Part 3: We are Not the First ...Sages under the Heavenly Vault ...The Zodiac and the Music of the Spheres ... Apes and Ages

We are Not the First

by Andrew Tomas

Chapter 8: 

Sages under the Heavenly Vault 

The realization that the ancients somehow knew about the infinitely small, appears to be impossible to us. There is also evidence which points to their knowledge of the infinitely great. No one can tell how the people of antiquity were-able to obtain this information without advanced precision instruments which they apparently did not have. 

This contradiction between poor instruments and rich knowledge has puzzled many a scientist and thinker. There are references to the solar parallax in classical sources. In modern times the first observation of the parallax of the sun was made by William Gascoigne in 1670 by means of a wire-netting placed in front of the telescopic lens. But the sages of antiquity were not known, to have had telescopes. How did they discover the solar parallax? To observe the apparent displacement of the sun amidst the stars because of the movement of the earth on its orbit, requires advanced instrumentation. 

How did the ancients know that the orbit of the earth was not round but elliptical? How did they arrive at the conclusion that the plane of the terrestrial orbit did not coincide with the plane of the earth's equator? Plutarch cites Aristarchus (3rd century B.C.E.) in introducing this subject: "The earth revolves in an oblique circle while it rotates at the same time about its own axis." This mystery of the history of astronomy was noted by the celebrated astronomers J. S. Bailly in 1781 and K. Gauss in 1819, and was mentioned in their monumental works. 

In the Timaeus of Plato written about 2,400 years ago, the philosopher gives a dialogue between a high priest of Egypt and Solon, the lawgiver of Greece. A curious fact emerges from it - the sages of the land of the pyramids were aware of asteroids in space and their occasional collisions with the earth. Astronomy tells us today that a huge meteorite hit Arizona about 50,000 years ago producing a devastating explosion. The Barringer Crater, 1.60 kilometres wide, is a mark on the face of our planet caused by that meteorite. The 3.22 kilometre Chubb Crater in Canada is the site of another astronomical accident - the fall of a bolide some 4,000 years ago. The force of impact was equivalent to 200 million-megaton atom bombs. The earth has scars of this type in Saudi Arabia, Australia and Africa, while the moon seems to be thoroughly pock-marked with them. 

To collate data of unusual happenings in nature in the course of thousands of years and then evaluate them correctly, can be done only by men of science. The sages of Egypt earned themselves such titles. 

The old Egyptian priest called Solon's attention to the Greek legend of the fall of Phaethon and explained to him what it really meant: "Now this has the form of a myth but really signifies a deviation from their courses of the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth recurring at long intervals of time." Can anything be clearer? The sage alludes to asteroids in space and their accidental crashes on our planet causing explosions. 

The Academy of Sciences of France made a statement in writing 170 years ago which showed its disagreement with the views held by the wise men of the land of the Nile: "In our enlightened age there can still be people so superstitious as to believe stones fall from the sky," This is but another example of the periodic triumphs of ignorance even in an 'enlightened age'. 

It might be inferred that a scientific legacy has existed for thousands of years, and in spite of wars, famine, plagues and other calamities which often destroyed whole civilizations, this age-old science was passed on from one generation to the next. 

"Mosques fall, palaces crumble into dust but knowledge remains," said Ulug Beg, the great Uzbek astronomer of the 15th century. For these defiant words the scholar was ordered to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He never reached Arabia because the ruler's agents murdered Ulug Beg on the road. The names of his assassins have been forgotten but after five centuries Ulug Beg's Astronomical Tables are still used because of their accuracy. 

Long before mosques and palaces there lived a strong astronomical tradition - even in caves. Stone carvings at Pierres Folles, La Filouziere, Vendie and Brittany have been identified as prehistoric astronomical charts. The constellations of Ursa Major, Ursa Minor and the Pleiades are represented by clusters of small hollows in the rock. Since astronomy would seem to have no practical use for "primitive" hunter-gathers, what was it that stirred their interest in stargazing? 

Thousands of Ice Age notational sequences, that is vertical markings, lines and dots, painted and engraved on stone or bone, are scattered from Spain (Canchal de Mahoma and Abri de las Vinas) to Ukraine (Gontzi). In the Upper Paleolithic period, from about 35,000 B.C.E. to 8,000 B.C.E., a great number of these markings in the so-called Azilian, Magdalenian and Aurignacian cultures are to be found. The fact that one type of linear art had existed in prehistory in an unbroken line for some 30,000 years is in itself very significant. 

The American scientist Alexander Marshack made the discovery that these notations on rock or bone are records of observations of the moon, made for calendric purposes. To find complex memoranda of lunar studies in prehistory was astounding to science. Marshack believes that his discovery "entails a revaluation of the origins of the human culture". He also states that because of this evidence "an earlier basic astronomical skill and tradition existed". This discovery is revolutionary in nature, calling for a review of the intellectual powers of man in the last Glacial Age. 

Although this prehistoric calendrical system may have no connection with the Scandinavian runes, yet both are arranged as notches on a foot-rule. The runic calendar appeared in the north of Europe, about 2,000 years ago, and its use was abandoned only in the early part of the 19th century. In fact, runic rulers are permanent calendars and can be used today! To develop a chronology requires a knowledge of astronomy and mathematics, accumulated during the course of long ages. The runic calendar of the Baltic basin may be a grandchild of the prehistoric notational system. Dr. L. E. Maistrov of the U.S.S.R. has the opinion that the runic calendar is based on the solar cycle of 28 years. The beginning of this calendrical system goes back to the year 4713 B.C.E. Although the runic calendar may not be as old as that, its starting point was placed far back in time. 

The first calendar in Egypt began with the earliest recorded date of 4241 B.C.E. Egyptian star charts occur as early as 3500 B.C.E. indicating a systematic study of astronomy. The Egyptians were aware that Mercury and Venus were closer to the sun than were the Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. 

Observations of the motions of Venus, Mars and Jupiter were recorded in cuneiform writing by the priests of Babylon almost 4,000 years ago. The astronomy of Mesopotamia was more advanced and more accurate than that of Egypt, inasmuch as the Babylonian priests were able to forecast eclipses. 

The ancient inhabitants of England were even more proficient in astronomy than the priests of Egypt or Sumer. The computations of the Stonehenge alignments made by Professor Gerald S. Hawkins have disclosed a precise knowledge of the solstices, equinoxes, and the ability to predict eclipses by the builders of those megaliths around 2000 B.C.E. The complexity of the Stonehenge astronomical tradition indicates a development of some thousands of years. Did this science develop locally or was it imported from another centre of civilization? 

The first encyclopaedists lived in ancient Greece. They had not only collected, classified and assimilated the science of the older civilizations of Egypt and Sumer but had also drawn their own brilliant conclusions. 

"The earth is round and it revolves around the sun," said Anaximander (c. 610-547 B.C.E.). "The earth is a globe," Pythagoras taught his disciples in Crotona in the 6th century before our era. 

Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 B.C.E.) affirmed that the earth travelled in an orbit around the sun, rotating on its axis at the same time. He even added that all the planets moved around the sun. 

"The earth spins on its axis once in 24 hours," said Heraclides of Pontus in the 4th century before our era. 

Seleucus of Erythrea (2nd century B.C.E.), also spoke about the rotation of the earth and its orbit around the sun. 

