While talking with a friend about my imminent trip to Turkey, I remembered the Piri Reis map discovered in the Topkapi Palace in 1929. My journalist uncle Don gave me an article about it when I was an impressionable youth (about the same time, and possibly in the same magazine, as photos of the remains of spontaneous human combustion which I remember to this day). The article claimed the 1513 Ottomon-Turkish map showed the outline of the continent of Antarctica beneath the ice sheet - something Piri Reis could only have known from extraterrestrial intelligence! Turns out that it fits
the coast of Patagonia better... Oh well, it remains a remarkable and beautiful map. Seems unlikely I'll get a chance to see it in Topkapi - I gather it's not on regular display. But I will at least be in the same building with it in three days...
While talking with a friend about my imminent trip to Turkey, I remembered the Piri Reis map discovered in the Topkapi Palace in 1929. My journalist uncle Don gave me an article about it when I was an impressionable youth (about the same time, and possibly in the same magazine, as photos of the remains of spontaneous human combustion which I remember to this day). The article claimed the 1513 Ottomon-Turkish map showed the outline of the continent of Antarctica beneath the ice sheet - something Piri Reis could only have known from extraterrestrial intelligence! Turns out that it fits 
the coast of Patagonia better... Oh well, it remains a remarkable and beautiful map. Seems unlikely I'll get a chance to see it in Topkapi - I gather it's not on regular display. But I will at least be in the same building with it in three days...
