Piri Reis

The surviving fragment of the Piri Reis map, which represents roughly the western third of the original, depicts the western coast of Europe and Africa, the eastern coast of Brazil, and numerous Atlantic islands with remarkably accurate coastlines. It was drawn on gazelle skin parchment and includes detailed annotations in Ottoman Turkish about the sources Piri Reis consulted.

The Piri Reis map is housed in the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. It was rediscovered in 1929 by the German theologian Gustav Adolf Deissmann during a cataloging project of the palace's library collections, which brought international attention to its remarkable cartographic detail.

Piri Reis stated in his annotations that he consulted approximately 20 source maps, including eight Ptolemaic maps, four Portuguese charts, and an Arabic map of India. He also referenced a map that he attributed to Christopher Columbus, which has generated significant scholarly debate since no Columbus-era maps have survived.

Some researchers have claimed that the landmass at the bottom of the Piri Reis map depicts the coast of Antarctica, suggesting knowledge of a continent supposedly covered by ice sheets long before 1513. Mainstream historians and cartographers generally argue that this southern land represents either the coast of South America distorted by the map's projection or the hypothetical Terra Australis commonly drawn on early modern European maps.