"Piri Reis and the Hapgood Hypotheses"

in "Aramco World Magazine"

(Jan-Feb 1980)

by Paul F. Hoye with Paul Lunde

In 1929, scholars working in the archives of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey's Topkapi Palace Museum made an exciting discovery: a section of an early 16th-century Ottoman map based in part, apparently, on the original chart drawn or used by Christopher Columbus and showing his historic discoveries in the New World. The map, signed by an Ottoman captain named Piri Reis, was dated 1513, just 21 years after Columbus discovered America.

This find -- disclosed two years later in Holland by German Orientalist Paul Kahle -- astonished the 18th Congress of Orientalists. For if a notation on the map were true -- "The coasts and islands on this map are taken from Columbus's map" -- the Turkish map might finally settle a centuries-old debate: did Columbus know he had found a new world? Or did he die thinking he had found a new route to China?

As it turned out, the map did not settle the question. To the contrary, it has raised new and far more perplexing questions, and, in recent years, has sparked a rash of quasi-scientific and popular theories and hypotheses that attempt to answer those questions. Some of those theories, to be sure, verge on the ludicrous. But others, even when startling, have raised fascinating and sometimes disturbing possibilities.

Those developments, however, came later. In 1931, historians of cartography had quite enough to do trying to cope with the immediate questions posed by the discovery in Istanbul. Was the Piri Reis map authentic? If so, how did it get into the hands of Christian Spain's feared Muslim rivals? And just who, incidentally, was this Piri Reis?

According to subsequent research, the story of the Piri Reis map began in 1501, just nine years after Columbus discovered the New World, when Kemal Reis, a captain in the Ottoman fleet, captured seven ships off the coast of Spain, interrogated the crews and discovered that one man had sailed with Columbus on his great voyages of discovery. More important, in an age when maps were secret and maritime information invaluable, the sailor had in his possession a map of the New World drawn by Columbus himself. Kemal Reis seized the map, kept it and subsequently willed it to his nephew Piri Reis, also an Ottoman naval captain, and a cartographer.

In 1511, the story goes on, Piri Reis began to draw a new map of the world which was to incorporate all of the recent Spanish and Portuguese discoveries. To do so, he used about 20 source maps. Among them, he wrote, were eight maps of the world done in the time of Alexander the Great (the fourth century B.C.), an Arab map of India, four Portuguese maps of the Indian Ocean and China, and his uncle Kemal's bequest, "a map drawn by Columbus in the western region." He did not, however, say what the other six source maps were.

In Gallipoli, where he temporarily retired, Piri Reis reduced his source maps to a single scale -- a difficult task in those days -- and spent three years producing his map. When it was finished he added this inscription: "The author of this is the humble Piri Hajji Muhammad, known as the nephew of Kemal Reis, in the town of Gallipoli in the Holy Month of Muharram of the year 919 [A.D. 1513]."

This map, presented to Sultan Selim, seems to have helped the career of Piri Reis. He was made an admiral. But it was not Piri Reis' only contribution to cartography. In 1521 he also wrote a mariner's guide to the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean -- which was to interest the cartographers trying to authenticate the map found in Istanbul. Called "Kitab-i Bahriye" ("Book of the Mariner," or "The Naval Handbook"), this book contained an account of the discovery of America by Columbus that was virtually identical to a long inscription on the left hand side of the map found in the archives of Istanbul.

The map found in Istanbul, therefore, is authentic. Although research has never disclosed what the six unlisted sources were, or further identified the eight "done in the time of Alexander the Great," there is no doubt that one source was a map drawn or used by Christopher Columbus himself.

There is little doubt, either, that both Piri Reis' map and book were valuable to the Ottoman Empire. Focusing, as they both did, on discoveries by Spanish and Portuguese mariners, they probably alerted the sultan to the growing threat to Ottoman power posed by European exploration of the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Gulf.

Ironically, Piri Reis' book -- in which he urged Suleiman the Magnificent to drive the Portuguese out of the Red Sea and the Gulf -- also led to his death. Put in command of a fleet to drive the Portuguese out of the Gulf in 1551, he lost most of his ships and, although in his 80's, was executed. By 1929 both Piri Reis and his map had been virtually forgotten. Even then the enthusiasm aroused by the map was short. Once the initial excitement over the discovery had faded, relatively few historians of cartography, with the exception of Kahle, paid much attention to the map or tried seriously to determine exactly what it proved -- even with regard to Columbus. "Imago Mundi," for example, one of the more important journals devoted to the history of cartography, has never run a full-length article on the Piri Reis map.

In 1954, however, a Harvard-trained teacher of the history of science named Charles Hapgood assigned his class at Keene State College in New Hampshire to the task of examining the Piri Reis map more closely. Starting with little knowledge of the subject -- and, says Professor Hapgood emphatically, "no preconceived notions" -- he and his students eventually spent seven years on the project. During that time, Hapgood says, "we discarded hundreds of hypotheses" before arriving at those advanced in a book called "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings."

