Forgotten Ages Research

The Secret Behind the Out-of-Place Maps—Who Engineered the Melting of the Ice Caps?

Report Topics:

• Mysteries of the out-of-place Renaissance charts—evidence pointing to someone mapping the entire surface of the Earth over eight thousand years ago using very sophisticated measuring techniques and advanced mathematics
• The focus of the Piri Reis, Oronteus Finnaeus, Mercator, Bauche, Zeno Brothers, Hadji Ahmed, Benincasa and Ptolemy maps on the Antarctic and Arctic regions, depicting the rapid disappearance of polar glaciation over a very short period
• Did an unknown civilization attempt to melt the polar ice caps in order to rebuild the planet’s lost water vapor canopy?
• ”Anomalous” animal remains and out-of-place human artifacts found in both polar regions suggesting the ice caps fully disappeared and the regions were inhabited briefly before being suddenly overwhelmed by new glaciation

Full Report:

Various Renaissance charts show evidence that someone long ago, before the known ancient civilizations, mapped the entire world. A number of features depicted on the old charts suggest that at the time the originals were made, the world was very different than the present, for the maps depict such places as Antarctica, Greenland, Alaska and northern Europe—places that are now or during the last Ice Age were completely covered with glaciers—as totally ice-free, with mountains, valleys and rivers dominating the lost landscapes. Here are some of the Renaissance maps and what they portray:

The Portolan Maps

In the fourteenth century there appeared in Europe a series of unusual charts that came from undisclosed sources that appear to be too perfect. They were too perfect because the cartographers of the period did not have the knowledge or tools to derive the sophisticated information incorporated into these maps. Grouped together under the general title portolans, they showed no previous development, and throughout the next several hundred years they were not developed any further. From the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries there was no material modifications to these maps.

Furthermore, though produced in many locations across Europe, they were all drawn from the same scale, suggesting that the maps were not developed as a result of mariner survey activity. Instead the portolans were drawn from a common source, the mathematical principles behind which the Renaissance cartographers did not fully understand.

In the 1890’s the Scandinavian scholar A. E. Nordenskold studied all the extant portolans still to be found in various European museums and libraries, and concluded that all them had been copied from just one source map. This mysterious map was so highly accurate in terms of both latitude and longitude measurement that Nordenskold found them to be even better than many of his own nineteenth century charts, and also included forms of cartographical projections only then recently developed.

What inaccuracies occurred on the portolans was only the result of the Renaissance mapmakers having attempted to add their own navigational observations and data, which was very crude by comparison.

Piris Re’is Map of 1513

Piri Re’is was a Turkish Admiral, and in the margin notes of his now famous chart he stated:

“No such map like this exists in our time. Your humble servant is its author and brought it into being. It is based mainly on twenty charts and mappae mundi, one of which was drawn in the time of Alexander the Great, and is known to the Arabs as caferiye. This map is the result of comparison with eight other caferiye maps, one Arab map of India and China and also the map of the western land drawn by Columbus, such that this map of the seven seas is as accurate and reliable as it can be.”

Nothing more is explained as to where the enigmatic “mappae mundi” or the “Caferiye” charts came from, but the Admiral’s mention of one of the maps dating to the time of Alexander the Great suggests that their origin point may have been the great Library of Alexandria, once the home of over a million scrolls of lost wisdom from the past.

One modern author-researcher, Rand Flem-Ath, has found internal evidence within the Piri Re’is Map that it depicts the ancient Egyptian city of Syene (now Aswan) as being located on the Tropic of Cancer. The last time this occurred was circa 3775 B.C.E.—which means some of the source charts the Turkish Admiral utilized date back at least that far.

Significant also is that another of Piri Re’is mystery sources was a map of Christopher Columbus. In other writings the Admiral revealed that in a sea raid he had captured a pilot who had been on the last voyage of Columbus to the New World. In the pilot’s possession was a map used by the famed explorer. It had not been made during the voyages, but rather had been used by Columbus to “discover” the lands of the Americas already portrayed on it in detail.

Looking at the Pirie Re’is map itself, we find these curious features:

Spain is drawn on the map having a large lake near its center with rivers leading to the Atlantic and Mediterranean where such a water system does not exist today—but did exist at the end of the last Ice Age when glaciers in the Pyrenees melted and formed run-off lakes and streams.

