The first world map

Left fragment of the Piri Reis map showing
Central and South America shores

   The Piri Reis map is a pre-modern (before the discovery of America) world map made in 1513 by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. The half of the map that survives shows the western coasts of Europe and North Africa and the coast of Brazil with reasonable accuracy. Some Atlantic islands, including the Azores and Canary Islands, are described, as is the 

mythical island of Antillia and possibly Japan. 

The historical importance of the map is its demonstration of how long the exploration of the New World was by approximately 1510, perhaps before others. It used 10 Arabian sources, 4 Indian maps sourced from Portuguese and one map of Columbus.

     The map was discovered on 9 October 1929, through the philological work of the German theologian, Gustav Adolf Deissmann (1866–1937). He had been hired by the Turkish Ministry of Education to catalogue the Topkapı Sarayı library's non-Islamic items. At Deissmann's request to search the place for old maps and charts, the director Halil Edhem (1861–1938) managed to find some disregarded materials, which he handed over to Deissmann. Realizing that the map might be a unique find, Deissmann showed it to the orientalist Paul Kahle who identified it as a map drawn by Piri Reis. The discovery caused an international sensation, as it represented the only then known copy of a world map of Christopher Columbus (1451–1506),[29] and was the only 16th century map that showed South America in its proper longitudinal position in relation to Africa. Geographers had spent several centuries unsuccessfully searching for a "lost map of Columbus" that was supposedly drawn while he was in the West Indies.

Part of the map showing Europe and the Mediterranean Sea

After reading about the map's discovery in The Illustrated London News, United States Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson contacted the United States Ambassador to Turkey Charles H. Sherrill and requested that an investigation be launched to find the Columbus source map, which he believed may have been in Turkey. In turn, the Turkish government complied with Stimson's request, but they were unsuccessful in locating any of the source maps. The Piri Reis map is currently located in the Library of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, but is not usually on display to the public.