given to the admiral by a Spanish prisoner who had apparently sailed on three of Columbus's
New World voyages! Many scholars have indeed suspected that Columbus was in possession of a
map and already knew of the existence of America before embarking on his famous ‘voyage of
discovery’. Reis also wrote a well known Turkish book on sailing called ‘Kitababi Bahriye’ in
which he gives detailed and accurate descriptions of the coastlines, harbors, bays, currents,
shallows and straits of the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. He was beheaded by the Turkish
Court in 1554 or 1555 for reasons now unknown.
In case you can’t see it, That’s the top piece of Africa on the top right of the map and the tip of
south America reaching out to it from the left side of the map, running up through the gulf of
Mexico and up to Nth. America. The tip of Antarctica can be seen sticking up on the bottom
right. Another interesting point to this map is the strange layout of the South American continent
which looks sort of stretched out of shape. However, viewing the sphere of earth from space
accurately produces this type of view. Funny that...
The Orontius Finaeus Map of 1531
The Orontius Finaeus map (fig.2) was found in 1960 by Charles Hapgood and it too, apparently
shows the continent of Antarctica along with the accurate outlines of Antarctic rivers that are now
covered by thick glaciers. The map was found in the Library of Congress in Washington DC
where it had been sitting unstudied for a great many years. In the map the continent and coastline
is shown to be ice free and, like the Piri Reis map, it too shows an accurate depiction of the Ross
Sea which today is totally hidden beneath a floating ice shelf several hundred meters thick.
Studies of actual core samples taken from the Antarctic ice shelf have also clearly revealed
numerous layers of strata in the ice showing that the area has indeed gone through several periods
of dramatic environmental change. Some sedimentary deposits that were found in the samples
were from sea water that had flowed into the area and were even actually datable. The tests show
that the sediments were deposited sometime around 4000 years ago which indicates that the Ross
Sea would have had to have been flowing and free from ice at the time for the deposits to have
occurred.
Fig.2