What do you think?
Rate this book
Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age
Revised edition. Provides concrete evidence of the existence of a world-wide culture in prehistoric times, that mapped the whole earth with a technology that was lost until comparatively modern times. xi, iii , 276 pages. stiff paper wrappers.. square 8vo..
276 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 1965
99 people are currently reading
1,792 people want to read
About the author
Charles H. Hapgood
16Ìýbooks42ÌýfollowersCharles Hutchins Hapgood was an American college professor and author who became one of the best known advocates of the pseudoarchaeological claim of a rapid and recent pole shift with catastrophic results.
()
()
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
August 22, 2015
Charles Hapgood was a professor of the history of science who was looking for a topic to present to his students and chose the Piri Reis map, which is a map dating from 1513 which, among other features, shows parts of the coastline of Antarctica. He and his students went on to investigate a variety of other ancient maps, which led them to the conclusion that these maps were evidence of cartographical activities undertaken by an advanced civilization whose existence preceded the beginnings of our written historical records. Needless to say, as their findings could not be refuted by mainstream academia, their findings were simply ignored, given that they clashed with the established beliefs of the academics. Not only does this book constitute the record of an amazingly impressive series of studies of ancient maps, it is also extremely beautiful, given that these same maps themselves are dazzlingly artistic. An amazing read!
April 18, 2013
Hapgood's "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings" may be known mostly for publicizing the existence of what is commonly called the Piri Reis Map, but as the first word in the title suggests there are many ancient maps evidencing knowledge we once believed was discovered more recently. The Piri Reis map of 1513 is a fragment of a larger map of the world, based on source maps going back to ancient Alexandria and beyond. Hapgood analyzes this map in great detail but the one fact that makes it most noteworthy is the detailed depiction of western Antarctica centuries before anyone in modern times knew the continent existed. Yet is was mapped in ancient times, free of ice, with mountains and river valleys in locations now verified with technology that can see under the ice cap.
Along with an analysis of many other ancient maps (such as those from Oronteus Finaeus, Hadji Ahmed, and Buache) which apparently demonstrate cartographic use of spherical trigonometry around the world, these maps also show geographical details the cartographers should not have known in antiquity (at least as conventional history teaches us.) Hapgood also looks into a variety of additional scientific evidence and reaches a conclusion which was startling when he introduced the idea about 60 years ago: that the surface of the Earth is not firmly attached to the core. There are crustal displacements - pole shifts - in which the entire outer surface of the planet changes position relative to our poles of rotation and our equator. This may destroy civilization when it happens. It has happened repeatedly. Hapgood won't tell us how quickly such an event could occur, nor will he claim that Atlantis was destroyed the last time it happened. But he does clarify where several prior North Poles have been, including the last one in Hudson Bay. He suggests that western Antarctica was habitable in ancient times. He even speculates that the next pole shift may take the future North Pole to a new location near Lake Baikal in Siberia.
If Hapgood's thinking is correct (and as an author writing about related subjects, I believe it is) then we have information at our disposal which can help us make predictions about the next pole shift. Does this mean that certain prophecies might really be based on the calculations of ancient scientists who had technology and wisdom rivaling our own? Did they "know" when certain things would happen in the future? Hapgood doesn't go that far. He stuck his neck out about as far as a college professor could in the 1950s without risking his job, but Atlantis and prophecy were not respectable topics.
Readers interested in such topics, along with those Hapgood did cover in "Maps" may also appreciate books like Hancock and Bauval's "The Message of the Sphinx," Weidner and Bridges' "The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye," Michell's "The Dimensions of Paradise," Montaigne's "End Times and 2019" and de Santillana and von Dechend's "Hamlet's Mill."
Along with an analysis of many other ancient maps (such as those from Oronteus Finaeus, Hadji Ahmed, and Buache) which apparently demonstrate cartographic use of spherical trigonometry around the world, these maps also show geographical details the cartographers should not have known in antiquity (at least as conventional history teaches us.) Hapgood also looks into a variety of additional scientific evidence and reaches a conclusion which was startling when he introduced the idea about 60 years ago: that the surface of the Earth is not firmly attached to the core. There are crustal displacements - pole shifts - in which the entire outer surface of the planet changes position relative to our poles of rotation and our equator. This may destroy civilization when it happens. It has happened repeatedly. Hapgood won't tell us how quickly such an event could occur, nor will he claim that Atlantis was destroyed the last time it happened. But he does clarify where several prior North Poles have been, including the last one in Hudson Bay. He suggests that western Antarctica was habitable in ancient times. He even speculates that the next pole shift may take the future North Pole to a new location near Lake Baikal in Siberia.
