Incredible Facts

Probably, most people who have long graduated from school will not immediately be able to give an answer about the difference between the Arctic, Antarctica and Antarctica - where are they located, and how do they differ?

Many doubt the main score due to the similarity of names and almost identical climatic conditions.

We can only say with confidence that there is a lot of snow, ice and icebergs here and there.



What are the similarities between the Arctic, Antarctica and Antarctica

To better understand how they are similar and how they differ, it is worth starting with what these places have in common.


Name

To be more precise, this is not a similarity, but rather a contrast.

The word "Arctic" is of Greek origin. Arktos means bear. This is due to the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, by which people are guided in search of the North Star, that is, the main northern landmark.

The word "Antarctica" was invented quite recently, or rather in the twentieth century. The history of its origin is not so interesting. The fact is that "Antarctica" is a combination of the two words "anti" and "Arctic", that is, the opposite part of the Arctic, or the bear.

Climate


Eternal snow and icebergs are the result of harsh climate conditions. This is the second similarity of the above territories.

However, it should be noted that the similarity is not entirely complete, since the climate of the Arctic is still milder due to warm currents, going far enough along the northern coast of the Eurasian continent. Here the minimum temperature is minimum temperature Antarctica.

What is the difference between the Arctic, Antarctica and Antarctica

Arctic


The northern polar region of our planet, which is adjacent to the North Pole.

The Arctic includes the outskirts of two continents - North America and Eurasia.

The Arctic includes almost the entire Arctic Ocean and many islands in it (except for the coastal islands of Norway).

The Arctic includes adjacent parts of two oceans - the Pacific and the Atlantic.

The average temperature in the Arctic is -34 C.

Arctic (photo)



Antarctic


This is the southern polar region of our planet. As already mentioned, its name can be translated as "the opposite of the Arctic."

Antarctica includes the continent of Antarctica and adjacent parts of the three oceans - the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian along with the islands.

Antarctica is the most severe climate zone Earth. Both the mainland and nearby islands are covered with ice.

The average temperature in Antarctica is -49 C.

Antarctica on the map



Antarctica (photo)



Antarctica

A continent located in the southernmost part of the globe.


Antarctica on the map


Simply put:

Antarctica and Antarctica


1. Antarctica is the mainland. Square given continent is 14.1 million sq. km., which puts it in 5th place in terms of area among all continents. He overtook only Australia in this parameter. Antarctica is a deserted continent discovered by the Lazarev-Bellingshausen expedition in 1820.

2. Antarctica is a territory that includes both the mainland Antarctica itself, and all the islands adjacent to this mainland and the waters of the three oceans - the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian. According to foreign scientists who call the Antarctic waters Southern Ocean The area of ​​Antarctica is about 86 million square kilometers. km.

3. Relief Antarctica is much more diverse than the topography of the mainland that it includes.


Tourists crossing the Dardanelles in the Canakkale region are usually so carried away by stories about the armies of Xerxes and Alexander the Great who crossed the Dardanelles many centuries ago that they completely ignore the modest bust installed on the European side of the strait next to the crossing. Few people know that the modest signature "Piri Reis" below the bust links this place to one of history's most intriguing mysteries.

In 1929, a map dated 1513 was discovered in one of the ancient palaces of Constantinople. The map, perhaps, would not have aroused much interest if it were not for the image of the Americas on it (one of the earliest in history) and the signature of the Turkish admiral Piri Reis. Then, in the 1920s, in the wake of the national upsurge, it was especially important for the Turks to emphasize the role of the Turkish cartographer in creating one of the earliest maps of America. The map began to be closely studied, as well as the history of its creation. And here is what has been revealed.

In 1513, the admiral of the Turkish fleet, Piri Reis, completed work on big map world for his geographical atlas "Bahriye". He himself did not travel much, but when compiling a map, he used about 20 cartographic sources. Of these, eight maps belonged to the time of Ptolemy, some belonged to Alexander the Great, and one, as Piri Reis writes in his book The Seven Seas, "was recently compiled by an infidel named Colombo." And then the admiral says: “An infidel named Colombo, a Genoese, discovered these lands. A book fell into the hands of the named Colombo, in which he read that on the edge of the Western Sea, far in the West, there are shores and islands. All kinds of metals and precious stones were found there. The aforementioned Colombo studied this book for a long time ... Colombo also learned about the passion of the natives for glass jewelry from this book and took them with him to exchange them for gold.

