Piri Reis (original name: Hadji Muhammad) was an Ottoman admiral born around 1465, in Gallipoli on the Dardanelles. He began to serve as a privateer in the Ottoman Navy as a youth and after many years of fighting against Spanish, Genoese and Venetian navies, he rose to the rank of Reis (Admiral). Following his defeat in 1554 (when he was about 90 years old) against the Portuguese navy in the Red Sea, the sultan ordered him beheaded.
He was also a cartographer - best known for his maps and charts collected in his Kitab-i Bahrieh or the Book of the Sea.
He gained his fame as a map maker after a small part of his world map (prepared in 1513) was discovered in 1929, in Istanbul.
The most interesting points of the map were its accuracy and a small continent that seemed to be linked to the southernmost tip of Southern America.
Various people including Charles Hapgood and Erich von Daniken considered this as a sign of the discovery of the continent of Antarctica many centuries before the traditionally accepted date, and even as a proof for the presence of extraterrestrial civilizations, which were supposed to have drawn the original map. However, most scientists do not agree that the Piri Reis map is any more accurate than might be expected based on contemporary geographical knowledge and guesswork.
The sources and references of the map have been noted in detail in Ottoman-Turkish on the map and he seems to have based the map on the works of Ptolemy, Portuguese maps, and Christopher Columbus.
The small landmass depicted on the southernmost part of the map is considered to be an imaginary continent, which was assumed to counterbalance the continents of the northern hemisphere, since the time of ancient Greeks (Terra Australis).
More likely though it is just the continuation of the South American coast which would have otherwise had to end abruptly half way down.
There is also evidence that it is a later addition to the original map and is displayed awkwardly only so as to fit in.
The most interesting point of the map is that it reflects Columbus' ideas about the new lands to the west and is probably the best-preserved copy of one of his earliest maps.
- Answer.com
Greek documents and maps showing Atlantis that Christopher Columbus studied before he set sail for America, including the 1482 Benincasa Map showing 3 Atlantis islands that no longer exist. Columbus is also linked with the Bermuda Triangle.
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