If Hapgood's thinking is correct (and as an author writing about related subjects, I believe it is) then we have information at our disposal which can help us make predictions about the next pole shift. Does this mean that certain prophecies might really be based on the calculations of ancient scientists who had technology and wisdom rivaling our own? Did they "know" when certain things would happen in the future? Hapgood doesn't go that far. He stuck his neck out about as far as a college professor could in the 1950s without risking his job, but Atlantis and prophecy were not respectable topics.
Readers interested in such topics, along with those Hapgood did cover in "Maps" may also appreciate books like Hancock and Bauval's "The Message of the Sphinx," Weidner and Bridges' "The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye," Michell's "The Dimensions of Paradise," Montaigne's "End Times and 2019" and de Santillana and von Dechend's "Hamlet's Mill."
November 13, 2010
Much like Hancock's "Heaven's Mirror" this thing is filled with information that you have to wade through in order to discover the true nuggets o' knowledge. Hapgood is a brilliant college professor, and his writing shows that. Most of the book is full of technobabble on the detailed science behind map making, which makes a majority of the book about as dry a read as the Sahara Desert. Given that, it is a very intriguing book that reveals a number of startling theories regarding ancient maps that impossibly map out our world in such exacting detail of our planet that it forces you to ask a lot of questions about the TRUE history of man. Good stuff overall.
May 14, 2020
In the 16th century, a Turkish admiral called Piri Re'is, by his own words, compiled ancient, crumbling maps into a map of the entire globe, of which only part of the Western half has survived. He himself says that Christopher Columbus followed similar ancient sources in his trip to what he thought was Zipango (Japan), because despite what the source maps showed, nobody realized that they depicted a completely different continent. Those sources are mentioned to come from the ancient Greeks, probably from the Great Library of Alexandria; however, few of the millions of documents there were originated in Alexandria. Famously, the rulers of the city only allowed ships to moor in their ports, among other things, if they lent their important documents to the librarians, who copied them and then gave either the originals or the copies to their original owners. Most of that knowledge was lost in successive destructions of the library (by Romans and Muslims mostly); it's rather silly to mention that losing that library was one of the worst disasters in the history of mankind.
The issue regarding Piri Re'is map is that it shows lands that hadn't been surveyed, islands and some coastlines that are now underwater (and have been since the last Ice Age ended definitely around 9,600 years ago), and some of Antarctica, which wasn't even known to exist as far as modern history is concerned up to around the 18th century, partly without ice and showing features that through modern geology have been surveyed to be now under 2 miles of ice. If just these facts are true, the most reasonable conclusion is that there was a culture able to navigate the entire world during the last Ice Age, when there were still gigantic megamammals long extinct and for the most part unknown by the public at large, and more importantly, different species of intelligent humans such as the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Although those cousins of ours had been largely depicted as stupid and primitive, just yesterday I watched a popular science video that admitted that at least Neanderthals were in fact more intelligent than us. Some huge event killed most of the megammamals, coinciding with tremendous spikes of temperature () and rising sea levels; sea levels rose around 120 meters/390 feet when the last Ice Age ended, submerging mostly coastal landmasses equivalent to Europe and China put together, while intelligent human beings were around, with the same intelligence that allows them to form communities and build cities. That is an insane amount of human history that is now buried under underwater sediment. This sudden catastrophic period coincides with one of the recently found two Greenland craters and with the Younger Dryas black mat, a telltale layer of sedimentation from around 12,800 years ago that is associated with cosmic impacts. From all this information it is reasonable to suppose that a winged bull of a rock pounded our planet and separated our modern conception of history from potentially dozens of thousands of years of stories that, as far as we are concerned, have never been told. The Apocalypse has already happened, and we are the descendants of the wasteland survivors. All of the remaining species of human beings have gone extinct, mostly around that catastrophic period (although there have been suspicious redheaded mummies with genetically elongated heads in South America and Egypt, among other places). The branch of human beings that has endured is the one that bred the most recklessly, the most violent, that one that could adapt to most despicable situations. Like pigeons, rats and cockroaches. So we live in the world we deserve.
The history that academics have settled on (emphasis on settled on) has always seemed suspect to me, and the more I read about the past the more it felt like a narrative weaved to fulfill the political and religious aspirations of certain groups of people. Despite the ample evidence to the contrary, publically our history started around 6,000 years ago; it neatly coincides with Abrahamic religious beliefs about the world starting 6,000 years ago, and that conclusion was set in stone by people who believed it or wouldn't dare being considered blasphemous. A bunch of Indo-Europeans formed Sumer, which got taken over by the Semitic Akkadians (most notably by Sargon of Akkad). From there is a somewhat twisted path to the foundation of Judaism, with their peculiar brand of monotheistic ethnic supremacy, and then Christianity, which make up the foundations of this so called judeochristian Western world (). As we know, Jews, Christians and later on Muslims weren't/aren't particularly keen on protecting cultures and their artifacts that were in some way contrary to their precepts; when I visited the magnificent cathedral of Oviedo in Asturias, the land that started the Reconquista, which took back these lands from Islam (), the displays explained joyfully how many people had been canonized for their efforts against all those terrible native Pagans that didn't deserve to exist. In another example, when some excavations were proposed in search of the pre-Islamic ruins in the extremely important ancient city of Harran, a very notable center of ancient astronomy, the Turkish authorities stopped the plans, saying that they weren't "interested in the city's pre-Islamic era".