Let's leave aside Columbus and his mysterious book for now, although a direct indication that he knew where he was sailing is already amazing. Unfortunately, neither this book nor the map of Columbus has come down to us. But several sheets of the map from the Bahriye atlas miraculously survived and were published in Europe in 1811. But then they were not given much importance. Only in 1956, when the Turkish Marine officer presented maps as a gift to the US Marine Hydrographic Office, US military cartographers conducted a study to confirm or refute the seemingly impossible: the map depicted the coastline of Antarctica - 300 years before it was discovered!

A report was soon received: "The assertion that Bottom part The maps show the Princess Martha Coast [part of] Dronning Maud Land in Antarctica, as well as the Palmer Peninsula, is substantiated. We found this explanation to be the most logical and possibly correct. The geographic details depicted at the bottom of the map are in perfect agreement with the seismic data taken through the ice cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition in 1949. This means that the coastline was mapped before it was covered in ice. The ice in this area is approximately 1.5 km thick. We have no idea how these data could be obtained with the assumed level of geographical knowledge in 1513.

So the Piri Reis map began to reveal its secrets. Here are just a few of them.

The map accurately shows the coastline of Antarctica

Antarctica as a continent was discovered in 1818, but many cartographers, including Gerard Mercator, still believed in the existence of a continent in the extreme south and plotted its supposed outlines on their maps. The Piri Reis map, as already mentioned, displays the coastline of Antarctica with high accuracy - 300 years before its discovery!

But this is not the biggest mystery, especially since several ancient maps are known, including the Mercator map, which, as it turned out, depicts, and very accurately, Antarctica. Previously, they simply did not pay attention to this, because the “appearance” of the continent on the map can be greatly distorted depending on the map projections used: it is not so easy to project the surface onto a plane the globe. The fact that many ancient maps accurately reproduce not only Antarctica, but also other continents became known after calculations made in the middle of the last century, taking into account various projections used by old cartographers.

But the fact that the Piri Reis map shows the coast of Antarctica, not yet covered with ice, is difficult to comprehend! After all, the modern appearance of the coastline of the southern continent is given by a powerful ice cover that goes far beyond the boundaries of real land. It turns out that Piri Reis used the sources that were compiled by people who saw Antarctica before the glaciation? But this cannot be, since these people should have lived millions of years ago! The only explanation accepted by modern scientists for this fact is the theory of the periodic change of the Earth's poles, according to which the last such change could occur about 6,000 years ago, and it was then that Antarctica began to be covered with ice again. That is, we are talking about navigators who lived 6000 years ago and compiled maps, according to which (as in the map of Piri Reis) modern ones were clarified? Incredible...

The map is tied to Cairo

Interestingly, the Piri Reis map also gives an answer to the question of where these ancient sailors lived. (Or not navigators, if they used other means of transportation?) The fact is that a professional cartographer, studying an ancient map and comparing it with modern ones, can determine what kind of projection the map creator used. And when the Piri Reis map was compared with the modern one, compiled in a polar equal-area projection, they found their almost complete similarity. In particular, the map of the Turkish admiral of the 16th century literally repeats the map compiled by the US Air Force during the Great Patriotic War.

But a map drawn in polar equal area projection must have a center. In case of American card it was Cairo, where during the war there was an American military base. And from this, as shown by the Chicago scientist Charles Hapgood, who thoroughly studied the Piri Reis map, directly follows that the center of the ancient map, which became the prototype of the admiral's map, was located exactly there, in Cairo, or its environs. That is, the ancient cartographers were the Egyptians who lived in Memphis, or their more ancient ancestors, who made this place a reference point.

Mathematical apparatus of cartographers

But whoever they were, they skillfully mastered their craft. As soon as the researchers began to study the fragments of the map of the Turkish admiral that have come down to us, they faced the question of the authorship of its primary source. The Piri Reis map is the so-called portolan, sea ​​chart, which allows building "lines between ports", that is, sailing between port cities. In the 15th-16th centuries, such maps were much more perfect than land maps, but, as noted by one of the leading scientists in this field, A.E. Nordenskiöld, they did not develop. That is, the maps of the 15th century were of the same quality as the maps of the 14th century. This, from his point of view, indicates that the skill of cartographers was not acquired, but borrowed, that is, in other words, they simply redrawn older maps, which is natural in itself.


But what does not fit in the head is the accuracy of the constructions and the mathematical apparatus, without which these constructions simply cannot be performed. Let me give you just a few facts.