North Africa is also depicted with networks of lakes and rivers across what is now the Sahara Desert. However, paleo-climatologists recognize that between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago, the north-blowing wind or mistral was very wet, transporting moisture from the rapidly melting glaciers in northern Europe across the region, making the Sahara green and fertile. Geologists and archaeologists know that up until as late as 3000 B.C.E. the Central Sahara was in fact a very lush region, well-watered and heavily populated. Researchers Stefan Kropelin and Rudolph Kuper from the University of Cologne in Germany have studied a hundred sites in the eastern Sahara over the last thirty years, and have determined that during that distant time the region “was a good place to live.“

Prehistoric rock art ranging from Tassili in what is now the central Desert to southwestern Egypt show cattle, grazing gazelles and people bathing, fishing and farming in places where today even a camel has a hard time to survive. This can only mean that the Turkish Admiral’s map of the Sahara must date from this older, wetter period.

The Piri Re’is map also portrays the Caribbean region filled with islands that do not exist today and other islands which are presently extant appear much larger in size. During the last Ice Age when the ocean levels were lowered by many feet, there were indeed more islands in the Caribbean, and the coastlines of present islands extended farther out into what is now shallow waters. This is true for the Bahamas, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the American continental shelves.

In South America the Amazon River is drawn with two outlets instead of one. There is geologic evidence that in the distant past the waters of the Amazon may have indeed flowed in two major streams before later joining and flowing as one as it does now.

Charles H. Hapgood, who did an extensive cartographical study of the Piri Re’is map was intrigued by the appearance of a large island depicted off the coast of South America located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at 5 degrees North. This is the precise location today of St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks, two volcanic islets each only a few hundred yards across. Yet the map shows them as a single island nearly three hundred miles in diameter. During the Ice Age, when the Atlantic was much lower, the Rocks would have been joined together by a landmass just about that size. Hapgood was of the opinion that this “lost” island may have once been a part of Atlantis.

Without a doubt the most fascinating feature of the Piri Re’is map is that it depicts a large stretch of the coastline of Antarctica called today Queen Maud Land. The map dates to 1513, yet the southern continent’s existence was not verified until 1818. The coast shown, however, is not as it looks today, but rather as it once looked without the present ice-cap covering it, which today buries all of it to depths of several thousands of feet.

In 1953, Captain Arlington H. Mallery was responsible for doing a detailed comparison between the Piri Re’is Antarctican coastline and modern seismic profiles made by sophisticated sonar equipment, which can detect land contours beneath glacier layers.

In every case Mallery found the bays between the islands on the sixteenth century map coincided with drops below sea levels on the seismic charts. In fact, in one instance Mallery actually discovered that Piri Re’is had placed two bays where the seismic map showed land, and when experts were asked to re-check their sonar readings, sure enough, they found that the old map was more correct.

In another case Mallery observed that a certain group of islands on the Piri Re’is chart correspond with an Antarctican mountain range--a range modern researchers had not discovered until 1952. Mallery, along with map expert Hapgood, believes that someone thousands of years ago had possession of sophisticated instruments and knowledge to map Antarctica at a time before the coastline was covered by ice.

Oronteus Finnaeus Map of 1531

This map shows the entire continent of Antarctica, and the shape depicted is strikingly parallel to modern outlines of the continent. Hapgood found more than fifty identifiable land features with an average position error of less than 3 degrees. Along the coast, mountain ranges are drawn where mountains have been detected below the mile thickness of ice. Rivers are also shown on the map flowing through the mountains to the coast in valleys situated precisely where huge glaciers now roll toward the sea.

In sharp contrast, the center of the continent is blank of any geographical features, suggesting that the polar glacier existed in this region at the time the source maps Oronteus Finnaeus copied from were made. But a large stretch of the coast and inland appears ice-free, and deep-sea core samples taken in the Ross Sea area of Antarctica by the University of Illinois during the 1947-1949 Byrd Expedition revealed the present of fine-grained deposits between 6000 and 4000 B.C.E.—the type of deposit one would find form temperate climate rivers bringing silt down over long distances to the coastal shore.

Mercator Map of 1569

A third pre-glacial map of Antarctica appears on Sheet #9 of the 1569 Atlas of the famous Flemish cartographer Mercator. At first glance there seems little relationship between Mercator’s map and the maps of either Finnaeus or Piri Re’is. However, a number of points are clearly definable, in some cases more distinctly so than on the other maps. This could indicate that Mercator possessed source maps different from those of his predecessors.