"I want to find out the size of this earth," said Eratosthenes (c. 276-194 B.C.E.), the custodian of the Alexandrian. Library. He noticed that due south at Syene the sun was directly overhead on midsummer's day, and seven degrees from vertical at Alexandria on the same day. With the aid of geometry he obtained a figure for the circumference of the earth, and then one for its diameter. Surprisingly, there was a discrepancy of merely 80 kilometres between his estimated figure for the polar diameter and that accepted by our modern astronomy. 

When Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to India, introduced the subject of astronomy during his audience with King Chandragupta Mam-ya in 302 B.C.E., the latter declared: "Our Brahmins believe the earth to be a sphere." The ancient book Surya Siddhanta contains reasonably accurate calculations of the diameter of the earth and its distance from the moon. The Rig Veda, the sacred book of India, contains a curious passage concerning the 'three earths' - one within the other. The earth does have three thick zones - the inner core, outer core and mantle, plus a very thin crust. It is only with the advancement of our science and the perfection of instruments that we have discovered the veracity of the Rig Veda. 

Knowledge is power and the priests of India, Babylon, Egypt and Mexico wanted to keep it. No wonder the 6th chapter of the Surya Siddhanta insists: "This mystery of the gods is not to be imparted indiscriminately." This old law had been so rigid in India that if a man of a lower caste tried to listen to the Vedas being read, molten lead was poured into his ears as punishment. The British finally put an end to this cruel custom early in the 19th century. 

That the astronomers of old were required to be competent and industrious can be seen from an episode related in the Book of Ski Ching (Book of Odes). During the reign of Emperor Yao of China (c. 2500 B.C.E.) the two official astronomers Hi and Ho got into the bad habit of drinking too much hot rice wine, and one day failed to make an announcement of a coming eclipse. But the law was strict where their duties were concerned. "If an eclipse took place before the estimated time, the astronomers were to be killed without respite." Now if the phenomenon occurred after the predicted date they "were to be slain without reprieve". The end of the story is sad. Hi and Ho the stargazers were dispatched to the stars. But later chronicles of China such as that of Chou in the 12th century B.C.E., contain precise astronomical forecasts of the eclipses of the moon. 

Nan-chi Hsien-weng, a hero of the Chinese Pantheon, had the enigmatic title of the Ancient Immortal of the South Pole. According to tradition, he helped the general Chiang-Tzu-Ya in the year 1122 B.C.E. It appears that over three thousand years ago the scholars of China had a correct concept of the spherical shape of the earth when they spoke of the South Pole. 

"The earth is an egg," said Chang Heng (78-139 C. E.) and explained that its axis pointed to the Polar Star. We have evidence stretching back for thousands of years which is unanimous in assuring us that some ancient thinkers had a perfectly scientific concept of the earth in space. 

Before embarking on his historic voyage Columbus made a study of all classic sources regarding the shape of the earth and the possibility of reaching the East by taking a westward route. In a letter preserved in Madrid, the discoverer of America made the curious statement that the earth was slightly pear-shaped. Satellites have recently disclosed that our planet is slightly pear-shaped. How was Christopher Columbus aware of this fact unless he had found it in an ancient text? 

Let us speak now about the moon which has received so much publicity since the Apollo missions. The Surya Siddhanta contains a passage relating to "the radiant sun which supplies the moon with light rays", evidently alluding to the reflected light of the moon. 

Parmenides made a definite statement about the moon in the 6th century before our era: "It illuminates the nights with borrowed light." This is an obvious reference to the reflection of the sun's rays from the lunar surface. Empedocles (494-434 B.C.E.) held the same opinion: "The moon circles round the earth - a borrowed light." Twenty-five centuries before our lunar exploration Democritus exclaimed: "Those markings on the moon? They are shadows from high mountains and deep valleys". 

"It is the moon that darkens the sun during an eclipse," said Anaxagoras 2,500 years ago. And he was also the first to explain that during a lunar eclipse it is the earth's shadow that falls on the moon. 

The words of Plutarch regarding the moon were indeed prophetic: "If you regard her as a star or a certain divine and heavenly body, I am afraid she will prove deformed and foul," he declared. Lunar photographs and television pictures do show dreary wastelands. 

An ancient Brahmin tradition teaches that 'Lunar Pitris' or the patriarchs, created all life on this planet after their descent from the moon. The Sanskrit texts always connect the Pitris with the moon and the kingdom of the dead, which would seem to imply that the moon is older than the earth. The seven ages of the ancients were in some way connected with the planets. The moon stood for the cradle of life. This belief that the moon had its day before the earth, has no logical explanation. In Mayan art the moon god is depicted as an old man with a conch shell. The moon goddess of ancient Mexico - Ixchel - was addressed as the Grandmother. In the religion of many primitive peoples, the moon is considered to be the first man who died, states Encyclopaedia Britannica. 

These ancient beliefs concerning the great age of the moon are now corroborated by the mineral samples brought from the moon by Apollo 11. The rocks from the moon's surface were dated 4.6 billion years whereas the oldest minerals on this planet are 3.3 billion years old. 

The ancients saw the connection that existed between the tides and the moon. Seleucus, an astronomer of Babylon correctly explained the tides of the seas by lunar attraction. The sages of China also had no doubts that it was the pull of the moon that was responsible for the rise of the sea level. 

Julius Caesar was a better general than scholar but even he wrote that when the moon is full, the tides are high, and he waited for the high spring tides to land in England. But that was two thousand years ago. When in the 16th century the great German astronomer Johann Kepler announced his theory that the tides were caused by the moon, he was severely censured. Kepler could not afford to argue because a relative of his was burned as a witch before his eyes, while his mother died in prison in chains. This historical episode demonstrates once more the obscuration of science and the persecution of men who were trying to resurrect the knowledge of antiquity. 

In the 10th century the Arab astronomer Abul Wafa wrote about the "variation of the moon". As the path of the moon is an ellipse, our satellite is 3,219 kilometres closer to the earth at new moon point, and 2,575 kilometres farther at last quarter point. This discovery is generally attributed to Tycho de Brahe (1546-1601). However, the treatise of his Arab colleague written six centuries earlier, mentions this irregular wobbling of the moon. 

Since a chronometer is required for such measurements, strictly speaking, without a good clock which Abul Wafa did not have, it would have been impossible to observe the lunar variation. The controversy is still raging - who discovered the variation of the moon? 

From Luna our road leads to the sun. "The sun is a vast mass of incandescent metal," boldly declared Anaxagoras 2,500 years ago. But the pious citizens of Athens believed otherwise - the sun was the throne of Apollo. Anaxagoras said the right thing at the Wrong time, and was exiled for his efforts. Around the same time Democritus, of atomic theory fame, postulated that the sun is of immense size. Before Galileo no one knew anything about sunspots, nor was it, as a perfect, divine, stellar body supposed to have any spots. But two thousand years ago the Chinese made astronomical records of sunspots. 

The Vishnu Pumna reads: "The sun is always in one and the same place." This sentence alludes to the apparent motion of the sun from east to west and suggests that it is the earth which rotates. 

Ancient Mexico had an incredibly high degree of astronomical knowledge. The actual figure for the duration of the year is 365.2422 days, according to present-day astronomy. Our Gregorian calendar takes it as 365.242 5. But the Mayas computed the length of the year as 365.2420, the closest to sidereal figure. In other words, the ancient Central American Indians had a more precise calendar than we in this Age of Science! 

The Copan Mayas estimated the duration of the lunar month as 29.53020 days, and the Palenque Mayas as 29.53086. According to astronomy, the figure is 29.53059 days. How did the Mayas get their results without chronometers and all the precision instruments we possess today? Actually, the correct figure is just half-way between the estimations of Copan and Palenque. 