It is known that in order to build geographical map, that is, displaying a sphere on a plane, it is necessary to know the dimensions of this sphere, that is, the Earth. Even in ancient times Eratosthenes was able to measure the circumference of the globe, but he did it with a large error. Until the 15th century, no one specified these data. However, a thorough study of the coordinates of objects on the Piri map indicates that the dimensions of the Earth were taken into account without error, that is, the compilers of the map had more accurate information about our planet at their disposal (not to mention the fact that they represented it as a ball). Researchers of the Turkish map also convincingly showed that the compilers of the mysterious ancient source were trigonometric (the Reuss map was drawn using planar geometry, where latitudes and longitudes are at right angles. But it was copied from a map with spherical trigonometry! Ancient cartographers not only knew that the Earth there is a ball, but they also calculated the length of the equator with an accuracy of about 100 km!) And cartographic projections that were not known to either Eratosthenes or even Ptolemy, and they theoretically could use the ancient maps stored in the Library of Alexandria. That is, the original source of the map is definitely more ancient.

Both Americas are shown on the map

The Piri Reis map is one of the first to show both Americas. It was compiled 21 years after the voyage of Columbus and the "official" discovery of America. And it marks not only the exact coastline, but also the rivers, and even the Andes. And this despite the fact that Columbus himself did not map America, having sailed only to Caribbean!

The mouths of some rivers, in particular the Orinoco, are shown on the Piri Reis map with an "error": river deltas are not indicated. However, this is more likely not an error, but rather an expansion of the deltas over time, as was the case with the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia in the last 3500 years.

Columbus knew where he was going

Piri Reis claimed that Columbus knew where he was sailing, thanks to a book that fell into his hands. The fact that Columbus's wife was the daughter of the Grand Master of the Order of the Templars, which had already changed its name by that time, had significant archives of ancient books and maps, indicates possible path the acquisition of a mysterious book (today much has already been written about the Templar fleet and the high probability of their regular voyages to America).

There are many facts indirectly confirming that Columbus owned one of the maps that served as the source for the Piri Reis map. For example, Columbus did not stop ships at night, as was customary because of the fear of running into reefs in unknown waters, but went under full sail, as if he knew for sure that there would be no obstacles. When a riot began on the ships due to the fact that the promised land did not show up, he managed to convince the sailors to endure another 1000 miles and was not mistaken - exactly 1000 miles later the long-awaited shore appeared. Columbus carried a supply of glass ornaments with him, hoping to exchange them for gold from the Indians, as recommended in his book. Finally, each ship carried a sealed packet with instructions on what to do if the ships lost sight of each other during a storm. In a word, the discoverer of America knew well that he was not the first.

The Piri Reis map is not the only one

And the map of the Turkish admiral, the source for which was, among other things, the maps of Columbus, is not the only one of its kind. If we set ourselves the goal, as Charles Hapgood did, to compare the images of Antarctica on several maps compiled before its "official" discovery, then there will be no doubt that they exist. common source. Hapgood scrupulously compared the maps of Piri, Arantheus Finaus, Hadji Ahmed and Mercator, made at different times and independently of each other, and determined that they all used the same unknown source, which made it possible to depict the polar continent with the greatest certainty long before its discovery.

Most likely, we will no longer know for sure who and when created this primary source. But its existence, convincingly proved by the researchers of the map of the Turkish admiral, indicates the existence of a certain ancient civilization with level scientific knowledge, comparable to the modern one, at least in the field of geography (the Piri map, as already mentioned, made it possible to refine some modern maps). And this casts doubt on the hypothesis of a gradual linear progress of mankind in general and science in particular. One gets the feeling that the greatest knowledge about nature, as if obeying an unknown law, at a certain stage becomes available to mankind, in order to be lost later and ... be reborn again when the time comes. And who knows how many discoveries the next find will contain?

Antarctica is an icy continent in the very south of the planet. The sixth continent was discovered by Russian navigators Thaddeus Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev in 1820.

According to international convention about Antarctica, this territory does not belong to any state in the world.

There is no permanent population here, but an active scientific activity. Seven out of 45 Antarctic stations belong to Russia. Antarctica has huge reserves of fresh water (about 80% of all fresh water on Earth), and there are also significant mineral reserves.

Map of Antarctica

Despite the huge natural resources, the entire world community recognizes the inadmissibility of intrusion into the fragile world of Antarctic nature, now only the tourism business is actively developing here. About six thousand tourists visit these harsh places every year! You and I can try to understand what attracts tourists to this distant continent so much by taking an online walk along this amazing land(See “Antarctica Walk” and “Antarctica Online”).