The identifiable features include the two capes (Dart and Herlacher) in Marie Byrd Land, the Amundson Sea, the Palmer Peninsula (which is shown only as a small projection, as it would look without the ice field now covering it), the Wedell Sea, the Huhling-Hoffman Mountains and the Regula Range (appearing as coastal islands) and an estuary on the Prince Harold coast down which the Shirase Glacier now flows.

The Franco Rosselli Map of 1508

A renowned Florentine cartographer of the fifteenth century, Rosselli made his chart as a richly illustrated copper plate engraving, hand colored on vellum, which today is kept in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. It also portrays Antarctica very accurately, with such features as the Ross Sea and Wilkes Land clearly visible and easily recognizable, though with no ice cover. Equally as remarkable is that the chart names this area quite specifically as “Antarticus”—again, more than three centuries before the land mass was discovered.

The Bauche Map of 1727

This is yet another map of Antarctica, but it is more surprising than the others for it portrays the continent as two large islands. According to a map of sub-glacial land surfaces of Antarctica prepared by survey teams during the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958, the surface of the continent is in fact below sea level straight across from the Ross Sea to the Wedell Sea, cutting the land in two.

On the Oronteus Finnaeus map this waterway is shown as two large estuaries that almost connect but not quite, suggesting that the polar ice cap was there in the center obstructing the complete link-up. But on the Bauche map there is no obstruction depicted, meaning that Bauche had access to source maps drawn at a time when Antarctica was totally free of ice. According to Charles Berlitz, Bauche obtained his information from an ancient Greek map, but there is no telling where the ancient Greek mapmakers had received their information.

Cartographer Charles Hapgood, when looking at the sum total of information contained in these charts, came to significant conclusions:

“The evidence presented by the ancient maps appears to suggest the existence in remote times, before the rise of any known cultures, of a true civilization, of an advanced kind, which either was localized in one area but had worldwide commerce, or was, in a real sense, a worldwide culture. This culture, at least in some respects, was more advanced than the civilizations of Greece and Rome. In geodesy, nautical science, and mapmaking, it was more advanced than any known culture before the eighteenth century of the Christian era. It was only in the eighteenth century that we first developed a practical means of finding longitude. It was in the eighteenth century that we first accurately measured the circumference of the earth. Not until the eighteenth century did we begin to send out ships for exploration into the Arctic or Antarctic Seas and only then did we begin the exploration of the bottom of the Atlantic. These maps indicate that some ancient people did all these things.”

But we can go even one step beyond, for when we look at all four maps together—Piri Re’is, Oronteus Finnaeus, Mercator, Rosselli and Bauche—a fascinating picture emerges which suggests that over a relatively short period of time, between 6000 and 4000 B.C.E., there appears to have been a swift and dramatic reduction of the Antarctican ice cap to the point that it completely disappeared. What makes this event so remarkable is that only a few millennia before, in approximately 10,000 B.C.E., the Antarctican ice cap was so vast in extent it overflowed to engulf the Patagonian region of South America. In other words, in only five millennia or less millions of tons of ice quickly vanished. What is more, the charts show that all during this period the reduction was being carefully monitored and mapped by a highly advanced civilization. Could an advanced civilization with a sophistication of accurately mapping an entire continent, also have the technological ability to actually engineer the melting of the Antarctican ice cap?

As an interesting aside to this question, there is the added possibility that during this relatively brief time the continent was ice-free, it may have been populated.

Francis Maziere has done extensive research into the legends and folklore of the central Pacific Polynesians. He found that the Polynesians are very familiar with the existence of the Antarctican continent. According to their ancient traditions, there was a time when the “great land to the far south” was not covered with ice and several nations of people lived there. Maziere found one Polynesian elder from Easter Island named Veriveri who told him that in the midst of the southern land is a great cliff of deep red rock. Just such a unique landmark, an escarpment of oxidized iron ore, was discovered not long ago by an American expedition into the heart of Antarctica.

The problem is the red cliff is several hundred miles inland, so that it could not have been observed from the coast. It would also have been impossible for a Polynesian to have journeyed across Antarctica in its present frozen state to see the red cliff and live to tell about it. If an ancestor of the Polynesians did observe the red escarpment, as the legend would indicate someone did, the observation must have been made when climatic conditions on Antarctica were radically different.

The Native Australians also have legends that a “great land to the south” was once the home of many people and dwelling places. But whatever magical technologies of energies had been employed to clear the land of ice appears to have been sadly forgotten, for the Australians tell that the southern land was once again overwhelmed by what they call “quartz crystals and cool water”--the closest image the desert-living Australians could make in describing ice.

