Ancient maps: What early cartographers were trying to tell us

[R.R. Book]

This topic is mind-bending in its own right, but can also be applicable to documenting pole shifts, whether caused by Px or by another agent.

I say "another agent" because there exists some evidence of cataclysms more recent than the 26,000 year cycle ( or 12,000, etc.) resulting in at least some degree of pole shift. 

So please feel welcome to post all ancient, or just odd, or old-but-not-ancient maps that you might come across...

[R.R. Book]

Will begin with perhaps one of the most famous old-but-not-ancient maps, the Piri Reis map of 1513 which date corresponds both to the Age of Exploration and the middle of the Renaissance.  It may or may not be considered an accurate map, depending upon which side of the debate one takes:

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

Highlights depicted:

*The supposedly mythical island of Antillia

*The accurate circumference of the earth is depicted

*A very large island in place of Cuba

*A land bridge from South America to a supposedly mythical "Terra Australis Incognita"

*An annotation that large snakes inhabited Antarctica

*The map depicts the Earth as it would be viewed from space

*Antarctica is depicted centuries before its "discovery"

*Antarctica depicted as having a warm climate, without an ice cap

*Odd doubles in some instances, such as two Virgin Islands and two Amazon Rivers

*Mercator lines were used long before they were "invented," and must have been done using technology that didn't exist in modern times until the late 1800's

*The positioning of North America significantly further north than presently located

*Level of coastal detail possible only with aviation capability

*It may be based partly upon maps once belonging to the long-destroyed Library of Alexandria, Egypt

*It may be based partly upon a lost map of Columbus

Gregory McIntosh analyzes the Piri Reis map of 1513 in his book by the same name, taking a skeptical scholarly position.

Charles Hapgood takes a different position in his book Map of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advance Civilization in the Ice Age.

More:

https://www.historicmysteries.com/the-piri-reis-map/

http://www.ancientdestructions.com/piri-reis-map-of-antarctica/

https://www.old.world-mysteries.com/sar_1.htm

http://www.diegocuoghi.com/Piri_Reis/PiriReis_eng.htm

http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/pirireismap.htm

[ilinda]

Fascinating to say the least.  And it was found in a Turkish basement.  Much more to read here....

[R.R. Book]

Florida Maquis has posted an interesting series of films delving into Medieval era maps, interpreting artistic details as depicting actual experiences of mariners landing in each location.

It's a fun version of "What's Wrong with this Picture?"

Highlights:

*Palm trees in Antarctica

*Mermaids in Antarctica

*Mermaids holding miniature flying saucers



*Giants in Antarctica

*Smaller humans also in Antarctica concurrently with the giants

*Palm trees at the southern end of South America

*People depicted in shorts in the 1500's at the southern tip of South America

*European-looking humans occupying a portion of South America now inhabited by indigenous people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYcoJgKyIe4

[R.R. Book]

Florida Maquis continues his series, commenting that the southernmost tip of South America at one time must have been much closer to Antarctica, because numerous older maps depicted it that way.  However, by the time of an 1850's map (300 years after earlier maps of the area), Antarctica was not depicted at all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIVthUYMcIs

Highlights:

*One old map of lower South America depicts a creature with the face of a man on the body of a lion, with a smaller creature living on its back.

*Giants using primitive weapons, while humans used more sophisticated ones

*Dinosaurs still alive on a lost continent in the Southern Hemisphere (Brontosaurus?)

*Giants walking around in the nude while humans wore clothing

*Headless giants with faces on their torsos

Wiki documents legends of headless men all over the world, under various nomenclature.  One wonders whether they were a separate race, a spontaneous mutation, or chimeras created in a lab experiment gone horribly wrong, as the Atlanteans were said to have done before their demise.

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

[R.R. Book]

Speaking of headless men, here's the official website of the Hereford Mappa Mundi map discovered beneath the floor of an English Cathedral, dating to 1285 A.D.  While a special museum website  permits in-depth exploration of the map, Google for some reason warns people away:

https://www.themappamundi.co.uk/mappa-mundi/

This bird's eye view of the map shows its orientation with East on top.  What is only noticeable close-up is that even in 1285 A.D., the compass must have existed, because a hole is punctured in the center of the map, which is framed by a perfect circle.

The headless men south of the Nile River were referred to as Blemmyes.

Details:

*A man riding a goat-like chimera beneath the surface of the earth

*Jason's golden fleece is located on the coast of the Black Sea

*A labyrinth drawing

*One-legged humanoids

*An inaccessible island at the top of the world

*Dog-man chimeras

*Constantinople is depicted upside-down in relation to everything else on the map

*A Phoenix sits on top of a bare tree located in Asia

*The tree of the sun and the tree of the moon tell Alexander the Great's fortune

*Mouthless people

*The island of horse-hoofed men

*Bat people

*Cannibals

*Giant birds capable of raptoring elephants

*A flying salamander

*Androgyne people

*Numerous bodies of water and land are out of place

*Numerous place names no longer exist

*Ostriches once occupied southern parts of Eurasia

*Mountains on the Baltic shore that no longer exist

*The Danes exist somewhere other than Denmark

*Monkeys are located in Norway

*The Orkney Islands were 22 fewer then

*Britain's topography was known by other names back then

*Britain's hills/mountains are largely missing

*A small hill in England is regarded as an important mountain

William Bevan undertook a detailed examination of the map in his 1873 book Mediæval Geography: An Essay in Illustration of the Hereford Mappa Mundi, available on-line as a free e-book, upon which most of this post is based:

https://books.google.com/books?id=u_oHAAAAQAAJ&pg=PR8#v=onepage&q&f=false

Blevans, a British minister, is remarkably well-educated in the classics and in world geography, though he attributes all bodies out of place on medieval maps to the incredible ignorance of the cartographers, rather than considering that a cataclysm may have altered their positions.