The Piri Reis Map is the oldest surviving map to show the Americas. It is not European, surprisingly, but Turkish. It bears a date of 919 in the Moslem calendar, corresponding to 1513 in the Western Calendar. It is in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, a fabulous museum and the locale for a truly awful movie in the late 1960's. (I've been there - the real place bears no resemblance to the place in the movie.) The map was lost for a long time and only rediscovered in the 20th century.

Apart from its great historic interest, the map has been alleged to contain details no European could have known in the 1500's, and therefore proves the existence of ancient technological civilizations, visits by extraterrestrials, or both.

It's the other stuff that fascinates people. Among other claims:

* The map shows the earth as seen from space
* The map shows the subglacial topography of Greenland
* The map shows the subglacial topography of Antarctica
* The map is aligned with the earth's energy grid (whatever that means)