Such legends and stories are also backed up by tantalizing artifacts. In the summer of 1977, specialists at the Leningrad Research Institute of the Arctic and Antarctic were examining deep-water ice samples that had been mined through boring the Antarctic icecap. Suddenly, in one of the samples something totally unexpected appeared—a small chip of wood that showed signs of having been fashioned by a carving tool. Even more remarkable the radio-carbon dating of the wood chip indicated that the time period the anomaly came from was 18,000 BP (Before Present) plus or minus 500 years.

The Russians also extracted from other ice samples what looked like threads all exactly 2 cm. long and as thick as strands of human hair. After a great deal of testing by the Crystallography Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the threads turned out to be made of an alloy of gold and silver, and of such a purity as to be soft and pliable.

Five years later, American explorers in Antarctica reported finding the same kind of alloyed threads buried deep in mid-continental ice cores.

Yet the mystery remains—what were these sophisticated man-made objects during in the middle of Antarctica at a time when that landmass was supposedly, according to “accepted” theories, covered with glaciers?

In 1999 Landsat images revealed that below Ice Stream E in Western Antarctica near the Ross Sea coast and northwest of the Whitmore Mountains is an unusual sub-glacial circular formation. Scientists are of the opinion that this may be the remains of an unknown volcano rim or meteor crater. But other researchers have noted that the formation is too perfectly round to be of natural origins, and have suggested instead that this may be the ruins of a walled city or other man-made structure. Was this a prehistoric settlement in ice-free Antarctica that was eventually overwhelmed by a climatic disaster?

What happened long ago to the southern polar regions seems to have also taken place in opposite latitudes, and here again a number of Renaissance charts depict the events.

Hadji Ahmed Map of 1559

The western hemisphere of this map is remarkably accurate looking, indicating that the Moslem chart-maker had at his disposal most extraordinary source maps. The western coast of North and South America are about two centuries ahead of the cartographical knowledge of the time and appears to have been based on a sophisticated projection unknown in Europe and elsewhere.

Of particular interest is the near perfect shape of the Baja California peninsula. The west coast was not explored thoroughly until later in the century, and the true shape of Baja was not established until the nineteenth century. Up to that time most cartographers represented it as an island.

In addition, the Hadji Ahmed chart accurately portrays the Northwest Coast of North America, including Alaska. It also depicts the Hawaiian islands and several Pacific isles which were not discovered until two centuries later.

The accuracy of these geographical features adds significance to the fact that Hadji Ahmed, following his prehistoric source maps of areas unknown to him, faithfully copied a land bridge joining Alaska and Siberia. Such a land bridge did not exist in Hadji Ahmed’s time—but did exist geologists tell us during the last advance of the Ice Age, sinking about 6000 B.C.E.

The contours of the bridge on the map closely correspond to what geologists believe the bridge actually looked like, only without the glacial ice that once covered it. During the 1958 Geophysical Year, soundings proved conclusively that this land connection had not been a narrow band but was an expanse of land of sub-continental proportions that had included all the area north of the curving Aleutian chain and the Alaska panhandle. This is precisely what we see portrayed on the Hadji Ahmed map.

In addition, as pointed out by Oxford scientist, Derek S. Allan, during the last Ice Age the large Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya was joined to the Siberian coast, and the New Siberian Islands composed one landmass. This is precisely how they are portrayed on the Hadji Ahmed map.

Piri Re’is Map of 1528

Fifteen years after his first map, Piri Re’is drew another world chart, but unfortunately we are left with only a very small portion of it. What it does show, however, has elements as remarkably advanced as his initial work. The map, based on a different projection than his first, shows Cuba and Haiti drawn quite accurately, as well as a portrayal of peninsular Florida that was at least a century before its time. It also depicts an accurate image of Honduras and the Yucatan peninsula.

The most remarkable feature of the Turkish Admiral’s second map, however, is seen in its northern portion, for it pictures the southern portion of Greenland--not as it looks today, but as it would appear without any ice on it. Like its southern latitude counterpart of ice-free Antarctica seen on his first map, the Greenland of Piri Re’is demonstrates that he possessed original charts that must have been thousands of years old, made during a prehistoric age when that Arctic landmass had no glaciers streaming down to its southern coasts.

