Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries, Brian Haughton [books you need to read .TXT] 📗

the works of Greek astronomer and geographer Ptolemy (second century A.D.), various Portuguese maps, and Christopher Columbus. In fact, Reis himself notes on the chart that he copied from Columbus's maps. Many features on the Piri Reis map, including place names and representations in the West Indies, show that he was using at least one of Columbus's maps to draw his own chart. Another indication that Reis was using medieval European maps is the depiction, near the top of the chart, of a ship next to a fish, which carries two people on its back. The note attached to this illustration quotes a medieval story from the life of the Irish saint, Brendan. This has obviously been reproduced by Piri Reis from one of his source maps, proving that one of them, at least, was of medieval European origin.

Greg McIntosh in his The Piri Reis Map of 1513, published in 2000, argues that looking at contemporary maps of the period shows that nothing in the Piri Reis map was unknown in 1513. He also suggests that what some have called Antarctica on the Piri Reis map is, in reality, the hypothetical Great Southern Continent, which cartographers had been depicting on maps since Ptolemy's time. The commonly held belief was that a continent must exist in the southern hemisphere to balance the landmasses in the northern hemisphere. McIntosh also demonstrates that all the coasts on the Piri Reis map south of 25 degrees are either inaccurate or wrongly placed, and that the Antarctica depicted on Reis's chart extends north of 40 degrees south latitude, while the actual continent of Antarctica does not extend further than 70. In fact, rather than being a depiction of Antarctica, a close examination of the Piri Reis map reveals that the southern continent bears an extremely close resemblance to the southern half of South America, adjusted width-ways to fit onto the shape of the parchment.

One conspicuously anomalous feature of South America on the Piri Reis map is its apparent depiction of the Andes mountain chain, with the rivers

Amazon, Orinoco, and Rio Plata emerging from its base and flowing eastwards to the coast. As the Andes were unknown to Europeans at this time, how did they come to be shown on Piri Reis's map? But Reis's map is not alone in showing a mountain range in the interior of South America; the Nicolo Canerio map, drawn between 1502 and 1504 and now housed in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, depicts the east coast of South America with a tree-topped chain of mountains. From this evidence, it seems likely that the Canerio map was another of Piri Reis's original sources. It is also hard to conceive that if the Piri Reis map were based on the work of an advanced ancient seafaring culture, it would include the Andes but omit the Pacific Ocean. A more plausible explanation is that the mountains depicted in the center of South America on the Piri Reis map are east coast mountains, drawn in the wrong place and at the wrong scale.

Most scholars now believe that the Piri Reis map is no more accurate than would be expected for a 16th century portolan chart, deriving information from existing geographical knowledge and conjecture. There is no reason to believe that Piri Reis based his map on the work of a hypothetical ancient super-culture. Certainly, it is possible that he had ancient source material that is now lost to us, but beyond that, the Piri Reis map should be appreciated for what it is-a strikingly beautiful and historically important document of medieval history.

the Unsolved Puzzle of the Phaist.os Disc

Photograph by Maksim. (GNU Free Documentation License).

Replica of the Phaistos Disc.

The undeciphered Phaistos Disc is one of the greatest puzzles in archaeology. Almost everything about this ancient artifact is controversial, from its purpose and meaning to its original area of manufacture. The mysterious clay tablet was found on the Greek island of Crete, at the Minoan Palace site at Phaistos. But who made it, and what was it used for?

The sophisticated Bronze Age civilization of the Minoans reached its height in the period c. 1700 B.C. and began to decline about three centuries later, when many of their palaces were destroyed. The Phaistos Disc was discovered in 1903 by Italian archaeologists excavating at the ruined Minoan palace of Phaistos. The archaeologists

came upon the strange object in a basement room in the northeast apartments of the palace, together with a clay tablet inscribed in Linear A (an undeciphered script used on Crete until around 1450 B.C.), and pieces of neopalatial pottery (c. 1700 B.c.-1600 B.C.). The palace had collapsed during an earthquake, which has been linked by some researchers to the massive volcanic eruption on the nearby Aegean island of Thera (modern day Santorini) c. 1628 B.C. The precise age of the Phaistos Disc is disputed; the archaeological context of the find suggests a date not later than 1700 B.C., though the modern opinion is that it could have been created as late as 1650 B.C.

The enigmatic disc is made of baked clay with an average diameter of 6.2 inches, and a thickness of 0.8 inches. Both sides of the disc are covered with a hieroglyphic inscription arranged in a spiral. The inscription was made by impressing wood or ivory hieroglyphic seals or stamps into the wet clay, and then baking the clay at a high temperature to harden it. It has been noted that occasionally on the artifact, a symbol slightly overlaps the one to its right, which demonstrates that the creator was stamping towards the left, that resulted in the text spiraling inwards to the center. The Phaistos Disc represents what is, in effect, the earliest form of printing anywhere in the world.

Printed into the disc are a total of 242 individual impressions divided into 61 groups by vertical lines; there are 45 different signs, including depictions of running men, heads with feather crowns, women, children, animals, birds, insects, tools, weapons,