In any case, history has been weaved from centuries ago so it wouldn't contradict or harm those institutions: that involved assigning monumental complexes to expected/wanted timeframes, discarding some carbon dating results because they were "outrageously erroneous", or downright destroying offending evidence: for example, when some director in charge of the magnificent Hypogeum of Malta, that features very complex masonry, deliberately destroyed the painted depiction of a creature that went extinct with the Ice Age, which obviously meant the Hypogeum must had been built at least before. Leaving the painting there would have aroused too much controversy that would have threatened "settled" history (). Geological evidence regarding pluvial erosion in the bedrock from which the Sphynx, to use a single concrete example from Egypt, was carved, says unambiguously that the monument must have been created thousands of years earlier from what is told by Egyptologists, very likely around 30,000 years ago, smack in the middle of the last Ice Age; Egyptologists, however, refuse to adapt to this reality. I have no idea how this is considered acceptable. Look at dozens of historical sites that feature stonework that doesn't make sense with the tools that according to history they were supposed to use (an example, Puma Punku in modern day Bolivia ); a huge red flag is the polygonal, pillowed stonework with strange protrusions that is prominent in the most ancient monumental constructions in places as distant as South America, Egypt, Syria, Japan and Easter Island; metal erodes away or gets repurposed: rock doesn't erode that much, nor their dozens or hundred of tons get moved easily. In ancient sites, the older stuff is always better made. How is that possible?
There are plenty of out of place historical artifacts that don't make a lick of sense regarding what is taught about ancient people. To cite a single example, the Antikythera mechanism (), an actual analog computer found in a shipwreck off the coast of a Greek island. According to Wikipedia, not that I like quoting things from Wikipedia: "an ancient Greek analogue computer used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendar and astrological purposes decades in advance. It could also be used to track the four-year cycle of athletic games which was similar to an Olympiad, the cycle of the ancient Olympic Games." Since when were Greeks in 200 BC able to build such complex machinery? And if indeed they came up with it themselves, instead of retro engineering far older machinery or also following old, crumbling designs, what else has been missed? Why doesn't popular history tell of the Greek's engineering prowess to rival 16-17th century Europe, and are still thought as very advanced mathematically but comparatively inept engineering-wise?
All of this is routinely reasoned away with stuff like "where is the evidence" (or "where is the pottery", from archeologists) that most academics, who for the most part don't visit the sites, use to dismiss the evidence of pre-historical complex civilizations. One could say, to cite a single example, "The Sphynx is the evidence", but of course, it isn't evidence of ancient unknown civilizations when it has been officially placed in "settled" history. There are exposed underwater complexes, never mind the still unknown or unexplored ones, like the Yonaguni monument near Japan: some say it's just erosion, and for others it's obviously constructed. However, the site in what is now unfortunately modern Turkey () named Göbekli Tepe and unearthed in the nineties after having been deliberately buried for unknown reasons, was unambiguously carbon dated to the 10th millennia BC (it's older than ten thousand years!). Look at this shit:
That complex, 90% of which still remains buried, is around as old in relation to Stonehenge (to its official dating, anyway) as Stonehenge is in relation to us. Who were those people? Where did they come from? What tools did they use? How much did it take them to develop their sophisticated stonework?
Regarding this book, which is what I'm supposed to be focused on, the author and his colleagues compared plenty of maps, from the ancient eras to the then modern ones (this was written in the sixties), and applied different known cartographical projections to Piri Re'is' and other similar suspicious maps, and reached the conclusion that although errors were made in the compilation, because the then contemporary techniques or explorations made weren't up to par, underlying all that, the most ancient maps that Piri Re'is compiled his map from had used advanced mathematical knowledge, knew about the exact or near exact curvature of the planet (so they had either explored the entire planet or at least could figure its extension mathematically), and knew the longitudes of distant places. Finding the correct longitudes isn't an easy problem to solve at all. The author of this book did all this work, as mentioned, in the sixties. Many decades later, all this Ice Age civilizations stuff is considered cooky stuff by most mainstream anything (ridiculing something, by the way, is only an argument for stupid people). The Egyptians themselves, who kept careful records of stuff, told Solon in the 6th century BC that 9,000 years earlier the land they came from was submerged suddenly by massive floods; we know now that it coincides with scientific data about sudden flooding and sea levels rising dramatically. They also had records of kings that had reigned around 30,000 years before them. But the ancients were all idiots. We, the enlightened ones, are riding the wave of Progress to the promised land.
