“Yes it does,” Nina realized. “Successor home-new home. There to find the new home of… of this symbol.”
“Hmm.” Philby leaned so close that his breath clouded on the artifact’s surface. “Now this one I really don’t recognize. It could be a representation of a personal name, or maybe a tribe…”
“Atlanteans.” Everyone turned to Kari. “The new home of the Atlanteans. That’s what it says.”
Philby pursed his lips. “Now, Ms. Frost, that could be wishful thinking. There are many other possibilities, which a detailed study of the ancient writings found in that region could clarify.”
“No,” said Nina, picking up the artifact. “She’s right. It has to be the Atlanteans. There’s nothing else it could be. The Atlanteans built a new home for themselves following the sinking of the island, somewhere in South America -and this piece is the map that’ll take us right to it. All we need is to identify the river. If we can work out what the numbers represent-”
“Or we could just do a pub quiz,” cut in Chase, grinning. “Seriously, Doc! South America! Big river full of crocodiles! What’s the first answer that comes into your head?”
“The… Amazon?” she answered, unsure if Chase was, as he put it, “taking the piss” again.
“Bingo! Come on, look how many notches directing you left and right there are on this map of yours, and each of them has a number next to it. If that’s how many tributaries you go past, that’s a bloody big river. And if there’s a lost city out there, it has to be in the Brazilian rain forest. If it was anywhere else, somebody would have found it already.” He looked over his shoulder towards Nina’s room. “You had an atlas in there, didn’t you? Hold on a minute.”
Chase jogged through the connecting door, returning with the large atlas, which he opened. “Here. There’s the northern mouth at Bailique, and if you go upstream you pass four tributaries on the left, seven on the right…” He laboriously tracked the route westward against the markings scribed into the orichalcum bar. “Eight on the left, and that brings you to the first big junction at Santarém.” The marking under his finger was more deeply indented than the others.
“Where it says to go right,” Nina said.
“So it’s working so far, then.” They followed the directions farther upriver until their course finally branched off the Amazon itself, onto a tributary over a thousand miles inland. The thin blue line on the page of the atlas continued westward for another hundred miles before stopping. There were still several more direction markings left to follow on the artifact.
“We need a better map,” said Kari. “Satellite imagery too.”
“But at least we know the general area,” Nina said excitedly. “Somewhere along the Tefé river. Right in the middle of the rain forest!”
“A proto-Olmec civilization, that far inland?” wondered Philby. “That doesn’t fit with any of the current theories about their origins and population distribution.”
“Nor does Atlantis, but things seem to be holding up so far,” said Nina, slightly caustically.
Philby huffed. “And how exactly would the Atlanteans be able to sail from the Gulf of Cádiz, according to your theory, all the way across the Atlantic? Even if we accept that the Sea People of ancient legend were in fact the Atlanteans, a journey of a few hundred miles in a trireme is rather different from a journey of several thousand. Especially when they had no way to navigate!”
“Actually,” Nina said, “they did have a way to navigate.”
“What do you mean?” Kari asked.
“I just realized it before you called me.” Nina picked up the artifact. “There was something about this that felt familiar, but I couldn’t work out what until now. Look.” She held the piece by the circular protrusion, letting it swing gently from her fingers like a pendulum. “It’s meant to hang down, like this. And then…” She held her pendant beneath the curved end of the artifact. “They match up exactly. My pendant has a few numbers marked on it, and if you extend it along the same curve and also continue the sequence of numbers… Well, with a sighting system of some kind, like a mirror that fits in the little slot, then you’ve got a way to measure the angle of inclination of an object relative to the horizon!”
“An object like a star?” asked Kari, caught up in Nina’s rising excitement. “Or the sun?”
“Exactly! It’s a sextant! The Atlanteans had a navigational instrument in 10,000 BC that wasn’t reinvented until the sixteenth century!”
“Imagine the military advantage that would give them over any other nation of the time…” Kari said thoughtfully.
Chase looked doubtful. “It’s not exactly like they had GPS.”
“Well no, because to work out longitude you need a very accurate chronometer, and it’s a stretch to think the Atlanteans were that advanced,” Nina said. “But a sextant lets you calculate latitude, how far north or south you are, with reasonable accuracy by using the sun or a star as a guide, as long as you adjust your calculations for the time of year. Which every ancient civilization with knowledge of astronomy was able to do.” She held up the two orichalcum pieces and pretended to take a sighting on Chase’s forehead, swinging her pendant back and forth as if it were part of a larger arc centered on the bar’s pivot. “Without something like this, the only way to navigate at sea is to either follow the coastline looking for landmarks, or use dead reckoning-just head in a particular direction and hope you don’t go off course.”
“But being able to calculate latitude makes longer voyages possible,” added Kari.
“Yeah. In fact…” Nina showed Chase the markings on the bar again. “The number here, seven, then south and west-the seven could be a latitude using whatever scale the Atlanteans worked in, and the compass directions…” The thought that had been taking form in her mind finally solidified. “It’s telling the user how to get to the river on the map from Atlantis! Go south to what they called latitude seven, then turn west. As long as you’re at the right latitude, then all you need to do is keep going west and you’ll eventually reach your destination. Since we know where their latitude seven is, that means…”
Kari completed her thought. “That means, if we can determine exactly how many degrees are in an Atlantean unit of latitude, we can backtrack and work out the exact location of Atlantis!”
“Okay, so,” said Chase, “all we need to do to find Atlantis is mount an expedition into the middle of the Amazon jungle, find a lost city and see if it’s got any old maps still knocking around?”
Nina nodded. “More or less.”
“Yeah, I’m up for that,” he said with a mock casual shrug.
Philby stood up. “Ms. Frost?”
“Yes?”
“This may be completely out of line, but… if your initial surveys show that there may indeed be a lost city somewhere along the Tefé, would it be possible for me to accompany your expedition?”
“Wait, Jonathan, let me get this straight,” said Nina, scenting victory. “Are you saying that now you do believe I was right all along and that Atlantis really existed?”
“Actually,” Philby sniffed, “I was thinking more about the importance of discovering evidence of a pre-Olmec civilization and the chance to study its language firsthand. It would be an incredible find. Any connection to Atlantis would be… well, a bonus.”
Kari was slightly thrown by Philby’s request. “I’ll check with my father, Professor, but… Are you sure that would be practical? We will be going deep into the jungle-and what about your commitments to the university?”
“I think I can arrange the time off-I am the head of the department, after all!” Philby laughed. “Besides, if Dr. Wilde can take off at a moment’s notice on an expedition around the world…” He gave Nina a pointed look. “It’s been several years since I went properly out into the field, but I’ve been to worse places than the jungle, believe me.”