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44 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 58
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Number 58 • ATLANTIS
RISING 3
EARLY RAYS
Aramaic text in cup
Cryptic Aramaic Message
Found in Ancient Ritual Cup
A
mysterious 2,000-year-old “ritual” cup
has been discovered by archaeologists in
Jerusalem. Unlike similar cups which have
turned up, this one has 10 lines of Aramaic
or Hebrew text inscribed within it. So far,
the scholars have been unable to translate
the message, but they see the Hebrew word
for God, YHWH, or Yahweh. The message
appears to be deliberately cryptic.
The cup was found near the Zion gate by
a team led by two University of North Carolina archaeologists Shimon Gibson and
James Tabor. The length of the inscription is
unprecedented they say. Usually there are no
words in such cups, or, at most, one line.
Excavated nearby was a ritual bath.
The cup apparently predates the sacking
of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by Titus, a Roman
general who would eventually become
emperor.
Translation of the inscription, it is hoped,
will shed light on the last days of the second
temple of Jerusalem which had been built to
replace the original lost temple of Solomon,
of Old Testament and Masonic fame. The esoteric significance of such a cup and message,
not unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls, is likely to
be hotly debated by scholars for years to
come.
Ireland Lining
Up for Grail
Tourism Bucks
reland is challenging Scotland for its posiIGrail,
tion as the final resting place of the Holy
said to be the cup from which Jesus
drank at the Last Supper and believed by
some scholars to have been in the possession
of the Knights Templar. The argument from
the Irvine Herald newspaper is that instead
of Scotland’s Rosslyn chapel, the abbey at
Kilwinning makes more sense. According to
Jamie Morton, authority on Freemasonry,
and an Irishman as well, there were more
Knights Templar in Ireland than ever in
Scotland. He has compiled, in a new book,
his case that after the fall of the Templars in
1307, Kilwinning was the final repository of
the Grail.
If the new book leads to an upsurge of
tourism to Ireland, comparable to what has
happened at Rosslyn following release of the
book and movie of The Da Vinci code, then,
so be it.
10 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 78
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The Holy Grail by Dante Gabriel Rosetti
Study Says
Ancient
Indus Script
Is a Written
Language
ver five thousand years ago, the reO
gion between India and Pakistan
was home to a relatively advanced civilThe Shroud of Turin
1800-YearOld Words
Discovered
on Shroud
of Turin
he debate over the true age of
T
the Shroud of Turin has taken
a new twist. Thierry Castex, a
French scientist, has reported
finding traces of words on the
cloth in Aramaic spelled with Hebrew letters. Vatican researcher,
Barbara Frale, told Vatican Radio
over the summer that her own research suggests that the letters
were written more than 1800
years ago.
The new discoveries come
even as the carbon dating of the
Shroud undertaken in the 1980s
has been called into question. The
study which declared a medieval
date for the Shroud’s creation has
been shown to be based on a section which had been woven as a
repair into the original linen at a
later date.
Frale recently made news with
her discovery of evidence that
during the 13th and 14th centuries the Shroud was in the custody of the Knights Templar. The
letters on the Shroud, though,
had nothing to do with the Templars, she says, and were probably
portions of the phrase “The King
of the Jews.”
The Shroud of Turin will go
on public display next year.
ization which built complex cities with
sophisticated planning and indoor
plumbing. That much is undisputed,
but could its people read and write?
Some researchers believe the Indus
Valley civilization was, in fact, much
older and was one of the last standing
remnants of an anti-diluvian civilization which once surrounded the ancient but now vanished Sarisvati
River—mentioned in ancient Hindu
scriptures—and extending into what is
now the Gulf of Cambay off India’s west
coast. That culture, it is said, may have
been the original source of Vedic civilization. All of this, of course, is hotly
disputed by mainstream archaeology
which has long viewed the Indus Valley
civilization as essentially pre-literate.
