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<5: ,:.,::~;.;.~::: ,by..MaunceChatelain "',-,, ·.. j.:·:;;·:,-:J~::K. i:Rep,liiledwlih perniission from ', .. "MtAncient Skies vo'!;? 1,noj;3'l July.August 1994 © 1994,"NndentAstronaut Society .1nfStJohns Avenue Hightand-P~r~~'IL 60(nS-31 05, USA .... .'Ph¢oe ~J (708) 295 8899 There is now no doubt that advanced civilisations have existed on the Eanh many thousand years ago before polar shifts, worldwide f1oo~s, ice ages ~d other nat ural phenomena changed the surface -of our planet Indisputable eVIdence can be found in the ruins of prehistoric monuments such as those of Tiahuanaco for example, or in ancient calendars such as the Mayan one which started in 49,617 BC or the Egyptian one in 49,219 BC. It should be noticed that the interval of 398 years between these two dates represents twenty conjunction periods of Jupiter and Saturn or 178 of Mars and Jupiter. Another kind of evidence can be found in the mediaeval maps of the Earth showing the Antarctic continent free of ice with its lakes, rivers and mountains which have now been covered with several thousand metres of ice for several thousand years. According to their authors, these maps were copies of prehistoric maps they had found in the Library of Alexandria before it was burned thrce times-once by the Romans, once by the Christians and once by the Arabs. The mediaeval map designers did not know the existence of the American and Antarctic continents but had already navigated around Africa. That is why some of their maps were centrcd on Africa with almost coo-eet latitudes, longitudes and orientations, and complete ly wrong data for the other two continents. Fortunately, it has recently been possible to understand the causes of their errors and reconstruct some of the original prehistorie maps that they had used to design their own maps scveral thousand years later. The best mediaeval map I know is one which was designed in 1513 by a Turkish 'admi ral named Piri Rcis and discovered in 1931 in the old imperial palace of Topkapi in Istanbul. I have a full-size CQlour copy of that map which a friend of mine had brought me from Turkey a few years ago. The map was designed on a gazelle skin which must have been shrinking during the Last five hundred years. The remaining part of it, less than one half in width, has a north-south length of 91 cm and an east-west width of 63 cm. The design was based on a circle divided into 16 sections separated by 16 small circles 22 1/2 degrees apart around the circumference. The map represented a plane circular projec tion of a spherical cap of the Earth as it could be seen by an astronaut from a high altitude above Egypt. The centre of the circle is missing and only five small circles remain, enclosing an angle of 90 degrees or one quaner of the circle. I rccently decided to calculate the original anglcs and dimensions of the map from the intervals between small circles, which were the only clues I had. I found that the centre of the circle must have bccn located at the intersection of the meridian of Alexandria at 30 degrees east and the Tropic of Cancer at 23 degrees nOM. That could have been the posi tion of the equator when the original prehistoric map was designed, probably more than twelve thousand years ago when the South Pole was in a different location and there was no ice on the Antarctic continent or the sea water around it. According to the expertS, the gazelle skin must have been shrinking by about one per cent since the map was designed almost 500 years ago. And since the spacing between small circles is now about 209 mm, it can reasonably be assumed that the circular map was designed in 1513 AD with a circumference of 3,388 mm, a radius of 539 mm, and a spacing between small circles of 211.75 mm. Strangely enough, these dimensions would correspond to exact multiples of the pyramid inch of 25.666 mm which r have described in previous articles as a fraction of a land mile of 1,848 metres-namely, 132, 21 and 8 1/4 inches, with the usual pi factor of 22{7. That would make sense since the Turks were ruling Egypt at that time and knew the dimensions of the prehistoric maps in the Library of Alexandria and those of the Great Pyramid before they removed the casing stones. 12-NEXUS DECEMBER 1994 -JANUARY 1995