In summary, intelligent beings have existed on this planet for at least the last 200,000-300,000 years. Is it reasonable to believe that we were just fucking around in caves while wearing loincloths until the Sumerians had a bright idea?
I could talk about this subject for hours, as it is one of my main obsessions, but let's leave it for now.
The issue regarding Piri Re'is map is that it shows lands that hadn't been surveyed, islands and some coastlines that are now underwater (and have been since the last Ice Age ended definitely around 9,600 years ago), and some of Antarctica, which wasn't even known to exist as far as modern history is concerned up to around the 18th century, partly without ice and showing features that through modern geology have been surveyed to be now under 2 miles of ice. If just these facts are true, the most reasonable conclusion is that there was a culture able to navigate the entire world during the last Ice Age, when there were still gigantic megamammals long extinct and for the most part unknown by the public at large, and more importantly, different species of intelligent humans such as the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Although those cousins of ours had been largely depicted as stupid and primitive, just yesterday I watched a popular science video that admitted that at least Neanderthals were in fact more intelligent than us. Some huge event killed most of the megammamals, coinciding with tremendous spikes of temperature () and rising sea levels; sea levels rose around 120 meters/390 feet when the last Ice Age ended, submerging mostly coastal landmasses equivalent to Europe and China put together, while intelligent human beings were around, with the same intelligence that allows them to form communities and build cities. That is an insane amount of human history that is now buried under underwater sediment. This sudden catastrophic period coincides with one of the recently found two Greenland craters and with the Younger Dryas black mat, a telltale layer of sedimentation from around 12,800 years ago that is associated with cosmic impacts. From all this information it is reasonable to suppose that a winged bull of a rock pounded our planet and separated our modern conception of history from potentially dozens of thousands of years of stories that, as far as we are concerned, have never been told. The Apocalypse has already happened, and we are the descendants of the wasteland survivors. All of the remaining species of human beings have gone extinct, mostly around that catastrophic period (although there have been suspicious redheaded mummies with genetically elongated heads in South America and Egypt, among other places). The branch of human beings that has endured is the one that bred the most recklessly, the most violent, that one that could adapt to most despicable situations. Like pigeons, rats and cockroaches. So we live in the world we deserve.
The history that academics have settled on (emphasis on settled on) has always seemed suspect to me, and the more I read about the past the more it felt like a narrative weaved to fulfill the political and religious aspirations of certain groups of people. Despite the ample evidence to the contrary, publically our history started around 6,000 years ago; it neatly coincides with Abrahamic religious beliefs about the world starting 6,000 years ago, and that conclusion was set in stone by people who believed it or wouldn't dare being considered blasphemous. A bunch of Indo-Europeans formed Sumer, which got taken over by the Semitic Akkadians (most notably by Sargon of Akkad). From there is a somewhat twisted path to the foundation of Judaism, with their peculiar brand of monotheistic ethnic supremacy, and then Christianity, which make up the foundations of this so called judeochristian Western world (). As we know, Jews, Christians and later on Muslims weren't/aren't particularly keen on protecting cultures and their artifacts that were in some way contrary to their precepts; when I visited the magnificent cathedral of Oviedo in Asturias, the land that started the Reconquista, which took back these lands from Islam (), the displays explained joyfully how many people had been canonized for their efforts against all those terrible native Pagans that didn't deserve to exist. In another example, when some excavations were proposed in search of the pre-Islamic ruins in the extremely important ancient city of Harran, a very notable center of ancient astronomy, the Turkish authorities stopped the plans, saying that they weren't "interested in the city's pre-Islamic era".
In any case, history has been weaved from centuries ago so it wouldn't contradict or harm those institutions: that involved assigning monumental complexes to expected/wanted timeframes, discarding some carbon dating results because they were "outrageously erroneous", or downright destroying offending evidence: for example, when some director in charge of the magnificent Hypogeum of Malta, that features very complex masonry, deliberately destroyed the painted depiction of a creature that went extinct with the Ice Age, which obviously meant the Hypogeum must had been built at least before. Leaving the painting there would have aroused too much controversy that would have threatened "settled" history (). Geological evidence regarding pluvial erosion in the bedrock from which the Sphynx, to use a single concrete example from Egypt, was carved, says unambiguously that the monument must have been created thousands of years earlier from what is told by Egyptologists, very likely around 30,000 years ago, smack in the middle of the last Ice Age; Egyptologists, however, refuse to adapt to this reality. I have no idea how this is considered acceptable. Look at dozens of historical sites that feature stonework that doesn't make sense with the tools that according to history they were supposed to use (an example, Puma Punku in modern day Bolivia ); a huge red flag is the polygonal, pillowed stonework with strange protrusions that is prominent in the most ancient monumental constructions in places as distant as South America, Egypt, Syria, Japan and Easter Island; metal erodes away or gets repurposed: rock doesn't erode that much, nor their dozens or hundred of tons get moved easily. In ancient sites, the older stuff is always better made. How is that possible?