Central to the argument has been a
mysterious and, so far, unreadable
script found on artifacts throughout
the region. In fact, the hieroglyphs of
the script have been found as far away
as Easter Island. The question was:
were the symbols part of a written language or merely the primitive pictographs of a pre-literate people. Now
dramatic new research using advanced
statistical analysis makes the case that
the Indus Valley script was indeed a
written language. The research provides powerful support to the proposition that the Indus Valley civilization
was much more advanced than previously believed.
A joint American and Indian study
led by a University of Washington researcher used computers and mathematics to extract patterns from the
script and show that the placement and
distribution of the symbols bear the
unmistakable characteristics of language. The resulting statistical model
is consistent with the fundamental
grammar of a written language. “Such
a model,” says lead author Rajesh Rao,
a UW associate professor of computer
science, “can be valuable for decipherment, because any meaning ascribed to
a symbol must make sense in the context of other symbols that precede or
follow it.” The study was published in
the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.
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Three Ancient Tablets with Indus Valley Script
Number 78 • ATLANTIS
RISING 11
ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE
Research Casts New Light on Some Very Old Emanations
• BY PATRICK MARSOLEK
J
apanese researchers have recently
proven that the body emanates light.
A man sits in a darkened room in
front of a highly sensitive camera. The
image showing on the screen in the next
room shows visible light emitting from the
man’s body, especially from the face and
neck. The light being recorded is definitely
not infrared radiation but is visible light. It is
at its lowest in the morning and seems to
peak in the afternoon. It may be linked to
the metabolic rhythms of the body.
This research has created quite a buzz in
the media. It has been taken by some to
prove that there is such a thing as the
human aura—a field of energy or light that
is purported to exist around living beings.
Skeptics are being careful to say that the
amount of light the body emits is approximately 1000 times less than that which the
human eye is capable of perceiving.
Does this new research prove that auras
exist? I think a person has to be very clear on
what he is talking about when asking this
question. The dictionary defines an aura
three ways: one, as an invisible breath, emanation, or radiation; two, as an intangible
quality that seems to surround a person or
thing, an atmosphere; or three, as sensation,
as of a cold breeze or a bright light, that pre-
22 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 78
cedes the onset of certain disorders, such as
an epileptic seizure or an attack of migraine.
In the New Age metaphysics, the aura relates
to the first two definitions but also represents a perceivable manifestation of universal energy. It can be ‘read’ or decoded and
can even be healed or ‘cleaned’ if dirty. It is
this popular perception of what the aura represents, and that it can even be perceived,
that irks skeptics.
This current Japanese research would
seem to confirm the first two definitions; an
invisible or intangible radiation and an intangible quality that is, in this case, around a
person. Skeptics are quick to point out how
it doesn’t confirm the existence of the metaphysical aura, especially since the light is far
too subtle to be perceived by the human eye.
As Charles Tart pointed out many years
ago, there are so many different variables involved in what we call the aura that it might
be hard to determine if it is ‘real’. Is the aura
physical or something projected in the psychological sense? Is it real if it is perceivable
by scientific instruments, people, or animals? Is it real if it informs you in some way?
Speaking to the physical aura, it has been
shown by scientific means that there are
many different kinds of emanations coming
from the human body. Along with the light
we now can measure, our bodies also generate infrared radiation, creating a heat gradient around us. With sweat and other body
chemical reactions, we also create a field of
electrical ions. Any living being also generates some sound waves that pulse outwards
from the body. All of these energies create a
mixture of perceivable auras around a living
body.
But there is also the whole realm of electrical and magnetic radiation. The energy
field of the heart was the first to be well documented with the electrocardiogram. Then it
was also discovered that the brain emitted its
own electrical fields. These fields have been
shown to travel throughout the body and
even extend beyond. These bioelectric fields
also produce biomagnetic fields, which also
travel outside the body. These more subtle
energies are detectable by modern, and
sometimes quite expensive, equipment.
