STRANGEST MYSTERIES

IN 1929 A GROUP of historians at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, found something rather fascinating. Imprinted on an old Gazelle skin dated 1513 they uncovered a segment of an amazing map. The chart seemed to depict part of the Atlantic Ocean and included the Americas and Antarctica in perfect detail. The mysterious thing was it had been drawn up only a few years after Columbus’ discovery, and three centuries before Antarctica was even known about. Over the years since the find, debate has raged about how the cartographer had assimilated his knowledge. Did an advanced ancient race, or aliens, create his source charts, or have the map’s features been adapted to fit wishful-thinking theories?

The map came to be named after its creator – Piri Reis. The word ‘Reis’ actually means ‘Admiral’, and it was discovered that Muhiddin Piri had originally worked as a privateer for the Turkish Ottoman empire, before accepting a role in the imperial navy. On his travels, he had collected all manner of charts, sketches, drawings and diagrams of coastlines and lands in the known world. In 1513, using an exhaustive list of source charts and data, he drew his first world map, which
is what we now recognise as the Piri Reis Map. He is known to have compiled another, quite different, global study in 1528 and continued to enjoy a distinguished military career until 1554, aged almost 90, when he was beheaded by the Ottoman Sultan.

The segment of the map that still exists is only a portion of the original, and shows the Atlantic Ocean from the west coast of Africa, to the east coast of South America, to the north coast of Antarctica in the south. Piri also included details about his sources on the map, claiming some of the reference charts he used were from the fourth century or even before. The map is not drawn with the straight lines of longitude and latitude found on today’s maps. It was designed using a series of circles with lines radiating out from them. These types of charts were called ‘portolan’ maps and were used to explain sailing routes, guiding ships from port to port, rather than giving sailors a definite position in the world. Ancient charts of this type were widespread, and Columbus is said to have used one when he set off to find the Americas.

Many Piri Reis Map enthusiasts believe the level of geographical detail and mathematical knowledge needed to create the map was far beyond the reach of navigators from the sixteenth or earlier centuries. Indeed, experts at the United States Air Force in the 1960s found the map so accurate they used it to replace false information on their own charts. Some people believe the map could only have been achieved with the help of aerial surveys, and suggest alien creatures mapped the planet thousands of years ago, leaving their results behind to be copied by Mankind.

The map’s seemingly accurate depiction of the geography of Antarctica is its most fascinating aspect. Antarctica was discovered in 1818, and the actual land of the continent was only mapped in 1949 by a combined British and Scandinavian project that had to use modern equipment to see the land underneath the mile-deep icecap. The theory put forward to compensate for this is that an ancient race using advanced, but now lost, technology was able to accurately record details of the continent before it was covered with ice.

Most experts suggest Antarctica was icefree no later than 6,000 years ago, although others believe ice has covered the continent for – at least – hundreds of thousands of years. Similarly, many cartography experts claim the accuracy of the portolan system of map drawing is more in the eye of the beholder, and many maps of this time included imaginary continents in the south Atlantic. But there are still some unexplainably accurate details on the map. The Falkland Islands are placed at the correct latitude, despite not being discovered until 1592, and the unknown Andes mountain range was included on the map of America. Similarly, Greenland was shown as three separate islands, a fact only discovered this century.

So the debate continues. Did Piri Reis just strike lucky with cartographic guesswork? Or did the Turkish admiral have access to charts and maps created by an advanced race, living on the planet thousands of years ago?

IN 1963, A SCIENTIST known as Fritz Werner was working on specialist nuclear tests in Arizona. In May of that year, Werner was asked to go on a specialist assignment – he was flown to Phoenix, and then taken by bus with a group of other men to a destination north-west of the city. The men were told not to talk to each other, and when unloaded from the vehicle they were shown a crash site. Werner claims that he saw a 30-feetwide metal disc protruding from the desert sand. He was asked to calculate the speed of the impact, and says that during his time on site he also saw the body of a four-foot-tall creature wearing a silver suit in the medical tent. He was taken back to Arizona and made to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

In 1957, a crashed UFO actually resulted in physical evidence being put into the public domain. On 18th September a journalist named Ibrahim Sued, who worked at a major Brazilian paper called O Globo, received a very odd letter. It was unsigned, but was said to be by a man who had been fishing near the town of Ubatuba in Sao Paulo, and saw a bizarre flying disc almost crash into the sea. The anonymous man said the craft was travelling at incredible speeds, and although it missed the water, it exploded in mid-air. The man managed to collect fragments from the strange vessel, which he included in the letter. These pieces were sent for official testing, and the Brazilian agricultural ministry declared it was a form of unusually pure magnesium. The results of experiments carried out by the Brazilian Army and Navy were kept secret.

Unlike more remote areas, the great advantage UFO researchers have when investigating odd incidents in America is that there are often plenty of witnesses. On 9th December 1965 hundreds of people saw a bizarre object streaking across the skies over Ohio and Pennsylvania. Some of the witnesses were airline pilots whose planes were shaken by the turbulence created by the unusual heavenly body. For six minutes, people watched what they thought was a meteorite travel from north-west to southeast before it seemed to explode. In fact, the object crashed in a wooded area in the town of Kecksberg, and started a small fire. Local police and fire authorities were unable to reach the site because they were turned away by a specialist military team who had immediately descended on the area. Witnesses said they had later seen the armed unit load a rounded metallic object onto a flatbed lorry which was then covered in tarpaulin to disguise its load.