IN last years interesting studies of the relief of the mainland were carried out and new maps were compiled. The study of the topography under the Antarctic ice sheet is critical to understanding the dynamics of the ice sheet, its thickness, and the impact on the surrounding ocean and global climate.

satellite antarctica

Influencing ocean currents and sea level rise, this continent plays a huge role in the Earth's climate system. Using various methods, researchers are trying to predict how Antarctica will react to climate change.

Information about the thickness of the ice and the structure of the mainland was limited. Now, thanks to work done by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), scientists have a new detailed map continent. The video will tell us how the work on compiling the map was carried out:

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Antarctica: description, photo, where it is on the map, how to get

Antarctica- the southernmost, and at the same time the coldest continent on Earth, washed by the waters of the Southern Ocean. Near mainland there are also a number of adjacent islands. Antarctica was the last continent discovered by scientists. Today, tours to this glacial continent are possible from South America and New Zealand. It is included in 1000 the best places world according to our site.

The total area of ​​the continent exceeds 14 million km², and its ice cover is more than 80% of all fresh water our planet. The study of glaciers has become a special field of science called "glaciology". Scientists for centuries could not get to the interior of Antarctica, as it was blocked by ice shelves. So, in the 18th century, the English navigator J. Cook, setting off in search of the last continent, crossed the line of the Antarctic Circle, but never found it.

F. Bellingshausen and M. Lazarev are considered to be the discoverers of the mainland. It was these Russian travelers who in 1820 managed to swim up to the eternal glaciers of Antarctica. The Norwegian polar explorer R. Amundsen made his way deep into the mainland already in the 20th century. Continuous exploration on the continent began in the 1950s. Currently, for all inquisitive tourists, excursions are conducted on board the expedition liner.

Such excursions provide an opportunity to admire the majestic sheer ice floes, which in some places reach 180 meters in height. Some of these hulks are as big as entire states. Icebergs often form on their basis. One of the most unique features in the Southern Ocean is the Ross Ice Shelf. It has long been the hallmark of Antarctica.

Its area is more than 470 thousand km².

This giant object was discovered by the English explorer J. Ross, after whom it got its name. Today, interested tourists have the opportunity to get to the glacier with transparent blue walls by helicopter flight. Eyewitnesses claim that the spectacle is fantastic.

Off the western shores of the mainland, there is another picturesque hulk - the Ronne-Filchner glacier. The easiest way to get to it is from the city of Ushuaia in Argentina. It is said that once every 15 years an iceberg breaks off from the glacier and for the sake of this spectacle it is worth visiting an Antarctic cruise. And, of course, many people want to visit the so-called "capital" of Antarctica - on the McMurdo Ice Shelf. It is home to over 100 buildings and a major research station.

Photo attraction: Antarctica

Antarctica on the map:

Antarctica is the main polar region of the planet, which includes the mainland Antarctica, as well as other islands and seas.

Axis has already been over 200 years of this Suvorian region to drive mandrivniks and dosledniks to oneself. James Cook, having risen in price with the polar seas in 1774, having built only heaps of sea criga on his way. Without watering the land, the great navigator categorically declared that there was no pivdenny mainland. Since then, perhaps, no one has tried to make jokes.

The last significant successes in the passage to Antarctica were reached by the expeditions of the Englishmen William Smith and Edward Brandswilde. The Russians Fadey Bellingshausen and Mikhailo Lazarev are respected as the pioneers of the mainland, as if by their expedition of 1820 they brought the foundation of the mainland to the rock, they marked out the boundary of the special climate.

The next seventy fates of the mainland rose from the sea - too soon to be suvorim and impregnable, they took care of it. Lesser in 1895 by the Norwegians L. Christensen and K. Borchgrevink mainland stage The legacy of Antarctica - many people visited the shores of the continent and chose the first collection of not rich Antarctic flora. In the XX century, expeditions to Antarctica become regular - Britain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Australia, Japan send their expeditions there.

Under the root of the Pivdenny Pole, the baby was born in 1911. Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who outperformed his competitor English Robert Scott for a month.

Antarctica - the mainland at Pivdenniy pivkul, lie near the pivdenny geographic pole. The area with shelf ice floes and islands in the middle is 14,100 yew. km2.

Antarctica is surrounded by three oceans: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific. Inland seas Antarctica, obviously, can not, because 99% of its territory is covered by ice floes.

The volume of ice is 24.9 million km3 - over 80% of the volume of fresh water on the planet.

