Chapter 1A Map of Hidden Places
8 RECONNAISSANCE TECHNICAL SQUADRON
(SAC)UNITED STATES AIRFORCEWestover
Airforce BaseMassachusetts6 July 1960
SUBJECT: Admiral Piri Reis World Map
To: Professor Charles H. Hapgood,
Keene College,
Keene, New Hampshire.
Dear Professor Hapgood,
Your request for evaluation of certain unusual features of the Piri Reis World Map of 1513 by this organization has been reviewed.
The claim that the lower part of the map portrays the Princess Martha Coast of Queen Maud Land Antarctica, and the Palmer Peninsula, is reasonable. We find this is the most logical and in all probability the correct interpretation of the map.
The geographical detail shown in the lower part of the map agrees very remarkably with the results of the seismic profile made across the top of the ice-cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949.
This indicates the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the ice-cap.
The ice-cap in this region is now about a mile thick.
We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled with the supposed state of geographical knowledge in 1513.
HAROLD Z. OHLMEYER
Lt Colonel, USAF
Commander
Despite the deadpan language, Ohlmeyer’s letter is a bombshell. If Queen Maud Land was mapped before it was covered by ice, the original cartography must have been done an extraordinarily long time ago.
How long ago exactly?
Conventional wisdom has it that the Antarctic ice-cap, in its present extent and form, is millions of years old. On closer examination, this notion turns out to be seriously flawed – so seriously that we need not assume the map drawn by Admiral Piri Reis depicts Queen Maud Land as it looked millions of years in the past. The best recent evidence suggests that Queen Maud Land, and the neighbouring regions shown on the map, passed through a long ice-free period which may not have come completely to an end until about six thousand years ago. This evidence, which we shall touch upon again in the next chapter, liberates us from the burdensome task of explaining who (or what) had the technology to undertake an “accurate geographical survey of Antarctica in, say, two million BC, long before our own species came into existence. By the same token, since map-making is a complex and
civilized activity, it compels us to explain how such a task could have been accomplished even six thousand years ago, well before the development of the first true civilizations recognized by historians.
Copyright © 2012 by Graham Hancock. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