It has also been discovered that all tissues
and organs produce specific magnetic pulsations, or biomagnetic fields. The traditional
electrical recordings, such as the electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram, are now
being complemented by biomagnetic recordings, called magnetocardiograms and magnetoencephalograms. Proponents of energy
Continued on Page 59
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ANCIENT WISDOM
• BY ANDREW GOUGH
W
ashington’s Monument, arguably
the most enigmatic testament to
America’s hope and vision for the
future, also contains a powerful
reference to its past: “Holiness to the Lord.
Deseret,” it states, meaning ‘Holiness to the
Lord, the Honeybee.’ The word ‘Deseret’
translates as Honeybee in the language of
the Jaredites, a mysterious tribe that is believed to have migrated to the Americas
during the time of the construction of the
Tower of Babel, according to Mormon tradition. The existence of this peculiar dedication to a bee, let alone its meaning, has
largely been forgotten; but those with eyes to
see know that it hails from a time when civilizations that understood its
contribution flourished and
those who did not perished.
Quite simply, the bee is
UFO abductions, apparitions,
Earth’s most industrious polliand near death experiences.
nator of plants and trees, a
Was this phenomenon known
vital function for sustaining
by the ancients and believed to
life on Earth. They also provide
have been one of the elements
important ritualistic, medicthat made the bee special?
inal, and health food byproducts, such as honey. To
Honey Hunting in Spain
understand the bee’s imporIn Anatolia, a 10,000-yeartance is to appreciate how cruHoney Hunting
old statue of the Mother Godcial these essentials were—still
are—to any advanced society. When we look dess adorned in a yellow and orange Beehiveto the dawn of civilization and trace the ven- style tiara has led scholars to the conclusion
eration of the bee over time, only then do we that the Mother Goddess had begun to
realize how this diminutive creature may morph into the Queen Bee, or bee goddess,
represent the greatest lost tradition in around this time. At the Neolithic settlement
of Catal Huyuk, rudimentary images of bees
history.
Incredibly, bees over 100 million years dating to 6540 BC are painted above the
old have been discovered in amber, frozen in head of a Goddess in the form of a halo; and
time, as if immortalized in their own honey. beehives are stylistically portrayed on the
The Greeks called amber Electron, asso- walls of sacred temples. Not surprisingly, it
ciated with the Sun God Elector, who was was the Sumerians who soon emerged as the
known as the awakener, a term also given to forefathers of organized bee keeping. Mesohoney—which resembles amber—a regener- potamia—modern day Iraq—flourished from
ative substance revered across the ancient the early sixth century BC and is known as
world. This association led to the bees’ illus- the cradle of civilization; and it is here that
trious status amongst ancient man, exalting the Sumerians invented Apitherapy, or the
their fossilized remains over the preserved medical use of bee products such as honey,
pollen, royal jelly, propolis, and venom.
vestiges of all other insects.
Sumerian reliefs depicting the adoration
Prehistory is full of clues that hint at ancient man’s obsession with bees. In the Cave of extraordinary winged figures have often
of the Spider near Valencia in Spain, a been interpreted by alternative history
15,000-year-old painting depicts a deter- writers as proof of extraterrestrial intervenmined looking figure risking his life to ex- tion. In the context of the benefits of beetract honey from a precarious, cliff-side bee- keeping, it is more likely they depict the venhive. Honey hunting represents one of man’s eration of bees. Significantly, the Sumerian
earliest hunter / gatherer pursuits—its very images gave rise to the dancing goddess
difficulty hinting at the genesis of the bee’s motif, a female dancer with her arms arched
adoration in prehistory. And, of course, it over her head that scholars believe reprewas the bee that led ancient shamans to the sents a bee goddess priestess or shaman. The
plants whose hallucinogens transported motif, which would become central to Egyptheir consciousness into the spirit world of tian symbolism, appears to allude to the
the gods. Curiously, recent research has re- bee’s unique ability to communicate through
vealed that the sound of a bee’s hum has dance, the waggle dance as it is known, or
been observed during moments of change in the ability to locate food up to three miles
the state of human consciousness, including from home and return to communicate its
individuals who have experienced alleged whereabouts to the hive through dance, sort
28 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 78
Today’s Threat to
the Honey Bee—
a Reminder of
Forgotten Wisdom?
of prehistoric satellite navigation.
