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Such a waterway, connecting the Ross, Weddell and Bellinghausen Seas, would indeed exist if Antarctica were free of ice. As the 1958 IGY Survey shows, the continent (which appears on modern maps as one continuous landmass) consists of an archipelago of large islands with mile-thick ice packed between them and rising above sea level.

The epoch


Of the mapmakers as we have seen, many orthodox geologists believe that the last time any waterway existed in these ice-filled basins was millions of years ago. From the scholarly point of view, however, it is equally orthodox to affirm that no human beings had evolved in those remote times, let alone human beings capable of accurately mapping the landmasses of the Antarctic. The big problem raised by the Buache/IGY evidence is that those landmasses do seem to have been mapped when they were free of ice. This confronts scholars with two mutually contradictory propositions. Which one is correct? If we are to go along with orthodox geologists and accept that millions of years have indeed elapsed since Antarctica was last completely free of ice, then all the evidence of human evolution, painstakingly accumulated by distinguished scientists from Darwin on, must be wrong. It seems inconceivable that this could be the case: the fossil record makes it abundantly clear that only the unevolved ancestors of humanity existed millions of years ago – low-browed knuckle-dragging hominids incapable of advanced intellectual tasks like map-making. Are we therefore to assume the intervention of alien cartographers in orbiting spaceships to explain the existence of sophisticated maps of an ice-free Antarctica? Or shall we think again about the implications of Hapgood’s theory of earth-crust displacement which allows the southern continent to have been in the ice-free condition depicted by Buache as little as 15,000 years ago?


Is it possible that a human civilization, sufficiently advanced to have mapped Antarctica, could have developed by 13,000 BC and later disappeared? And, if so, how much later? The combined effect of the Piri Reis, Oronteus Finaeus, Mercator and Buache Maps is the strong, though disturbing, impression that Antarctica may have been continuously surveyed over a period of several thousands of years as the icecap gradually spread outwards from the interior, increasing its grip with every passing millennium but not engulfing all the coasts of the southern continent until around 4000 BC. The original sources for the Piri Reis and Mercator Maps must therefore have been prepared towards the end of this period, when only the coasts of Antarctica were free of ice; the source for the Oronteus Finaeus Map, on the other hand, seems to have been considerably earlier, when the ice-cap was present only in the deep interior of the continent; and the source for the Buache Map appears to originate in even earlier period (around 13,000 BC), when there may have been no ice in Antarctica at all.

South America

Were other parts of the world surveyed and accurately charted at widely separated intervals during this same epoch; roughly from 13,000 BC to 4000 BC? The answer may lie once again in the Piri Reis Map, which contains more mysteries than just Antarctica:


• Drawn in 1513, the map demonstrates an uncanny knowledge of South America – and not only of its eastern coast but of the Andes mountains on the western side of the continent, which were of course unknown at that time. The map correctly shows the Amazon River rising in these unexplored mountains and thence flowing eastwards.


• Itself compiled from more than twenty different source documents of varying antiquity; the Piri Reis Map depicts the Amazon not once but twice (most probably as a result of the unintentional overlapping of two of the source documents used by the Turkish admiral). In the first of this the Amazon’s course is shown down to its Para River mouth, but the important island of Marajo does not appear. According to Hapgood, this suggests that the relevant source map must have dated from a time, perhaps as much as 15,000 years ago, when the Para River was the main or only mouth of the Amazon and when Marajo Island was part of the mainland on the northern side of the river. The second depiction of the Amazon, on the other hand, does show Marajo (and in fantastically accurate detail) despite the fact that this island was not discovered until 1543.19 Again, the possibility is raised of an unknown civilization which undertook continuous surveying and mapping operations of the changing face of the earth over a period of many thousands of years, with Piri Reis making use of earlier and later source maps left behind by this civilization.


• Neither the Orinoco River nor its present delta is represented on the Piri Reis Map. Instead,
as Hapgood proved, ‘two estuaries extending far inland (for a distance of about 100 miles) are shown close to the site of the present river. The longitude on the grid would be correct for the Orinoco, and the latitude is also quite accurate. Is it possible that these estuaries have been filled in, and the delta extended this much, since the source maps were made?

• Although they remained undiscovered until 1592, the Falkland Islands appear on the 1513 map at their correct latitude.

