The most intelligent of the inhabitants would be elected 'king'. As a visible sign of his power, he would be given a radio set through which he could contact and address the 'gods' at any time.

Our astronauts would try to teach the natives the simplest forms of civilisation and some moral concepts, in order to make the development of social order possible. A few specially selected women would be fertilised by the astronauts. Thus a new race would arise that skipped a stage in natural evolution.

We know from our own development how long it would take before this new race became space experts. Consequently, before the astronauts began their return flight to earth, they would leave behind clear and visible signs which only a highly technical, mathematically based society would be able to understand much much later.

An attempt to warn our proteges of dangers in store would have little chance of success. Even if we showed them the most horrifying films of terrestrial wars and atomic explosions, it would not prevent the beings living on this planet from committing the same follies any more than it now stops (almost) the whole of sentient humanity from constantly playing with the burning flame of war.

While our space-ship disappears again into the mists of the universe, our friends will talk about the miracle—'the gods were here!' They will translate it into their simple language, turn it into a saga to be handed down to their sons and daughters and they will turn the presents and implements, and everything that the space travellers left behind into holy relics.

If our friends have mastered writing, they may make a record of what happened: uncanny, weird, miraculous. Then their texts will relate—and drawings will show—that gods in golden clothes were there in a flying boat that landed with a tremendous din. They will write about chariots which the gods drove over land and sea, and of terrifying weapons that were like lightning and they will recount that the gods promised to return.

They will hammer and chisel in the rock pictures of what they had once seen:

Shapeless giants, with helmets and rods on their heads, carrying boxes in front of their chests; balls on which indefinable beings sit and ride through the air; staves from which rays are shot out as if from a sun; strange shapes, resembling giant insects, which were vehicles of some sort.

There are no limits to the fantasy of the illustrations that result from the visit of our space-ship. We shall sec later what traces the 'gods' who visited the earth in our remote antiquity engraved on the tablets of the past.

It is quite easy to sketch the subsequent development of the planet that our space-ship visited. The inhabitants have learnt a lot by watching the 'gods' surreptitiously; the place on which the space-ship stood will be declared holy ground, a place of pilgrimage, where the heroic deeds of the gods will be praised in song. Pyramids and temples will be built on it—in accordance with astronomic laws, of course. The people grows, there are wars that devastate the place of the gods, and then come generations who rediscover and excavate the holy places and try to interpret the signs.

This is the stage we have reached. Now that we can land men on the moon we can open our minds, to space travel. We know the effect the sudden arrival of a large oceangoing sailing vessel had on primitive people in for example the South Sea Islands. We know the devastating effect a man like Cortes, from another civilisation, had on South America. So then we can appreciate, if only dimly, the fantastic impact the arrival of space-craft would have made in prehistoric times.

We must now take another look at the forest of question marks—the array of unexplained mysteries. Do they make sense as the remains of prehistoric space travellers? Do they lead us into our past and yet link up with our plans for the future?

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Our historical past is pieced together from indirect knowledge. Excavations, old texts, cave drawings, legends and so forth were used to construct, i.e. a working hypothesis. From all this material an impressive and interesting mosaic was made, but it was the product of a preconceived pattern of thought into which the parts could always be fitted, though often with cement that was all too visible. An event must have happened in such and such a way. In that way and no other. And lo and behold—if that's what the scholars really want—it did happen in that way. We are entitled, indeed we ought to doubt every accepted pattern of thought or working hypothesis, for if existing ideas are not called in question research is at an end. So our historical past is only relatively true. If new aspects of it turn up, the old working hypothesis, however familiar it may have become, must be replaced by a new one. It seems the moment has come to introduce a new working hypothesis and place it at the very centre of our research into the past.

New knowledge about the solar system and the universe, about macrocosm and microcosm, tremendous advances in technology and medicine, in biology and geology, the beginning of space travel—these and many other things have completely altered our world picture in less than fifty years.

Today we know that it is possible to make space-suits that can withstand extremes of heat and cold. Today we know that space travel is no longer a Utopian idea. We are familiar with the miracle of colour television, just as we can measure the speed of light and calculate the consequences of the theory of relativity.

Our world picture, which is already almost frozen into immobility, begins to thaw. New working hypotheses need new criteria. For example, in the future archaeology can no longer be simply a matter of excavation. The mere collection and classification of finds is no longer adequate. Other branches of science will have to be consulted and made use of, if a reliable picture of our past is to be drawn.

So let us enter the new world of the improbable with an open mind and bursting with curiosity! Let us try to take possession of the inheritance the 'gods' have bequeathed to us.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century ancient maps which had belonged to an officer in the Turkish Navy, Admiral Piri Reis, were found in the Topkapi Palace. Two atlases preserved in the Berlin State Library which contain exact reproductions of the Mediterranean and the region round the Dead Sea also came from Piri Reis.

All these maps were handed over to the American cartographer Arlington H. Mallery for examination. Mallery confirmed the remarkable fact that all the geographical data were present, but were not drawn in the right places. He sought the help of Mr Walters, cartographer in the US Navy Hydrographic Bureau. Mallery and Walters constructed a grid and transferred the maps to a modern globe. They made a sensational discovery. The maps were absolutely accurate—and not only as regards the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. The coasts of North and South America and even the contours of the Antarctic were also precisely delineated on Piri Reis's maps. The maps not only reproduced the outlines of the continents, but also showed the topography of the interiors! Mountain ranges, mountain peaks, islands, rivers and plateaux were drawn in with extreme accuracy.

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.