How old is man? So many theories have been given to ascertain when man first walked this earth, yet newer discoveries by archaeologists and anthropologists keep researchers scratching their heads as to how old man really is.

Indisputable proofs of ancient civilisations much older than previously thought are being dug up revealing ancient remains of past civilisations which were not only thriving but quite advanced contrary to accepted thinking. Out of this discovery, the most baffling one to date is a map found on a stone slab in Russia of a civilisation which has been dated back to — now hold your breath — a 120 million years!

The map is of the Ural region or Russia, as it was at that time and contains detailed and precise measurements. In 1999, a professor from the Bashkir State University, Alexander Chuvyrov, was on an expedition in the area with his students when their research regarding the region lead to ancient white stone slabs with inscriptions of a strange language unknown to the researchers and cartographers.

The first slab was found on July 21, under the porch of Vladimir Krainov, a well-known local of the area. The slab weighed a tonne and was 148 centimetres in height, 106cm in width and was 16cm thick. After cleaning the dust from the top, the scientists were surprised, not only was it a map, but a three-dimensional map of the Bashkiria region. The area on the map was identified because not much of the topography has changed there since millions of years and further calculations proved it.

The map, according to the research team which later included more scientists from various institutions, seemed to be created without the use of any ancient tools, however, the unknown technology used in the making must have been extremely advanced. Today, such maps are being made by the US by the use of many powerful computers.

The strange language on the slab first seemed ancient Chinese but then turned out to be some unknown mix of hieroglyphic-syllabic origin, which is unknown to researchers around the world. The slab has three layers, the base is 14cm of dolomite, the second is diopside glass, a mixture of rock and crystalline glass, and the way it has been treated is the thing that is a mystery to scientists. The third layer is 2mm and is calcium porcelain to protect the map. The picture is etched on the second layer.

At first, the team thought the age of the map was around three thousand years old, but when further radio carbonic analysis and investigations were carried out, they revealed two interesting extremely ancient shells found in the material contained in the slabs. The date according to when the shells existed was 120 million years ago. When the slab was scrutinised at the Centre of Historical Cartography in Wisconsin, US, the answer was that the only way such a map could have been made was by aerial survey. This means that the civilisation surveyed their area or travelled freely by air; because even today, such a map can  be made only through observations done by a space shuttle. Shocked! Well so are the researchers.

Professor Alexander Chuvyrov does not like to say that it was made by extraterrestrials or UFO’s or some such thing. He just likes to call whoever made the map, ‘the creator’, since the identity of its creators is unknown. Also, since only water channels are etched out, it is assumed that the people of the era only used aerial transport or waterways. Or according to some scientists, the map was only made as an initial survey of the region and the people who made it never actually lived there.

Moreover, latest theory states that the map is a piece of a larger one that is of the entire Earth and has many fragments scattered in the area or near it. But during the ice age, it broke down into pieces and the entire piece would be approximately 340m x 340m.

The downside of the scenario is that the fragments are probably under the construction of houses and other buildings in the area so might never be found. But somehow and someday, someone might find a certain piece of this puzzle under their very own house around the region. The research scientists have prepared a report on their findings and sent it to several countries around the world by the title of “The Civil Engineering Works Map of an Unknown Civilisation of South Ural”.

Were there such amazingly advanced civilisations on this planet on which human evolution is relatively much younger? Each new discovery opens a new mystery.