There are plenty of out of place historical artifacts that don't make a lick of sense regarding what is taught about ancient people. To cite a single example, the Antikythera mechanism (), an actual analog computer found in a shipwreck off the coast of a Greek island. According to Wikipedia, not that I like quoting things from Wikipedia: "an ancient Greek analogue computer used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendar and astrological purposes decades in advance. It could also be used to track the four-year cycle of athletic games which was similar to an Olympiad, the cycle of the ancient Olympic Games." Since when were Greeks in 200 BC able to build such complex machinery? And if indeed they came up with it themselves, instead of retro engineering far older machinery or also following old, crumbling designs, what else has been missed? Why doesn't popular history tell of the Greek's engineering prowess to rival 16-17th century Europe, and are still thought as very advanced mathematically but comparatively inept engineering-wise?
All of this is routinely reasoned away with stuff like "where is the evidence" (or "where is the pottery", from archeologists) that most academics, who for the most part don't visit the sites, use to dismiss the evidence of pre-historical complex civilizations. One could say, to cite a single example, "The Sphynx is the evidence", but of course, it isn't evidence of ancient unknown civilizations when it has been officially placed in "settled" history. There are exposed underwater complexes, never mind the still unknown or unexplored ones, like the Yonaguni monument near Japan: some say it's just erosion, and for others it's obviously constructed. However, the site in what is now unfortunately modern Turkey () named Göbekli Tepe and unearthed in the nineties after having been deliberately buried for unknown reasons, was unambiguously carbon dated to the 10th millennia BC (it's older than ten thousand years!). Look at this shit:
That complex, 90% of which still remains buried, is around as old in relation to Stonehenge (to its official dating, anyway) as Stonehenge is in relation to us. Who were those people? Where did they come from? What tools did they use? How much did it take them to develop their sophisticated stonework?Regarding this book, which is what I'm supposed to be focused on, the author and his colleagues compared plenty of maps, from the ancient eras to the then modern ones (this was written in the sixties), and applied different known cartographical projections to Piri Re'is' and other similar suspicious maps, and reached the conclusion that although errors were made in the compilation, because the then contemporary techniques or explorations made weren't up to par, underlying all that, the most ancient maps that Piri Re'is compiled his map from had used advanced mathematical knowledge, knew about the exact or near exact curvature of the planet (so they had either explored the entire planet or at least could figure its extension mathematically), and knew the longitudes of distant places. Finding the correct longitudes isn't an easy problem to solve at all. The author of this book did all this work, as mentioned, in the sixties. Many decades later, all this Ice Age civilizations stuff is considered cooky stuff by most mainstream anything (ridiculing something, by the way, is only an argument for stupid people). The Egyptians themselves, who kept careful records of stuff, told Solon in the 6th century BC that 9,000 years earlier the land they came from was submerged suddenly by massive floods; we know now that it coincides with scientific data about sudden flooding and sea levels rising dramatically. They also had records of kings that had reigned around 30,000 years before them. But the ancients were all idiots. We, the enlightened ones, are riding the wave of Progress to the promised land.
In summary, intelligent beings have existed on this planet for at least the last 200,000-300,000 years. Is it reasonable to believe that we were just fucking around in caves while wearing loincloths until the Sumerians had a bright idea?
I could talk about this subject for hours, as it is one of my main obsessions, but let's leave it for now.
April 16, 2016
If you have advanced degrees in cartography and trigonometry, as well as an unreasonably high tolerance for a monotonous, dry, professorial writing style, with no real story line, plot, theme or conclusion, then this is definitely the book for you. If, however, you are part of the other 99.99999% of the planet, you may consider joining me in moving this book to the top of the list if we ever re-institute book burnings. . .
That being said, I must congratulate Dr. Hapgood for making it into the hallowed halls of my "All Time Top 5 Worst Books I've Ever Read" list. If he were not already dead, I'd be sending the author a bill for my time wasted reading his vomitous abomination of pedantary and drivel. The best bit of reading in this work is the blurb on the back cover. To compliment the author: he's clearly intelligent, learned, and thorogh. Since he has a Master's degree from Harvard, one would hope so. Unfortunately, his Master's degree is in Medieval History; I think the world would be a much happier place if he'd degreed in English or Writing.
To devote even one more paragraph elaborating on my profound dissatisfaction with my entire Hapgood Experience would devote more time than is worth wasting further. Plus, one paragraph is not nearly enough to fully convey the totality of misery that reading this book has imparted.
Suffice it to say, dear reader, that if you consider reading this book, reconsider. Run, run, run away as fast as you can. Gouge out your eyes or suffer a self-inflicted head injury if that's what it takes. Either would be a more pleasant experience than the read.
