Piri Reis map

Surviving fragment of the Piri Reis map showing the Central and South American coast. The appended notes say "the map of the western lands drawn by Columbus"

The Piri Reis map is a map of the world drawn on a parchment of gazelle skin by a Turk named Piri Reis (Hadji Muhiddin Piri Ibn Hadji Mehmed) in 1513. This map has been used to support claims for a pre-modern exploration of Antarctica.

Piri Reis Map Media

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  The Topkapı Palace where the map was discovered, viewed from the Bosporus

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  This map includes translations of the major inscriptions of the Piri Reis map from Ottoman Turkish and Arabic into English. It also includes (in green text) translations, transliterations, and identifications of many places on the map.

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  The map's coastlines (in black) laid over the Cantino Planisphere—another portolan world map—show both similarities and a significant increase in South American detail. Areas depicted in similar locations are labeled in red. The peculiar configuration of the Caribbean is usually attributed to the usage of an early map of Columbus, now lost.

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  Along the map's Western edge, a headless Blemmye (left, holding flowers) converses peacefully with a monkey (right, holding fruit).

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  Terra Australis, or the Southern Land, is depicted on Petrus Plancius's Orbis Terrarum of 1594 as a massive continent, spanning much of the southern hemisphere. Places discovered but little understood are depicted as the Northern edge of Terra Australis, including Tierra del Fuego south of the Americas and New Guinea.

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  The expected topography of Antarctica using modern data and accounting for isostatic rebound shows no similarities with the Piri Reis map.