Ptolemy Map of Northern Europe

The last of the great geographers in classical times was Claudius Ptolemy, who lived in the second century A.D. The rediscovery of is works in the fifteenth century was considered a major impetus for the revival of the science of geography in the Renaissance, and for several centuries his charts were the standard of European cartographers. Most of Ptolemy’s maps—especially of the Mediterranean and Africa—were fairly accurate, but those of more distant lands were grossly in error. It seems that Ptolemy relied heavily on travelers’ accounts and on poor stellar observations made throughout the Roman Empire.

However, there are indications that he occasionally referred to a number of remarkable source maps in his possession. It is clear that he was not interested in the geographical positioning of these maps so much as with the detail of topography the source maps revealed. And at times the topography he faithfully reproduced was not that of the second century, but that which existed thousands of years earlier.

Of particular interest is Ptolemy’s “Map of the North.” It shows Greenland covered with ice, but not to the extent it is today. Most of the ice is show in the north of the island, and only a small tongue of an ice-flow extends into the south, with many run-off rivers meandering to the coast, indicating the glaciers were melting.

The Greenland ice of Ptolemy’s map is artistically drawn to show the sheen or reflection of sunlight off the ice surface. Strangely enough, several patches depicting similar sheen are also located on the map in southern Sweden. Although there are glaciers in Sweden, there have not been any in the southern part of the country since the Ice Age. The presence of these glaciers is further indicated by the portrayal of several modern Swedish lakes which appear greatly swollen by run-off rivers flowing into them from the melting patches. Also, a waterway is shown cutting across the peninsula separating southern Sweden from the rest of Scandinavia.

Bjorn Kurten, in his study entitled The Ice Age, reproduces several maps of Scandinavia showing the retreat of glacial ice 14,000 to 4,000 years ago, and on the map representing conditions in the late stages of the retreat, southern Sweden is seen severed from Scandinavia by an inland waterway.

The Ptolemy map also pictures remnant glaciers stretching across northern Germany, through Poland and east Russia. The lines these glaciers form parallels closely the line of farthest advance of the continental ice sheet that covered northern Europe during the last Ice Age.

Benincasa Map of 1508

Another map which shows Ice Age characteristics is the Andrea Benincasa chart of 1508. In the Mediterranean region the map shows a very sophisticated degree of accurate measurement. From Bakum on the Black Sea to Gibraltar--a distance of nearly 3,000 miles--the whole projection is accurate to within less than a degree. In almost unbelievable contrast, however, the Baltic region on the same map appears at first glance to be grossly in error. The Baltic flows on a roughly north-south axis, yet the Benincasa chart depicts it flowing east-west. The upper Baltic in fact—the Gulfs of Bothnia and Riga—are completely missing.

We could dismiss this error as simply the result of a bad representation by a Mediterranean geographer of the coastal lands of northern Europe unfamiliar to him. But a closer examination of the Baltic Sea on the map reveals features very different from other bodies of water depicted.

First, the “coasts” of the so-called sea are heavily shaded, much more so than the other shorelines, as if to distinguish them as separate and distinct entities. Second, a number of rivers and lakes along the southern border are shown flowing out of and not into it. Hapgood has suggested that this strange mass on the Benincasa map covering northern Europe is not the Baltic at all, but instead is a melting ice sheet complete with run-off rivers and glacial lakes.

Like the Ptolemy map, the southern edge of the ice here follows a contour similar to what geologists have identified as the greatest extent of polar ice during the last phase of the Wurm glaciation of the Ice Age.

Zeno Brothers’ Map of 1380

In the mid-fourteenth century, two brothers from Venice named Zeno embarked on a voyage of exploration that took them to Iceland, Greenland, and as far as Nova Scotia. They drew up a map of the North Atlantic in 1380, which was lost for two centuries before it was rediscovered by a later descendant of the Zenos.

A study of the chart reveals that the Zeno brothers could not have been the original mapmakers. The brothers were supposed to have only touched land in Iceland and Greenland, yet their chart depicts not only very accurate longitude and latitude for these locations, but also for Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the German coast, Scotland, and even such little known landfalls as the Shetland and Feroe Islands. The map also shows evidence of having been based on a polar projection, which was a cartographical practice far beyond the abilities of fourteenth century geographers. The original mapmakers, whoever they were, likewise knew the correct lengths of degrees of latitude for the entire North Atlantic. It is very possible that the map, instead of being a product after the fact, was drawn up by the Zeno brothers and then used for their explorations of the northern lands.