That being said, I must congratulate Dr. Hapgood for making it into the hallowed halls of my "All Time Top 5 Worst Books I've Ever Read" list. If he were not already dead, I'd be sending the author a bill for my time wasted reading his vomitous abomination of pedantary and drivel. The best bit of reading in this work is the blurb on the back cover. To compliment the author: he's clearly intelligent, learned, and thorogh. Since he has a Master's degree from Harvard, one would hope so. Unfortunately, his Master's degree is in Medieval History; I think the world would be a much happier place if he'd degreed in English or Writing.
To devote even one more paragraph elaborating on my profound dissatisfaction with my entire Hapgood Experience would devote more time than is worth wasting further. Plus, one paragraph is not nearly enough to fully convey the totality of misery that reading this book has imparted.
Suffice it to say, dear reader, that if you consider reading this book, reconsider. Run, run, run away as fast as you can. Gouge out your eyes or suffer a self-inflicted head injury if that's what it takes. Either would be a more pleasant experience than the read.
April 11, 2013
The portolano maps are older and yet more accurate than most of the late medieval maps. Hapgood gives a convincing explanation about their origin: prehistoric. He can not figure out the culture or civilization that charted them, though he suggests it could be Egypt. In my own research, I found out that the Megalith Builders of Western Europe were great sailors, ahead of all the classical civilizations, Summer and Egypt included. In my next book, I'll prove these maps were originally created by the Megalith Builders.
August 31, 2011
Some people are willing to die to print the truth. Hapgood is dead, perhaps he had help? A must for any historians library. Not as much to read through as to flip through and have for reference. Excellent material, good reproductions of ancient maps.
November 4, 2013
A thoughtful analysis of an apparently anachronistic map. It takes some time to get to the "meat" of the theory that the title relates to, but this is not a sensationalistic book. Rather, it's more a scholarly work that- however reluctantly- advances the theory that there may have been some 'lost civilization' that drew up a map of the world far more advanced than would be expected in history until the 20th century. This map was used as a reference for many subsequent maps, one of them being the "Piri Reis" map uncovered in 1929.
This will not be a book for everyone. As mentioned, it is a scholarly work, done by a history professor. This shows clearly in the text, as he goes step by step into the details of the mathematics of cartography, and dwells on the intricacies of the problems encountered by him and his colleagues of figuring out what made the map unusual for its time. That it would posit an advanced civilization in the accepted prehistory period, combined with the author's other controversial theories (for example, pole reversals) guaranteed it low mainstream exposure. There was enough interest in this book since its first printing to have reprints published; this is one of them.
Hardcore 'conspiracy' fans, alternate history fans, and open minded cartographers are encouraged to give this book a try. Casual readers will definitely be turned off by this book- unless their choice of 'casual' reading involves history textbooks.
This will not be a book for everyone. As mentioned, it is a scholarly work, done by a history professor. This shows clearly in the text, as he goes step by step into the details of the mathematics of cartography, and dwells on the intricacies of the problems encountered by him and his colleagues of figuring out what made the map unusual for its time. That it would posit an advanced civilization in the accepted prehistory period, combined with the author's other controversial theories (for example, pole reversals) guaranteed it low mainstream exposure. There was enough interest in this book since its first printing to have reprints published; this is one of them.
Hardcore 'conspiracy' fans, alternate history fans, and open minded cartographers are encouraged to give this book a try. Casual readers will definitely be turned off by this book- unless their choice of 'casual' reading involves history textbooks.
June 4, 2014
It wasn't my kind of book. It was mostly about the mistakes in studying about latitudes and lines on map and the constant perfecting of it....ect.
July 24, 2010
While searching for the earliest map of Antarctica, I heard about the Piri Reis Map of 1513 and the Oronce Fine (Oronteus Finaeus) Map of 1531. And in due course came across this book. I had my reservations, based on some of the info I had read, about Hapgood (as well as the Map librarian at LOC telling me he was a nut), but I feel that in this book he makes an interesting case for his hypothesis of an early seafaring/map making culture(s). Many of his theories about the maps he and his students examined are backed up by other experts and even military cartographers. Yet after digesting what I'd read a little more and reading "The Piri Reis Map of 1513" by Gregory C. McIntosh [see my review], Hapgood makes a number of assumptions and, at times, disregards or distorts evidence in order to better make his case. I think my lack of prior knowledge in this area made it more believable. Also, even though this book contains a lot of cartographic and mathematical descriptions, it is still quite readable for the average person. Finally, this edition (1966) could have had better (in color and sharper) pictures of the maps.
Read
October 27, 2017Key book to get wide background on pre-historic civilizations. I first saw this book when it was frequently referenced in Graham Hancock's "Underworld". Professor Hapgood did pioneering research on the lost map of Piri Reis. From Wiki: "....he supported the suggestion made by Arlington Mallery that a part of the Piri Reis Map was a depiction of the area of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land. He used this to propose that a 15 degree pole shift occurred around 9,600 BCE (approx. 11,600 years ago) and that a part of the Antarctic was ice-free at that time, and that an ice-age civilization could have mapped the coast." His theories definitely will make you think again about the evolution of human civilization.
