Atlantis Beneath the Ice

by Rand Flem-Ath

  Charles Hapgood explained to Arch C. Gerlach (chief of the Map Division at the Library of Congress) that the Piri Reis map “required more astronomy than was known in the Renaissance. The mathematics require that whoever constructed it had to know the linear distance from Syene to the North Pole to within a degree of accuracy. Piri Reis did not know that, neither did Columbus.”11

  Mallery and Hapgood, as well as the U.S. Navy and Air Force experts, had become convinced by their exhaustive studies that the Piri Reis map offered compelling evidence that an unknown ancient civilization possessed advanced astronomical and geodesic knowledge.

  SYENE OR THE TROPIC OF CANCER?

  Hapgood and his students (notably Frank Ryan) spent months trying to determine the exact center of the Piri Reis Map. At first, Hapgood was convinced that it was the city of Syene, where Eratosthenes, the librarian and father of geography, had made his famous calculations about the size of the earth. Hapgood submitted this suggestion to the cartographic crew at Westover Air Force Base. Captain Burroughs concurred. He wrote, “Piri Reis’ use of the portolano projectionb (centered on Syene, Egypt) was an excellent choice.”12

  We see in figure 1.2 on page 22 how the complete map must have looked, based on the same projection used by Piri Reis in 1513. The chart Christopher Columbus carried on his voyage would have resembled this projection.

  Despite the fact that professionals had verified Syene as the center of the map, Hapgood remained skeptical. He thought that the ancients would have been more likely to use the Tropic of Cancer, which divides the tropical from the temperate climatic zones. Hapgood was certain that such an important global marker would have been highly significant to the ancient navigators.

  Figure 1.2. The 1513 Piri Reis projection is but a fragment of the secret map that Columbus may have possessed. If the lost map is ever found, it should depict the entire globe using an equidistant projection centered on the ancient Egyptian city of Syene. Drawing by Rand Flem-Ath and Rose Flem-Ath.

  Today, the Tropic of Cancer lies near Syene but not precisely over it. The difference in distance is small, but Hapgood and his students wanted to be exact in their calculations. There was considerable debate whether to use the measurement from the ancient city or from the climatic marker. Hapgood mistakenly assumed that it had to be an either/or choice between Syene or the Tropic of Cancer. It was a false choice. There was a time when the Tropic of Cancer lay directly over Syene. We believe that a clue to that synchronicity of time and place lies within the very projection of the Piri Reis Map.13

  When did the Tropic of Cancer and Syene share exactly the same latitude? Astronomers have concluded that it takes a century for the Tropic of Cancer to drift 40 seconds of latitude. This gives us a formula for our calculations and enables us to bull’s-eye the date when the original mapmakers were at work. By calculating the difference in distance from the latitude of today’s Tropic of Cancer (23°27' N) to that of Syene (24°05'30" N), we discover the answer: about 5,775 years ago, that is, circa 3763 BCE.

  Syene is 38 minutes and 30 seconds from today’s Tropic of Cancer. This is 2,280 seconds (multiplying 38 times 60 to convert minutes to seconds) plus the 30 seconds to give us a total of 2,310 seconds difference. We then divide these seconds by 40 to find that Syene was last on the Tropic of Cancer some 57.75 centuries ago.

  The projection of the Piri Reis map points like an arrow at a pivotal turning point in human history. Archaeology teaches that Egyptian civilization dawned circa 3800 BCE.c

  THE SECOND SANTA MARIA

  Hapgood feared that the Spanish authorities would not take up the president’s challenge to locate the source maps that Columbus had used to chart his trip to the New World. After all, they had no motive to rewrite history since they were content with its outcome—Spain had discovered America. To overcome this problem Hapgood drafted a letter for President Eisenhower to send to General Francisco Franco, Spain’s fascist leader.

  DRAFT PROPOSAL

  A Letter from the President to General Franco

  Dear General,

  I have the honor to request your kind cooperation in securing an item of information of equal importance to the peoples and historians of Spain and the United States, relating to the discovery of America.