So, society had discovered the immense
value that bees provide, ten thousand years
ago or more, back in the mist of prehistory.
As life along the River Nile evolved and Dynastic rule in ancient Egypt slowly developed, the seeds of bee veneration had already
been sown. But the tradition was about to be
embraced like never before, or since.
The Bee Goddess in Ancient Egypt
Egyptologists, such as David Rohl, believe
that Sumerian culture migrated across the
Eastern Egyptian Desert and into the Nile
Valley. This desolate expanse of Wadis is renowned for its pre-dynastic rock art depicting exalted-looking figures with exaggerated plume-like decorations. The unusual
lines extending upwards from the main figures’ heads recall the antenna of the bee
while hinting at the shape of the plumes that
would characterize the headdress of Egyptian Kingship for thousands of years to
come. The images also depict the Dancing
Goddess motif, a woman with her hands
bowed over her head just as the ‘dancing’ bee
Goddess had been depicted in Sumerian and
Central European reliefs thousands of years
earlier. The icon is widespread in Egyptian
mythology and appears to have originated
from an understanding of the bee’s unique
ability to communicate through ‘dance.’
Another clue to the bee’s artistic influence can be found in ceremonial Egyptian
dress, which has certain stylistic similarities
with the bee, namely the headdress, or
nemes, which consists of alternating yellow
and dark horizontal stripes. This visual synchronicity is discernible in many reliefs and
sculptures but is perhaps best illustrated in
the death mask of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh,
Tutankhamen, which famously depicts the
Pharaoh adorned in alternating black and
yellow stripes or bands, just like a bee.
Continued on Page 61
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UNTOLD HISTORY
Were the Spanish Conquistadors
the First Europeans to
Meet the Aztecs
or Not?
Hernan
Cortes
• BY STEVEN SORA
T
he order of the Knights Templar
would survive for less than two centuries. In the period between 1108
and 1307 it would have a spectacular
rise and a devastating fall. The order’s history
is based equally on legend and fact, in part
because the order wanted it that way. Many
of the order’s secrets remain as secrets even
today. Written records remain concealed;
others have been destroyed; but still others
remain in plain sight for those who understand enough to recognize what they actually
mean.
One of these secrets left in plain sight is
the depiction of maize and aloe carved in
stone in Rosslyn Chapel. The journey of Sir
Henry Sinclair to the New World in 1398 can
account for the depiction of maize, a corn variety known to Native American peoples in
New England [See “Return to Oak Island,”
A.R. #76]. Aloe, however, is a product grown
much further south. While aloe itself could
come from Africa’s tropics, the aloe cactus is
distinctly American and originates far south
of New England where Sir Henry left his
mark.
32 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 78
Could the Templars have reached
All of Mexico
Mexico? There is much evidence from the
shared bound
Spanish explorer Hernando Cortes that the
books of bark and
Aztecs and the Templars had some common
skins, and poshistory. The Aztec civilization, like that of
sibly three or
the Templars, also had only a brief history.
four survived.
Compared to the other ancient peoples of The so-called Madrid codex is decorated and
Mexico and Peru, the Aztecs were modern. inscribed on both sides of all 56 pages which
Despite the historical portrayal that com- gave instructions for raising crops, rainpares them to the Mayans and Incas, like the making, beekeeping, weaving, and hunting.
Templars, their power lasted for only for two
All of Mexico shared a calendar as well.
centuries. The Aztecs then encountered the That calendar was much more accurate than
Spanish who ended their control. Aztec Europe’s Gregorian. The natives were adept
power lasted for a much shorter period than at mathematics and possessed the use of the
that of either the Incas or the Mayans. Coin- zero that Europeans had somehow missed.