May 26, 2011
I Read this book because I wanted a more scientific look at the evidence surrounding an ancient civilization, and Hapgood does provides this. He also takes the time to tell how he became fascinated by the subject, and step by step, how that fascination resulted in the book. Still, what he really illustrates, and what this book shows, is that no one has ever taken this idea seriously and tried to advance it scientifically. This is an idea based(the idea not the book)on a diverse set of theories that have never been draw together in any meaningful way. Whether this is because the theories are bad, or people are afraid to pursue them, I cannot say.
January 2, 2008
Excellent scholarly work about the ancient maps that show the existence of Antartica *without* an ice cap. Which basically means that there was a fairly advanced civilization before the last Ice Age.
The main point of this book is that.
He doesn't delve into what civilization was, other than say it may have been Atlantis or something like that.
Reading the fiction book series, Circle of Time by Robert Jordan got me intersted in our very own lost time & civilizations.
The main point of this book is that.
He doesn't delve into what civilization was, other than say it may have been Atlantis or something like that.
Reading the fiction book series, Circle of Time by Robert Jordan got me intersted in our very own lost time & civilizations.
Currently reading
March 29, 2012According to Charles Hapgood, the mapmakers responsible for the earliest maps must in some ways have been more technically advanced than sixteenth-century Europe and the ancient civilisations of Greece, Egypt and Babylonia.Not only did they produce fantastically detailed maps, they also appear to have mapped every continent. The Americas were mapped thousands of years before Columbus and Antarctica was mapped when its coasts were free of ice
May 21, 2010
Ancient history through maps.
The maps of the Renaissance contain surprising details of Antartica, north amercia etc.. clearly these maps were created from older maps, maps that showed an accuracy of longitude and global discovery and cartography that must have been passed down to the Renaissance map makers and explorers. Who were these explorers of ancient times?
The maps of the Renaissance contain surprising details of Antartica, north amercia etc.. clearly these maps were created from older maps, maps that showed an accuracy of longitude and global discovery and cartography that must have been passed down to the Renaissance map makers and explorers. Who were these explorers of ancient times?
September 21, 2007
A scholarly work, with tons of references and a lot of theories. Interesting, and a must read for those who like a real mystery over the made up kind. This book is referenced itself in many other modern scholarly works, it was fun to finally read it after hearing about it so much.
October 28, 2019
Most books are rated related to their usefulness and contributions to my research.
Overall, a good book for the researcher and enthusiast.
Read for personal research
- found this book's contents helpful and inspiring - number rating relates to the book's contribution to my needs.
Overall, a good book for the researcher and enthusiast.
Read for personal research
- found this book's contents helpful and inspiring - number rating relates to the book's contribution to my needs.
February 11, 2008
A doubtful thesis, but intriguing possibilities make this book worth a glance.
July 28, 2011
First read about the meaning of the Piri Reis's map from the Graham Hancock's books. It is amazing and very intriguing.This book is a very good study of the ancient maps.
February 26, 2013
Brilliant and fascinating!
March 26, 2014
You look close enough and you find the history of our world isn't quite the same as you thought it was.
March 9, 2015
The book has interesting facts about maps of the ancient sea kings. I give this book 5 stars.
January 29, 2016
Interesting pseuodohistory....the errors in the work continue to pop up in the writing of other authors
May 5, 2017
Goodness. Well done.
November 25, 2017
Amazing glimpse into lost knowledge.
August 21, 2022
It is a very strange book. Written apparently for the cartography expert in mind it is a lengthy treatise on the analysis of a set of maps from late antiquity and early modernity which show some interesting features and anomalies. He seems to have uncovered that some ancient maps had been based on maps that had been originally laid out with an "oblate" spherical trigonometry. This spherical geometry is preserved in the errors of longitude and latitude that were created by the later map makers when copying them to a different projection. It suggests that in deep antiquity the maps had reached a point of sophistication not seen until the 17th century of the modern era, and then had declined to the state we understand it to be in during the Classical era of Alexandrian and Greek cartography. And then furthermore, there are geographic anomalies in some of these old maps that suggest they had been made using copies of maps that were first charted from ~4,000-7,000 BCE as source material.
I think there is a lot of intriguing ideas and evidence in this book, but it is extremely difficult to read. I eventually gave up trying to understand all of what he was saying and would skip to passages where he summarizes his findings. However, half of the book is also an extensive appendix of notes, which contain a great deal of interesting reference information. This is certainly a book worth owning and skimming through. Not sure I can recommend reading the whole thing though!