  It is a question of a map, said to be the map of Columbus, which was seen by an American geographer on board the flagship of the Spanish fleet that visited the Columbian Exposition in the year 1893.

  The Spanish fleet consisted of three ships, which were exact replicas of Columbus’ ships. The flagship was, therefore, named The Santa Maria. I enclose a copy of a memorandum from one of our historians explaining in detail why we think it important to find the “Columbus map” that was on board the replica of the Santa Maria that summer (in 1893). I also enclose a statement by the gentleman (now 89 years old) who saw the map on the Santa Maria and some related documents.

  If it would not be a matter of inconvenience, we would greatly appreciate a facsimile copy of the map, which, we presume, must now be found in your archives.

  Professor Hapgood’s memorandum and the supporting statement from our Col. Ohlmeyer will make clear, I am sure, the very remarkable importance that may be attached to this map.

  With all personal good wishes,

  (signed)

  DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

  Enclosures:

  1. Mr. Hapgood’s Memorandum

  2. Mr. Campbell’s Statement

  3. Col. Ohlmeyer’s Statement

  4. Photograph of the Piri Reis Map

  Included with the letter was James Hunter Campbell’s (1873–1962) account of his sighting of the elusive map. Campbell was only nineteen years old in the summer of 1893 when he accompanied his father to see the replica of the Santa Maria while it was docked in Toronto on its way to the World’s Columbian Exposition (the Chicago World’s Fair), held to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America.

  STATEMENT OF JAMES H. CAMPBELL OF OCEAN BLUFF, MASSACHUSETTS, REGARDING THE COLUMBUS MAP HE SAW ON THE REPLICA OF THE SANTA MARIA, IN 1893:

  The Spanish Government built and sent over to this country for exhibition at the Columbian Exhibition at Chicago, three replicas of Columbus’ vessels. There was the Santa Maria, which was the largest of the three; then there was the Pinta, and I think the third one was the Nina. They came to Chicago by way of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, and as they were passing through Lake Ontario they stopped at Toronto. My brother, who was on the reception committee of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club, met the officers and they made him promise that when he went to Chicago to see the Fair that he would call on them. The Fair was open for six months, and as near as I can remember my brother came to Chicago about the end of July or the first of August. My father was living in Chicago at the time, and was employed by one of the publishing houses.

  When my brother came to Chicago to visit the Exhibition my father and I went along with him, as he was going to pay a visit to the officers of the caravels.

  The caravels were tied up alongside of the Agricultural Building and right next to the boathouse of the Electrical Launch and Navigation Co. Since I was in charge of the electrical launches I was able to guide them directly to the caravels.

  We went aboard the Santa Maria, and my brother introduced my father and me to the officers. When the officers learned that my father was a geographer and the author and publisher of geographies and other school books in Canada, they became much interested, and asked my dad if he would like to see Columbus’s map. Up to this time my dad had left the conversation to my brother and me, but after that the conversation was carried on between the officers and my dad, and what made it worse when the Spaniards were at a loss to find words in English to express their thoughts, my dad invited them to speak in French, and to their surprise they found out a little later that my dad could also speak Spanish, so that cut out both my brother and me out of the conversation for the remainder of the visit.

/>   The officers invited us into the Chart Room, and took out a large map. As I remember it now it was about four feet square. It covered most of the table that was situated in the center of the Chart Room. My dad was very short sighted, so he pored over the chart with his nose almost touching the paper. He was tremendously pleased, but he didn’t say much, until we got home again, and then he said he had difficulty in reading the map, not in understanding the language as he was a Spanish scholar and had at one time published a Spanish journal, and he also understood navigation, but he said he didn’t have enough time to study the map. Nevertheless he was overjoyed at having seen it. I might add that my father was an enthusiastic yachtsman, and at one time contemplated making a trip around the world in his yacht, the Oriole. . . . I am sorry I don’t remember the names of the officers who showed us the map, but it is most likely that they signed the log at the Clubhouse, and this has probably been preserved.14

  The mention of the chart being “four feet square” intrigued Hapgood since the Piri Reis map was about two by three feet. Might the map that Campbell saw actually depict the entire world and not just the Piri Reis fragment?