The stele I of El Castillo in Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa in Guatemala represents the transit of Venus on the solar disc on November 25, 416. This discovery was made by G. A. Burland who reported it to the International Congress of Americanists in Paris in 1956. While at the Congress he stated that: "The Cotzumalhuapa astronomers were serious and accurate scientists." Now to reach an advanced knowledge of astronomy of this kind, science requires many centuries of continuous and uninterrupted development. Quite possibly we may be dating incorrectly the beginning of civilization in Central America. 

In the British Museum there are Babylonian inscriptions which speak of the horns of Ishtar (Venus), or the crescent of the planet. However, this crescent is visible only through a telescope. Although the German astronomer Carl Gauss wrote early in the 19th century about the ability of his mother to see the phases of Venus with the naked eye, no other such historical cases had been known. The first astronomical observation of Venusian phases was made by Galileo in 1610 who left the following anagram to claim priority rights: "Cynthiae figuras aemulator Mater Amorum," or "The Mother of Love (Venus) imitates the figures of Cynthia (the moon)!" 

Why was Ishtar or Venus called Sister of the Moon or the Mighty Daughter of the Moon by the Babylonians? Why not Sister of Jupiter which it resembles so much more in brilliance? Perhaps the explanation is that the scientific priesthood of Babylon had somehow known about the- moon-like phases of Venus. 

The Babylonian priests also recorded their observations of the four greater satellites of Jupiter - which again can not be seen without a telescope. In alluding to this fact Professor George Rawlinson wrote: "There is said to be distinct evidence that they observed the four satellites of Jupiter and strong reason to believe that they were acquainted likewise with the seven satellites of Saturn." 

The discovery of the four moons of Jupiter was made by Galileo in 1610. The Saturnian satellites were first observed by Cassini, Huygens, Herschel and Bond between 1655 and 1848. How could the Babylonians have known about them? Did the priest-astronomers of Babylon have superhuman eyesight, telescopes - or a secret tradition from a lost civilization? Actually, there is a crystal disc in the British Museum found at Nineveh by Layard which at first was considered to be a lens but it is not strong enough for astronomical work. 

There is another unsolved case in the Scotland Yard of the History of Science. The Dogons of Sudan have a strange tradition about the 'dark companion of Sirius'. This dim companion of the bright star Sirius is visible only in the most powerful telescopes such as that of Mount Palomar. 

Only a few brief centuries ago the scholars and clerics of Europe believed in a stationary earth - the centre of the universe, or even a flat earth with a firmament. The stars were holes in that firmament through which shone the light of paradise. 

But in Greece in the 5th century before our era Democritus said: "Space is filled with myriads of stars and the Milky Way is but a vast conglomeration of distant stars." It should be borne in mind that in Democritus' time no more than 6,000 stars could be seen in the sky. By using logic and imagination he arrived at the correct picture of the universe which we have rediscovered only during the last one hundred and fifty years. 

Thales of Miletus (c. 640-546 B.C.E.) was another genius. He concluded that the stars were of the same substance as the earth. This idea of the universality of matter was buried in the Middle Ages and resurrected only yesterday. 

"The distances which separate us from the stars are immeasurable," said Aristarchus of Samos twenty-three centuries ago. 

"There are more planets than the ones we can see," taught Democritus. What gave him the idea that there were planets beyond Saturn? When Democritus was a young man, Anaximenes spoke of 'non-luminous' companions of stars. Surely he was not referring to planets in other solar systems. Or do we underestimate his intelligence and imagination? 

Seneca (4 B.C.E. - 65 C.E.) in Natural Questions shows deep insight in his speculation on astronomy and its future: "How many heavenly bodies revolve unseen by human eye! How many discoveries are reserved for the ages to come when our memory shall be no more." How right he was. 

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were discovered only in the last two hundred years. And while only a few thousand stars were known in Seneca's time, millions are now listed in our star catalogues. 

The Tanguts, a central Asian tribe whose city of Hara-Hoto was excavated in 1908, had a strange belief about the eleven luminaries - the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the planets Tsi-Tsi, Ouebo, Rahu and Ketu. While Rahu and Ketu are undoubtedly the ascending and descending nodes of the moon, borrowed from Hindu astronomy, the identity of Tsi-Tsi and Ouebo remains a mystery. Are they Uranus and Neptune? 

One of the most amazing things mentioned in ancient texts and legends is the notion of life in other worlds. To the legendary Orpheus, son of Apollo, is attributed this fragment: "Those innumerable souls, they fall from planet to planet and, in the abyss of space, lament the home they have forgotten." These words appear to speak of life on other planets. 

Heraclitus (c. 540-475 B.C.E.) and all the disciples of Pythagoras (6th century B.C.E.) considered each star as being the centre of a planetary system. Democritus taught that worlds come into being and die. "Only some of these worlds in the stars are suitable for life", he said. Anaxagoras (500- 428 B.C.E.), another Greek philosopher, also wrote about "other earths which produce the necessary sustenance for inhabitants". Metrodorus of Lampsacus (3rd century B.C.E.) believed in the plurality of populated worlds. He said that to call the earth the only inhabited world was as unwise as to assert that there was only one spike of grain growing in a vast field. Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.) was likewise convinced that life was not confined to our planet alone. Lucretius (c. 98-55 B.C.E.), a Roman poet, wrote that "it is in the highest degree unlikely that this earth and sky is the only one to have been created". According to Cicero (106-43 B.C.E. ) the realm of Heaven was peopled with a host of genii. This notion is remarkable as it approaches our present-day idea of inhabited worlds in space. 

Was this a brilliant speculation or a heritage from some Golden Age of Science? If it were only a conjecture, why was it identical in countries so widely separated geographically as Mexico, China, Greece, India, Egypt and Babylon? 

Why did the Romans have the so-called Cumaean Prophecy? In his Fourth Eclogue Virgil recorded it: "Now a new race descends from the celestial realms." This line does not speak of ethereal creatures but of a new people coming from starry space. The origin of so astonishing a concept has yet to be explained, for we are referring back to the period of the reign of Emperor Augustus. 

The Vedas of India are quite definite about "life on other celestial bodies far from the earth". Teng Mu, a scholar of the Sung Dynasty, summed up the views of ancient Chinese thinkers on the universality of life: "How unreasonable it would be to suppose that besides the earth and the sky which we can see, there are no other skies and no other earths." 

Now let us turn our attention to comets. From 240 B.C.E. Chinese astronomers kept records of every appearance of Halley's comet. In 11 B.C.E. they watched a comet for nine weeks, making descriptions of its changing shape exactly as do the astronomers of today. 

"Comets move in orbits like the planets," wrote Seneca nineteen centuries ago. Aristotle cites the Pythagoreans in identifying comets as stellar bodies reappearing after long periods of time. This reasoning was magnificent because comets do not carry identification plates. On the authority of Apollonius Myndius it can be surmised that the doctrine came from Babylon, antedating Pythagoras by many a century. 

In the 2nd century of our era the Roman historian Suetonius defined comets as "blazing stars which are thought by the ignorant to portend disaster to rulers". But what happened fourteen centuries after Suetonius in that choicest portion of the earth - Europe, is incredible by its stupidity. The Town Council of Baden, Switzerland issued a proclamation in January, 1681 when a "frightful comet" with a long tail appeared in the sky. "All are to attend Mass and Sermon every Sunday, abstain from playing and dancing, and evening drinking is to be on a modest scale," it said. Did almost all mankind bury its head in the sand after the noble Greeks, proud Romans and intuitive Egyptians had made their exit? 

