preserved in a library in Istanbul, and
that we should owe its preservation to an admiral of the Ottoman
navy.
     Oddly enough, however, hew scholars since Paul Kahle seem to
have carefully examined the "Columbian" portions of the Piri Reis
map, and the question of whether or not--and to what degree--it
represents Columbus' ideas is still far from settled.
     The Map.  The Piri Reis map is drawn on gazelle hide, with a
web of lines criss-crossing the Atlantic.  Called "rhumb lines,"
they are typical of late medieval mariners' charts, and most
scholars believe do not indicate latitude and longitude, but were
used as an aid in laying a course.
     Among the map's illustrations are two lozenges, which give
the scale, and beautifully drawn ships, some accompanied by
inscriptions which record important discoveries.  One is almost
certainly an account of the expedition of Cabral in 1500; Cabral
discovered Brazil when he was blown off course across the
Atlantic while on his way to India.
     The Iberian Peninsula and the coast of west Africa are
carefully drawn, in a manner suggesting the style of the prac-
tical mariners' charts called "portolanos."  Here many of the
place names are given in Turkish, rather than being merely
transliterated from Portuguese or Spanish--showing that the
Ottomans had practical experience of their own along those
coasts.
     At the top of the map is a ship anchored near a fish, with
two people sitting on its back.  The accompanying inscription
tells a tale from the life of the Irish Saint Brandon, a charming
medieval legend.  Faithfully copied by Piri Reis from one of his
source maps, it is evidence that at least one of the
mappaemundi--maps of the world--mentioned as sources by Piri Reis
was a medieval European production and not a map of the "ancient
sea kings."
     Another immediately striking feature of the map is the
number of islands, most of them legendary, and some of them
adorned with parrots.  Maps showing islands scattered through the
Atlantic were current in the later Middle Ages, and a Globe made
by Martin Behaim in 1492--the same year Columbus first set off--
shows a quantity of them; so does the Toscanelli map, which we
know Columbus used.
     The Caribbean.  With regard to the Hapgood hypotheses, the
Caribbean portion of the Piri Reis map is particularly important. 
In its northwest corner, for example, there is a large island
labeled Hispaniola--today the home of Haiti and the Dominican
Republic--which Columbus discovered on his first voyage and where
he set up a colony, marked by the three towers on the map. 
Immediately below Hispaniola is Puerto Rico, and to the northeast
is a group of 11 islands labeled Undizi Vergine--"The Eleven
Virgins."  The fact that this name is in a recognizable form of
Italian--as opposed to Portuguese--is evidence, as Kahle pointed
out, of its Columbian origin.  This part of the Piri Reis map is
thus not based on maps from the ancient civilization postulated
by Hapgood.
     Further evidence is the fact that the map of the Caribbean
area is so wildly inaccurate.  Hapgood attempted to bring it into
line with geographic reality by postulating an equidistant
projection based on a point near Cairo, identifying the island
clearly labeled Hispaniola as Cuba, and reorienting the entire
Caribbean regions--which is seriously forcing the evidence.  Not
only is Hispaniola--Hapgood's "Cuba"--grossly out of proportion
to Brazil, for example, but it is oriented north-south rather
than east-west.  Most striking of all, it is almost identical to
the conventional representations of Marco Polo's "Cipangu"--that
is, Japan--on late medieval maps such as Behaim's and
Toscanelli's.  Why?  Probably because Columbus was convinced, on
his first voyage at least, that he had found the fabled Cipangu
(Japan), and he may have drawn Hispaniola in this shape to
support his claim.
     An even more important argument for the Columbian origin of
this part of the map and against its classical or "ancient"
origin--unless Hapgood's ancient mariners were very bad carto-
graphers indeed--is the fact that the real Cuba, as an island, is
missing.  And so it should be on a Columbian map, for Columbus
thought Cuba was part of the mainland of Asia, and drew it
accordingly.  On Piri Reis' map, the wedge-shaped projection on
the mainland opposite Hispaniola is almost certainly the eastern
tip of Cuba; the southward-trending coast below is an attempt to
draw Cuba as if it ran north and south--as Columbus believed it
did.  It is interesting that Behaim's globe and other maps
influenced by Marco Polo's description of Cathay show a very
similar wedge-shaped projection opposite the island of Cipangu;
if Columbus thought he was off the coast of Asia, he may have
drawn the mainland this way to correspond to its then conven-
tional representation.