Two years later those hypotheses became unexpectedly famous when they were incorporated in the controversial best-seller "Chariots of the Gods." Written by Erich von Daniken, "Chariots" went into at least 18 English editions and was translated into numerous other languages. Presented as fact, and written in a pseudo-scientific tone, "Chariots" described and briefly examined what the author called "the unsolved mysteries of the past."

Among the "unsolved mysteries," von Daniken said, was the appearance on the Piri Reis map of information that 16th-century cartographers could not possibly have known. Citing Hapgood, von Daniken said that the map showed the coast of Antarctica, not discovered for centuries afterward, and certain mountains in Antarctica that were not discovered until modern sonar made it possible to locate them beneath the ice cap.

For the author -- if not for his legions of critics -- it was obvious how Piri Reis got such information: astronauts from another planet had provided it on maps. The astronauts, he claimed, had made numerous appearances on earth before and during the period of recorded history, and left traces all over the world.

Despite inaccuracies in describing what in some cases are mysteries -- and in citing Hapgood -- and despite frequently debatable logic, "Chariots" sold millions of copies. It also persuaded thousands of readers -- brought up during a period of intense public interest in "flying saucers" and "UFO's" -- that its premises were valid. "Chariots," indeed, attracted such attention that BBC Television filmed and showed a two-part refutation of the book.

The BBC, moreover, was not alone; most serious observers scorned the book. Yet one of the points raised by Hapgood and quoted by von Daniken went stubbornly unanswered: how did Piri Reis know about Antarctica and its mountains in the 16th century, if, in fact, his map did show them?

One answer, in science-fiction form, was put forth by author Allan W. Eckert in a ponderous 1977 novel called "The Hab Theory" in which the Ottoman admiral's map was a focal point of the plot and in which other, apparently true, phenomena were described in great detail. Among them was the undeniable fact that mammoths - - extinct for 18,000 years -- were found in Siberia embedded in the permafrost, the frozen subsoil of Arctic and Antarctic regions.

According to Eckert, the mammoths were "quick-frozen" rather the way orange juice is today, thus explaining why the meat was still edible. Furthermore, some mammoths were found in an upright position with undigested grasses in their stomachs-- facts confirmed last July by a spokesman at the British Museum. The grasses, moreover, were tropical grasses. To Eckert, this suggested that Siberia was once a tropical region and that the shift in climate from tropic to arctic was very swift: in a matter of hours.

This occurred, "The Hab Theory" goes on, because every 6,000 years or so the polar regions accumulate so much ice that the earth begins to wobble on its axis. At a critical point the wobble becomes so bad that the earth capsizes, leaving the polar regions at the equator and the equatorial regions at the poles.

The earth's normal rotation them resumes until the new polar regions accumulate enough ice to cause another wobble and another cataclysm.

This process, the book continues, explains what characters in the book call scientific mysteries. One is that the ancient Berbers, in what is now the Sahara, left cave paintings showing people swimming and sailing in "a vast body of water." This, according to "The Hab Theory," was a sea created when the earth capsized and the polar ice cap, now close to the equator, melted, creating a large sea -- now reduced to today's Lake Chad.

Even for science fiction, it is a startling idea. Yet it is not entirely without a basis in fact. In the "New Scientist" issue of May 17, 1979, two professors from Cardiff and Oxford Universities in Britain were quoted as saying that the last ice age may have come quite swiftly and cited the mammoths in Siberia as proof. "Their excellent state of preservation is also evidence that they were quickly frozen after death," the article said.

Science fiction, of course, is as much fiction as science. Still, at the heart of "The Hab Theory" there were some ascertainable facts. The Piri Reis map does exist, there were mammoths preserved in Siberian permafrost, and cave painting so some sort have been found in the Sahara, though whether they show "vast seas" or not could not be determined. Even more to the point, there is a real Hab theory. In fact, according to Professor Hapgood, the real Hab theory--as distinct from Eckert's science-fiction treatment -- was what launched him on his first studies of Antarctic "mysteries" and led, in a curious chain of events, to the Piri Reis map.

The real Hab theory was first proposed by an engineer specializing in centrifugal force: the late Hugh Auchincloss Brown, whose initials are the same as the fictional proponent of Eckert's book. In a book called "Cataclysms of the Earth," Brown suggested what is basically the same theory presented in the novel: that massive accumulation of ice at the poles, especially the South Pole, caused the earth to wobble on its axis and then, about every 7,000 years, to "careen." Like the novel, it has some basis in fact. A spokesman at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, England--who says "careening" is impossible -- confirmed last month that the ice does accumulate at the South Pole in massive quantities: 2,000 billion tons a year, enough to build a wall 10 inches thick and half a mile high from New York to California.