  Hapgood was also curious about the senior Campbell’s reaction to the map. Campbell’s father had written geography texts, and the fact that he “pored over the chart with his nose almost touching the paper” was suggestive. We know that the senior Campbell was not puzzled by the inscriptions since he was a “‘Spanish scholar.’” So what was it that fascinated him? We suggest it was the unusual equidistant projection—uncommon in 1893.

  THE WHITE HOUSE ACTS

  When we reviewed Hapgood’s correspondence contained in President Eisenhower’s archives, we discovered that the White House did in fact follow through on the memorandum. The U.S. State Department, on orders from Eisenhower, directed the American ambassador in Spain, John David Lodge, to pursue the matter.

  Ambassador Lodge’s younger brother, Henry Cabot Lodge (1902– 1985), was Richard Nixon’s vice presidential running mate during the 1960 campaign. Despite the obvious distractions, Lodge followed through on the presidential order. Unfortunately, the Spanish authorities came up empty-handed.

  With the election of President John Kennedy in 1960, the dynamics in Washington changed. The new administration never found time to pursue Hapgood’s quest. Hapgood never knew what happened. Instead he devoted a decade to writing Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age. The preface begins:

  This book contains the story of the discovery of the first hard evidence that advanced peoples preceded all the peoples now known to history. In one field, ancient sea charts, it appears that accurate information has been passed down from people to people. . . . It becomes clear that the ancient voyagers traveled from pole to pole. Unbelievable as it may appear, the evidence nevertheless indicates that some ancient people explored the coasts of Antarctica when its coasts were free of ice.15

  WE TAKE UP THE HUNT

  As librarians, we were challenged by the problem of finding this most important of documents. We began by contacting a friend in Toronto, Shawn Montgomery, to see if he could follow up on Campbell’s suggestion that the Royal Canadian Yacht Club might have log entries concerning the visit of the Santa Maria replica. Unfortunately the logs from 1893 no longer existed.

  We then turned to the Chicago side of the mystery and contacted Ray Grasse, an author and friend living in Chicago. He suggested that we contact the Chicago Historical Society. The librarian at the society, Emily Clark, told us that the captain who sailed the replica of the Santa Maria in 1893 was named V. M. Concas. Clark turned our request over to an assistant working in the archives department named Cynthia Mathews. She hit on the mother lode and sent us an account of the trip written by the captain himself.

  From this account we discovered that Hapgood’s logical assumption that the “lost map of Columbus” was housed in the Spanish archives was incorrect. In fact, according to Captain Concas, the Columbus maps were kept in an entirely different location. He wrote, “She (Spain) has sent also the original charts of America, but the difficulties attending the proper custody in the Convent of Rabida of this valuable collection of charts, where are also the original documents connected with the discovery of America (also belonging to Spain), has resulted in their being examined by a very limited number of persons.”16

  It was within the sand-colored walls of the modest La Rábida Monastery that the “lost map of Columbus” could be found. The monastery was originally built by the Knights Templar in 1261. After they fell from power in 1307, the Franciscans chose the monastery as one of their Spanish bases.

  In 1485, Christopher Columbus began lobbying European royalty to finance an unprecedented voyage to India and China. He would sail west across the Atlantic, something that had never been done before. Until then all voyages to India and China had sailed south, hugged the coast of Africa, and then traveled east.

  Frustrated in his attempts to enlist a patron to support his “westward” route to Asia, Columbus decided to join the rich pilgrims who regularly journeyed across Europe. His hope was that one of them would finance his venture or use his or her influence to obtain an audience for Columbus with one of the royal families.