I think there is a lot of intriguing ideas and evidence in this book, but it is extremely difficult to read. I eventually gave up trying to understand all of what he was saying and would skip to passages where he summarizes his findings. However, half of the book is also an extensive appendix of notes, which contain a great deal of interesting reference information. This is certainly a book worth owning and skimming through. Not sure I can recommend reading the whole thing though!
December 23, 2022
Can you say spherical geometry?
This book is worth keeping for the pictures alone. At least my copies have color and do look like coffee table books. I do not want to argue validities. That is up to the author. Nevertheless, there is no other book that really covers the Piri Reis map. It seems to have disappeared from the Internet. I have been able to find a few other references now and then like other people mentioning the fact that Columbus did have a map case of sorts.
The story goes that the crew was not afraid of falling off the end of the earth but that Columbus was a poor navigator. All this flat earth stuff is much later than Columbus is. The map he had was a composite and he missed his landing point. However, no one else is as enthusiastic as Charles H. Hapgood is. As far as who got to the west first, it seems that anyone falling in the water would turn up here. So, what is the big deal? The deal is that maps such as these are the tangible proof that others have done so.
As far as the secondary proofs of building styles, 101 architecture class will tell you that with similar building materials you get similar structures. The one piece of information that is hard to dismiss is the Antarctic coastline accuracy.
People may agree or disagree with the conclusions drawn but the five-star rating is for an excellent presentation and making people think.
This book is worth keeping for the pictures alone. At least my copies have color and do look like coffee table books. I do not want to argue validities. That is up to the author. Nevertheless, there is no other book that really covers the Piri Reis map. It seems to have disappeared from the Internet. I have been able to find a few other references now and then like other people mentioning the fact that Columbus did have a map case of sorts.
The story goes that the crew was not afraid of falling off the end of the earth but that Columbus was a poor navigator. All this flat earth stuff is much later than Columbus is. The map he had was a composite and he missed his landing point. However, no one else is as enthusiastic as Charles H. Hapgood is. As far as who got to the west first, it seems that anyone falling in the water would turn up here. So, what is the big deal? The deal is that maps such as these are the tangible proof that others have done so.
As far as the secondary proofs of building styles, 101 architecture class will tell you that with similar building materials you get similar structures. The one piece of information that is hard to dismiss is the Antarctic coastline accuracy.
People may agree or disagree with the conclusions drawn but the five-star rating is for an excellent presentation and making people think.
February 23, 2024
This book raises some uncomfortable question for historians and historic researchers. It's more than Piri's map. There is a plethora of maps that show details that are hard to explain or just say it's imaginary coincidences. To say there was an old civilization of seafarers doesn't make it real. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence that is irrefutable with the harsh light of science fully engulfing it. This book fails with claims made.
Maps used and the explanation of what we see or what we should see is difficult at times. Some of it is very technical and that's ok. This is where other experts can view the work and make an educated decision of the work.
The author has a wide source of published works or whitepapers as sourced information for his thoughts. While this book is a little dated on some aspects, it respects the science used for some results. It would be interesting to see an updated version of this book with a non-invested scientist writing modern timelines in attempting to explain these maps.
I have my own thoughts on these maps and dozens more that have since been brought to light that show anomalies that are in modern maps, yet these maps are hundreds of years old.
Maps used and the explanation of what we see or what we should see is difficult at times. Some of it is very technical and that's ok. This is where other experts can view the work and make an educated decision of the work.
The author has a wide source of published works or whitepapers as sourced information for his thoughts. While this book is a little dated on some aspects, it respects the science used for some results. It would be interesting to see an updated version of this book with a non-invested scientist writing modern timelines in attempting to explain these maps.
I have my own thoughts on these maps and dozens more that have since been brought to light that show anomalies that are in modern maps, yet these maps are hundreds of years old.
July 1, 2024
Interesting stuff ! And very well written.
I must say that I always search for books that can prove its claims which this one sort of does.
Sort of because I do not understand what is going on with the science and math of cartography.
But the credibility of the author makes me believe the conclusions along the way.
A thing I am as a reader both for and against. For i am left as incapable to use this as a reference or proof as before I started reading it. Maybe it is just me who learned that if I want the big answers I need to educate myself to critically understand them.
I am sure he would have been an extremely interesting guy to speak to and have as teacher!
I must say that I always search for books that can prove its claims which this one sort of does.
Sort of because I do not understand what is going on with the science and math of cartography.
But the credibility of the author makes me believe the conclusions along the way.
A thing I am as a reader both for and against. For i am left as incapable to use this as a reference or proof as before I started reading it. Maybe it is just me who learned that if I want the big answers I need to educate myself to critically understand them.
I am sure he would have been an extremely interesting guy to speak to and have as teacher!
April 18, 2021
I really great book, way ahead of its time! Charles Hapgood was a very serious academic and this book is very serious and scientific. Hapgood may be the writer but he was not alone in his research, as several scientists from various areas (mathematicians, geographers, etc.) helper him, as well as his students.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.