Gambia airports. Airfield of Ancient Civilizations Found! Yundum airfield in Gambia (6 photos) Where did the airfield in Gambia come from in Africa?

According to supporters of paleovisit, in ancient times our planet was actively visited by aliens from outer space. They taught earthlings how to cultivate the land and a number of crafts, and gave them knowledge of medicine and the structure of solar system. Having left the Earth, the aliens left behind not only a long memory, which became the basis for a number of ancient myths and legends, but also quite material traces, for example, their cosmodromes...

With the light hand of researcher Erich von Däniken, the famous Nazca desert was “designated” as the main ancient spaceport of aliens on our planet. south coast Peru: “Near the modern provincial town of Nazca, aliens from other worlds once landed on a desert plain and built a temporary spaceport for their ships, consisting of two tracks. The ships carried out patrols in the vicinity of the Earth. When the astronauts completed the task, they left for their planet.”

According to Däniken, local tribes They waited for a long time for the “gods” to return, but they still did not appear. Then they decided to attract them and began to draw new straight lines in the desert. When this did not bring results, the Indians depicted giant insects and animals on the earth's surface. This is how, according to Däniken, Nazca acquired its famous lines and figures. Of course, such arguments are not taken seriously by archaeologists, historians, or even many ufologists.

The fact is that alien ships that had reached the stage of space flight in their development should have been capable of strictly vertical landing and takeoff, and therefore they did not need runways. In addition, the desert soil becomes quite viscous after rains and multi-ton starships would simply get stuck in it. However, it cannot be ruled out that the planes of the Hyperboreans or Atlanteans, and perhaps the vimanas of the ancient Indians, landed in the Nazca desert.

There is a hypothesis by Jim Woodman and Julian Knott, according to which the Nazca Indians were able to take to the air themselves, for the first time in the world constructing primitive Balloons from thin dense fabric and filling them with warm air.

The famous researcher Maria Reiche, who devoted more than 40 years of her life to the study of Nazca, believed that the desert drawings were a giant ancient calendar. In her book, she wrote: “For ancient peoples, the positions of the Sun and Moon served as a calendar, which determined the arrival of spring and autumn, seasonal fluctuations in the water regime, and, consequently, the timing of sowing and harvesting.” Reich was able to establish the astronomical significance of many lines and even images of the Nazca desert.

GIANT TRILITON OF BAALBEK

In the mountains of Lebanon, in the basin Dead Sea, there is an amazing structure - the Baalbek terrace, made of gigantic slabs weighing over 1,000 tons each. One of them still lies in an ancient quarry. What titans, with what technical means, could lift such slabs up the mountain and place them there, at a height of seven meters, in a structure? After all, even now, with all the technical power, this is impossible to do.

“For what purpose did they deliberately choose such bulky and solid parts of the structure, in comparison with which the blocks of the Cheops pyramid or the rock-pedestal of the Bronze Horseman seem like pebbles?” - this is how the science fiction writer A. Kazantsev once described the Baalbek terrace that struck his imagination. It is located in ancient temple Jupiter, which is directly adjacent to the Lebanese city of Baalbek.

The first mention of Baalbek was found in one of the Assyrian inscriptions dating back to 804 BC. e. The city was founded by the Phoenicians, they were the ones who worshiped the god Baal, the lord of the sun and water, and the sanctuary of this god was called Baalbek, which means “city of Baal.” The temple that glorified this city is on site ancient sanctuary Alexander the Great laid the foundation, and the Romans finished it, dedicating it to the god Jupiter.

He was on a platform that was higher than all the other buildings. It is in this platform, called the Baalbek terrace, that there are three huge stones, which in ancient times were called trilithon and were considered sacred.

At the very beginning of the 60s of the 20th century, the Soviet mathematician M. M. Agrest suggested that this terrace was built by aliens from outer space in ancient times. According to his hypothesis, it could be either an ancient cosmodrome, or a kind of memorial structure left by aliens for future generations of earthlings.

An ardent supporter of this hypothesis was Erich von Däniken, who saw a surviving fragment of an alien landing site in the trilithon of the Baalbek terrace. According to the researcher, the trilithon is very ancient, and the builders of the temple did not move it, but only used it to build a platform.