Cosmology as a science began with Kant and Laplace only two hundred years ago. However, the Huai Nan Tzu book (c. 120 B.C.E.) as well as the Lun Heng written by Wang Chung (82 C.E.) outlined the crystallization of Worlds by Whirlpools of primary matter. 

The ancient Popul Vuh of the Guatemala Mayas thus describes the appearance of the World: "Like the mist, like a cloud, and like a cloud of dust was the creation." And here is a modern version of the same cosmogony: "The stage began with the precipitation of the dust specks of the central (equatorial) plane of the flattened cloud." What was the source of Mayan cosmology? Was it the same that gave them the most precise calendar in the world?

Chapter 9: 

The Zodiac and the Music of the Spheres 

How strange it is that the ancient Mayas call the constellation known to us as Scorpion by the same name? Orion, or the Hunter, of Babylon, Egypt and Greece had a similar name in China - the Hunter of the Autumn Hunt. Our Aquarius is echoed in the Mexican god Tlaloc, the Ruler of the Rains. 

But what is really puzzling is this - it is only by a stretch of imagination that one can find a connection between the figures the constellations are supposed to represent and the formations of stars. It looks as if early civilizations had access to older lists of constellation names which they adopted to identify the myriads of stars. 

The Chinese zodiacal sign of the Sheep finds its replica in the Babylonian zodiac as Aries. The Ox sign of China finds its reflection in the West as Taurus. The Horse of Chinese astronomy is Sagittarius in Babylon and Egypt. Although the names are often identical, they sometimes do not refer to the same constellation. 

The similarities in the constellation names in Central America and China are even more striking. The Aztec calendar has days of the Alligator, Snake, Rabbit, Dog and Monkey. The Chinese-Tibetan calendar has the years of the Dragon, Snake, Rabbit, Dog and Monkey as well! These strange coincidences ought to be examined. We can not but agree with the eminent scientist Giorgio de Santillana who writes this about constellation names in The Origins of Scientific Thought: "They were repeated without question substantially the same from Mexico to Africa and Polynesia - and have remained with us to this day." 

While the Pythagoreans were observing the constellations, a curious thing happened - some heard the Music of the Spheres. According to Pythagoras, all stars were alive and they harboured intelligences. He imagined the universe to be a cosmic lyre with numerous strings which gave out this Music of the Spheres. Around the same time the Taoists of China held the same concept: "Everything that is, is in space, and everything that is in space, has a sound." 

Today we know that stars and planets are sources of radio emission. Is this what the Pythagoreans and the Taoists meant? Do our radio telescopes pick up this Music of the Spheres? 

The musical scale was introduced by Pythagoras. By measuring the length of chords and listening to sounds from strings, he discovered a mathematical correlation. His school postulated that the planets moved in an orderly manner and that their distances from the 'central fire' were not unlike the intervals in the diatonic scale of music. 

Pythagoras and his disciples were not far from the truth because planetary orbits are arranged in a certain mathematical order. According to Bode's Law, if the number 4 is added to 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, etc., and the result is divided by 10, we get the approximate distances of the planets from the sun, taking the distance from the earth to the sun as one unit. This is another example of how the ancients already knew what were later believed to be new discoveries in astronomy. 

Down through the ages astronomy has been connected with astrology, or the art of evaluating the influence of heavenly bodies upon earth and man. The fossil sciences of alchemy and astrology have not been free from superstition and distortion. Astrology is defined by science as primitive astronomy. However, its attempt to foretell the future has been regarded by savants as a fallacy. 

Only a few decades ago no scientist would have believed that sunspot activity could produce a devastating invasion of locusts in South East Asia. The idea of such a connection between sunspots and insects on earth would have seemed too ridiculous to be discussed on an academic level. However, observations made during the past decades have established a coincidence which does exist between the locust invasions and sunspot activity. 

Appropriate measures are taken now before the locusts arrive. Serious scientists are beginning to pay attention to this influence of forces in space upon phenomena on earth. 

In his Mysteries of the Universe Wm. R. Corliss writes: "Stranger still is the observation that sunspot maxima are roughly synchronized with the French and Russian revolutions, both world wars, and the Korean conflict. If there is some small truth in astrology, the thing to do is to explain this truth in scientific terms and strip away all the pretence." 

According to the Soviet astronomer R. P. Romanchuk, the so-called 'squares' and 'conjunctions' in astrology have a scientific basis. It is the positions of the sun, Jupiter and Saturn that determine sunspot activity, he says, basing his conclusion on a chart which he drafted. 

In the Russian science magazine Zmmie-Sila (No. 12, 1967) A. Gangnus writes: "In ancient times astrologers attempted to predict the future by the respective positions of the planets. Who knows, this may not be so absurd. If the respective positions of the planets really influence the sun, then astronomical tables could become data for helio-geophysical and even for long-range climatic forecasts." 

The Soviet astronaut A. A. Leonoff and Dr. V. I. Lebedeff write: "The number of car accidents increases four times on the second day after the solar flare-ups, as compared with the days when the sun is calm." They also state that suicides increase four to five times above the normal rate during the periods of explosions on the sun. 

These quotations from serious scientific sources establish coincidences between solar as well as planetary forces and events taking place on our earth. Astrology was built on this very assumption that the stars influence our lives. It appears therefore that some of the beliefs of astrologers may have had a scientific basis! 

When Halley criticized Newton for considering astrology as a science, Sir Isaac Newton replied: "I have studied the subject, sir. You have not." If the divinatory character of astrology is ignored, one thing becomes strikingly clear - the sages of antiquity had a clear concept of stellar bodies emitting radiation. That idea alone is thoroughly scientific. 

Chapter 10: 

Apes and Ages 

At a time when even a schoolboy knows that the Sinatrthropus, our apelike prehistoric patriarch, lived over 600,000 years ago, it is curious to recollect the words of an early 19th-century luminary of science - Cuvier, who once declared that: "Prehistoric men, physically different from the men of today, have never existed on earth." But they have, and their skeletons can now be seen in museums. 

It is significant that while the Europeans of a century or two ago erroneously traced the origin of man and the universe to a date less than 6,000 years before their time, many thinkers of the ancient past had a truly scientific concept of the long evolution of man. 

According to the Sanskrit Book of Manu (c. 2nd century B.C.E.) the germ of life first appeared in water from the action of heat. Then it manifested itself as a mineral, a plant, an insect, a fish, a reptile, a mammal and finally in the form of a man. Other Brahmin scriptures of great antiquity list the Incarnations of Vishnu in the following order: the fish, tortoise, boar, lion man, dwarf, man with an axe, Rama and Krishna. Again we can recognize in this allegory a pre-Darwinian notion of evolution. The fish becomes a reptile, the mammal comes to take its place. Then giant and dwarf primates appear. 

The Gigantopithecus was five metres tall while the Pithecanthropus was short. The Cro-Magnon, the "man with an axe", was the true progenitor of modern man. Rama is a symbol of civilized man. Krishna stands for the future goal of mankind--cosmic man. These remarkable ideas of Indian sages antedate the Theory of Evolution by thousands of years. 

"Man's procreator is a fish - living creatures came from water," said Anaximander in the 6th century B.C.E. Lucretius, a Roman poet of the 1st century before our era, drew a picture of the 'survival of the fittest' in his poem On Nature. 