Antarctica is the largest continent on the planet. The ice curve, which has settled here about 20 million years ago, in some places rises to a height of 4,800 m. indigenous that upper ice age.

The average height of the mainland is more than 2,000 m (the highest in the middle of other continents), while the part of the plain arid part of Antarctica has fallen under the tovshey ice and is lower than the sea level. The western part is cut off by ridges, one of which is crowned by the wild volcano Erebus. Transantarctic mountains stretch across the mainland. The best point of the mainland is located on the Vinson massif (5,140 m). The ice-buildings of Antarctica are steadily collapsing. On the edges of the mainland, the ice rises, appeasing icebergs.

In Antarctica, a rich brown copalin was found (kam'yan vugillya, ore deposits, chromium, nickel, gold). That z looking at the severity of the climate and the unsafe destruction of the ecologically equal to the unique region of the planet, the growth of genera was recognized as invisible and not social.

More interesting articles:


Lithospheric catastrophe and ancient maps of Antarctica

Map of Piri Reis 1513


In 1929, a map was discovered in the ancient imperial palace in Constantinople that excited many. It was drawn on parchment and dated 919 according to the Muslim calendar, which corresponded to 1513 according to the Christian calendar. It was signed by Piri ibn Haji Mamed, admiral of the Turkish fleet, now known as Piri Reis.



Lithospheric catastrophe and ancient maps of Antarctica. At one time, Piri Reis made other interesting statements about the sources from which he drew information. He used about twenty maps, mostly from the time of Alexander the Great, as well as maps compiled on a strict mathematical basis, scientists who studied his map, discovered in the 1930s, could not take these admissions with confidence. But now their truth is being revealed.


After some time, public attention faded to the map, and scientists rejected it as an analogue of the “Columbus map”. She was not heard from until 1956, when in Washington, as a result of a happy accident, interest in her flared up again. A Turkish naval officer presented the maps as a gift to the US Marine Hydrographic Office.


The map was then sent to M. I. Walters, the cartographer of the naval headquarters.


It so happened that Walters gave the map to his friend, a specialist in ancient cartography and the initiator of new scientific directions at the junction with archeology. It was Captain Arlington H. Mallery. After brilliant career engineer, navigation specialist, archaeologist and writer, he devoted a number of years to the study of ancient maps, especially Viking maps North America and Greenland. Taking the map home, he came to curious conclusions. In his opinion, its southern part reflected the bays and islands of the Antarctic coast, or rather the Queen Maud Land, now hidden under ice. Thus, someone has already mapped these areas when they were free of ice cover.


These claims were so incredible that they could not be taken seriously by most professional geographers, although Walters himself felt that Mallery must be right.


Neither medieval masters nor famous ancient Greek geographers could draw such maps. Their characteristics indicate an origin from a culture with more high level technology than that which was achieved in the Middle Ages or ancient times.



According to Piri Reis himself, it was a map of the “seven seas” and included Africa and Asia, as well as the northern part, in addition to the surviving piece.


It turned out that the position of some points on the Piri Reis map was very accurate, while others were not strictly fixed. Gradually we understood the reason for such inaccuracies. It turned out that this map was compiled from smaller maps of individual territories (perhaps drawn in different times and different people), and errors accumulated as it was created.


Component maps from ancient times were more accurate and reliable than later depictions. earth's surface. And this speaks of the decline of science, from ancient times to modern history.


The longitude and latitude of the coastline is determined quite accurately. This is also true for the North Atlantic islands, with the exception of Madeira. The accuracy of the longitude of the African coast, where it is greatest, can be explained by our assumption of the center and radius of the projection, but with some adjustments.


It can be seen from the portolan with a modern coordinate grid that the coasts separated by the Atlantic have approximately correct corresponding values ​​of longitude relative to the projection center on the meridian of Alexandria. This leads to the belief that the first compiler must have determined the correct longitude over the entire space from the Alexandrian meridian to Brazil itself.


It is also important that most of the islands are located on the true longitude.


The exact location of the islands suggests that they were already on the ancient map used by Piri Reis.


Piri Reis, in all likelihood, had ancient maps in his possession while in Constantinople, and it is quite possible that some of them came to the West long before him.


In 1204, the Venetian fleet, making crusade to the Holy Land, attacked and captured Constantinople. And for 60 years after that, Italian merchants had the opportunity to redraw maps from the Byzantine collection.