Trilithon is truly amazing. The length of the giant monolithic blocks is 19.5 meters, width - 4.5 meters, thickness - 3.75 meters. The weight of each block is about 750 tons, although some researchers often put the figure at 2,000 tons. In addition to the trilithon, there is another huge block that remained in the quarry; its dimensions are 16x4x2 meters.

The huge stone blocks of Baalbek pose many mysteries to scientists. How were these stone monoliths mined from a quarry without distortion or damage, moved over a distance of two kilometers and perfectly fitted to each other? How did you manage to make a stone surface of tens of square meters absolutely flat, since this is impossible to do with hand tools? These questions are still awaiting answers.

Should the appearance of these blocks be associated only with aliens? After all, such blocks could well have been made by representatives of the civilization of giants, whose existence in the distant past is no longer disputed by many researchers. It is unlikely that the aliens needed such a powerful platform for their ships, but the hypothesis of an ancient cosmodrome cannot be completely ruled out.

THE MYSTERY OF YUNDUM AIRFIELD

On the territory of the small African country of Gambia is located mysterious airfield Yundum, about whom in last years a lot has already been written. What is the mystery of this airfield? The fact is that its main and most expensive component - the runway (runway) - was not built here, since it already existed. The runway consisted of monolithic stone slabs, carefully fitted to each other. As they assured local residents, these slabs have been in this place for centuries.

During the construction of the airfield, all that remained was to roll asphalt onto these slabs, apply markings, and the result was a magnificent runway 3,600 meters long, capable of accommodating any modern aircraft regardless of their weight and dimensions. It is worth noting that NASA took an active part in the creation of the Yundum airfield.

The American space agency chose it as an alternate airfield for landing its reusable space shuttles. With the help of the Americans, the necessary radio-electronic control and navigation systems were installed at Yundum, and in 1996 the building went into operation international airport, built according to a joint American-Gambian project.

It is curious that despite the impressive length of the strip, not all ancient slabs are covered with asphalt and some of them can be seen both at its beginning and at the end. And then it turns out that the ancient runway was much more impressive than the modern one. But who took off from it? It is still difficult to answer this question - from the available publications it becomes clear that no one has conducted any research on this topic.

The areas of the strip not covered with asphalt are represented by light sandy-brown slabs carefully fitted to each other. The age of the slabs has not yet been determined. According to some publications, their surface is roughly polished, while others claim that the grinding is close to ideal. Judging by the published photographs, the first is closer to the truth, but this only speaks of the antiquity of the slabs, the perfect polishing of which could be significantly damaged by long-term weathering processes.

FASCISTS, ALIENS OR ANCIENT EARTHLANDS?

Attempts to explain the presence of such an impressive runway in the African wilderness led to the hypothesis that it was built in the 40s of the 20th century by the German Nazis, who allegedly exported uranium from the Dark Continent during World War II.

However, it is completely unclear why the Nazis needed to build a strip with a length that significantly exceeded all those available at that time. Opponents of this version note that the Germans at their secret military airfields built runways using small metal plates with a series of holes to reduce weight.

To build this strip, the Germans would need to open a large-scale stone-cutting production, use powerful machines and cranes. But local old-timers claim that nothing like this has ever happened here, and the slabs have always been there - under their grandfathers, great-grandfathers, great-great-grandfathers, etc.

Thus, the presence of this runway can only be explained by the assumption of some ancient earthly civilization that built it, or by connecting it with aliens. As for the last option, it seems less convincing, because extraterrestrial ships must have the ability to land on any unprepared, albeit fairly level, place.

From numerous publications about the Yundum airfield, we can conclude that no research has been carried out on ancient plates, they are simply used, and that’s all. Of course, you would need to study them carefully. However, it is possible that NASA employees conducted some research during the construction of the airfield, but hid their results.

Of all the proposed cosmodromes of antiquity, Yundum is the most promising place for research. Perhaps spaceships did not launch here, and it was not a cosmodrome, but an airfield from which ancient planes took off, whose appearance was brought to us by golden artifacts from Colombia.

Discovered ancient maps of Antarctica without ice cover, a mysterious slab found in Bashkortostan by Professor A. N. Chuvyrov and called the Map of the Creator, on which a mock-up map of part of the earth’s surface was made, indicate that aerial photographs were clearly used in their production.