  In 1490, he arrived at La Rábida. Fortunately for Columbus, the prior of La Rábida took a liking to him and intervened on Columbus’s behalf with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. The great explorer was at the monastery when he received the exciting news that his ambitious voyage had been approved. It is not surprising that he left his most valuable maps to the prior who made his dream possible.

  Is the lost map still lying in the shadows on some dusty shelf in a quiet Spanish monastery? What could we discover from it if we could see its ancient face? How would our concept of history be changed if Hapgood and Campbell were right about the mappa mundus?

  The path that the two men took together in their quest for the source map of the 1513 Piri Reis map was not the first adventure they had shared. Starting in the late 1940s, the Hapgood/Campbell team had explored an idea central to Atlantis beneath the Ice—the theory of earth crust displacement.

  Like their quest for ancient maps, the exploration of this idea would involve many others, most notably, Albert Einstein.

  TWO

  ADAPT, MIGRATE, OR DIE

  On May 8, 1953, an elderly professor with a fondness for the violin sat down at his desk in Princeton, New Jersey, and wrote a letter to Charles Hapgood, an obscure instructor at a small New England college. The professor was Albert Einstein, and the topic of the letter was a theory of Hapgood’s that had “electrified” the great physicist. Einstein wrote, “I find your arguments very impressive and have the impression that your hypothesis is correct. One can hardly doubt that significant shifts of the crust of the earth have taken place repeatedly and within a short time.”1

  Charles Hutchins Hapgood (1904–1982), a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was born in New York City. After graduating, Hapgood traveled to Germany, where his studies at the University of Freiburg coincided with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. When World War II erupted, he returned to the United States and joined the Office of Strategic Studies (OSS, the forerunner of the CIA) as a civilian with inside knowledge of Nazi Germany. After the war, Hapgood became a professor of anthropology and the history of science at Keene State College in New Hampshire. In the early 1950s, he began formulating his theory of earth crust displacement, a project that would occupy him for nearly twenty years.

  Einstein’s correspondence with Hapgood began in November 1952 and lasted until Einstein’s death in April 1955.2 Einstein wrote at least ten letters to Hapgood and conducted scientific correspondence with other interested parties about Hapgood’s theory. In 1954, Einstein approached the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in support of Hapgood’s application. Einstein wrote that Hapgood’s idea of earth crust displacement was: “fascinating, justified, promising, and important.”
3

  Einstein recommended Hapgood as one who had the “energy and patience” to pursue the theory. However, despite the support of one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, Hapgood did not receive a fellowship.

  One of Hapgood’s most rewarding experiences came in January 1955 when he and his friend and co-theorist James Hunter Campbell met with Einstein. Hapgood explained that his own contribution lay mainly in the fields of geology and paleontology. He left to Campbell the issues of mechanics and geophysics. The conversation ranged over a number of topics, from the “elastic limit of the crustal rocks” to the value of the new tool of radiocarbon dating. As the men were about to leave, Einstein offered two pieces of advice.

  He said that it was not “necessary to take the present state of knowledge very seriously,” adding that “what we regard as knowledge today may someday be regarded as error.”

  He added that the “gradualist notions common in geology were . . . merely a habit of mind, and were not necessarily justified by the empirical data.”4

  Earlier, in May 1954, Einstein had written a foreword to Hapgood’s book, The Earth’s Shifting Crust: A Key to Some Basic Problems of Earth Science.5 Part of that foreword reads, “A great many empirical data indicates that at each point of the earth’s surface that has been carefully studied, many climatic changes have taken place, apparently quite suddenly. This, according to Mr. Hapgood, is explicable if the virtually rigid outer crust of the earth undergoes, from time to time, extensive displacement.”6

  Einstein’s enthusiasm was tempered by one concern: “The only doubtful assumption is that the earth’s crust can be moved easily enough over the inner layers.”7

  Figure 2.1. Between the earth’s mantle and its outer crust (or lithosphere) lies a semiliquid layer known as the asthenosphere. Charles Hapgood believed that the asthenosphere allowed the outer crust of the earth to shift. Such a displacement includes continents and the ocean basins.