Undoubtedly the most unsettling UFO crash and subsequent government reaction is reported to have occurred in northern Mexico, in the state of Chihuahua. UFO investigators have obtained documents which they claim reveal that an unidentified object was tracked by two US Air Defense radars on 25th August 1974. The object seemed to be entering the atmosphere from orbit, and was heading towards the United States, but veered off at the last minute and disappeared from sight over Mexico. At the same time, Mexican authorities said a light aeroplane had been lost over the area. The next day, Mexican search and rescue teams hunting for the downed plane started reporting that they had found the crash site, and two aircraft seemed to have been involved. When they transmitted a message that claimed the second appeared to be metallic and circular in shape, all broadcasts were ordered to stop.

UFO enthusiasts believe the US government heard these messages and immediately organised a response team. The US government strongly urged Mexico to accept their help, and when the local authorities ignored the offer, they decided to go in anyway. Mexican salvage squads had already loaded the two craft onto a truck and were heading south. By the time the US forces, travelling in helicopters, had caught up with them, a terrible tragedy had occurred. All the people with the convoy had somehow been mysteriously killed, so the American team, wearing protective clothing, took charge of the suspect air vehicle. They ferried it slung underneath a cargo helicopter, and took it to a secret installation in the US.

There is no absolute proof of UFO activity, but investigators continue to claim that more and more official evidence is being revealed that support these stories. The truth may not be ‘out there’, but it could certainly lie hidden in the vaults of a government agency.

AT 7:17AM ON 30th June 1908 there was a massive explosion in the atmosphere five miles above Siberia. It left the forest underneath burnt and charred, and pushed trees over in a 20-mile radius. It threw people to the floor and broke windowpanes 50 miles away. One hundred miles away, witnesses reported seeing the explosion create an enormous black cloud of ash which was accompanied by a terrific roar. This deafening noise was even heard 300 miles away, and all across the world scientific equipment recorded strange occurrences in northern Russia. To this day, bizarre growth patterns in plant and animal life can be found in the area. But what exactly happened in Tunguska that day?

The nearest witnesses to the explosion were reindeer herders 25 miles from the blast’s epicentre. They were sleeping in their tents when the massive force blew them into the air. One man was reported to have died, and the others lost consciousness. When they came round, they saw the forest around them devastated and smouldering. Other witnesses at a trading post in Vanavara 50 miles south of the explosion, reported seeing the sky split in two, with the northern part covered in flames. A blast that washed over them was so hot it felt as if their clothes were on fire. It threw them 20 feet in the air, and when they regained their senses, a terrible crashing bang was followed by a noise which sounded like a downpour of small stones hitting the ground.

More distant witnesses had seen the phenomenon’s final impressive act approaching. Residents in remote towns had seen a great ‘ball of fire’ with an iridescent tail streaking across the morning sky. Many thought it was the beginning of the great final apocalypse. The local newspaper, the Sibir, reported what was seen from the village of Nizhne-Karelinsk, 200 miles from the explosion:

The peasants saw a body shining brightly – with a bluish white light. It moved vertically downwards for about ten minutes. The body was in the form of a ‘pipe’. The sky was cloudless, except that low down on the horizon in the direction in which this glowing body was observed, a small dark cloud was noticed. It was hot and dry and when the shining body approached the ground it seemed to be pulverised: in its place a huge cloud of black smoke was formed and a loud crash, not like thunder, but as if from the fall of large stones, or from gunfire, was heard. All the buildings shook and at the same time, a forked tongue of flame broke through the cloud. The old women wept, everyone thought that the end of the world was approaching.

The Russian authorities were not able to send anyone to investigate the phenomenon until March 1927, when Leonid Kulik was chosen by the Soviet Academy of Sciences to find out what had happened. Kulik arrived in the area and noticed the lines of trees all knocked down radiating from a distant point. He took photographs and studied the land, but never found any fragments or meteorite samples. It seemed that whatever had caused the huge heavenly event had vaporised itself. The absence of physical remains left the Russians perplexed. They felt that only a massive rock from outer space could have caused those effects.

Following the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan during the Second World War, photographs comparing the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the area near the epicentre of the Tunguska explosion displayed many similarities. A revision of eye-witness accounts also increased the possibility of the Russian phenomenon being a nuclear explosion. However, no nuclear weapons existed in 1908, so some people speculated the blast was caused by an alien space craft crashing to Earth.

Such an idea is now largely scoffed at, and has been replaced with theories of antimatter or a black hole imploding above Siberia. Our improved scientific knowledge has been able to deduce that the explosion was the equivalent of a 40-megaton nuclear weapon. But Man’s ideas about what caused this amazing event, whether it involves UFOs or other intergalactic oddities, requires an understanding of a subject that we still have not quite grasped.