It is doubtful that aliens were in any way involved in the production of the map on the impressively heavy stone slab from Bashkortostan. Its authors, most likely, were representatives of an ancient earthly civilization that was destroyed as a result of some global cataclysm or nuclear war. Let us remind you: a number of authoritative researchers believe that aliens had nothing to do with the construction of the so-called ancient cosmodromes; they were built by earthlings.

Perhaps, once upon a time, our very distant ancestors managed not only to rise into the sky, but even visited the Moon and Mars. Now such assumptions seem fantastic to many, but recently more and more evidence has been accumulating in favor of this particular hypothesis.

2016-12-01 00:00:00

This airfield is a legacy of ancient civilizations, which, according to some information, had aircrafts- the so-called vimanas.

In 1875, the treatise “Vimanika Shastra”, written by Bharadwaja the Wise in the 4th century BC, was discovered in one of the temples in India. e. based on even earlier texts. Before the eyes of surprised scientists appeared detailed descriptions strange aircraft of antiquity, reminiscent in their technical specifications modern UFOs. The devices were called vimanas and had a number of amazing qualities, among which are listed 32 main secrets that make vimanas also a formidable weapon.

In any case, no one knows for sure who and when Yundum was built.

This former British colony is located on the Atlantic coast of tropical Africa and belongs to the group of the most economically backward countries not only in the world as a whole, but also in its far from prosperous continent. The territory of the state is strongly elongated in the latitudinal direction. The Gambia extends 350 kilometers deep into the mainland from west to east; it is located along the bed of the deep river of the same name. The width of the country from north to south does not exceed 50 kilometers. Just over one and a half million people live in The Gambia, including 75% in rural areas. Industry there is extremely poorly developed and consists of enterprises producing peanut butter, beer, soft drinks and clothing. The export of peanuts provides the country with half of its foreign exchange earnings. The backwardness of the Gambia is eloquently evidenced by the fact that until recently the population could receive higher education only abroad: in Senegal, USA or Western Europe. The situation changed only in 1999, when the University of the Gambia was established in the capital Banjul. There is only one library in the country and the first museum opened not so long ago; now, however, there are already five of them. Here, the transition at the end of the last century from manual cultivation of fields with hoes to plows drawn by oxen, horses or donkeys is considered an achievement. Equipping fishing boats with outboard motors also became evidence of Gambia's involvement in technological progress. Of course, this small country also has its own strengths. It is one of the few on the Dark Continent where a multi-party system operates. politic system. There are several in the vicinity of Banjul magnificent resorts with spacious and clean sea beaches, where tourists from the UK love to relax. Livestock farming can be considered very developed: the number of cattle exceeds 400 thousand heads.

They paved, marked and flew.

But Gambia has a real international airport. Also mysterious. This is Yundum - the same one so beloved by ufologists and alternative historians. It is located 27 kilometers from Banjul. The length of its runway (runway), which meets the highest requirements, is 3600 meters, so Yundum is able to accommodate aircraft of any weight. The Gambians themselves did not build this expensive runway. They just laid the asphalt on the existing rough-polished stone slabs that had been cleared of soil and made markings. NASA then helped Gambia, since the American space agency was interested in creating an alternate airfield for reusable spacecraft such as the shuttle. Initially, the United States chose the airport of the Senegalese capital Dakar, but its runway has too large an angle relative to the main flight path of the shuttles. Therefore, in September 1987, the Americans reached an agreement with the Gambian side on the use of the Yundum airfield for these purposes. The runway has been improved. In particular, its width was increased from 29 to 45 meters. The Americans also installed the necessary electronic control and navigation systems. And in 1996, the international airport building, built according to a joint Anglo-Gambian project, was put into operation. If you look closely at satellite images, you can see that the central part of the Yundum runway is actively used, but there are unused areas on both sides of the runway. They are paved with light slabs of an unusual sandy-brown color. There are also extensions of the strip that have not yet been cleared of land. And the trees along it grow in a very interesting way - along the lines of some faults in the soil.

Versions, versions, versions.