Baptism
cidentally, the rise of the Aztecs occurred at TheThey
wereofwatchers of the sky and revered
Leonardo
the same time as the demise of the TemplarJesus,
Venus
as much as the Egyptians had. The
da Vinci
order in Europe. Or was it mere Templar
Knights, also had kept their secrets
coincidence?
hidden, not from the illiterate populace, but
Our knowledge of the Aztecs was substan- from the Church.
tially reduced by the Spanish Catholic
Mexico had first been populated mostly
bishops who destroyed as much of the Aztec by Mayans who peaceably farmed the
literature as could be found. Bishop Diego de southern regions of that country and other
Landa would record that the Spanish found a areas in Central America. Around 1200 BC
large number of books. Since the bishops they met up with the culture historians label
could not read them they decided it was all “Olmec,” whose origin has never been exsuperstition—the work of the devil—and plained. The Olmec may have been the first
burned them.
civilizing force to elevate an agriculturally
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ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE
• BY JOSEPH ROBERT JOCHMANS, Lit.D.
s there, flowing across the world, a
single planetary energy system, long forgotten to modern humanity? And here
and there along the energy pathways, did
a prehistoric global civilization once tap into
its power by building vast transmission and
receiving stations, using various forms of
monumental architecture?
Have today’s historians been so out of
touch with the obvious interconnections of
all of these remains that they have tried to
explain the silent sentinel ruins as nothing
more than “primitive” construction projects
having little meaning or purpose beyond localized superstitious needs?
Were such mysterious sites as Stonehenge in England, or Machu Picchu in Peru,
or the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon near
Mexico City, or the megaliths of Malta, or the
stone heads of Easter Island, or Serpent
Mound in Ohio, or thousands upon thousands of other structures scattered across the
globe, simply a matter of chance arrangement or design? Have the modern theories,
whatever they may be, fallen far short of explaining what really once was?
Is it true that these great monumental
edifices were deliberately fixed into the geometric configuration of an “enchanted” energy landscape? And did they together create
a gigantic, intricate, web-like pattern, the
meaning and purpose of which has defied the
most scholarly of modern archaeologists and
historians to fully explain? What is the
missing element that interlinks everything
into a single fabric and weave, of which the
prehistoric linear patterns among the silent
structures are but the threads?
I
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Is there a universal energy source, once
known but lost to us today which springs,
from the Earth? Was it distributed along the
sacred lines and pathways and broadcast out
of the temples situated at the focal points?
Is this the mythic hidden “power” of magic
and healing at one time shared by everyone,
in a forgotten golden age in the distant
past? How was such a system lost, and can it
be understood and restored again today?
Several leading, modern researchers in
the fields of ancient mysteries and earth energies have gleaned from ancient sources
what may be new answers to these questions regarding the true nature of the planet
and its power systems, as well as how these
have effected not only climatic and geologic
changes in the Earth, but also significant
physical-emotional-mental-spiritual transformations among peoples and nations.
What is also being realized is that ongoing shifts and alterations in personal and
planetary energy fields have subtle yet profound influences on world events. Only as
we can learn more concerning earth energies—how they were once used and can be
rediscovered again today—will we find an
important key to the potential directions of
the future.
Memories of a Broken Web of Power
Among ancient and modern indigenous
peoples the world over are very similar traditions of earth energy patterns and how
they were once utilized. In England, alignments among standing stones and stone circles are called leys, along which flowed the
life force that fertilized the landscape. In
A Broken Web of Power
May Be Our Legacy
from the Distant Past
Ireland they are remembered as fairy paths
and in Germany as holy lines. The Greeks
knew them as the Sacred Roads of Hermes,
while the ancient Egyptians regarded them
as the Pathways of Mim.
The Chinese today still measure the
Lung Mei or “dragon currents” which affect
the balance of the land, as practiced through
the ancient art of feng shui. Much in the
same fashion as the application of acupuncture needles in Chinese medicine helps the
flow of Chi or life force in the human body,
so the placement of pagodas, stones, trees,
temples, and houses in the environment was
regarded as a way to “heal” the earth.