• The library of ancient sources incorporated in the Piri Reis Map may also account for the fact that it convincingly portrays a large island in the Atlantic Ocean to the east of the South American coast where no such island now exists. Is it pure coincidence that this ‘imaginary’ island turns out to be located right over the sub-oceanic Mid-Atlantic Ridge just north of the equator and 700 miles east of the coast of Brazil, where the tiny Rocks of Sts Peter and Paul now jut above the waves? Or was the relevant source map drawn deep in the last Ice Age, when sea levels were far lower than they are today, and a large island could indeed have been exposed at this spot?


Sea levels and ice ages


Other sixteenth-century maps also look as though they could have been based on accurate world surveys conducted during the last Ice Age. One was compiled by the Turk Hadji Ahmed in 1559, a cartographer, as Hapgood puts it, who must have had access to some ‘most extraordinary’ source maps. The strangest and most immediately striking feature of Hadji Ahmed’s compilation is that it shows quite plainly a strip of territory, almost 1000 miles wide, connecting Alaska and Siberia. Such a ‘land-bridge’, as geologists refer to it, did once exist (where the Bering Strait is now) but was submerged beneath the waves by rising sea levels at the end of the last Ice Age. The rising sea levels were caused by the tumultuous melting of the icecap which was rapidly retreating everywhere in the northern hemisphere by around 10,000 BC. It is therefore interesting that at least one ancient map appears to show southern Sweden covered with remnant glaciers of the kind that must indeed have been prevalent then in these latitudes. The remnant glaciers are on Claudius Ptolemy’s famous Map of the North. Originally compiled in the second century AD, this remarkable work from the last great geographer of classical antiquity was lost for hundreds of years and rediscovered in the fifteenth century. Ptolemy was custodian of the library at Alexandria, which contained the greatest manuscript collection of ancient times, and it was there that he consulted the archaic source documents that enabled him to compile his own map. Acceptance of the possibility that the original version of at least one of the charts he referred to could have been made around 10,000 BC helps us to explain why he shows glaciers, characteristic of that exact epoch, together with ‘lakes … suggesting the shapes of present-day lakes, and streams very much suggesting glacial streams … flowing It is probably unnecessary to add that no one on earth in Roman times, when Ptolemy drew his map, had the slightest suspicion that ice ages could once have existed in northern Europe. Nor did anyone in the fifteenth century (when the map was rediscovered) possess such knowledge. Indeed, it is impossible to see how the remnant glaciers and other features shown on Ptolemy’s map could have been surveyed, imagined or invented by any known civilization prior to our own.




The implications of this are obvious. So, too, are the implications of another map, the ‘Portolano’ of Iehudi Ibn Ben Zara, drawn in the year 1487.30 This chart of Europe and North Africa may have been based on a source even earlier than Ptolemy’s, for it seems to show glaciers much farther south than Sweden (roughly on the same latitude as England in fact) and to depict the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Aegean Seas as they might have looked before the melting of the European ice-cap. Sea level would, of course, have been significantly lower than it is today. It is therefore interesting, in the case for instance of the Aegean section of the map, to note that a great many more islands are shown than currently exist. At first sight this seems odd. However, if ten or twelve thousand years have indeed elapsed since the era when Ibn Ben Zara’s source map was made, the discrepancy can be simply explained: the missing islands must have been submerged by rising sea levels at the end of the last Ice Age. Once again, we seem to be looking at the fingerprints of a vanished civilization – one capable of drawing impressively accurate maps of widely separated parts of the earth. What kind of technology, and what state of science and culture, would have been required to do a job like that?

End of chapter 2
 

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References of the chapter:

