He is best known for his maps and charts collected in his Book of the Sea. He gained his fame as a map maker after a small part of his world map (prepared in 1513) was discovered in 1929, in Istanbul. The most interesting points of the map were its accuracy and a small continent that seemed to be linked to the southernmost tip of Southern America. Various people including [Charles Hapgood]? and [Erich von Daniken]? considered this as a sign for the discovery of the continent of Antarctica a few centuries before the traditionally accepted date and even as a proof for the presence of extraterrestrial civilizations, which were supposed to have drawn the original map. However, most scientists do not agree that the Piri Reis map is more precise than might be expected based on contemporary geographical knowledge plus accident.
On the other hand, the origins and references of the map have been noted in detail by Ottoman-Turkish on the map and he seems to have based the map on works of Ptolemy, Portuguese scholars and Christopher Columbus. The small landpiece depicted on the southernmost part of the map is considered to be an imaginary continent, which was assumed to counterbalance the continents of the northern hemisphere, since the time of ancient Greeks. The real interesting point of the map is that it is reflecting Columbus' ideas about the world and probably is the best preserved copy of one of his earliest maps.
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