Likewise, the Native Australians still go
on walkabouts or pilgrimages down their
dream paths, crisscrossing the desert in an
effort to seasonally reenergize the life centers of the region. They work with boards
called Turingas which map out the dream
lines; and by meditating on them, they are
able to predict the approach of storms and
the location of game animals as they interact
with the line systems.
The old Polynesians spoke of using the te
lapa or “lines of light” flowing in the ocean
as a method of navigation. The stone heads
of Easter Island and the sacred Ahu platforms of Hawaii were so positioned as to receive their mane or life power along aka
threads from over the watery horizons.
When the Spanish conquistadors entered
Peru in the sixteenth century, they found
the entire Inca Empire organized around
wacas or sacred centers situated along ceque
Continued on Page 66
Number 78 • ATLANTIS
RISING 39
UNTOLD HISTORY
A 1960 Memo to President Eisenhower Aimed
at Locating the “Lost World Map of Columbus”
Here, Verbatim, Is the Message Which Revived a Centuries-Old Quest
To:
President Dwight D.
Eisenhower
From: Charles H. Hapgood
Professor of History
Re: THE PIRI RElS WORLD MAP
OF 1513 AND THE LOST MAP OF
COLUMBUS
Memorandum
For several centuries scholars
have been searching for the lost map
of Christopher Columbus. The map is
referred to by Columbus’ contemporaries, and by the historian Las
Casas, as one he used to navigate by
to the New World.
In 1929 a map was discovered in
the former Imperial Palace (The Seraglio) in Constantinople, authored by
a Turkish admiral of the 16th Century, Piri Reis. In the inscriptions
written on this map the author states
that the western part, showing the
American coasts, was copied from a
map that had been in the possession
of Christopher Columbus, but which
had fallen into the hands of Piri Reis
with the booty seized from eight
Spanish ships captured by him in a
battle off the coast of Valencia in
1501 or 1508.
The Piri Reis map (a copy of
which accompanies this memorandum) attracted the attention of
President Kemal Ataturk, and of the
American Secretary of State, Henry
Stimson, who, in 1932, asked the
Turkish Government for a color facsimile of the map, and for a search of
Turkish archives and collections to
see if the lost map of Columbus
might not be found. The facsimile of
the map now hangs in the Map Division of the Library of Congress, but
the original Piri Reis worked from—
Columbus’ own map (or a copy of
it)—was never found.
We now have excellent reason to
believe that the original map still exists, and in the Spanish archives! The
reason that this map has remained so
long undiscovered appears to be,
simply, that it is very different from
the other contemporary maps and is
not at all what scholars would expect
to find in a map of Columbus. It is
not a map Columbus himself made,
but one he found in the Old World. It
should resemble the western side of
the Piri Reis map, if it can be found.
Evidence of its present whereabouts
came to me through my old
friend and scientific collaborator, James H. Campbell,
who, together with his father,
a professional geographer,
actually saw this map in
1893. I am enclosing a separate account of this incident in Mr. Campbell’s own
words. It seems that in
1893, at the time of the Columbian Exposition at Chicago, the Spanish Government built and sent to
America replicas of Columbus’ three ships. The
caravels were sailed
across the Atlantic, and
through the Great Lakes
to Chicago. It was there
that Mr. Campbell and
his father were invited,
as he describes in detail,
to see Columbus’ own
map in the chart room of
the Santa Maria!
In addition to the important purpose of
clearing up many mysteries
relating to the Discovery of
America, we have another
purpose in asking that a
search be made for the
map now. Studies of the
map by various scholars
have shown that it contains many details that
were not known to geographers in 1513. These
indicate that the map
must descend from maps
made in very ancient
times, and that navigators (possibly of Phoenician origin) discovered
and explored the
coasts or Americas perhaps a millennium before the Christian era.
This, of course, tends
to give support to the
tradition that Columbus brought a map
from the Old World. It
seems that
Columbus left the Old
World with quite a
good map of America in his pocket!