For Charles Hapgood in New Hampshire, Brown's theory was fascinating. "I spent about 10 years looking into it," he said in a recent interview, "until mathematical calculations proved it impossible." But as his research had raised certain questions in his own mind, Hapgood continued to work on the subject and eventually came up with his own theory, which he outlined in "Earth's Shifting Crust" (Pantheon Books, New York, 1958).

Essentially, he said, the earth's crust "slips" over its core, thus periodically changing the positions of the poles. Aware that ideas that deviate from traditional scientific beliefs get short shrift in the scientific community -- as did, for instance, Wegener's theory of continental drift, now widely accepted -- Hapgood took the precaution of submitting his manuscript to a scientist whose views were generally thought to be acceptable: Albert Einstein. Though neither cartographer nor geographer, Einstein read the manuscript, agreed to write the introduction and said Hapgood's ideas "electrified" him. He also said that if Hapgood's theory "continued to prove itself", it would be "of great importance to everything that is related to the history of the earth's surface."

Meanwhile, Hapgood had heard of the Piri Reis map. A U.S. Navy cartographer, engineer and ancient-map specialist--Captain Arlington H. Mallery -- had come across a copy of the map, studied it and said publicly that the map seemed to show Antarctica -- unknown at the time the map was drawn -- and that, furthermore, the coast seemed to have been mapped at a time when it was free of ice, an apparent impossibility. Furthermore, Mallery's opinions had been endorsed by the directors of the astronomical observatories at Boston College and Georgetown University, Daniel Linehan and Francis Heyden.

To Hapgood, already caught up in the subject of Antarctica, the questions raised by Mallery and the Piri Reis map were an irresistible challenge. As Antarctica was not discovered until 1820 -- 307 years after Piri Reis drew his map -- how could Piri Reis possibly have included Antarctica -- if he did? And, since Antarctica had, presumably, been covered with ice for millennia, why would he have shown it without ice? And why does the notation on the map read as follows: "There is no trace of cultivation in this country. Everything is desolate, and big snakes are said to be there. For this reason the Portuguese did not land on these shores, which are said to be very hot"?

Hapgood thought that investigation of these ideas would be an interesting challenge for his students. Accordingly, he presented it to them as a class project and began to work with them himself.

As the investigation began, Hapgood and his students immediately came across several puzzling facts. One was that, on the Piri Reis map, the mountains in the western region of what is obviously South America seemed to be the Andes. But since Magellan did not find a way around the continent, through the strait named after him, until 1520 -- seven years after the map was finished -- and since Pizarro did not sight the Andes until 1527 -- 14 years afterwards--how could Piri Reis have known about the Andes? The answer, obviously, was that one of Piri Reis' 20-odd source maps must have shown them.

But which map? Hapgood concluded it was probably one of the eight maps of the world done in the time of Alexander the Great, or one of the six other "unknown" maps--which meant someone had not only known of the Americas, but had mapped them at least 1,700 years before Columbus.

It was possible, of course, that the mountains were not -- and were not supposed to be -- the Andes at all. Still, the map did show them roughly in the right place, and included a drawing of a creature that Kahle had tentatively identified as a llama. As the llama is exclusive to the Andes and was not known in Europe in 1513, when Piri Reis finished his map, Hapgood concluded that the mountains were indeed the Andes.

As the study went on, the Hapgood team noticed, toward the south, what looked very much like the Falkland Islands -- even though the Falklands were not discovered until 1592 -- and reasoned that if they were the Falklands, the land south of them would almost surely be the coast of Queen Maud Land -- Antarctica -- not discovered until more than three centuries after the Piri Reis map.

As it was this feature that had fascinated Hapgood originally, his team made a particularly careful comparison of "Antarctica" on the Piri Reis map with Antarctica on a modern globe. They concluded that there was "a striking similarity" between the Piri Reis coastline and the Queen Maud Land coast. Later, after a series of complicated calculations, they also came to believe that the Piri Reis map, in that area, was accurate to within 20 miles.

In what was a vital aspect of the developing hypotheses, they also concluded that Mallery's "mountains"--the mountains not discovered until this century -- were, on the Piri Reis map, the small cluster of islands shown at the bottom toward the right. According to Hapgood, the "heavy shading of some of the islands" was, in 16th-century map-making techniques, an indication of mountainous terrain. In addition, he said, a seismic profile made by a Norwegian-British-Swedish expedition in 1949 disclosed a range of undersea mountains. Some of these, the Hapgood team concluded, would emerge from the sea as islands if there were no ice cap--another indication that Antarctica had really been explored and mapped earlier, at a time when no ice cap existed.

By then, of course, Hapgood and his students were captivated by the mystery of the map. They proceeded cautiously, however, because they knew that many cartographers in ancient times vaguely believed in the existence of a landmass in the southern regions and, with or without evidence, might have added something to their charts out of blind faith -- or even out of a preference for esthetic balance.

From greatdreams.com/magellan/magellan.htm