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Next we have an Assyrian crystal lens from the seventh century BC To grind such a lens requires a highly sophisticated mathematical formula Where did the Assyrians get such knowledge'? Finally, these very ancient fragments, now in the Baghdad Museum, have been identified as the remains of an electric battery.
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The next five photographs are from South America, a continent teeming with ruins and unexplained puzzles.
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This is part of a huge monolithic block weighing an estimated 20,000 tons It can be found at Sacsayhuaman in Peru What was its purpose? What titanic forces turned it upside down?
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And what did these great steps lead to? A throne for giants perhaps?
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Rock vitrification requires very high temperatures. What caused it in Peru?
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Part of the huge terrace walls at Sacsayhuaman. Just look at the incredible accuracy of the jointing. How could primitive people handle these huge blocks?
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A mummy from the Second Dynasty.
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Part of a very finely woven piece of cloth. Where did the Egyptians get such complex techniques so early?
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With wood rollers and manpower it would have taken at least 600 years to handle the 2 1/2 million stone blocks in the great pyramid of Cheops.
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As in Peru, we are faced with fantastically accurate jointing of huge blocks of stone.
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This temple at Copan in Honduras is constructed according to the Mayan calendar with a fixed number of steps completed every 52 years.
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There is no recorded history of Tiahuanaco On the Gate of the Sun, above, carved out of a single 10-ton block, is the representation of a flying god flanked by forty-eight mysterious figures Legend tells of a golden space ship which came from the stars.
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On the great idol, is found information about astronomical phenomena covering an immense span of time.
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Once again what primitive people had techniques for handling and accurately jointing such huge blocks of stone, in this case water conduits 6ft long and 1 1/2ft
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"El Castillo at Chichen Itza, Mexico This also has been constructed according to the Mayan calendar The 91 steps on each side add up to 364 and the final platform gives 365.
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In Bolivia near Santa Cruz are long concrete constructions Could these really be roads for people who did not use the wheel"?
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Rock drawings from all round the world
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(Left) - From Rhodesia This reclining figure is clad in chainmail and wears curious headgear It might be the burial of a king It might just as likely be an astronaut receiving supplies.
(Right) - This drawing from South Africa shows a white figure dressed in a short sleeved suit with breeches, garters, gloves and slippers A rather surprising example of imagination on the part of primitive natives who went about naked
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This drawing was found by a Russian expedition.
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This drawing from Val Camonica in Northern Italy shows yet again the extraordinary obsession primitive man had with figures in suits and unusual headgear.
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More ancient drawings
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From Navoy.
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From Fergana in Uzbekistan
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From Tassili in the Sahara.
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An American astronaut Perhaps the earliest space travellers also wore suits like this.
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With such enormous estimates a couple of million men more or less does not matter. But one thing is clear—they all had to be fed. There were not only a host of construction workers, stone-masons, engineers and sailors, there were not only hundreds of thousands of slaves, but also a well-equipped army, a large and pampered priesthood, countless merchants, farmers and officials, and last but not least the Pharaonic household living on the fat of the land. Could they all, all have lived on the scanty yields of agriculture in the Nile delta?
I shall be told that the stone blocks used for building the temple were moved on rollers. In other words, wooden rollers! But the Egyptians would scarcely have felled and turned into rollers the few trees, mainly palms, that then (as now) grew in Egypt, because the dates from the palms were urgently needed for food and the trunks and fronds were the only tilings giving shade to the dried up ground. But they must have been wooden rollers, otherwise there would not be even the feeblest technical explanation of the building of the pyramids. Did the Egyptians import wood? In order to import wood there must have been a sizeable fleet, and even after it had been landed in Alexandria the wood would have had to be transported up the Nile to Cairo. Since the Egyptians did not have horses and carts at the time of the building of the Great Pyramid, there was no other possibility. The horse and cart was not introduced until the seventeenth dynasty, about 1600 B.C. My kingdom for a convincing explanation of the transport of the stone blocks! Of course the scholars say that wooden rollers were needed ....
There are many problems connected with the technology of the pyramid builders and no genuine solutions.
How did the Egyptians carve tombs out of the rock? What resources did they have in order to lay out a maze of galleries and rooms? The walls are smooth and mostly decorated with paintings in relief. The shafts slope down into the rocky soil; they have steps built in the best tradition of craftsmanship that lead to the burial chambers far below Hordes of tourists stand gaping in amazement at them, but none of them gets an explanation of the mysterious technique used in their excavation. Yet it is firmly established that the Egyptians were masters of the art of tunnelling from the earliest times, for the old rock-cut tombs are worked in exactly the same way as the more recent ones There is no difference between the tomb of Tety from the sixth dynasty and the tomb of Rameses I from the New Kingdom, although there is a minimum of 1,000 years between the building of the two tombs. Obviously the Egyptians had not learnt anything new to add to their old technique. In fact the more recent edifices tend increasingly to be poor copies of their ancient models.
The tourist who bumps his way to the Pyramid of Cheops to the west of Cairo on a camel called Wellington or Napoleon, depending on his nationality, gets the strange sensation in the pit of his stomach that relics of the mysterious past always produce. The guide tells him that ,1 Pharaoh had a burial place built here. And with that bit of rehashed erudition he rides homewards, after taking some impressive photographs. The Pyramid of Cheops, in particular, has inspired hundreds of crazy and untenable theories. In the 600-page-long book Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid by Charles Piazzi Smith, published in 1864, we can read about many hair-raising links between the pyramid and our globe
Yet even after a highly critical examination, it still contains some facts that should stimulate us to reflection.