We have reason to believe that good map The St. Lawrence River was accessible to Europeans even before the voyage of Columbus in 1492. It even shows the islands near the mouth. The compiler of this map, Martin Beheim, also placed it on the globe, which he created shortly before the return of Columbus from the first voyage.


The historian Las Casas testified that Columbus had a world map, which he showed to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, after which they were convinced that the idea was not hopeless.


A number of world maps of the 16th century show the Antarctic continent. As will be seen from what follows, Gerhard Mercator believed in its existence. Comparing all the maps, one can single out only one or two main groups depending on different projections. In accordance with them, Antarctica was copied or recopied only with some amendments by various cartographers.


Mercator Map of Antarctica


Gerhard Kremer, better known as Mercator, is considered the most important cartographer of the 16th century. There is even a tendency to start scientific cartography in his name. And yet there has never been a cartographer more interested in antiquity, more indefatigable in the search for ancient maps, or more respectful of the study of bygone eras.


If Mercator did not believe in Antarctica, it would be understandable why he did not include the map of A. Finaus in his Atlas. He didn't publish a fantasy book. But we have good reason to believe that he admitted the possibility of the existence of this continent: Antarctica on the maps was drawn by him personally. One of her images appeared on folio 9 in the Atlas of 1569 edition.


The projection on the Mercator map of Antarctica is just the one that is named after him. The meridians run parallel from pole to pole, and this, as already noted, greatly exaggerates the size of the polar regions.



Earlier, in 1538, Mercator drew a world map, and also with Antarctica. Its similarity with the work of A. Finaus is striking, but there are also significant differences. Mercator's antarctic circle is inside the continent, like Finaus's, but not at the same distance from the pole. In other words, it looks like Mercator has changed the scale.


On the Finaus map, as has already been shown, the so-called "circus antarcticus" was erroneously presented as the 80th parallel of the original source. Mercator violated the original scale, so we cannot reconstruct the latitude grid on this map, as we have done elsewhere. The value of the longitudes turned out to be extremely accurate.


It seems that Mercator constantly used the ancient primary sources that were available to him. What happened to them afterwards, we do not know, but their influence can be detected, at least in those cases when Mercator lacked information from contemporary travelers, and he depended on ancient materials.


With regard to the map of South America in 1569, a number of interesting details emerge here.


First of all, in relation to the northern coast, it is quite clear that Mercator was dominated by ancient maps, as well as materials from contemporary expeditions. He incorrectly placed the Amazon in relation to the equator, as it was on the map of Piri Reis. But here the course of the river is shown correctly with a number of bends - a meander. The island of Marajo, correctly aligned with the equator on the Piri Reis projection, is here confused with the island of Trinidad at the mouth of the Orinoco. And Trinidad is thus doubled in size. South- East Coast South America from the Tropic of Capricorn to Cape Horn is very poorly drawn, obviously, according to the reports of navigators, while West Coast and the form is distorted.


And at the same time, on the map of 1538, that is, several years earlier, Mercator had already shown a more correct outline of the western coast of South America. What was the reason for this? It can be assumed that in his first map he was based on ancient sources, while in 1569 he already used materials from travelers of his time, who did not know how to correctly determine longitude, but only showed general direction coast.


World map of Arantheus Finaus, 1532


Other portolans of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance have been found, which could show Antarctica. A number of such maps came to light because, as already mentioned, many cartographers of the 15th and 16th centuries believed in the existence of a southern continent.


During the Christmas holidays of late 1959, Charles Hapgood was exploring Antarctica in the reference room of the Library of Congress in Washington. For weeks on end he had been working there on hundreds of medieval maps.


“I discovered / he writes / a lot of amazing things that I did not suspect to find, and several maps depicting the southern continent. And then one day I turned the page and was dumbfounded. My gaze fell on the southern hemisphere of the world map drawn by Oronteus Finius in 1531, and I realized that I had before me a genuine, real map of Antarctica!



The general outline of the continent surprisingly coincides with what is shown on modern maps. Almost in place, almost in the center of the continent, was the South Pole. mountain ranges, fringing the shores, resembled numerous ridges discovered in recent years, and enough not to consider this an accidental product of the cartographer's imagination. These ridges have been identified, some on the coast, some in the distance. From many of them, rivers flowed to the sea, very naturally and convincingly fitting into the folds of the relief. This, of course, assumed that the coast was ice-free at the time the map was drawn. The central part of the continent on the map is free from rivers and mountains, which suggests the presence of an ice cap there.


“Charles Hapgood taught the history of science at Keene College, New Hampshire, USA. He was neither a geologist nor a specialist in the history of the ancient world.