     South America.  The delineation of the coast of Brazil on
the Piri Reis map is much more accurate than that of the
Caribbean.  The relationship and distance between South America
and the west African coast, for example, is much more correct
than on most European maps of the time--and the place names along
the coast, clearly transliterated from Italian and Spanish names,
are taken from accounts of the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci and
others.
     The most striking topographical detail, and the one that has
caused the most discussion, is the chain of mountains running
through South America--the mountains which Hapgood identified as
the Andes.  The rivers which issue from their base are obviously
meant to be the Amazon, the Orinoco and the Rio Plata, and the
animal with two horns standing on the mountains is Hapgood's
"llama."  Interestingly, though, the Piri Reis map is not the
only early map--nor the first--to show mountains in the interior
of South America.  The Nicolo de Canerio map, now in the
Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and the Waldseemuller chart both
show the east coast of South America, though schematically drawn,
and a chain of mountains adorned with trees.  The de Canerio map
was drawn between 1502 and 1504--long before the eastern coast of
South America had been explored.  As there is a striking similar-
ity between this map and the Piri Reis map, it is therefore
possible that one of Piri Reis' source maps was based on that of
de Canerio rather than on one produced by an ancient civiliza-
tion.  Other maps showing the east coast of South America may
also have been available in some form to Piri Reis--such as the
maps of Martin Waldseemuller (1507), Clareanus (1510) and
Johannes de Stobnicza (1512).  All of these are related to each
other and, almost without question, ultimately derive from a de
Canerio-derived map.
     The map by Johannes de Stobnicza, in particular, could have
been available to Piri Reis, for it was printed in Cracow,
Poland, in an edition of Ptolemy, in 1512, the year before the
Piri Reis map was drawn.  Thus it could have been one of the maps
"drawn in the time of Alexander the Great" which Piri Reis refers
to--especially considering the confusion that existed between the
two Ptolemies.
     Antarctica and the Eastward-Trending Coast.  This portion of
the map was crucial to Hapgood's hypotheses, yet it too could
have been derived from sources other than a forgotten advanced
civilization.  While none of the maps derived from de Canerio's
shows an Antarctic continent, other groups of early maps do. 
Beginning in the early 15th century, mapmakers often indicated a
huge southern landmass that linked Africa to Asia and made a
landlocked sea of the Indian Ocean--a geographical notion derived
from Ptolemy's references to a "southern land". When Magellan
passed through the strait that now bears his name, he sighted
Tierra del Fuego to the south and assumed that it was a promon-
tory of Ptolemy's southern landmass; it was not until Drake's
southern voyage of 1578 that this idea too was explored.
     The search for terra australis went on for centuries--
incidentally leading to the discovery of the land which now
fittingly bears the name that so fascinated Renaissance carto-
graphers:  Australia.  But Antarctica itself eluded the great
discoverers.
     There are, however, some indications that the coast of
Antarctica was sighted before its "official" discovery in 1820. 
The great Amerigo Vespucci related how, blown off course and
driven 500 miles south, he sighted a land which he named Terra de
Vista--"Land Seen"--and which was possibly the Falklands or even
Antarctica.  In 1514, the year after the completion of the Piri
Reis map, two Portuguese ships reported something similar, as did
two Dutch ships about the same time:  also blown off course, they
sighted land and named it "Pressillgtlandt".  Whatever land was
sighted on these obscure voyages, the accounts prove one thing: 
There was no inherent impossibility in a 16th-century ship
getting a long way south.
     There may, in fact, be an even simpler explanation of the
presence of "Antarctica" on the Piri Reis map.  To start with, as
Hapgood admits, about 900 miles of South American coastline are
missing from the map:  below the Rio de la Plata the coast simply
turns eastward.  And, interestingly, if this eastward section of
coast is looked at vertically--that is, as continuing south
instead of east--it does bear a remarkable resemblance to the
actual east coast of South America from below Rio de la Plata
down to Tierra del Fuego.  Some of the smaller coastal features,
moreover, jibe with a modern map as well, and the small group of
three islands (Isla de Sara) could then be identified as the
Falkland Islands, and the wedge-shaped projection at the most
easterly point of the line could correspond to the tip of South
America.
     To put it more simply, Piri Reis, or the scribe who copied
his work, may have realized, as he came to the Rio de la Plata,
that he was going to run off the edge of his valuable parchment
if he continued south.  So he did the logical thing and turned
the coastline to the east, marking the turn with a semicircle of
crenelations, so that he could fit the entire coastline on his
page.  If that was the case, then the elaborate Hapgood
hypotheses--or at least those elements based entirely on the Piri
Reis map--would have no foundation whatever.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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