It is quite evident that these clear-cut notions of evolution existed long before Lamarck and Darwin. Only one hundred years ago Darwinists met a wall of opposition, ridicule and fear. At a lecture on evolution given in those troublesome years the wife of Sir David Brewster, an eminent savant, fainted on hearing the facts which her tender ears could not take. Even until recent years certain states in America have had a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. Actually, there is nothing offensive in the Theory of Evolution - a cosmic process of growth from the low forms of life towards the superior, holds a promise of a greater future for man. And who knows, perhaps the ancient Mayas were right. According to their sacred book the Popol Vuh, the monkey is a descendant of early man. 

A comparison of scientific knowledge prevalent over two thousand years ago and the beliefs current in the past three hundred years, forces upon us the conclusion that the ancients surpassed our ancestors in the interpretation of the phenomena they had observed. 

The people of antiquity believed in the tremendous age of the world and mankind which they estimated in tens of thousands and even millions of years. To the European of Napoleonic times, the earth and man were created by God only several thousand years ago. However, the Asiatics had different views. 

The Brahmins of India calculated the duration of the universe, or the Day of Brahma, to be 4,320 million years. The Druses of Lebanon set the beginning of creation at 3,430 billion years. The present age of the earth is considered to be about 4,600 billion years, whereas that of the crust is 3,300 billion years. There are strange parallels between these figures. What is really extraordinary is the pundits' time reckoning in milliards of years - cosmic chronology of this type was unknown until this century. 

According to Simplicius (6th century C.E.) ancient Egyptians kept records of astronomical observations for 630,000 years. The archives of Babylon were 470,000 years old, wrote Cicero with a remark that he did not believe this claim. Hipparchus (c. 190-125 B.C.E.) mentioned Assyrian chronicles stretching back for 270,000 years. 

The Egyptian priests told Herodotus in the 5th century B.C. that the sun had not always risen where it rose then. This implied that they had kept records of the precession of equinoxes, covering at least 26,000 years. 

The Greek historian Diogenes Laertius (3rd century C.E.) claimed that the astronomical records of Egyptian priests began in 49,219 B.C.E. He also referred to their registers of 373 solar and 832 lunar eclipses, which would involve a period of approximately 10,000 years. 

The Byzantine historian George Syncellus said that the chroniclers of the Pharaohs had recorded all events for 36,525 years. Martianus Capella (5th century) wrote that the Egyptian sages had secretly studied astronomy for over 40,000 years before they imparted their knowledge to the world. 

The first dynasty after the Deluge was traced by Babylonian priests to a date 24,150 years before their time. According to Codex Vaticanus A-3738, the Mayas kept their calendrical system since 18,612 B.C.E. 

Herodotus places the reign of Osiris at about 15,500 B.C.E. from the information given to him by the priests of the Land of the Nile. He made the remark that they were quite certain about the exactitude of the date. 

The lunar calendar of Babylon and the solar calendar of Egypt coincided in the year 11,542 B.C.E. The calendrical computations of India began with the year 11,652 B.C.E. According to Plato, the Egyptian priests fixed the date of the sinking of Atlantis at 9850 B.C. while the Zoroastrian books set the 'beginning of time' at 9600 B.C.E. 

That these dates are correct, can be questioned. But we can not escape the conclusion that the ancients were much closer to truth than the scholars and clerics of one and a half centuries ago who thought that the world had been created in 4004 B.C.E. according to the biblical chronological study of Bishop Ussher. 

The universe of the Brahmins was almost as old as that of modern science. The chronicles of the Mayas, Egyptians and Babylonians went farther back in time than our history. In view of what our science has yet to learn, it would be presumptuous to accuse them of exaggeration. The mental horizons of the peoples of antiquity were vast and we are only beginning to see today what they perceived yesterday. 

The priests of Babylon and Egypt believed that man was civilized half-a-million years ago. They kept historical and astronomical records in their archives as Simplicius and Cicero tell us. We can smile at these claims and give civilization five thousand years to progress from the chariot to the automobile, from bows and arrows to the atomic bomb, from the boat to the spaceship. 

Although legitimately drawn from the palaeontological evidence available today, certain inferences of anthropology are questionable as we shall later see. According to anthropology, anthropoid apes appeared about two million years ago. They were neither men nor apes. There is a possibility that both modern man and present-day ape had a common ancestor. 

Accordingly, if this period of two million years, representing the life span of man, is likened to a year, then the Australopithecus appeared on July 1, the Pithecanthropus came on October 14, the Neanderthal on Christmas Day and the Cro-Magnon on December 27, 28, 29 and 30. Today is the 31st December on this scale, and it has been about 5,500 years long. 

Primitive man began to make tools between July and September of this Great Year, and early in the second week of December he discovered fire. For eleven months of this Great Year of Evolution the ancestor of man was slowly detaching himself from the animal kingdom by adopting an erect posture and developing a larger brain. 

Our immediate progenitor is the Cro-Magnon. He was a six-footer (1.8 metres); intelligent and good-looking. He originated in the last Ice Age about 35,000 years ago, and had a continuous existence until the dawn of history when he became the forefather of modern man. 

The Neanderthal of Europe was nothing like him. He was only 1.65 metres tall, with short muscular limbs, broad chest, weighing about 82 kilograms. This prehistoric man had a very small forehead, almost no chin and in comparison with the Cro-Magnon, was ugly. During the earliest period of his existence the Cro-Magnon was contemporaneous with the Neanderthal, whom he removed from the European scene by his strength and intelligence. 

The Neanderthal was not the grandfather of the Cro-Magnon, although occasional crossings of races apparently took place, and it is sometimes hypothesized that the earlier people were assimilated by their ultimate successors. 

Evolution laboured for hundreds of thousands of years to produce the Neanderthal out of the primates. If so long a period of time was necessary to evolve this low browed, chinless, thick-necked, stocky creature, how could the more evolved Cro-Magnon have developed in the space of a few thousand years? Here is his portrait - he dressed himself in skin clothes which were sewn and embroidered. He carved mammoth bone, painted beautiful pictures on rock, and kept calendars by watching the moon. He even had art schools. 

Our planet has had unexpected glacial epochs of different duration. The last one ended about twelve thousand years ago. But there were interglacial periods before the one we live in today. A warm climate prevailed about 150,000 years ago during which civilization might have been born, flourished and then died in an avalanche of ice and ocean waves. The Cro-Magnon could have been a survivor from this Garden of Eden. This hypothesis would account for the large brain and high forehead of the Cro-Magnon. He may have brought with him hereditary traits from a former race, just as we ourselves carry his genes. 

Now, using the same comparative scale, let us divide the day we are living - December 31, into 12 hours, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., from sunrise to sunset. Today at 7 o'clock in the morning we discover bronze, writing and the wheel. At 8 we begin to build cities. Shortly before 11 we learn how to melt and forge iron. Between 1 and 2 in the afternoon the Greek forefathers meditate on the nature of the universe, from the atom to the possibility of space travel. About 4.30 p.m. we emerge from an historical siesta - the Dark Ages - and begin to develop the scientific legacy of Greece. At 5 in the afternoon, European explorers begin colonizing the New World. At sunset we steal the Promethean fire of the atom and then soar to the moon. Everything happens in the last hour of the last day of the Great Year. 

If all the above is correct, then the story of man is unparalleled in evolution. It took the horse sixty million years to become what it is now. The ancestor of the ant lived 150 million years ago, and his descendants have changed but little. 

There is something strangely unrealistic in the picture of a tree-climbing animal becoming in two million years a biped who can make machines to sail on water, roll on land, or fly in the air or interplanetary space, while his simian cousins still jump from tree to tree. It is difficult to believe that man's history is so short while that of a horse is thirty times longer. 