The most remarkable detail of the
Piri Reis map indicating its enormous
age was pointed out by Captain Arlington H. Mallory some years ago.
He stated that the lower part of this
• Number
• Number
7878
ATLANTIS
ATLANTIS
RISING
RISING
4242
Bust of
Henry
Sinclair
map showed the sub-glacial topography of Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, and the Palmer Peninsula. After
four years of study of the map we
came to recognize that Captain
Mallery’s statement was correct, but,
desiring the most authoritative
checking of our conclusions, we submitted the
data to the cartographic
staff of the Strategic Air
Command. I attach a letter
from Col. Harold Z. Ohlmeyer, Commander of the
8th Reconnaissance Technical Squadron, SAC, in
confirmation. Needless to
say this is a matter of enormous importance for cartography and for history.
The Antarctic ice cap is at
present one mile thick over
the areas shown on the Piri
Reis Map. Consultations
with geological specialists
have indicated beyond
question the truth that the
data on the map is many
thousands of years old. It
seems that the Antarctic ice
cap covered the queen
Maud Land coast not later
than 6,000 years ago. The
map information must have
been obtained earlier, either
by the Phoenicians or by
some earlier (and unknown)
people.
If the Columbus map
can now be found we shall
learn whether it contained
the Antarctic data, or
whether Piri Reis used another source map. If the
Columbus map did contain
the data, then we will
know he found the map in
Europe, and that therefore
he had a good idea of
where he was going.
We have found, in our
long study of the Piri Reis
map, a number of errors
which explain, in our
opinion, Columbus’ confusion as to whether Cuba was
the mainland, and his underestimate of the distance to
America.
The most important step at
the present time is to push the
search in Spain for the map that
was on the replica of the Santa
Maria during the summer of
1893. Success in this search will
make it possible to rewrite, in a
fundamental way, the history of
the Discovery of America.
Very sincerely yours,
Charles H. Hapgood
Keene Teachers College
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Christopher Columbus
(Painting by Carl von Piloty)
Did Charles Hapgood
Enlist President
Eisenhower in a Wild
Goose Chase or Was It
Something Much
More Astonishing?
The
Piri
Reis
Map
of 1513
The Secret Search for the
Missing Map of Columbus
• BY RAND & ROSE FLEM-ATH
P
rofessor Charles Hapgood’s memo
got the President’s attention. He instructed the American Ambassador
to Spain to use his influence to find
the ancient map that Columbus had on
board during his historic 1492 voyage across
the Atlantic.
Hapgood was seeking the holy grail of ancient maps, the so-called mappa mundus
thought to be the original map of the world.
He believed the Piri Reis map was but a fragment of this much older complete and accurate document that predated the Age of European Discovery.
In November 1929, Halil Edhem, the Director of Turkey’s National Museum, was
hunched over his solitary task of classifying
documents. He pulled towards him a map
drawn on Roe deer skin. As Halil opened the
chart to its full dimensions (two feet by three
feet wide or 60 X 90 cm) he was surprised by
how much of the New World was depicted on
a map dated 1513.
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The document was the legacy of a pirate
turned Turkish Admiral, Piri Reis (circa
1470-1554). He was born in Gallipoli, a naval
base on the Marmara Sea and was the
nephew of Kemal Reis, a pirate who had reinvented himself as a Turkish Admiral adventurer who made his name in naval warfare.
Piri Reis sailed with his famous uncle from
1487 to 1493. It was during these voyages
that he was introduced to the lucrative spoils
of piracy. The fleet fought pirates and captured and plundered enemy ships. In 1495,
Kemal Reis’ skill in the art of battle earned
him an invitation to join the Imperial
Turkish Fleet. His nephew accompanied him
to his new assignment.
The pirates had transformed into respectable Admirals.
After Kemal was killed during a naval
battle in 1502, Piri Reis turned his back on
the seafaring life and began a second career
as a map maker. A perfectionist—Piri Reis
would not tolerate the slightest error in his
drawings. In 1513 he created his famous
map. He relied on older source maps—
including charts captured from Christopher
Columbus when the Turks raided one of his
ships before the crew had a chance to throw
the charts overboard.