Just how old the original source maps may have been is indicated by the fact that the Zeno map portrays Greenland free of the ice cap that now covers it. The interior is depicted with mountains, and rivers are drawn flowing through the mountains to the sea, in many cases where glaciers today flow to the shore.

Captain Mallery, whose initial work on the Piri Re’is map led him to study other Renaissance charts such as that of the Zenos, took special note of the flat plain shown stretching the length of the Greenland interior on this map, intersected by mountains halfway across. The Paul-Emile Victor French Expedition of 1947-1949 found just such a topography from seismic profiles.

Immediately to the south and east of glacial free Greenland the Zeno map also depicts Iceland plus a number of smaller North Atlantic isles. But the latter do not exist today. The American oceanographic ship, Glomar Challenger, took core-samplings in this area and discovered that many of the present shallow water fishing banks located there had once been above sea level as late as the end of the Ice Age to about 6000 B.C.E. Significantly, the Zenos portrayed some of these now sunken Atlantic islands as dotted with cities and towns.

As with the revelation that Antarctica was at one time free of ice and perhaps inhabited, we might also wonder if Greenland and other northern lands presently drowned or buried underneath thousands of feet thickness of glaciers, were likewise peopled by a prehistoric civilization. Traces of such a civilization would have been obliterated long ago by the sea and the power of moving ice.

Could the Arctic have been ice-free in fairly recent times? In 1991, the bones of a polar bear were discovered in Arctic Norway, dating from an era when the region was supposed to be sealed under an icecap that would have made such life impossible. Zoologist Rolf Lie of the University of Bergen stated, “The most remarkable thing is that there were animals living there, which would mean that the area wasn’t under ice as we believed.”

The bear bones, accidentally unearthed by construction workers at Tysfjord, located about 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle, casts doubt about the accepted view that glacial ice has continuously covered the area all during the last Ice Age beginning 80,000 years ago and ending in 10,000 B.C.E. Lie and other scientists probing the chalk-filled Tysfjord grottos and nearby sites have since found a wealth of other bones, including those of two other polar bears, the jaw of a wolf, the remains of seals, mice and even ants.

The only answer to the enigma is that during a specific era in the past the Arctic ice fields completely disappeared for a brief period of time, yet long enough for polar and even temperate climate animals to move in and inhabit the region, before they were then caught and frozen in the returning ice. And if fauna had a chance to thrive in the warmer climate, did humans representing an advanced prehistoric civilization—one that had accurately mapped out the retreat of the glaciers—also come to settle the ice-free region?

At Ipiutak on Point Hope, northern Alaska, there are the ruins of a sophisticated prehistoric culture composed of eight hundred structures laid out in carefully planned blocks and avenues—a community large enough to have supported several thousand individuals. Unfortunately, there are very few artifacts left among the ruins that can tell us anything about the Ipiutak people.

What we do know is that the settlement was far from being a simple hunting community. There are indications that these people had a knowledge of mathematics and astronomy comparable to that of the ancient Maya. Archaeologists are astonished that a community the size of Ipiutak could have existed at all, for it is situated in the permafrost, far north of the Arctic Circle, where today small bands of Eskimo hunters scratch out a meager livelihood. Ipiutak could only have supported so large and sophisticated a population if the climate of Alaska was decidedly different from the present. Is this small city’s existence proof of the time when the northern ice cap was deliberately melted?

Not long ago Russian archaeologists discovered the remains of a number of prehistoric settlements very similar to Ipiutak in the midst of the frozen taiga in northeastern Siberia.

Here too the climate is very hostile to all forms of life, yet the archaeologists found evidence of large Paleolithic, Neolithic and even Bronze Age populations that appear to have lived side by side in the same area.

In Yakutia, Paleolithic rock drawings have been discovered that are much like the cave paintings of Magdalenian France and Spain. Between Yakutia and western Europe in the east-west direction, the land and the prehistoric cultures it supported were completely devoid of evidence of any similar artistic development. The only possible link between Siberia and the European Cro-Magnon civilization is more directly across the North Pole, in the direction of a possible common homeland in the Arctic.

Looking at the Renaissance maps of the northern regions as a whole, we see another parallel with those of Antarctica. Once again, everywhere on the charts we are witness to the swift shrinking of all glaciers from their greatest extent in the Ice Age cover over northern Europe, to their complete disappearance, even in Greenland.

