ATLAS

Official versionOMEGA-10-21-4Sheet 4 of 6 of the dossier Ancient maps of Antarctica

The cartographers' reading: Columbus and Terra Australis

What historians of cartography say the two maps actually contain: a lost Columbus map and an imagined southern continent.

Large 16th-century world map with a big landmass drawn around the south pole.
Gerardus Mercator's 1569 world map: like earlier maps, it draws a vast hypothetical southern continent that no one had visited. Gerardus Mercator · public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Summary

Historians of cartography read the Piri Reis map and Finé's world map as products of their time. For Piri Reis, scholars attribute the unusual arrangement of the Caribbean to a now-lost map by Columbus, which explains why Cuba and Central America seem fused. The southern coast of the Atlantic Ocean on the map is most likely a version of Terra Australis, the Southern Land. That idea is very old: Aristotle held that the northern continents had to be balanced by an unknown landmass in the south, and Ptolemy believed the Indian Ocean was enclosed on the south by land. Mapmakers of the Renaissance therefore drew a southern continent as an expected feature, not as a surveyed one. Finé's map follows this tradition: his cosmography was derived from the German cosmographer Johannes Schöner, and the legend on his southern land refers to the discovery of Tierra del Fuego by Magellan. As explorers charted the southern hemisphere, the imagined continent shrank, and the belief in it was abandoned after James Cook's second voyage in the 1770s. Specialists also correct the claim of exceptional accuracy: a comparison with other maps of the period found that the Piri Reis map is not the most accurate of its century. Hapgood's own interpretations met with skepticism and were later discredited by research on Antarctic ice.

Official version

  1. Official version

    Scholars attribute the peculiar arrangement of the Caribbean on the Piri Reis map to a now-lost map from Columbus.

    • Piri Reis map, Wikipedia
      Scholars attribute the peculiar arrangement of the Caribbean to a now-lost map
  2. Official version

    The southern coast of the Atlantic Ocean on the Piri Reis map is most likely a version of Terra Australis.

    • Piri Reis map, Wikipedia
      The southern coast of the Atlantic Ocean is most likely a version of Terra Australis
  3. Official version

    The idea of a southern land is ancient: Aristotle held that the northern continents must be balanced by an unknown southern landmass, and Ptolemy believed the Indian Ocean was enclosed on the south by land.

    • Terra Australis, Wikipedia
      Aristotle hypothesised that the continents of the Northern Hemisphere must be balanced out by an unknown landmass in the Southern Hemisphere
  4. Official version

    Finé's cosmography was derived from the German cosmographer Johannes Schöner, and the legend on his southern land refers to the discovery of Tierra del Fuego by Ferdinand Magellan.

    • Oronce Finé, Wikipedia
      Fine's cosmography was derived from the German mathematician and cosmographer Johannes Schöner
  5. Official version

    Belief in the Southern Continent was abandoned after the second voyage of James Cook in the 1770s showed that, if it existed, it was much smaller than imagined.

    • Piri Reis map, Wikipedia
      Belief in the Southern Continent was abandoned after the second voyage of James Cook in the 1770s
  6. Official version

    A comparison with other portolan-style maps found that the Piri Reis map is not the most accurate map of the sixteenth century, as has been claimed.

    • Piri Reis map, Wikipedia
      The Piri Reis map is not the most accurate map of the sixteenth century, as has been claimed
  7. Official version

    Later research on Antarctic paleoclimatology and ice sheets has discredited Hapgood's interpretations that any part of Antarctica had been ice-free in the recent past.