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ALIEN VIS_ITORS TO ANCIENT CHINA? High in the mountains of Bayan Kara Ula, on the borders of China and Tibet, a team of archaeoJogislS were conducting a very detailed routine survey of a series of interlinked caves. Their interests hadl been excited by the discovery of lines of neatly arrapged graves which contained the skeletons of what must have been a strange race of human beings; strange because they had unnaturally spindly bodies and large, overdeveloped heads. At first, it had been thought that the caves had be'en ,the home of an hitherto unknown species of ape, Bun as the leader of the team-the Chinese archaeologist, Professor Chi Pu Tei-pointed out, "Who ever heard of apes burying each other?" It was while studying the skeletons that one of the team st\lIDbled on a large, round stone disc, half buried in the dust on the floor of Ithe cave. The team gathered round the discovery, turn ing it this way and that. It looked, absurdly, like a kind of Stone Age gramo phone record. There was a hole in 'the centre and a fine, spiral groove radiat ed to the rim. Closer inspection, how ever, showed that ,the groove was, in fact, a C_Qn tinllou_s spiralling line of closely written characters. The object was a 'record', in mOJe ways Ithen one. Only, nobody at "Ithe time-the year was I: , __~1L_ 1938-possessed the key to its incredible message. HBRUARY -MARCH 1994 The disc was labelled and filed away among other finds in the area. Even those who knew of its existence knew nothing of its meaning. Many experts tried to translate the hiero= glyphs in the 20 years the dise languished in Beijing. They all failed. It was not until another professor-Dr Tsum Urn Nui broke the code and started to decipher the 'speaking grooves' that the extraordinary implications of the dise were realised. Realised, that is, by only a select few. The outside world remained in ignorance. For the professor's conclusions on the meaning of the disc were so shattering that they were officially suppressed. The Peking Academy of Prehistory forbade him to pub lish his findings. Two years later, in 1965, the professor and [our of his colleagues were finally given permission to reveal their theory. It appeared under the long-winded but intriguing title, "The Grooved Seript con cerning Spaceships which, as recorded on the Discs, landed on Earlth 12,000 years ago". The 'records'-116 of the grooved 4.iscs were later uncovered in the same caves toldl an astonishing story of a 'space probe' by the inhabiLants of another planet which came to grief in the Bayan Kara Ula moun taiJl range. The strange, spiral script told NEXUS·S9