Hapgood showed that the 1513 Piri Re'is map contained at least twenty-four points that were accurate within a half a degree of longitude. European explorers did not match this level of accuracy until the 1770s during Captain Cook's famous voyages. The southern portion of the map seems to depict the subglacial features of Antarctica. This discovery was made by Captain Arlington Mallery but Hapgood took up the map and made many more discoveries about it. Incidentally, Hapgood believed that this map included Atlantis. Here's where Charles placed the lost continent:

Hapgood believed that Plato's "whole opposite continent" was a reference to America and this island (Rocks of St. Peter and St. Paul) now beneath the Atlantic Ocean, seemed to him to be a place that matched Plato's words. But these Rocks of St. Peter and St. Paul can in no way be compared to a land mass high above sea-level and larger than Libya and Asia combined. Nevertheless, Hapgood's Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings remains the classic work on ancient cartography.

The second book that I read by Hapgood was his Path of the Pole which provided a mechanism to resolve all the questions that were haunting me. Here was a theory that could explain a temperate Lesser Antarctica around Plato's date of 9,600 B.C. and at the same time move me towards an understanding of a host of other scientific puzzles.  Next