ARE MEDIEVAL PLANISPHERES
REPRESENTING LATE PLEISTOCENE ANTARCTICA?

ABSTRACT

Scholars where intrigued by the fact that Antarctica has been represented on maps produced when its existence was not known yet. But most intriguing was the fact that apparently those maps represent Antarctica as it looked like at the end of Pleistocene, with a lower sea level and ice-free Atlantic shores.

At that time Earth had a peculiar climatic and geographic situation, of which a possible explanation (independent and quite different from Hapgood’s) has been proposed by the author, with the hypothesis that the South Pole was on a different position, precisely at the edge of Antarctica, towards Australia. If we draw a map of the continent in this situation, taking the bathymetric of 130 meters as the coastline and orienting the map with the South Pole at the top, we obtain a representation with some very peculiar characteristics: an island somewhat circular;  a deep fjord  on the left, corresponding to the today’s Mackenzie Bay, with an unmistakable profile; a wide bay on the right, corresponding to the Ross Sea; at the bottom a wide internal sea, with a narrow entry, pushing deep inside the continent as far as the ancient ice-cap. The Peninsula was separated from the main continent by a narrow channel.

We immediately realize that this representation is strikingly similar to the world as it was described by ancient mythologies:  a large island, almost circular, surrounded by the “river Ocean”, which flowed around it. This view was replaced by the Ptolemaic geography during classic times, but it was resumed in the Medium Age, with the so called T planispheres, all oriented with the north pole on the left.

If we compare the map of late Pleistocene Antarctica with the medieval planispheres, we find an undeniable resemblance and sometimes an absolute identity of shapes, proportions and orientation. Same characteristics can be recognized on Mercator and  Finaeus maps, where Antarctica is enlarged to reach the tip of South America and the Peninsula is merged into it.

1. IMPOSSIBLE MAPS

A map discovered at the Topkapi, Istanbul, on 1929, drawn on 1513 by the Turkish Admiral Piri Reis, was the seed of a mighty proliferation of “outrageous” cartographical and historical hypotheses, which is all but over.

Prof. Hapgood [1] after a thorough exam of that map, highlighted  two features that were impossible at the date when it was produced:

-          first, a precision in longitude that could not be achieved before the invention of the chronometer, in the 18^th century;

-          second, the representation on the lower part of the map of the Atlantic coasts of Antarctica, which was discovered only three centuries later. But more disconcerting was the fact that the profile of those coasts appears to be as it was at least 10 thousand years ago, when they were ice free.

Hapgood tried to explain this facts with the hypothesis that an ancient unknown maritime civilisation existed at that time, so advanced as to be able of mapping the entire world in aprecise way. Somehow copies of those maps should have survived and have become the “source” of maps produced during the Renaissance, which often possess characteristics similar to those of Piri Reis’, apparently inexplicable on the base of the geographic knowledge and the technical instrument of that period.

In his book “Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings”, Hapgood makes a list of maps “impossible” for their epoch. I will only remember two of them, the map drawn by Oronteus Finaeus on 1531, and the one due to the great cartographer Mercator, which both represent Antarctica in its precise location and, according to Hapgood, with its precise profile, although out of scale.

 

 Finaeus    Mercator

 

Hapgood’s  analysis , however, has been rejected by most scholars, mainly because none of those supposed maps of Antarctica  seems to represent such an important feature like the Peninsula. Another recurrent objection is that the tip of South America doesn’t match with the real one.

I will not take side on this debate. I would only highlight a whole series of maps, not considered by Hapgood, which not only seem to support his conclusions about Antarctica, but also could provide a credible explanation of some of the inconsistencies underlined by his critics, like the absence of the Peninsula.

Medieval planispheres

Piri Reis was not the first to draw Antarctica. Before him entire generations of medieval  “cartographers” did it,  although none of them was aware of this fact and they were convinced to represent the known world. That they were representing Antarctica, however, looks undeniable on the base of the following analysis.

The medieval planispheres are extraordinary under many aspects, first of all because they seem to ignore the fundamental conquests achieved in the geographic field by ancient Greeks and Romans.

 

The apex of ancient cartography was reached with Tolomeus. On his maps the Mediterranean basin is represented in a quite precise way; Africa and Asia a little bit less, but their essential characteristics are well defined. The most important characteristic of this representation, however, which was common to all ancient maps, as well as to those of today, is that the north pole is at the top; because this is the most natural and instinctive way (I would say obliged) of  a geographic representation, for a cartographer living in the northern emisphere.

