The Piri Reis Map
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What is the significance of the Piri Reis Map?
On the morning of October 9th, 1929, a Turkish historian named Halil Edem entered Istanbul's Topkapi Palace. For over four centuries, mighty sultans ruled the vast Ottoman Empire from this very palace. With Edem's help, the Turkish government hoped to turn the palace into a grand museum. But before that could happen, someone had to sort through hundreds of years worth of documents. His eyes danced across the faded yellow pages, but when he unfolded one roll of parchment, he stopped. He held in his hands a map. It was spectacular. The cartographer P. Re Rees had signed and dated it in 1513 CE. It depicted the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, North America, and South America. Intricately drawn ships sailed towards the New World.
Over the continents themselves, the cartographer had sketched rivers, mountain ranges, and icons of people and exotic animals. It took an extraordinary amount of detail and skill to create such a map, but what struck Etta most was how impossibly accurate the South American coastline was. Europeans had only discovered the continent itself 20 years earlier, in 1492. Somehow, Piri had perfectly drawn a massive portion of the Earth that explorers had never been to before. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. And we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Stay with us.
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Who was Piri Reis and what was his background?
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Born around 1465 in Gallipoli, a Turkish peninsula across the Aegean Sea from Greece, Piri Reis' real name was Haji Ahmed Muheddin Piri. The word Reis actually referred to a rank he acquired later in life as a captain in the Ottoman Navy. From a young age, Piri felt at home on the sea. At only 12 years old, he joined a crew of pirates led by his uncle Kamal. For 14 years, Kamal attacked Christian trading ships in the Mediterranean Sea with Piri at his side. The Islamic Ottoman Empire was expanding, but it wanted to avoid open warfare with Italy, Spain, and Portugal. So it contracted captains like Kamal to work as privateers for the empire. Piri's uncle taught him how to pilot a ship and navigate using the stars.
Together they fought battles and plundered ships. They even rescued Jews and Muslims fleeing Catholic persecution in the Spanish peninsula. And in 1495, the Empire officially inducted Piri and Kamal into the Imperial Ottoman Navy. Kamal died in 1510, leaving 45-year-old Piri without his captain and mentor. Freed from obligation, he hung up his pirate boots and turned to his true passion, cartography. He returned to Gallipoli and began work on a map that he hoped would capture the whole world on a single page. This daunting task took three years to complete. Piri gathered more than 200 different charts created over the past 2,000 years. One of his sources was an ancient map supposedly drawn during the reign of Alexander the Great, sometime between 336 and 323 BCE. Many others were drawn by Portuguese and Arabic explorers. To combine all these charts, Piri had to match the contours of each continent's coastline to the other, like fitting together pieces of a puzzle. Even with modern technology, this would be difficult.
But at the time, the task was nearly impossible. According to 20th century historian J.B. Harley, these documents all had to be decoded. A dotted line could mean a road on one map and a river on another. And even when Piri decoded the charts, he still had to deal with their inaccuracies. Back in Alexander's day, most navigators used a technique called dead reckoning.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the significance of the Piri Reis Map?
0:03–2:47
2
Who was Piri Reis and what was his background?
2:47–10:07
3
How did Piri Reis create his map?
10:07–17:04
4
What challenges did ancient navigators face?
17:04–28:40
5
What was the reaction to Piri Reis's map after it was discovered?
28:40–35:12
6
How did the Piri Reis Map relate to Antarctica?
35:12–36:41
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from Conspiracy Theories
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