So where did this runway come from? The most sensational, of course, is the hypothesis that the runway was built back in the days of pre-civilization, and that, very possibly, ancient Indian or Atlantean aircraft - vimanas - took off from here. However, fans of conspiracy theories made another assumption. They say the airfield was secretly built by the Germans during World War II. Sometimes a more precise date is given - 1944. At first glance, this version is not without some plausibility. Indeed, during the war, the Nazis showed great interest in African uranium and allegedly even took it out of the Congo by plane, making several intermediate landings. In this regard, one can even recall the secret German airfields built in the Arctic, behind the lines of Soviet troops. Just as for the Gambia, there are several big “buts”. Firstly, such airfields were not paved with massive stone slabs, but with small metal ones, which also had several holes to reduce weight. Secondly, the Gambians claim that the slabs, partially covered with soil, have always been there, and did not appear in the middle of the 20th century. Finally, thirdly, back in January 1943, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was passing through Banjul. This was due to the holding of a conference in Casablanca, Morocco. During the meeting, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, together with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States and Great Britain, discussed the prospects for opening a Second Front and the strategy for combating German submarines in the Atlantic. The port of Banjul was at that time used as a stopover for Allied naval convoys, and the mysterious airfield was favored by the US Army Air Corps. So no secret bases there simply could not be Nazis in the immediate vicinity of such a strategic Anglo-Saxon hub.

Did the allies try?

On some sites you can even find statements that Yundum, in fact, was built by the Allies themselves. So is there really no secret to the ancient airfield? No matter how it is! The length of the runway is clearly excessive for aircraft of that time. As we already know, local residents saw this covering long before the war. And the color of the slabs is sharply different from concrete. There is a photograph of the only combat aircraft of the Gambian army, a Su-25 attack aircraft purchased in Georgia in 2008, standing on a platform made of concrete slabs attached to the Yundum runway. They clearly have a different color - gray - which is what concrete should have. It can also be noted that, judging by the photographs, the sandy-brown stone slabs vary in size, and this is absolutely not typical for airfield surfaces of the 20th-21st centuries.

So the mystery of Yundum really exists, and it has yet to be solved.

It is an interesting tourist attraction only for British fans of holidays on its clean beaches– flying on vacation to a former colony is quite in the style of English subjects. The city where Gambia's only airport is located is the capital Banjul.

Gambia International Airport

Yundum-Banjul Airport and the city's business center are separated by 24 km, which can be covered by taxi or public transport. It is optimal to order a transfer at the hotel where you have booked a room for your holiday, or at travel company, since Gambia is not the most safe country for foreign tourists.
The passenger terminal building was put into operation in 1966. It was built according to a joint project of local architects and specialists from. The terminal has a cafe, currency exchange offices, and duty-free shops.
Among the airlines whose flights land at the Gambia airport are both small and world famous:

Arik Air flies to and to .
Binter Canarias operate flights to the island of Gran Canaria as part of the Canary Archipelago.
Brussels Airlines carries passengers from the capital.
Royal Air Maroc operates regular flights to.
Senegal Airlines connects Gambia Airport to .
Thomas Cook Airlines brings tourists from and.
Small Planet Airlines operate seasonal charters from Gatwick Airport to.
Vueling transports those wishing to travel to The Gambia from.

Despite the small size of the state and not very popular among travelers, the Gambia airport serves at least a million passengers annually.
The runway at Yundum Banjul Airport is 3.6 km long and meets the highest international standards. The third longest take-off on the dark continent allows you to receive and dispatch aircraft of any weight.
The American agency NASA, interested in creating an alternate airfield for landing reusable spacecraft, took part in the construction and reconstruction of the Gambia airport. Thanks to American participation in the project, the runway was expanded to 45 meters, and air traffic controllers received modern radio-electronic control and navigation systems.
Ufologists and researchers of ancient civilizations believe that the first airport on the territory of modern Gambia was built long before 1977, as is commonly believed. The opposite ends of the runway are made of sandy-brown stone slabs, which were not used in the construction practice of the last century, and the length of the asphalt runway, taking into account these extensions, looks completely prohibitive for the realities of the last century. Local residents saw these slabs even before the Second World War, which means that the version of a secret Nazi airfield also does not stand up to criticism.

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the mysterious Yundum airfield, discovered in the small African country of Gambia.

This airfield is almost a legacy of ancient civilizations, which, according to some information, had aircraft - the so-called vimanas.