Tolomeus map

 

These fundamental conquests of ancient cartography seem to have been lost during the Medium Age in Western Europe, because since the 8^th century representations of the world of a totally different kind start to appear. To begin with, the world is represented as a more or less circular island, which profile, both external and internal, doesn’t match at all with the reality it is intended to reproduce. It looks more in agreement with Omer’s geography, who conceived the world as a circular island surrounded by the “river ocean”.

 

     Many scholars  talk about a dramatic loss of knowledge in the West in every scientific field during the medium age, especially  for what concerns geography, not taking into consideration the fact that the western world was constantly in very close relation with the East, where this loss didn’t happen; and western traders, those who were more interested in cartography, were always present in  the East. A simple “loss” of knowledge in this field is out of the question. It was rather a loss of interest for a kind of geography which did not respond any more to the new theocentric vision of the world and the search of a new model which could match exigencies of a theological character rather than geographic. It’s not by chance that most of those planispheres were produced in the close of monasteries.

From where did come this new vision of the world? Was it an invention of some monk who never went outside the walls of his monastery, or was it rather inspired to pre-existing geographic models, which the classical culture had put aside,  but which now were again proposed because more in tune with the cosmologic vision of the new cartographers?

 

Babylonian clay tablet world map,	We can exclude that it was an autonomous invention of the western monks, because the model which inspired them came from a very distant past. We find this same model in the most ancient civilisations of the world, like the one found in  ancient Babylonia.
Map of Ibn Hauqal               Tabula Rogeriana	A curious and very significant thing is that the same kind of representation, i.e. a circular island with a river ocean surrounding it, is represented also in the Arab world

 

It was a period of great vitality and big culture of the arabs, who had inherited the great ancient culture; so we cannot attribute the appearance of those geographic representations as a loss of information (as it was supposed for the western world). It looks as if the “model” to which these representations, both in the West as well in the East, in ancient Mesopotamia like in Carolingian France, was the same. A model which apparently has nothing to do with the actual geography of the area where the maps were produced.

A really surprising innovation with respect to Ptolemaic geography, apparently with no justification, of the medieval planispheres is the fact that the cardinal points are rotated of 90 degrees, with the north on the left and the East on the top of the representation.

Could it be that it was inspired by those “source maps” which existence is hypothesised by Hapgood? If indeed those source maps existed, other people before Piri Reis, Finnaeus and Mercator should have seen them and should have drawn maps accordingly.

 

Antarctica at the end of Pleistocene

 

These hypothetical source maps, according to Hapgood had to be originally drawn during a well determined epoch, more or less at the end of Pleistocene or the beginning of Olocene, when the Atlantic costs of Antarctica were deglaciated.

 

 

Let’s suppose, if nothing else as a working hypothesis, that the scenario represented by the author in another section of this conference (Atlantis in Antarctica), was true. That is, the Pleistocene ended up in a catastrophe (the universal flood of Mythology) due to a sudden shift of the poles, triggered by a celestial impact[2].

Let’s then imagine how Antarctica looked like at that time and how a cartographer would have represented it.

First, as we have said, the South pole had to be shifted towards Australia, and fell in front of Wilkes Land, between Adelie and Sabrina Coasts. A very ancient (possibly up to one million years) ice cap covered all this part of Antarctica, pushing far inside the continent. We can be sure that it covered at least all that part of Antarctica where sub glacial lakes (more than 1.500 up to day) have been discovered. Along the Atlantic coasts the ice is very recent and so there are not lakes underneath.

 

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Let’s  then draw a map of Antarctica, assuming that the Peninsula and the Atlantic coast up to Mackenzie Bay were ice free, and that  the sea level was 130 meters lower than today. And let’s put, as it’s natural in a geographic representation, the supposed position of the pole at that time (indicated with a small circle) on the upper side of the map.

This representation does not pretend to be accurate, mainly for one thing: it’s impossible to know what was the precise extent of the ancient ice cap inside the continent, and the profile under the ice cap is not exactly known. But we don’t need an accurate map: only one that should  be in principle more or less as it was at that time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, if the mysterious civilisation hypothesised by Hapgood had its seat in the southern hemisphere, it’s precisely  in this way that they would have represented Antarctica. Impressive in its simplicity,  easy to memorize, easy to reproduce and even to describe verbally. And in this way it had to be represented on the hypothetical “source maps”, which existence is deemed to be necessary in order to explain the peculiar characteristics of the renaissance maps.

