Franco Rosselli was a renowned Florentine cartographer of the 15th century who created a relatively small but richly illustrated copperplate engraving, hand colored on Vellum, measuring just 6 x 11 inches.
The piece is now kept in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. At the time Rosselli created the map, cartography was still a relatively new and experimental art which makes the revelations in his world map even more amazing.
The maps depiction of Antarctica is a work of great accuracy and even names the area quite specifically as Antarticus. The details on the Rosselli map are extremely well painted and as with the previous maps, geographical features such as the Ross Sea and Wilkes Land are particularly easy to identify on it.
Again, what is so perplexing about this extraordinary map is the year it was painted in 1508. According to our history this is a full three and a half centuries before Antarctica was discovered.
And yet here again we have Antarctica depicted accurately on a 15th century Florentine map.
Phillip Bauche was a French geographer of the 18th century who also drew a map that clearly shows Antarctica except that Bauche’s map shows Antarctica two separate land masses, with detailed shorelines. For many years the map was generally considered to be wrong because when Antarctica was discovered it actually looked nothing what Bauche had drawn.
Then in 1958 a seismic survey of Antarctica was carried out which surprisingly showed that Antarctica was indeed two archipelago islands covered by a thick layer of ice that made it appear as only one land mass and not only that, but that the general topography of the lands beneath the ice matches the drawings on the Bauche map in every detail.
So how on earth this can be in any way possible? This map means that Bauche was in possession of a correct map showing Antarctica 100 years before it was discovered and not only that, but without any ice on it. Antarctica has not been in an ice free condition for a minimum of at least 10,000 years and many scientists believe that the period of time to be more like several million years.
The Orontius Finaeus map (fig.2) was found in 1960 by Charles Hapgood and it too, apparently shows the continent of Antarctica along with the accurate outlines of Antarctic rivers that are now covered by thick glaciers.
The map was found in the Library of Congress in Washington DC where it had been sitting unstudied for a great many years. In the map the continent and coastline is shown to be ice free and, like the Piri Reis map, it too shows an accurate depiction of the Ross Sea which today is totally hidden beneath a floating ice shelf several hundred meters thick.
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In 1929 there was an amazing map discovered in the Imperial Archives at Constantinople that had been sitting, virtually unexamined, for years. The map, which had been drawn in 1513 by a Turkish Admiral named Piri Reis, showed North America, South America, Greenland and Antarctica.
However what is so perplexing about this map is that Antarctica had not been discovered in 1513. Antarctica was not located until 1820 and America had only been discovered in 1492, a mere 21 years prior to the maps creation and yet it is mapped quite accurately.
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