In any case, no one knows for sure who and when Yundum was built.

In this photo, the red circles mark the unpaved areas of the ancient runway slabs.

The Gambia extends 350 kilometers deep into the mainland from west to east; it is located along the bed of the deep river of the same name. The width of the country from north to south does not exceed 50 kilometers. Just over one and a half million people live in The Gambia, including 75% in rural areas.

Industry there is extremely poorly developed and consists of enterprises producing peanut butter, beer, soft drinks and clothing. Peanut exports provide the country with half of its foreign exchange earnings.

The backwardness of The Gambia is eloquently evidenced by the fact that until recently the population could only receive higher education abroad: in Senegal, the USA or Western Europe. The situation changed only in 1999, when the University of the Gambia was established in the capital Banjul. There is only one library in the country and the first museum opened not so long ago; now, however, there are already five of them.

Here, the transition at the end of the last century from manual cultivation of fields with hoes to plows drawn by oxen, horses or donkeys is considered an achievement. Equipping fishing boats with outboard motors also became evidence of the Gambia's involvement in technological progress.

Of course, this small country has its own strengths. It is one of the few on the Dark Continent where a multi-party political system operates. In the vicinity of Banjul there are several magnificent resorts with spacious and clean sea beaches, where tourists from the UK love to relax. Livestock farming can be considered very developed: the number of cattle exceeds 400 thousand heads.

Paved, marked and flew

But Gambia has a real international airport. Also mysterious. This is Yundum - the same one so beloved by ufologists and alternative historians. It is located 27 kilometers from Banjul.

The length of its runway (runway), which meets the highest requirements, is 3600 meters, so Yundum is able to accommodate aircraft of any weight. The Gambians themselves did not build this expensive runway. They just laid the asphalt on the existing rough-polished stone slabs that had been cleared of soil and made markings.

The Gambia was then helped by NASA, since the American space agency was interested in creating an alternate airfield for reusable spacecraft such as the shuttle. Initially, the United States chose the airport of the Senegalese capital Dakar, but its runway has too large an angle relative to the main flight path of the shuttles.

Therefore, in September 1987, the Americans reached an agreement with the Gambian side on the use of the Yundum airfield for these purposes. The runway has been improved. In particular, its width was increased from 29 to 45 meters. The Americans also installed the necessary electronic control and navigation systems. And in 1996, the international airport building, built according to a joint Anglo-Gambian project, was put into operation.

If you look closely at satellite images, you can see that the central part of the Yundum runway is actively used, but there are unused areas on both sides of the runway. They are paved with light slabs of an unusual sandy-brown color. There are also extensions of the strip that have not yet been cleared of land. And the trees along it grow in a very interesting way - along the lines of some faults in the soil.

Versions, versions, versions

Sometimes a more precise date is given - 1944. At first glance, this version is not without some plausibility. Indeed, during the war, the Nazis showed great interest in African uranium and allegedly even took it out of the Congo by plane, making several intermediate landings.

In this regard, one can even recall the secret German airfields built in the Arctic, behind the lines of Soviet troops. Just as for the Gambia, there are several big “buts”. Firstly, such airfields were not paved with massive stone slabs, but with small metal ones, which also had several holes to reduce weight.

Secondly, the Gambians claim that the slabs, partially covered with soil, have always been there, and did not appear in the middle of the 20th century. Finally, thirdly, back in January 1943, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was passing through Banjul. This was due to the holding of a conference in Casablanca, Morocco.

During the meeting, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, together with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States and Great Britain, discussed the prospects for opening a Second Front and the strategy for combating German submarines in the Atlantic.

The port of Banjul was at that time used as a stopover for Allied naval convoys, and the mysterious airfield was favored by the US Army Air Corps. So there simply could not be any secret Nazi bases in the immediate vicinity of such a strategic Anglo-Saxon hub.

Did the allies try?

As we already know, local residents saw this covering long before the war. And the color of the slabs is sharply different from concrete. There is a photograph of the only combat aircraft of the Gambian army, a Su-25 attack aircraft purchased in Georgia in 2008, standing on a platform made of concrete slabs attached to the Yunduma runway.

They clearly have a different color - gray - which is what concrete should have. It can also be noted that, judging by the photographs, the sandy-brown stone slabs vary in size, and this is absolutely not typical for airfield surfaces of the 20th-21st centuries.