Coming to our recent origin, it seems that the Cro-Magnon could not have displayed his artistic talents without heredity from another cycle of civilization of which we know nothing. Neither could we have reached the moon without the biological legacy from the Cro-Magnon. 

Only material evidence from prehistory can make this speculation truly scientific. But there is a great deal to suggest that the evolutionary road of mankind is much longer than it is considered at present. The discovery of a man-type skeleton in Tuscany in 1958 by Dr. J. Hurzeler and Dr. H. de Terra in a 10-million year Miocene stratum lends strength to the author's theory of the ancientness of man. 

Or has our growth been accelerated by another galactic civilization, millions of years older than our own? "May be we are property," mused Charles Fort - "property of a cosmic super-civilization breeding gods out of monkeys?" 

Chapter 11: 

The Celestial Comedy 

In 1877, Asaph Hall, the Director of the Naval Observatory in Washington, discovered the two small moons of Mars: Phobos and Deimos. Curiously enough, the 15th book of the Iliad alludes to the fact that the god of war had two companions - Phobos and Deimos. Was an ancient tradition concerning the Martian satellites expressed in a symbolic form? 

About two hundred and fifty years before the discovery of the Martian moons Kepler (1571-1630) left the following solution of an astronomical anagram of Galileo: "Salve umbistineum geminatum Martia proles," or "Greetings to you, the twin-offspring of Mars." Apparently, Kepler was aware of the 'twins of Mars'! 

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) in his Autre Monde mentioned the two moons of Mars as well. Voltaire (1694-1778) was also certain that Mars had two satellites: "Coasting along the planet Mars, which is well known to be five times smaller than our little earth, they descried two moons subservient to that orb which have escaped the observation of all our astronomers," he wrote in Micromégas. 

In Gulliver's Travels, written in 1726, Jonathan Swift describes the flying island of Laputa, held and propelled in space, by a magnet. The scientists on this weightless 'space platform' speak about the two moons of Mars. One of these "lesser stars or satellites" as Swift calls them, orbits Mars at a distance of three Martian diameters from the planet's centre. The other one whirls around it at a distance of five diameters of Mars. 

While the actual distances to the orbits of Deimos, the outer satellite, and Phobos, the inner one, are less than 3% diameters for Deimos and under 1% for Phobos, it is true, as Dr. I. M. Levitt, the American astronomer, remarked that: "The similarity between the hypothetical satellites and the real ones was so close that it remains one of the most amazing feats of speculation." 

The provisions of Swift, Voltaire, Bergerac and Kepler are usually explained in this way - the earth has one moon, jupiter four (known at the time), therefore Mars must have two. Irrespective of their reasons for believing that Mars has two moons, the writers of the 17th and 18th centuries certainly hit the target - the planet does have two satellites. What is more, they are the smallest in the whole solar system with its thirty-one satellites. Furthermore, Phobos is the fastest moon in the solar system, as it spins around Mars in 7 hours 39 minutes - faster than Mars itself revolves on its own axis. This phenomenon is without parallel in our solar system. 

One can not help thinking that perhaps the ancient Greeks inherited a tradition about these moons of Mars from an unknown source of primordial science. The scientific truth was veiled in their legend of the god Mars with his two companions, Phobos and Deimos. 

The story of the two moons of Mars about which people had spoken for two hundred years before they actually saw them, is captivating, indeed. However, an even crazier mystery is one which is the exact opposite of the case of the Martian moons. Incredible but true; once upon a time there was a moon, which was seen first, and talked about afterwards. We refer to the strange case of the moon of Venus. 

Early in the morning on January 25, 1672: the great astronomer Cassini, who had discovered Jupiter's Red Spot, sighted a smaller object near Venus. He watched it for ten minutes but decided not to create a sensation by claiming the discovery of a Venusian moon. At 4.15 a.m. on August 18, 1686 he saw it again. The satellite was large - one quarter of Venus in size, situated at a distance of three-fifths of the planet's diameter. The Venusian moon showed phases like the mother planet. Cassini studied the body for fifteen minutes and left complete notes. 

On October 23, 1740 James Short of England found a body near Venus, one third of the diameter of the planet, and examined it through his telescope for one hour. On May 20, 1759 Andreas Mayer of Greifswald, Germany observed for half an hour an astronomical body in proximity to Venus. 

In 1761 Jacques Montaigne, a member of the Limoges Society, who had discovered a comet, and had been very sceptical of the Venusian moon observations, saw it himself on March 3, 4, 7 and 11, 1761. On February 10, 11 and 12, 1761 Joseph-Louis Lagrange of Marseille, who later became Director of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, reported his sightings of the satellite of Venus. 

On March 15, 28 and 29 of the same year Montbarron of Auxerre, France, spotted the Venusian baby-planet through his telescope. Roedkioer of Copenhagen made eight observations of the body in ]une, July and August, 1761. The labours of these astronomers finally received a touch of official recognition when Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, proposed that the moon of Venus be named D'Alembert in honour of the French savant. Then Christian Horrebow of Copenhagen studied the Venusian satellite on january 3, 1768. What happened afterwards was more mysterious than any unsolved kidnapping that the F.B.I. has ever handled - the Venus baby vanished for a whole century. 

It turned up again in 1886 when the astronomer Houzeau saw the mini Aphrodite seven times. He even baptized it Neith in honour of the Egyptian goddess of learning. 

On August 13, 1892 the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard sighted a seventh-magnitude object near Venus in spite of the fact that he had had no faith in the Venusian moon story. His report is highly reliable because Professor Barnard was the discoverer of the fifth moon of Jupiter and also a star in the constellation Ophiuchus, named in his honour. And while the fifth Jovian moon is still merrily going around its mother planet and Barnard's star has not stopped twinkling, the offspring of Venus has disappeared again. 

For a hundred years astronomers were on the lookout for this illegitimate child of the goddess of Love. But without any success. The riddle of the Venusian moon, seen by so many astronomers, is still unsolved. 

Can the right planet be discovered by wrong calculations, or the wrong planet discovered by right calculations? Evidently it can. Forty years ago, after a lot of figuring Dr. Clyde Tombaugh decided that because of Neptune's odd movement, there must have been another planet beyond it. He pointed his telescope in the right direction and found the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930. But now, after all these years, astronomers say that Pluto could not have disturbed Neptune or Uranus because it is much too small. The discovery of the planet was a freak coincidence, they claim. The moral is this - it can sometimes pay to make errors in your mathematics, if indeed errors were made in this case. 

And now we come to the biggest scandal in celestial affairs. On March 26, 1859 a Dr. Lescarbault of Orgeres, France, observed a moving astronomical body on the disc of the sun for one hour and seventeen minutes. Leverrier, the Director of Paris Observatory, visited Dr. Lescarbault in order to check on his observation, calculations and background. This he did with great scepticism and little enthusiasm. However, Leverrier was satisfied with the interview and concluded that an intra mercurial planet had been discovered by Lescarbault. He computed its mass to be 1/17 that of Mercury, its orbit equal to 19 of our days, and named it Vulcan. 

Dr. Lescarbault presented his findings to the Academy in Paris in January, 1860. Immediately, Napoleon III awarded him the coveted Legion d'Honneur. While France was basking in the glory of this astronomical discovery, Vulcan suddenly refused to parade before the telescopes and vanished as unexpectedly as the moon of Venus. But in this case it was not a mere moon but a whole planet gone astray! 

