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On July 21 st, 1969 a London bookmaker paid out £10,000 Only five years earlier he gave odds of a thousand to one that man would not land on the moon before 1970 A fortnight later the Americans released photographs taken 2,000 miles away from Mars Space travel had moved out of the realms of science fiction.
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After centuries under the sea this object does not look very important It was found by Greek divers off Antikythera in 1900 Above, right Long and patient cleaning revealed that it was a mass of interlocking cogs and was a planetarium The machine gives the year of construction as 82 BC This drawing reconstructs part of the machine.
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Easter Island is known as the 'navel of the world' by the islanders The huge statues on this tiny fragment of rock are extraordinary Even more extraordinary is the fact that this totally isolated island had its own script, which is still undeciphered.
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This ancient iron pillar does not rust It cannot be accurately dated, but it is hundreds of years old.
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This Babylonian tablet records past and future eclipses.
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Here are three curious things from Assyria and one from Iraq.
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The 'god Shamasi' It is from the third millennium BC and shows stars and figures with peculiar headgear Why should ancient gods be associated with the stars'?
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The second tablet is from the early first millennium BC. The object in the centre is described as a sacred tree It could just as reasonably be interpreted as a symbolic representation of the construction of an atom, with an astronaut in a fiery chariot above We have a figure within a winged circle and below the circle a representation.
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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.