Oronce Finé : born 20 December 1494 – 8 August 1555) was a French mathematician and cartographer. Born in Briançon, the son and grandson of physicians, he was educated in Paris (Collège de Navarre) and obtained a degree in medicine in 1522. He was imprisoned in 1524, probably for practicing judicial astrology. In 1531, he was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the Collège Royal (the present Collège de France), founded by King Francis I, where he taught until his death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oronce_Finé
Enderby Land: is a projecting landmass of Antarctica. Its shore extends from Shinnan Glacier at about 67°55′S 44°38′E to William Scoresby Bay at 67°24′S 59°34′E, approximately 1⁄24 of the earth's longitude. It was first documented in western and eastern literature in February 1831 by John Biscoe aboard the whaling brig Tula, and named after the Enderby Brothers of London, the ship's owners who encouraged their captains to combine exploration with sealing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enderby_Land
Wilkes Land: is a large district of land in eastern Antarctica, formally claimed by Australia as part of the Australian Antarctic Territory, though the validity of this claim has been placed for the period of the operation of the Antarctic Treaty, to which Australia is a signatory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkes_Land
Victoria Land: is a region in eastern Antarctica which fronts the western side of the Ross Sea and the Ross Ice Shelf, extending southward from about 70°30'S to 78°00'S, and westward from the Ross Sea to the edge of the Antarctic Plateau. It was discovered by Captain James Clark Ross in January 1841 and named after Queen Victoria. The rocky promontory of Minna Bluff is often regarded as the southernmost point of Victoria Land, and separates the Scott Coast to the north from the Hillary Coast of the Ross Dependency to the south. The region includes ranges of the Transantarctic Mountains and the McMurdo Dry Valleys (the highest point being Mount Abbott in the Northern Foothills), and the flatlands known as the Labyrinth. The 2,700-metre (9,000 ft) Mount Melbourne is an active volcano in Victoria Land. Early explorers of Victoria Land include James Clark Ross and Douglas Mawson. In 1979, scientists discovered a group of 309 meteorites in Antarctica, some of which were found near the Allan Hills in Victoria Land. The meteorites appeared to have undergone little change since they were formed at what scientists believe was the birth of the solar system. In 1981, lichens found at Victoria Land attracted the attention of NASA because lichens may give clues about where to look for the existence of extraterrestrial life on Mars or elsewhere. Dr. George Denton, a glaciologist at the University of New Hampshire looked for microorganisms on Mount Lister, one of the highest in Antarctica; it has the same kind of sandstone in which lichens grow. In 2017, conservationists at Cape Adare, Victoria Land, unearthed an ice-covered fruitcake that they believe once belonged to the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott. Scott's Northern Party expedition was in 1911, making the age of the fruitcake 106 years old. A program manager said it was in “excellent condition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Land
 

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The Ross Sea: is a deep bay of the Southern Ocean in Antarctica, between Victoria Land and Marie Byrd Land and within the Ross Embayment, and is the southernmost sea on Earth. It derives its name from the British explorer James Ross who visited this area in 1841. To the west of the sea lies Ross Island and Victoria Land, to the east Roosevelt Island and Edward VII Peninsula in Marie Byrd Land, while the southernmost part is covered by the Ross Ice Shelf, and is about 200 miles (320 km) from the South Pole. Its boundaries and area have been defined by the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research as having an area of 637,000 square kilometres (246,000 sq mi). The circulation of the Ross Sea is dominated by a wind-driven ocean gyre and the flow is strongly influenced by three submarine ridges that run from southwest to northeast. The circumpolar deep water current is a relatively warm, salty and nutrient-rich water mass that flows onto the continental shelf at certain locations. The Ross Sea is covered with ice for most of the year. The nutrient-laden water supports an abundance of plankton and this encourages a rich marine fauna. At least ten mammal species, six bird species and 95 fish species are found here, as well as many invertebrates, and the sea remains relatively unaffected by human activities. New Zealand has claimed that the sea comes under its jurisdiction as part of the Ross Dependency. Marine biologists consider the sea to have a high level of biological diversity and it is the site of much scientific research. It is also the focus of some environmentalist groups who have campaigned to have the area proclaimed as a world marine reserve. In 2016 an international agreement established the region as a marine park.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Sea
Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr.: (October 25, 1888 – March 11, 1957) was an American naval officer and explorer. He was a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the highest honor for valor given by the United States, and was a pioneering American aviator, polar explorer, and organizer of polar logistics. Aircraft flights in which he served as a navigator and expedition leader crossed the Atlantic Ocean, a segment of the Arctic Ocean, and a segment of the Antarctic Plateau. Byrd claimed that his expeditions had been the first to reach both the North Pole and the South Pole by air. His claim to have reached the North Pole is disputed. He is also known for discovering Mount Sidley, the largest dormant volcano in Antarctica.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_E._Byrd
Marine isotope stages (MIS), marine oxygen-isotope stages, or oxygen isotope stages (OIS), are alternating warm and cool periods in the Earth's paleoclimate, deduced from oxygen isotope data reflecting changes in temperature derived from data from deep sea core samples. Working backwards from the present, which is MIS 1 in the scale, stages with even numbers have high levels of oxygen-18 and represent cold glacial periods, while the odd-numbered stages are lows in the oxygen-18 figures, representing warm interglacial intervals. The data are derived from pollen and foraminifera (plankton) remains in drilled marine sediment cores, sapropels, and other data that reflect historic climate; these are called proxies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_isotope_stages
The Mercator projection: is a cylindrical map projection presented by Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It became the standard map projection for navigation because it is unique in representing north as up and south as down everywhere while preserving local directions and shapes. The map is thereby conformal. As a side effect, the Mercator projection inflates the size of objects away from the equator. This inflation is very small near the equator but accelerates with increasing latitude to become infinite at the poles. As a result, landmasses such as Greenland and Antarctica appear far larger than they actually are relative to landmasses near the equator, such as Central Africa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection
The Mühlig-Hofmann Mountains: is a major group of associated mountain features extending east to west for 100 km (62 mi) between the Gjelsvik Mountains and the Orvin Mountains in Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica. With its summit at 3,148 metres (10,328 ft), the massive Jøkulkyrkja Mountain forms the highest point in the Mühlig-Hofmann Mountains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mühlig-Hofmann_Mountains
The Great Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. The Library was part of a larger research institution called the Mouseion, which was dedicated to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts. The idea of a universal library in Alexandria may have been proposed by Demetrius of Phalerum, an exiled Athenian statesman living in Alexandria, to Ptolemy I Soter, who may have established plans for the Library, but the Library itself was probably not built until the reign of his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The Library quickly acquired many papyrus scrolls, owing largely to the Ptolemaic kings' aggressive and well-funded policies for procuring texts. It is unknown precisely how many such scrolls were housed at any given time, but estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000 at its height.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
 