However, to make matters worse, in 1878 Professor James Watson of the University of Michigan claimed to have seen two Vulcans instead of one! An amateur astronomer, Lewis Swift, also had a good look at Vulcan from Pike's Peak in Colorado. But Swift was no ordinary star-gazer as his work on nebulae had received recognition by astronomers. 

It is sheer impertinence for critics to say that all these men of science were hallucinating, and that Lescarbault got his Legion d'Honneur for nothing. The observations were undoubtedly genuine but we still do not know what the body was that crossed the disc of the sun in 1859. Was it an asteroid or a giant space platform from another world? And was the Venusian moon a huge space city cruising the galaxy? 

Chapter 12: 

Maps, Manuscripts and Marvels 

In the Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Flavius Philostratus of Athens (circa 172-250) there is an intriguing passage which points to unsuspected knowledge of geography in antiquity: "If the land be considered in relation to the entire mass of Water, we can show that the earth is the lesser of the two." 

If the ancient Greeks, Cretans or Phoenicians had not crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific, how could Philostratus know that the oceans cover the greater part of the surface of the planet? Plato must have been cognizant of the great size of our globe, and of other continents, because he said in Phaedo that the Mediterranean people occupied "only a small portion of the earth". 

"Besides the world we inhabit, there may be one or more other worlds peopled by beings different from ourselves," wrote Strabo (1st century B.C.E.). He even mentioned that if the parallel of Athens were extended westward - across the Atlantic, these other races might live there in the temperate zone, clearly alluding to North America. 

Yet in the days of Columbus, a significant number of scholars still believed the earth was flat, and that the Nina, the Pinto and the Santa Maria would fall over the edge of this plane if they sailed far enough. Small wonder it was so difficult to recruit the crew for this first trans-Atlantic voyage. 

From these historical facts it can be seen that the cognizance of ancient peoples in geography was greatly superior to that of the Europeans of the 15th century. Herodotus (V, 49) tells us that Aristagoras, the ruler of Miletus (500 B.C.E.) possessed a bronze tablet on which lands and seas were engraved. This might have been one of the earliest maps excepting the clay tablets of the Babylonians. 

Only if they had explored distant places themselves, could the people of former times have described those places with such accuracy. Pytheas of Massalia, ancient geographer and astronomer (circa 330 B.C.E), sailed as far as the Arctic Circle in the Atlantic and gave a scientific explanation of the Midnight Sun. Did the scholars of antiquity know about America? Seneca (1st century), the tragedian, confirms this supposition by his famous verse in the Medea: 

There shall come a time 

When the bands of Ocean 

Shall be loosened, 

And the vast Earth shall be laid open, 

Another Tiphys shall disclose new worlds, 

And lands shall be seen beyond Thule. 

New lands 'beyond Thule', or Iceland, could be nothing but Greenland and North America. Tiphys was the pilot of the legendary ship Argos. Seneca's lines definitely allude to what was called the New World centuries later. In the 5th century before our era. Plato wrote in the Timaeus about the Atlantic Ocean and America: "In those days the Atlantic was navigable from an island situated to the west of the straits which you call the Pillars of Hercules; from it could be reached other islands and from the islands you might pass through to the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean." 

This phrase infers that beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, the Canaries and Azores, across the Atlantic Ocean, lies a continent which must be the Americas. This is a momentous statement for it suggests that twenty-five centuries ago or earlier, the ancients were somehow aware of the existence of the Americas. 

The Vishnu Parana, a sacred book of India, contains a significant passage about Pushkar (a continent) with two Varshas (lands) which lie at the foot of Meru (North Pole). The continent faces Kshira (an ocean of milk), and the two lands are shaped like a bow. Mythological nonsense? 

Not really. The Brahmin text concerns the continent of America (Pushkar), with its two land divisions, North and South (the two Varshas). America certainly faces the Polar Ocean (ocean of milk), and the profile of North and South America does resemble a bow as described by the Vishnu Parana. 

After this interpretation of the passage from the sacred book of India, a question immediately arises - from where could the Brahmins have got information about America and its exact shape from Greenland to Patagonia? Geographical survey implies 'means of transport and instruments. But the civilization of India did not have ocean-going vessels one thousand and five hundred years before Columbus. And so we have another unsolved mystery in the history of science. 

An ancient Tibetan book of the Bon sect contains a strange chart. It is a mosaic of squares and rectangles marked with names of unknown countries. As the diagram shows the four cardinal points - the east on top, the west at the bottom, the south on the right and the north on the left, the Soviet philologist Bronislav Kouznetsov concluded that the chart was a map. He found a key to it, and identified places such as the Persian city of Pasargadae (4th-7th century C.E.), Alexandria, Jerusalem, the countries of Bactria, Babylonia, North Persia arid the Caspian Sea. 

The discovery provides proof of the geographical knowledge of the Tibetans and their links with Persia and Egypt centuries ago, which Orientalists have not suspected until now. 

The Yale University map of 1440 conclusively proves that the Vikings reached Greenland and Canada four hundred years before the Spanish landed in San Salvador in 1492. Curiously enough, for their navigation the Vikings used sunstones or special crystals which changed colour if pointed towards the sun even in cloudy weather. 

The Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences made a discovery in 1964 that the 13th-century scholar Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was aware of the existence of America two hundred and fifty years before Columbus. The astronomer mentioned the land of Eternal Isles in one of his books, giving its geographical co-ordinates. When these were joined, the contour corresponded. to the east coast of South America. Where did Nasireddin Tusi obtain his information about a faraway continent? In the 13th century Mediterranean vessels were too small and unreliable to cross the Atlantic from Gibraltar to Brazil. 

The 16th-century Turkish cartographer Admiral Piri Reis compiled an atlas called Bahriye or the Book of the Seas, containing two hundred and ten well drawn maps. The National Museum of Turkey has in its possession two old maps made by Reis, dated 1513 and 1528. The map with the date 1513 shows Brittany, Spain, West Africa, the Atlantic, parts of North America and a complete outline of the eastern half of South America. At the very bottom of the map is shown the coastline of Antarctica, extending eastward to a point under Africa. The chart was torn but it is suspected that originally there were three more sections exhibiting the Indian Ocean, perhaps Australia, Europe and Asia. This conclusion is suggested by the existing two maps which appear to be portions of a larger one. 

The second map dated 1528 shows Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland, a part of Canada, the east coast of North America to Florida. The geographical projection of these maps could not be determined until recent years. The famous Swedish explorer and savant Nordenskjold spent seventeen years in trying to solve the projection. His work was completed by the American cartographer Arlington H. Mallery who had the co-operation of the United States Navy/Hydrographic Office. 

It was astounding to discover that the maps had been drawn with the greatest precision. The distance between Europe, Africa and the Americas was exact. Until the 18th century navigators could not determine longitude with accuracy. In other words, this 16th-century map was superior to later navigational charts. 

The text of the Atlas Bahriye and notations on the Piri Reis geographical maps by the Admiral, throw light on the origin of these amazing documents. According to Piri Reis, when he was 31, his uncle Captain Kemal and himself fought against Spain in 1501. In the course of the naval battle they captured a Spanish sailor who had some rare maps on him. The Spaniard told the Turks that he had been on three of Columbus' expeditions, and that the discoverer of America had used those maps. If so, the words of Christopher Columbus' biographer, Bartolomé de las Casas, then become clear: "He was as sure he would discover what he did discover as if he held it in a chamber under lock and key." 

