History has run Amok!!

Chapter 6- The Mapping of Antartica before it was ever discovered!

 One of the names for the snow covered mountains seen by ship in 1603 by Spaniard Gabrielle de Castilla, the first person recognized as the explorer that discovered Antarctica. Although, he was largely ignored in that time

Fast Forward to 1820 and now several expeditions are on the hunt for Antarctica. By 1821, American Captain John Davis, a sealer, was the first to set foot on the ice.

With that info in mind, i would like to point out my first picture, the Piri Reis map of 1513.

Reis had been a famous Turkish General of the 16th Century with a love for cartography and was a highly respected mariner. He was pretty much the "go to" guy when it came to anything maritime or with coastlines and was also highly respected by the Turkish Courts. With a status such as that, it gave him pretty much unprecedented access to the Imperial Library at Constantinople, where Reis spent a great deal of his time. This map he created was said to be based off of several other older maps, including one that was said to have been given to Columbus to view before his journey to the Americas. (that last sentence on C.C. sounds more hearsay though)

Keep in mind, Antarctica wasn't even seen yet since. it was only surmised in 1487 by Bartholomew Dias that there was an ocean separating Africa and this unknown landmass. Then in 1513, Reis drew a map that showed a small portion of a then, undiscovered, Antarctic continent.

This next excerpt comes from a book called Earths Forbidden Past by Max Ignan, which is where a good deal of this cartography info comes from. Its so well written that i would rather copy the entire passage (a small paragraph) detailing the map I'm about to provide.

"The Orontius Finaeus map of 1531 was found in 1960 by George Hapgood and it, too, shows the continent of Antarctica along with accurate outlines of Antarctic rivers that are covered now by thick Glaciers. The map was found in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. where it had been sitting unstudied for a great many years. For many years, the map was considered by many to be wrong because when Antarctica had been discovered, it looked nothing like what Bauche had drawn. Then in 1958, a seismic survey was carried out which surprisingly showed that Antarctica was, indeed, two archipelago islands covered by a thick layer of ice that made it appear as one land mass and not only that, the general topography of the lands beneath the ice matches the drawing of the Bauche map in EVERY DETAIL. So how on earth is this in any way, possible? This map means that Bauche was in possession of a correct map showing Antarctica 100 years before it was discovered, and not only that, but WITHOUT any ice on it!Antarctica has not been in an ice free condition for a minimum of 10,000 years and many scientists believe that number to be more around 7 million years."

To put an exclamation point to the end of my sentence, I'm going to copy one more excerpt from Earths Forbidden Past  about another map. Again, my writing abilities may be a little above average, but there's no way i could put into words what Mr. Ignan has done so here. This is the most interesting of all the maps Ive gotten the opportunity to take a look at, as longitude was used....longitude was not heavily used until Maritime Chronometers became widely affordable...sometime between 1800 and 1850 (a little earlier if you were British as the chronometer was invented there...but was very expensive. Lunar cycles were still used until the 1800's.

And now id like to show you the Mercator Map of 1538

"And even yet another intriguing map is one drawn in 1538 by Mercator, another highly respected cartographer from the 16th century. His works are quite famous and you can still buy a Mercator Atlas today. Mercator was known to periodically update his works and produce a new, more definitive world atlas as more shores became charted and more accurate charts became available to him. In doing such an update, his 1538 world map was replaced by a new one in 1569. However, we now know that not only his 1538 map far more accurate than the latter one but what proved to be even more amazing was that it contained the correct measurements of Longitude.

To put all this mention of longitude into perspective for you: Longitude is the distance in degrees east or west of the Prime Meridian. Due to Earths Rotation, it is far harder to measure longitude than it is latitude, which can be measured by using the stars or the sun for observation. To calculate longitude, requires an equation of "distance=speed x time" and most importantly, an accurate clock. Discovering longitude was once described as "greatest of all naval problems" and in the 1700's an actual board of longitude was set up in England to solve the issue. In 1714, Sir Isaac Newton appeared before the board and explained was the real problem was that "a watch with such accuracy has yet to be invented". The Queen then offered a prize of 20,000 pounds to any man that might build such a device and finally, in 1761, a man by the name of Harrison claimed the prize and put forth his prototype chronometer which then "ushered in a new era of sea travel" for the world.

During the 19th century, maps then began being updated with the correct degrees of longitude. However, Mercators map of 1538 was marked with correct longitude a full 223 years before it was discovered. Where was he able to gain that information from? It is obvious that Mercator himself, had no real knowledge of longitude at that time and must have borrowed or been given the information from another source because he then updated his subsequent maps incorrectly with what was considered to be more recent and therefore, supposedly more reliable information. These maps constitute some extremely significant evidence indeed, for if ancient man had never circumnavigated the globe or possessed any knowledge of longitude then how can any of these maps exist?"

  And that, to me, is a damn good question!  

I also want to highly point out and reccomend reading Max Ignan's Earths Forbidden Past.  Its an eye opener and a very very detailed book on our ancient past and its many mysteries!