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A man ahead of his time

The late Charles Hapgood taught the history of science at Keene College, New Hampshire, USA. He wasn’t a geologist, or an ancient historian. It is possible, however, that future generations will remember him as the man whose work undermined the foundations of world history and a large chunk of world geology as well. Albert Einstein was among the first to realize this when he took the unprecedented step of contributing the foreword to a book Hapgood wrote in 1953, some years before he began his investigation of the Piri Reis Map: I frequently receive communications from people who wish to consult me concerning their unpublished ideas Einstein observed. It goes without saying that these ideas are very seldom possessed of scientific validity. The very first communication, however, that I received from Mr. Hapgood electrified me. His idea is original, of great simplicity, and if it continues to prove itself of great importance to everything that is related to the history of the earth’s surface. The ‘idea’ expressed in Hapgood’s 1953 book is a global geological theory which elegantly explains how and why large parts of Antarctica could have remained ice-free until 4000 BC, together with many other anomalies of earth science. In brief the argument is:

1 Antarctica was not always covered with ice and was at one time much warmer than it is today.

2 It was warm because it was not physically located at the South Pole in that period. Instead, it was approximately 2000 miles farther north. This would have put it outside the Antarctic Circle in a temperate or cold temperate climate.

3 The continent moved to its present position inside the Antarctic Circle as a result of a mechanism known as ‘earth-crust displacement. This mechanism, in no sense to be confused with plate-tectonics or continental drift, is one whereby the lithosphere, the whole outer crust of the earth, may be displaced at times, moving over the soft inner body, much as the skin of an orange, if it were loose, might shift over the inner part of the orange all in one piece.

4 During the envisaged southwards movement of Antarctica brought about by earth-crust displacement, the continent would gradually have grown colder, an icecap forming and remorselessly expanding over several thousands of years until it attained its present dimensions. Further details of the evidence supporting these radical proposals are set out in Part VIII of this book. Orthodox geologists, however, remain reluctant to accept Hapgood’s theory (although none has succeeded in proving it incorrect). It raises many questions.