Piri Reis himself revealed the story of the maps which he had secured by questioning the Spanish seaman: "A certain book from the time of Alexander the Great was translated in Europe and after reading it Christopher Columbus went and discovered the Antilles with the vessels he obtained from the Spanish government." 

Fantastic it may sound, but the origin of the maps is apparently traceable to Greece or Alexandria. After studying the two maps Professor Afetinan of Turkey said: "It is quite evident today that Piri Reis came into possession of the map that the great discoverer used." 

The two maps, dated 1513 and 1528, pose a number of questions. How could navigators of Piri Reis' time attain such accuracy in cartography? Did ancient Greeks reach and survey South America? Why does the Turkish cartographer's chart of 1513 show not only the coastline of South America but even the unexplored rivers of that continent - the Orinoco, Amazon, Parana, Uruguay and others? How did Piri Reis learn about ice-free Antarctica? 

Now let us review the navigation routes of the New World explorers. The destinations of the three voyages of Columbus made between 1492 and 1498, were the Bahamas, Porto Rico and Haiti. In 1501 Vespucci sailed from the coast of Brazil (ofli Recife) down to Rio de la Plata, where Montevideo is today. Magellan followed his course in 1519, went through the strait bearing his name today, and emerged into the Pacific on his way around the world. Neither Vespucci nor Magellan had explored the rivers of South America beyond the deltas, nor had they carried out any land survey inland. 

Yet the 1513 map shows the entire profile of Brazil which Vespucci could not have charted in 1501 since after reaching Argentina he turned into the Atlantic from La Plata. The map was made six years before Magellan's historic voyage showing the then-unknown shores from what is now Montevideo down to Patagonia. What explorer could have drawn this coastline on Piri Reis' chart? 

Cortes landed in Mexico in 1520, seven years after the completion of Piri Reis' map. Pizarro occupied Peru in 1531, or eighteen years after the map had been issued. Antarctica was discovered in the 19th century and its charting is still going on. Oddly, the ancient map of Piri Reis shows Antarctica stretching right under Africa, completely free of polar ice, and even indicates the altitudes of mountains which are under glaciers now, and whose height in many cases has not yet been measured! Until the International Geophysical Year probes we knew almost nothing about these mountain ridges sealed under ice. The riddle of the Piri Reis' maps still stands as a challenge to science. Who performed the geographical survey required for drawing these ancient maps with such precision? 

As Dr. C. H. Hapgood noted in his book Earth's Shifting Crust, "the mapping of Antarctica had actually been done when the land was ice-free". If this is true, the maps of Piri Reis must be copies of charts thousands of years old. Arlington Mallery, the U.S. expert it on cartography, adds a touch of mystery to the subject when he says: "We don't know how they could map it so accurately without an aeroplane." 

There is no doubt that the Turkish admiral had used some very ancient sources, and this he admitted in a note on one of the maps: "In preparing this map I made use of about twenty old charts and eight Mappa Mundis, i.e. of the charts called Iaferiye by the Arabs and prepared at the time of Alexander the Great, and in which the whole inhabited world was shown." This is a clear indication of the antiquity of the data from which Piri Reis drew his charts. 

Yet another map, that of Oronteus Finaeus, dated 1531, can be placed in the same category as those of the Turkish cartographer. The outline of Antarctica is also displayed on this old map. It shows rivers which implies that the South Pole was warmer in former times than now. Mountain ranges are likewise indicated on the map. They are now covered by a thick ice cap. This document is another enigma because the exploration of Antarctica did not begin before the first part of the 19th century. 

After having checked the Oronteus Finaeus map, Captain Burroughs, Chief of United States Air Force Cartographic Section, made the following statement in 1961: "It is our opinion that the accuracy of the cartographic features shown in the Oronteus Finaeus map suggests, beyond a doubt, that it also was compiled from accurate source maps of Antarctica." 

The map of Zeno, with an earlier date of 1380, is also a mystery as it shows Greenland without the ice sheet. The rivers and mountains drawn on this chart have been located in the probes of the French Polar Expedition of Paul Emile Victor in 1947-49. This discovery conclusively proves that the source of Zeno's map was very ancient, and that the mapping of Greenland had been done in a temperate climate. 

Many conclusions can be drawn from these enigmatic maps. There must have existed an unknown civilization which had ocean-going ships and scientists with a good knowledge of astronomy, navigation and mathematics in order to have charted Antarctica and Greenland. The vessels employed in these ancient polar explorations had to be large and strong, and immensely superior to the craft possessed by ancient Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece or Rome. 

The view expressed by Professor Charles H. Hapgood is logical: "The evidence presented by the ancient maps appears to suggest the existence in remote times, before the rise of any of the known cultures, of a true civilization, of a comparatively advanced sort, which either was localized in one area but had worldwide commerce, or was, in a real sense a worldwide culture." 

He believes that while palaeolithic peoples lived in Europe, a more advanced culture existed elsewhere. After all, stone-age tribes of New Guinea and Central Australia are with us today in this era of technology. The same situation could have prevailed in the distant past. 

Comparable with the mysterious maps of Piri Reis, Oronteus Finaeus and Zeno is the so-called Voynich Manuscript. In 1912 Wilford Voynich, a New York collector of antiquities, found this document inside a locked chest in an ancient castle near Rome. In 1665 the manuscript was in possession of the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher who received it from a friend with an accompanying letter which said): "Such sphinxes as these obey no one but their master." 

The manuscript is certainly an enigma. Although Professor William Romaine Newbold of the University of Pennsylvania made a serious attempt to decipher the coded document, some of his conclusions have been rejected. War-time experts who cracked the complex codes of Germany and Japan, could not do much with it. An R.C.A. 301 computer was given the problem of interpreting the text and numerous diagrams of this handwritten book but was not able to clarify the mystery. 

The Voynich Manuscript contains well over two hundred and fifty pages about the format of the book you are reading. On most of the pages there are diagrams in colour with captions. There are also thirty-three pages of text. In the opinion of Professor Newbold, the parchment, the ink and the style of the drawings indicate the 13th century as the time of origin. Other experts think it was written around 1500. 

The document is devoted to botanical, astronomical, biological and pharmaceutical subjects. There are charts depicting cross sections of leaves and roots which could only have been observed with a microscope, but the microscope was not invented until the 17th century. One illustration shows a spiral with eight legs, a cloudy mass with stars in the centre, and some writing in it. The legend, deciphered by Newbold, reads that the object is within a triangle formed "by the navel of Pegasus, the girdle of Andromeda and the head of Cassiopeia". This chart, therefore may refer to the Andromeda Galaxy which is invisible as a spiral without a strong telescope. 

In studying this chart during the twenties Professor Eric Doolittle of the University of Pennsylvania made a remark that "in my opinion it unquestionably represented a nebula and that the man who drew it must have had a telescope." But if he did not have a telescope, how could the author have observed the Andromeda Galaxy long before the invention of his instrument? And how could he have studied cross sections of plants without a microscope? 

On the other hand, if the man who wrote the Voynich Manuscript did in fact employ a microscope as well as a telescope, then adjustments must be made in the history of science, moving these inventions back three and a half centuries, and perhaps acknowledging Roger Bacon as the true inventor of these instruments. Where did Bacon receive his knowledge concerning the microcosmos and macrocosmos? If it came from ancient alchemical and hermetic writings, then the source of his discoveries might have been arcane science, come from time immemorial. 

In case the reality of this mysterious document - the Voynich manuscript - is questioned, it should be mentioned that in the year 1962 it was on sale in New York for the substantial sum of 160,000 dollars.

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