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In 1957, the Geophysical Year, the maps were handed over to the Jesuit Father Lineham, who is both Director of the Weston Observatory and a cartographer in the US Navy. After scrupulous tests Father Lineham, too, could but confirm that the maps were fantastically accurate—even about regions which we have scarcely explored today. What is more the mountain ranges in the Antarctic, which already figure on Reis's maps, were not discovered until 1952. They have been covered in ice for hundreds of years and our present-day maps have been drawn with the aid of echo-sounding apparatus. 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.