Of these by far the most important is what conceivable mechanism would be able to exert sufficient thrust on the lithosphere to precipitate a phenomenon of such magnitude. We have no better guide than Einstein to summarize Hapgood’s findings: In a polar region there is continual deposition of ice, which is not symmetrically distributed about the pole. The earth’s rotation acts on these unsymmetrically deposited masses and produces centrifugal momentum that is transmitted to the rigid crust of the earth. The constantly increasing centrifugal momentum produced in this way will, when it has reached a certain point, produce a movement of the earth’s crust over the rest of the earth’s body. The Piri Reis Map seems to contain surprising collateral evidence in support of the thesis of a geologically recent glaciation of parts of Antarctica following a sudden southward displacement of the earth’s crust. Moreover, since such a map could only have been drawn prior to 4000 BC, its implications for the history of human civilization are staggering. Prior to 4000 BC there are supposed to have been no civilizations at all. At some risk of over-simplification, the academic consensus is broadly:

• Civilization first developed in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East.

• This development began after 4000 BC and culminated in the emergence of the earliest true civilizations (Sumer and Egypt) around 3000 BC, soon followed by the Indus Valley and China.

• About 1500 years later, civilization took off spontaneously and independently in the Americas. • Since 3000 BC in the Old World (and about 1500 BC in the New) civilization has steadily ‘evolved’ in the direction of ever more refined, complex and productive forms.

• In consequence, and particularly by comparison with ourselves, all ancient civilizations (and all their works) are to be understood as essentially primitive (the Sumerian astronomers regarded the heavens with unscientific awe, and even the pyramids of Egypt were built by technological primitives). The evidence of the Piri Reis Map appears to contradict all this.


Piri Reis and his sources

In his day, Piri Reis was a well-known figure; his historical identity is firmly established. An admiral in the navy of the Ottoman Turks, he was involved, often on the winning side, in numerous sea battles around the mid-sixteenth century. He was, in addition, considered an expert on the lands of the Mediterranean, and was the author of a famous sailing book, the Kitabi Bahriye, which provided a comprehensive description of the coasts, harbours, currents, shallows, landing places, bays and straits of the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. Despite this illustrious career he fell foul of his masters and was beheaded in AD 1554 or 1555.19 The source maps Piri Reis used to draw up his 1513 map were in all probability lodged originally in the Imperial Library at Constantinople, to which the admiral is known to have enjoyed privileged access. Those sources (which may have been transferred or copied from even more ancient centres of learning) no longer exist, or, at any rate, have not been found. It was, however, in the library of the old Imperial Palace at Constantinople that the Piri Reis Map was rediscovered, painted on a gazelle skin and rolled up on a dusty shelf, as recently as 1929.20 Legacy of a lost civilization? As the baffled Ohlmeyer admitted in his letter to Hapgood in 1960, the Piri Reis Map depicts the subglacial topography, the true profile of Queen Maud Land Antarctica beneath the ice. This profile remained completely hidden from view from 4000 BC (when the advancing ice sheet covered it) until it was revealed again as a result of the comprehensive seismic survey of Queen Maud Land carried out during 1949 by a joint British-Swedish scientific reconnaissance team. If Piri Reis had been the only cartographer with access to such anomalous information, it would be wrong to place any great weight on his map.


At the most one might say, ‘Perhaps it is significant but, then again, perhaps it is just a coincidence.’ However, the Turkish admiral was by no means alone in the possession of seemingly impossible and inexplicable geographical knowledge. It would be futile to speculate further than Hapgood has already done as to what ‘underground stream’ could have carried and preserved such knowledge through the ages, transmitting fragments of it from culture to culture and from epoch to epoch. Whatever the mechanism, the fact is that a number of other cartographers seem to have been privy to the same curious secrets. Is it possible that all these mapmakers could have partaken, perhaps unknowingly, in the bountiful scientific legacy of a vanished civilization?

End of Chapter 1
Ah, ha! Nice to find out that school I did on plate tectonics was actually relatable to something!
 
What I remember reading was the gravitational pull on the earth, plus volcanic activity. Was a long time ago, though, I mean that I did the report, but not as long as since Pangea broke up, lol!
 
You too! You're way too smart for the likes of me, lol ;)
No sir you are mistaken I do not think I am smarter than anyone the greatest minds in history admitted they knew nothing compared to everything in the world that is possible to learn :) but thank you
 
No sir you are mistaken I do not think I am smarter than anyone the greatest minds in history admitted they knew nothing compared to everything in the world that is possible to learn :) but thank you
That's very true 🙂
 

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