So the mystery of Yundum really exists, and it has yet to be solved.

Valdis PEIPINSH
Secrets of the twentieth century

This airfield represents the legacy of ancient civilizations, which, according to some information, had aircraft - the so-called vimanas. In any case, no one knows for sure who and when Yundum was built. I offer you all the available information on this issue, since the mystery of Yundum really exists, and it has yet to be solved.

This airfield is a legacy of ancient civilizations, which, according to some information, had aircraft - the so-called vimanas. In any case, no one knows for sure who and when Yundum was built. This former British colony is located on the Atlantic coast of tropical Africa and belongs to the group of the most economically backward countries not only in the world as a whole, but also in its far from prosperous continent. The territory of the state is strongly elongated in the latitudinal direction. The Gambia extends 350 kilometers deep into the mainland from west to east; it is located along the bed of the deep river of the same name. The width of the country from north to south does not exceed 50 kilometers. Just over one and a half million people live in The Gambia, including 75% in rural areas. Industry there is extremely poorly developed and consists of enterprises producing peanut butter, beer, soft drinks and clothing. Peanut exports provide the country with half of its foreign exchange earnings. The Gambia's backwardness is eloquently evidenced by the fact that until recently the population could only receive higher education abroad: in Senegal, the USA or Western Europe. The situation changed only in 1999, when the University of the Gambia was established in the capital Banjul. There is only one library in the country and the first museum opened not so long ago; now, however, there are already five of them. Here, the transition at the end of the last century from manual cultivation of fields with hoes to plows drawn by oxen, horses or donkeys is considered an achievement. Equipping fishing boats with outboard motors also became evidence of Gambia's involvement in technological progress. Of course, this small country also has its own strengths. It is one of the few on the Dark Continent where a multi-party political system operates. In the vicinity of Banjul there are several magnificent resorts with spacious and clean sea beaches, where tourists from the UK love to relax. Livestock farming can be considered very developed: the number of cattle exceeds 400 thousand heads.
They paved, marked and flew.

Versions, versions, versions.
So where did this runway come from? The most sensational, of course, is the hypothesis that the runway was built back in the days of pre-civilization, and that, very possibly, ancient Indian or Atlantean aircraft - vimanas - took off from here. However, fans of conspiracy theories made another assumption. They say the airfield was secretly built by the Germans during World War II. Sometimes a more precise date is given - 1944. At first glance, this version is not without some plausibility. Indeed, during the war, the Nazis showed great interest in African uranium and allegedly even took it out of the Congo by plane, making several intermediate landings. In this regard, one can even recall the secret German airfields built in the Arctic, behind the lines of Soviet troops. Just as for the Gambia, there are several big “buts”. Firstly, such airfields were not paved with massive stone slabs, but with small metal ones, which also had several holes to reduce weight. Secondly, the Gambians claim that the slabs, partially covered with soil, have always been there, and did not appear in the middle of the 20th century. Finally, thirdly, back in January 1943, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was passing through Banjul. This was due to the holding of a conference in Casablanca, Morocco. During the meeting, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, together with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States and Great Britain, discussed the prospects for opening a Second Front and the strategy for combating German submarines in the Atlantic. The port of Banjul was at that time used as a stopover for Allied naval convoys, and the mysterious airfield was favored by the US Army Air Corps. So there simply could not be any secret Nazi bases in the immediate vicinity of such a strategic Anglo-Saxon hub.

Did the allies try?
On some sites you can even find statements that Yundum, in fact, was built by the Allies themselves. So is there really no secret to the ancient airfield? No matter how it is! The length of the runway is clearly excessive for aircraft of that time. As we already know, local residents saw this covering long before the war. And the color of the slabs is sharply different from concrete. There is a photograph of the only combat aircraft of the Gambian army, a Su-25 attack aircraft purchased in Georgia in 2008, standing on a platform made of concrete slabs attached to the Yunduma runway. They clearly have a different color - gray - which is what concrete should have. It can also be noted that, judging by the photographs, the sandy-brown stone slabs vary in size, and this is absolutely not typical for the surfaces of airfields of the XX-XXI centuries. So the mystery of Yundum really exists, and it has yet to be solved.