The power of learning.
A dispassionate account of the exploration of interesting questions raised by the impossible accuracy of old maps. This enquiry by a group of students goes deep into the questions of how maps, made in a time when people found it impossible to determine their position on the globe, could be as accurate or nearly as accurate as modern maps.
The books stops at the end of what can be discovered from the maps. As an account of how to engage students in learning, this is a boffo book. As an opening door to new questions, it intrigues. Where could these maps have come from?
One answer is that they were traced from more ancient ones, remnants of a now-vanished civilsation - from perhaps 10,000 years ago! - whose mathematical knowledge matched our own. Who could these people have been? What happened to them? That is for the reader - and your students - to explore.