“In examining this map of Antarctica on the grid of parallels drawn by Arantheus Finaus, we found that he extended the Antarctic Peninsula too far to the north—up to 15°. At first it was thought that he simply moved the entire continent in the direction of South America. Further work, however, has shown that the Antarctic coastline is abnormally extended in all directions, even reaching the tropics in some places. The whole problem, therefore, was scale. Using some kind of extensive map, the compiler was forced to stretch the Antarctic Peninsula to Cape Horn, almost completely displacing the Drake Passage. Moreover, this mistake was made much earlier, since we found the same distortion on all Antarctic maps of that period, including Piri Reis's portolan. It is likely that this mistake was made in ancient times on the primary source map, skipping a significant part of the coast of South America: after all, there was no free space for it.


The map in question shows the absence of glaciers at a considerable distance from the coast. These are Queen Maud Land, Enderby Land, Wilkes Land, Victoria Land (east coast of the Ross Sea), Mary Byrd Land. There was a significant lack of points with coinciding coordinates (with modern map) for the western coast of the Ross Sea, Ellsworth Land, Edith Ronne Land.


Comparison of the map of Arantheus Finaus with the map of the subglacial relief of Antarctica, compiled by the services various countries during the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1959, explains some of the shortcomings of medieval work, and also sheds light on the extent of glaciation at the time the original map was made.


The IGY expeditions, using seismic sounding, recreated the shape of the earth's surface, hidden by the current ice cap. And it turned out that there is no western coast near the Ross Sea at all; moreover, the rocky bed of the continent runs below ocean level just between the Ross and Weddell seas. If the ice melts, the same Ellsworth Land will become not dry land, but oceanic shallow water.


If the western coast of the Ross Sea and the coast of Ellsworth Land are fictitious land, then the absence of certain physical and geographical characteristics of this sector on the map of A. Finaus becomes clear. But it seems that the ice cover, at least in West Antarctica, could already exist by the time the maps were compiled, since the inland waterways connecting the Ross, Weddell, Amundsen seas are not shown - everything was already icebound.


Of course, it should be remembered that millennia must have elapsed between the compilation of early and later maps. various parts Antarctica. Therefore, it cannot be definitely concluded that there was a time when East Antarctica abounded in ice, and it was absent in Western Antarctica. The maps of East Antarctica, after all, could have been drawn millennia after other maps.


Boucher, the French geographer of the 18th century, left for posterity a map that shows the continent at a time when there was no ice at all ... If you get rid of obvious errors in the orientation of Antarctica in relation to other land masses, then it is easy to imagine that this map shows rivers connecting the Ross, Weddell, and Bellingshausen seas.


While studying the mysteries of ancient maps, Charles Hapgood came up with the idea that the accepted theory and timing of the ice ages might be different. The pole shift hypothesis was born. Not gradual, but abrupt.


Albert Einstein was among the first to realize this when he decided to write the preface to a book written by Hapgood in 1953, several years before the latter took up the study of the Piri Reis map:


“I often get correspondence from people who want my opinion on their unpublished ideas. It is clear that these ideas are very rarely of scientific value. However, the very first message I received from Mr. Hapgood literally electrified me. His idea is original, very simple and, if confirmed, will have great value for everything related to the history of the Earth's surface.


These "ideas", formulated in Hapgood's book in 1953, are, in fact, a global geological theory that elegantly explains how and why large areas of Antarctica remained ice-free until 4000 BC, as well as many others. anomalies in earth science. Briefly, his arguments are as follows:


1 Antarctica Wasn't Always Ice-Covered And Was Once Much Warmer Than It Is Today


2. She was warmer because at that time she was not physically on south pole, and was located about 2000 miles to the north. This "brought it outside the Antarctic Circle and placed it in a zone of temperate or cold temperate climate»


3. The continent moved and took its current position inside arctic circle as a result of the so-called "shift earth's crust". This mechanism, which should not be confused with plate tectonics or continental drift, is associated with periodic movements of the lithosphere, the outer crust of the Earth, as a whole “around a soft inner body, just as the peel of an orange could move around the pulp if the connection between them weakened. »


4. In the process of such a “journey” to the south, Antarctica gradually cooled down, and on it, little by little, but inevitably, an ice cap grew over several thousand years, until it acquired its current shape.