And once again, too, the reduction was carefully observed and charted by an advanced civilization, testified by the accuracies inherent in the maps. The dates likewise suggest that the rapid melting of boreal ice took place concurrent with the disappearance of the Antarctican glaciers, and with a speed too swift to be accounted for by normal natural causes and processes.

The conclusion is both daring and disturbing—a technological society in dim antiquity was responsible for engineering the feat of melting both the southern and northern polar icecaps of the world. They succeeded, as the maps certainly prove, though the results appear to have been only temporary. Later on, within a few millennia, whatever controls had been in effect preventing the ice from building up again were subsequently lost, the ice returned, and today glaciers once more dominate the once unfrozen lands of Antarctica and Greenland.

If such an engineering feat was indeed accomplished in ages past, there is one mystery left unexplained. Where did the “disappearing” ice go?

Modern oceanographers and climatologists have calculated that if the present Greenland and Antarctican ice sheets were melted, the world’s ocean levels would rise anywhere from 100 to 300 feet, drowning all coastal areas and major port cities. Yet when we look at the various Renaissance maps, the melting of the southern and northern glacier masses was achieved with little difference in ocean levels apparent through the process.

In fact, generally the ocean levels are portrayed as being somewhat lower than at present, as seen in more numerous and larger islands in the Mediterranean, Caribbean and North Atlantic.

One possible answer is that the melting waters were by unknown means “transported” by evaporation and condensation in the Earth’s ecosystem to water dry areas of the world. It is significant, for example, that the Piri Re’is map shows the present Sahara as being well-watered and fertile. Paleo-climatologists in fact recognize that all modern deserts—the Gobi in Central Asia, the Arabian Desert, the African Khalahari, South America’s coastal wastelands, and the American Southwest Deserts—were from 10,000 B.C.E. to as late as 3000 B.C.E. equally as well-watered, fertile and full of lakes and rivers as was the Sahara.

Only as a general failure in the balance of the Earth’s ecosystem at a relatively recent date did the modern deserts come into being. And that relatively late date happens to coincide with the time when the ice fields began building up again in the polar regions.

Yet even if we surmise that all deserts in the world enjoyed good climate and plenty of rain from diverted moisture from the melted polar glaciers, this would not have been sufficient a quantity of water to explain the disappearance of all the ice. The only real solution—the only place left for the water to have gone—is straight up, into the atmosphere, where it once stayed in a permanent layer above the Earth.

The creation of a new water vapor canopy around the planet, even if it was only temporary for a few millennia, would have left its mark in the natural records of the Earth. We know from the study of ancient climates, called palynology and based on the deposits of pollen left in sediment layers around the world, that suddenly about 8000 B.C.E. and lasting to circa 3000 B.C.E. the globe went through a very warm phase in which the sea temperature increased by a staggering 4.5 degrees Centigrade, then just as quickly dropped off at the end of the period. During this time, even northern Scotland enjoyed a Mediterranean-like climate.

According to Yugoslavian astronomer Milutin Milankovitch, who discovered regular cycles in the appearance and disappearance of Ice Ages over the past 600 million years, this sudden warm period between ten and five millennia ago was out of sync with the natural glacial periodicity of the planet, that the “Ice Age retreated far too quickly, and then seemed to lose impetus and cool down again before resuming its steady upward slope.” The canopy collapse also precipitated an unprecedented quick change. Using computer simulations of the Earth’s atmospheric conditions, German scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research calculated that the onset of desertification in the Sahara region occurred within less than 300 years.

In addition, localized dipole measurements in volcanic rock produced during the same period can be used to create what is called a magnetically orientated substrate calibration chart, showing the occurrence of geomagnetic disturbances in the planetary field. Significantly, one perturbation took place about 7500 B.C., about the time the water vapor canopy was put in place using the natural energies of the globe. A second larger disturbance happened about 3150 B.C.E.—close to the time when the canopy collapsed and when the world-wide electrical avalanche triggered by the Babel disaster transpired.

Yet the question remains, who were the unknown people who engineered the creation of the second canopy and its planetary effects?

In the Hebrew Book of Genesis, there is a memory of a global mapping and dowsing “irrigation” of earth energies as found preserved in the name of one of Noah’s fifth generation descendants, Peleg.

In Genesis 11:25, it is stated, “Peleg, in his day was the earth divided,” with the connotation of “a measurement, allotment, a marking off of area.” Peleg is also derived from the Akkadian palgu and the Ugaritic plg, meaning, “to discern currents in the earth, to map out water courses, to irrigate the earth with fertile energies.” Noteworthy is the fact that many of the Renaissance maps—particularly the Piri Re’is chart—shows major Earth Crystal node points among the oceans and land masses, indicating that the Ancients who were doing the global mapping were likewise delineating out the major chakras of the planet.