A Columbus Controversy
The general public first learned of the
map’s existence in the 27 February 1932
issue of the Illustrated London News. The article, entitled, “A Columbus Controversy:
America—And Two Atlantic Charts,” noted
that: ... Columbus got little further than the
mouth of the Orinoco, in Venezuela, in his
voyage along the coast of South America in
1498, so that the stretches of the South
American coast given in the Piri Reis’s chart
must have been copied from other sources.
In the July 23 edition of the magazine,
Akcura Yusuf, President of the Turkish Historical Research Society, wrote a more detailed account.
“Piri Reis himself explains, in one of the
marginal notes on his map, how he prepared
it:
This section explains the way the map was
prepared. It is the only chart of its kind existing now. I, personally, drew and prepared
it. In preparing the map I used about twenty
old charts and eight Mappa Monde (i.e. the
charts called Jaferiye by the Arabs, and prepared at the time of Alexander the Great, in
which the whole inhabited world is shown);
the charts of the West Indies; and the new
maps made by four Portuguese, showing the
Sind, Indian, and Chinese Seas geometrically
represented. I also studied the chart that
Christopher Columbus drew for the West. By
reducing all these charts to a single scale, I
compiled the present map. My map is as
Continued on Page 69
Number 78 • ATLANTIS
RISING 43
LOST HISTORY
Vinland Map
The Vinland Map Is for Real
New Study Makes the Case that the Vikings Were Here Before Columbus
• BY FRANK JOSEPH
S
cholars, convinced our continent was
hermetically sealed off from the outside world before the arrival of Christopher Columbus, have been struck a
heavy blow. A map long branded a hoax, because it indicates European awareness of
America prior to 1492, has been found to be
genuinely pre-Columbian.
Last July, world-class experts in document authentication at the Royal Danish
Academy of Fine Arts presented the results of
their study at Copenhagen’s International
Conference on the History of Cartography.
According to Rene Larsen, director of the
School of Conservation, “We have so far
found no reason to believe that the Vinland
Map is the result of a modern forgery. All the
tests that we have done over the past five
years—on the materials and other aspects —
do not show any signs of fraud.”
The document in question does far more
than prove old-world Europeans beat Co-
44 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 78
lumbus across the Atlantic Ocean. Bound in
a mid-15th Century history of the Mongols,
the so-called “Vinland Map” was re-drawn
from a two-hundred-year older compilation
of several, earlier maps indicating extensive
knowledge of what is now the eastern United
States going back a thousand years. The land
mass portrayed farthest to the left, identified
as Vinilanda Insula, encompasses an area
from Maine in the north to the Carolinas in
the south; from the Atlantic Seaboard to the
Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania.
Although compressed—directions, as
well as some proportions, are skewered—
details are less distorted than geographically
correct. An overlay of the Vinland section
forms a template for virtually every twist and
turn of Maine’s northern boundary at the
Saint John River, just as the east coast down
to Charleston, South Carolina, is clearly defined. Chesapeake Bay, undiscovered until
1586, and Lake Ontario, first visited by
Jesuit missionaries seventy-five years later,
are explicitly portrayed. The large region
represented here must have been experienced by many Norse explorers over a protracted period of time. No single discoverer
could have undertaken such extensive journeys during the course of one lifetime. Moreover, the strange combination of disproportion and accuracy does indeed suggest a later
compilation of many maps made by different
travelers on separate journeys over time. An
anonymous medieval cartographer endeavored to combine them into a single map encompassing all areas of North America explored and known from 1000 AD.
The creation of these individual maps also
implies that relations between Scandinavian
visitors and tribal native Americans must not
have been as contentious as some Nordic
sagas have portrayed them. History records
that the Vikings were as adept at commerce
as they were at war, and more commonly engaged in trade than pillage. The geographical
information that went into the Vinland Map
Continued on Page 71
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