Let’s imagine, then, what a medieval monk would have thought, finding amongst the papers of his archive, a map of this kind, of unknown origin. Their geographical meaning was clear; so, obviously he had to think that they represented the only world known to him. He had to reproduce the map, adding schematisation, and placing the more correctly he could the various geographic entities of which he was aware: the Mediterranean and around it Europe, Asia and Africa. And of course Jerusalem right in the middle.

As in his model the Mediterranean was on the bottom of the map, he had to move the north pole on the left; this is something that betrays in a clear way the existence of a model to which he had to remain faithful. There is no other logical justification for this fact.

This representation passed from one monastery to another undergoing modifications and simplification in this process, ending up on one side to the extremely simplified T planispheres, on the other end to very sophisticated geographical representation, like that due to fra Mauro, which represents the Mediterranean and adjacent seas in an absolute faithful manner, still maintaining the essential characteristics of the primitive model.

Let’s then compare some of the most significant planispheres with the pleistocenic Antarctica.

 

 

Pomponius Mela		St.Denis
Ranulf Higden		Cotton Map

 

 

The planispheres of Pomponius Mela, St. Denis, Higden and Cotton are all different form each other. But even from a very superficial examination it is absolutely clear that they all respond to the same basic model.

They all have the north on the left side; a Mediterranean at the bottom-centre, very schematic, with no relation with the real one; a deep inlet on the left and a large gulf on the  top right with a well recognizable profile. Exactly as the representation of Pleistocenic Antarctica.

 

Many planispheres, besides responding to the same basic model, represent the position of the Pleistocene south pole with a small circle on the top of the map. Exactly as in the hypothetical representation of Antarctica of 11 thousand years ago.

 

Hereford		Haldingham map
Sawley or Henry of Magonza	Pleistocenic Antarctica		Psalter Map

 

Here too are clearly recognizable the characteristics of the representation : north pole on the left, circular world surrounded by the ocean, the two tipical inlet on topo right and left and the Mediterranean on the bottom.

These same characteristics are present in the following planispheres from Osma Beatus and  Guido, which however present a higher degree of stylization which eventually would lead to the classical T representations.

 

Osma Beatus map		Beatus  super Apocalypsim,
Beatus of Liebana	Pleistocenic Antarctica		Guido’s map

Only a casual coincidence? If we would let the verdict to an impartial judge, like a computer, there would be no hesitation: those planispheres represent the Antarctica of 11 thousand years ago, more likely than the world known to medieval man.

Not easy to accept, of course, because it implies too big a reverse of the current scientific paradigms. But nonetheless the similarity is undeniable.

 

But what about the Peninsula? Although it was an island, separated by the main continent, it should have been drawn in the hypothetical “source maps”. We can suppose that it was omitted in the medieval planispheres because it didn’t match with the geographical knowledge of that time. But professional geographers like Finaeus and Mercator, who, according to Hapgood, were inspired by the same source maps, couldn’t ignore the existence of the Peninsula in their representations.

As a matter of fact, they didn’t. The geographical nature of their “source map” had to be clear, but it did not match with any land they had knowledge of. It must have been the island “Peninsula” that gave them the clue were to place that not yet discovered land. They had to think that the peninsula represented the tip of South America, that was reached by Magellan on 1519.

From the evidence they had, on the other side of Magellan channel there had to be a large continent, undoubtedly that mysterious land represented on their source map, which couldn’t find any other location in the world. They had to adjust the scale of that representation in order to merge the Peninsula with South America.

 

 

The result: an Antarctic continent out of scale, with its profile faithfully reproduced, as demonstrated by  Hapgood analysis, which cannot be dismissed with a shrug [3]. Even the Peninsula is represented, but “merged” with the tip of South America. Therefore the main objection to Hapggod’s conclusions based on the absence of the  Peninsula, becomes  irrelevant. On the contrary this absence turns out to be a strong point in favour of Hapgood’s hypothesis about the existence of source maps  going back to the end of Pleistocene.

 

Renaissance maps and medieval planispheres admit a logical and coherent explanation rooted in a very distant past and space; they are evidence of the existence in the Atlantic of late Pleistocene or/and early Holocene, of a civilisation  so advanced as to be capable of producing very precise maps of the whole world, but which had a special interest for Antarctica.

 

 

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