Piri Reis Map

Record summary

The Piri Reis map is an early sixteenth-century Ottoman portolan world map, of which a western portion survives in the Topkapı Palace collection. Its marginal notes identify sources used by Piri Reis, including earlier Mediterranean and Iberian maps. Modern writers have proposed that it depicts Antarctica or other anachronistic geography, but cartographic historians generally explain disputed features through projection, copying, coastline distortion, and interpretation. The map is valuable for studying transmission of geographic knowledge rather than as evidence of prehistoric global mapping.