Einstein summed up Hapgood's discovery this way:


“There is a constant accumulation of ice in the polar region, which is located asymmetrically around the pole. The rotation of the Earth acts on these asymmetric masses, creating a centrifugal moment that is transferred to the rigid Earth's crust. When the magnitude of such a moment exceeds a certain critical value, it causes the earth's crust to move relative to the part of the Earth's body located inside ... "".


Charles Hapgood:


"The only one glacial period, which has an adequate explanation, is the current glaciation in Antarctica. It is perfectly explained. It is quite obvious that it exists simply because Antarctica is at the Pole, and nothing else. This fact does not depend on variations in solar heat input, nor on galactic dust, nor on volcanism, nor on currents flowing under the crust, and has nothing to do with land uplifts or ocean currents. This leads to the conclusion that the best theory to explain the ice age is the one that says: because there was a pole in this place. Thus, it is easy to explain the presence of glaciation in the past in India and Africa, although in our time these places are in the tropics. In the same way, the origin of any glaciation on a continental scale can be explained.


What evidence is there that Antarctica was not always an icy continent?


In 1949, on one of Sir Baird's Antarctic expeditions, sediment samples were taken from the bottom of the Ross Sea. It was produced by drilling. Dr. Jack Huf of the University of Illinois took three cores to study climate evolution in Antarctica. They were sent to the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC, where a new dating method developed by nuclear physicist Dr. W. D. Ury was applied.


This method is called ionic for short. In this case, they operate with three radioactive elements contained in sea ​​water in certain proportions - uranium, ionium, radium. However, their decay period is different, which means that when they fall into the bottom sediment and the moisture cycle stops, the amount of these radioactive elements decreases, but not to the same extent. Therefore, when receiving and examining bottom samples in the laboratory, one can determine their age by changing the proportions of these elements in marine sediments.


The nature of bottom sediments varies greatly depending on the climatic conditions that existed at the time of their formation. If they were carried by the rivers and deposited in the sea, then they are well sorted, and the better, the farther they fall from the mouth of the river. If, however, they are torn from the earth's surface by a glacier and carried into the sea by an iceberg, then their character corresponds to coarse clastic material. If a river has a seasonal cycle, flowing only in the summer, most likely from melting glaciers in the inland, and freezing over every winter, then the precipitation will form in layers, like annual rings on trees.


All these types of sediments have been found in bottom cores from the Ross Sea. Most striking was the presence of a series of layers formed from well-sorted sediments brought to the sea by rivers from ice-free lands. As can be seen from the cores, there have been at least three temperate epochs in Antarctica during the past million years when the Ross Sea coasts should have been ice-free.


The timing of the end of the last warm period in the Ross Sea, determined by Dr. Ury, was of great importance to us. All three cores indicated that the warming ended about 6000 years ago, or in the fourth millennium BC. This was when glacial sediments began to accumulate at the bottom of the Ross Sea in the closest ice age to us. Kern argues that this was preceded by a longer warming period.


Thus, it turns out that ice-free Antarctica was already in the existence of ancient civilizations, and not hundreds of thousands of years ago, as was previously believed.


Alfred Veneger, the creator of the theory of glaciation, apparently also knew about the mechanism of the "ice clock", but did not dare to make his knowledge public. Even during the life of a genius, official science mocked him to its fullest. Everyone poisoned him, only the very lazy one did not “kick” him. He became cautious and suddenly became addicted to travel to Greenland, where he eventually died tragically.


This is a brief history of the appearance of the theory of lithospheric catastrophes, which went to the people under the name of "pole shift".


But many conclusions follow from this. Times exist vintage cards, where Antarctica is shown without icing, then we can assume the presence of a developed civilization capable of making such mapping just before this glaciation. But where did this civilization go then?


The fact is that the displacement of the earth's crust will cause the movement of water in the oceans, similar to that which occurs in a sharply moved plate. It is this theory that can explain the biblical Flood. And not every civilization will survive such an event. After this, the survivors are able to slide into barbarism and lose many civilizational achievements. This is also suitable for understanding where Atlantis disappeared. She didn't go anywhere. After the waves destroyed her well-established life, she began to be covered with ice. Now we know it as Antarctica. Archaeological research is hardly possible under ice more than a kilometer thick. Part of the knowledge of this civilization has survived to our time in the form of maps redrawn from more ancient, astronomical concepts and crafts. It is not for nothing that many peoples have stories about people who came from across the sea and taught them crafts, writing and much more.


Such is the story. So far there is no more solid evidence of its correctness. But the existing ones no longer allow to brush aside.


Sergei Kamshilin


Materials used: http://vzglyadzagran.ru