The latest studies of Professor Charles H. Hapgood and the mathematician Richard W. Strachan give us some more shattering information. Comparison with modern photographs of our globe taken from satellites showed that the originals of Piri Reis's maps must have been aerial photographs taken from a very great height. How can that be explained?
A space-ship hovers high above Cairo and points its camera straight downwards. When the film is developed the following picture would emerge: everything that was in a radius of about 5,000 miles of Cairo is reproduced correctly, because it lay directly below the lens. But the countries and continents become increasingly distorted the further we move our eyes from the centre of the picture.
Why is this?
Owing to the spherical shape of the earth, the continents away from the centre 'sink downwards'. South America, for example, appears strangely distorted lengthways, exactly as it does on the Piri Reis maps! And exactly as it does on the photographs taken from the USA lunar probes.
There are one or two questions that can be answered quickly. Unquestionably our forefathers did not draw these maps. Yet there is no doubt that the maps must have been made with the most modern technical aids—from the air.
How are we to explain that? Should we be satisfied with the legend that a god gave them to a high priest? Or should we simply take no notice of them and pooh-pooh the 'miracle', because the maps do not fit into our mental world picture? Or should we boldly stir up a wasps' nest and claim that this cartography of our globe was carried out from a high-flying aircraft or from a space-ship?
Admittedly the Turkish Admiral's maps are not originals. They are copies of copies of copies. Yet even if the maps dated only from the eighteenth century when they were found these facts are just as unexplainable. Whoever made them must have been able to fly and also to take photographs!
Not far from the sea, in the Peruvian spurs of the Andes, lies the ancient city of Nazca. The Palpa valley contains a strip of level ground some 37 miles long and one mile wide that is scattered with bits of stone resembling pieces of rusty iron. The inhabitants call this region pampa, although any vegetation is out of the question there. If you fly over this territory—the plain of Nazca—you can make out gigantic lines, laid out geometrically, some of which run parallel to each other, while others intersect or are surrounded by large trapezoidal areas.
The archaeologists say that they are Inca roads.
A preposterous idea! What use were roads that run parallel to each other to the Incas? That intersect? That are laid out in a plain and come to a sudden end?
Naturally typical Nazca pottery and ceramics are found here, too. But it is surely oversimplifying things to attribute the geometrically arranged lines to the Nazca culture for that reason alone.
No serious excavations were ever carried out in this area until 1952. There is no established chronology for all the tilings that were found. Only now have the lines and geometrical figures been measured. The results clearly confirm the hypothesis that the lines were laid out according to astronomical plans. Professor Alden Mason, a specialist in Peruvian antiquities, suspects signs of a kind of religion in the alignments and perhaps a calendar as well.
Seen from the air, the clear-cut impression that the 37-mile-long plain of Nazca made on me was that of an airfield!
What is so far-fetched about the idea?
'Research' (= knowledge) does not become possible until the thing that is to be investigated has actually been found' Once it is found, it is tirelessly polished and trimmed until it has become a stone that—miraculously enough—fits exactly into the existing mosaic. Classical archaeology does not admit that the pre-Inca peoples could have had a perfect surveying technique. And the theory that aircraft could have existed in antiquity is sheer humbug to it.
In that case, what purpose did the lines at Nazca serve? According to my way of thinking they could have been laid out on their gigantic scale by working from a model and using a system of co-ordinates or they could also have been built according to instructions from an aircraft. It is not yet possible to say with certainty whether the plain of Nazca was ever an airfield. If iron was used it will certainly not be found. For most metals corrode in a few years, but stone never corrodes. What is wrong with the idea that the lines were laid out to say to the 'gods': 'Land here! Everything has been prepared as "you" ordered'? The builders of the geometrical figures may have had no idea what they were doing. But perhaps they knew perfectly well what the 'gods' needed in order to land.
Enormous drawings that were undoubtedly meant as signals for a being floating in the air are found on mountain sides in many parts of Peru. What other purpose could they have served?
One of the most peculiar drawings is carved on the high red wall of the cliffs in the Bay of Pisco. If you arrive by sea, you can make out a figure nearly 820 ft high from a distance of over 12 miles. If you play at 'It looks like ...', your immediate reaction is that this sculptor's work looks like a gigantic trident or a colossal three-branched candlestick. And a long rope was found on the central column of this stone sign. Did it serve as a pendulum in the past?
To be honest, we must admit that we are groping in the dark when we try to explain it. It cannot be meaningfully included in existing dogmas, which does not mean to say that there may not be some trick by which scholars could conjure this phenomenon too into the great mosaic of accepted archaeological thinking.
But what can have induced the pre-Inca peoples to build the fantastic lines, the landing strips, at Nazca? What madness could have driven them to create the 820-ft-high stone signs on the red cliffs south of Lima?
These tasks would have taken decades without modern machines and appliances. Their whole activity would have been senseless if the end-product of their efforts had not been meant as signs to beings approaching them from great heights. The stimulating question still has to be answered: why did they do all this if they could have had no idea that flying beings actually existed?
The identification of finds can no longer remain a matter for archaeology alone. A council of scientists from different fields of research would certainly bring us closer to the solution of the puzzle. Exchange of opinions and dialogue would definitely produce illuminating insights. The danger of research coming to no definite conclusion lies in the fact that scientists do not take the posing of such questions seriously and ridicule them. Space travellers in the grey mists of time? An inadmissible question to academic scientists. Anyone who asks questions like that ought to see a psychiatrist.
But the questions are there, and questions, thank heavens, have the impertinent quality of hovering in the air until they are answered. And there are many inadmissible questions like that. For example, what would people say if there was a calendar which gave the equinoxes, the astronomical seasons, the positions of the moon for every hour and also the movements of the moon, even taking the rotation of the earth into account?
That is no mere hypothetical question. This calendar exists. It was found in the dry mud at Tiahuanaco. It is a disconcerting find. It yields irrefutable facts and proves— can our self-assurance admit such a proof?—that the beings who produced, devised and used the calendar had a higher culture than ours.
Another fantastic discovery made there was the Great Idol. This single block of red sandstone is over 24 ft long and weighs 20 tons. It was found in the Old Temple. Again we have a contradiction between the superb quality and precision of the hundreds of symbols all over the idol and the primitive technique used for the building housing it. Indeed it is called the Old Temple because of the primitive technique.