The entire map is also based on a sophisticated azimuthal equidistant projection which has as its focal point one of the most powerful Earth node points, the Great Pyramid at Giza.

The Biblical figure of Peleg was no alone in his Earth measurement work, for other descendants listed in Genesis chapter 11 also had interesting names with connotations bearing upon the same mapping. One of these was Mizraim, a grandson of Noah, who according to both Jewish and Arabic traditions was the forefather of the Egyptians. His name, as it is derived from Semitic and Akkadian roots, means, “to draw up a plan, a representation,” particularly in terms of measuring something such as with a map.

The connotation also encompasses, “to search, to discover the structure or framework of an object.” Was Mizraim instrumental in finding and charting out the Crystal lattice pattern of the planet?

As the word stands in the Hebrew in Genesis, without points, it reads as Met-zraim or Metz-im, signifying, “to enclose, embark, hem in, confine, or restrict the ocean, sea or water currents.” This is parallel to the name meaning of Peleg, the “divider-measurer of earth and waters,” and again alludes to the manipulation of earth energies interlinked with subterranean springs and water flows.

Interestingly, Mizraim is a dual word form, indicating the presence of a polarity of currents dealt with, as is indicated from many corroborating legends and stories found world-wide concerning the yin-yang aspects of earth energies.

Two more curious Genesis name listings are Almodad and Sheleph, both sixth generation descendants and the sons of Joktan, the brother of Peleg. In the Hebrew, Almodad means, “measurer,” and in the Chaldrean Paraphrase of Jonathan, there is preserved the ancient tradition that he was the “inventor of geometry,” qui mensuratat terram finibus—”who measured the Earth to its extremities.” Almodad was a progenitor of the southern Arabians—and it is interesting to note that many of the Renaissance maps showing advanced knowledge of the Earth’s surface, like the Piri Re’is and Hadji Ahmed maps, were made by Arabs from ancient sources which they never fully disclosed.

In the same Paraphrase, Sheleph is given to mean, “he who leads forth the waters of rivers, the operation of canals, waterworks, who knows and measures the great circles of water-energies.”

While one brother, Almodad, seems to have concentrated on measuring the physical contours of the planet, the other brother strove to know the mystery of controlling the lines and points of earth energy by measuring the water-energy contours of the planet.

According to the Genesis account, the lives of Peleg, Mizraim, Almodad and Sheleph covered a span of five generations, and according to the Septuagint’s genealogical numbers for Genesis, these men were all contemporaries of one another at a specific moment in time.

One Renaissance map, the Ibn Ben Zara chart of 1487, is much like the Piri Re’is map, in that it shows several out-of-place features both in space and time, suggesting it too was drawn from source maps dating far back. The map is not only more sophisticated than mapmakers of the fifteenth century cold have made, but it also depicts certain geographical anachronisms.

For example, the mouth of the Guadalquivir River in southern Spain is as it looked thousand of years before it had a delta; more islands appear in the Aegean Sea where such islands in fact existed up until not long after the end of the last Ice Age; and a single large island is given for Thera (Santorini)—the way it appeared before its volcanic mount blew up and split in two in about 1250 B.C.E.

These are curious and significant features in themselves, but the most fascinating feature of the Ibn Ben Zara chart is five small portraits that surround the outer edges of the map. There is evidence that as this map was copied and recopied over the ages, these little faces had been faithfully copied as well. They were considered to be as important as the map itself, and were an integral part of it. The Arabs at least attempted to accurately reproduce the little pictures as best they could, while in Europe the pictures on similar maps degenerated in time to become only artistic decorations—-the zephyrs or cherubim faces with puffed cheeks blowing wind from each corner of the map.

What is noteworthy about the Ibn Ben Zara portraits is that the faces are not Arabic, nor do they correspond to the facial features of any other fifteenth century peoples. The five men are shown in profile—clean-shaven, wide-eyed, with moppish hairstyles. No one knows for certain who these men were, but they were considered important enough to have their faces associated with a very sophisticated map showing prehistoric geographical elements, and their deeds were of such significance that their memory was preserved over a considerable period of time. Is it possible that these five faces correspond to the five generations from Mizraim to Almodad and Sheleph, who once surveyed and dowsed the world in the distant past?

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]