12 Year Old Genius Challenges Big Bang Myth

Indystar.com: Genius at work: 12-year-old is studying at IUPUI.

When Jacob Barnett first learned about the Schrödinger equation for quantum mechanics, he could hardly contain himself.

For three straight days, his little brain buzzed with mathematical functions.

From within his 12-year-old, mildly autistic mind, there gradually flowed long strings of pluses, minuses, funky letters and upside-down triangles -- a tapestry of complicated symbols that few can understand.

He grabbed his pencil and filled every sheet of paper before grabbing a marker and filling up a dry erase board that hangs in his bedroom. With a single-minded obsession, he kept on, eventually marking up every window in the home.

Strange, say some.

Genius, say others.

But entirely normal for Jacob, a child prodigy who used to crunch his cereal while calculating the volume of the cereal box in his head.

"Whenever I try talking about math with anyone in my family," he said, "they just stare blankly."

So do many of his older classmates at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, who marvel at seeing this scrawny little kid in the front row of the calculus-based physics class he has been taking this semester.

"When I first walked in and saw him, I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going to school with Doogie Howser,' " said Wanda Anderson, a biochemistry major, referring to a television show that featured a 16-year-old boy-genius physician.

Elementary school couldn't keep Jacob interested. And courses at IUPUI have only served to awaken a sleeping giant.

Just a few weeks shy of his 13th birthday, Jake, as he's often called, is starting to move beyond the level of what his professors can teach.

In fact, his work is so strong and his ideas so original that he's being courted by a top-notch East Coast research center. IUPUI is interested in him moving from the classroom into a funded researcher's position.

"We have told him that after this semester . . . enough of the book work. You are here to do some science," said IUPUI physics Professor John Ross, who vows to help find some grant funding to support Jake and his work.

"If we can get all of those creative juices in a certain direction, we might be able to see some really amazing stuff down the road."

"My fear was that he would never be in our world"

Teenage college student?

Developer of his own original theory on quantum physics?

Paid researcher at 13?

This is not what Jake's parents expected from a child whose first few years were spent in silence.

"Oh my gosh, when he was 2, my fear was that he would never be in our world at all," said Kristine Barnett, 36, Jake's mother.

"He would not talk to anyone. He would not even look at us."

Child psychologists assessed Jake at the time and diagnosed behavioral characteristics of a borderline autistic child. He was impaired, they said, and had a lack of "spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment," difficulty showing emotion and interacting with others.

Diagnosis: mildly autistic.

"My biggest fear," his mom said last week, with tears welling up in her eyes, "was that he had lost the ability to say, 'I love you' to us."

By age 3, Jake was the focus of a more intense evaluation from a team of psychologists, therapists and a diagnostic teacher.

Their report indicated that while Jake continued to struggle with social activities and physical development, he was showing signs of academic skills that were above his age level.

Diagnosis: Asperger's syndrome, a somewhat milder condition related to autism.

After hearing this, Jake's parents decided to pay closer attention to the things their first-born son was doing -- rather than the things he was not.

For example, Jake often recited the alphabet -- forward and then backward. He used Q-tips to create vivid geometrical shapes on the living room floor. He solved 5,000-piece puzzles (rather quickly). And he once soaked in a state road map and ended up memorizing every highway and license plate prefix.

And perhaps most amazingly, he could recite the mathematical constant pi out to 70 digits.

"I'm at 98 now," Jake said, interrupting his mom during an interview.

And then, a week later, he was up to 200 digits after the decimal point -- forward and backward.

At 3, his head was in the stars

The Barnetts decided it was time to follow Jake's lead, adopting a method that some parents of children with autism use -- floor-time therapy -- to help foster developmental growth. They let their children focus intently on subjects they like, rather than trying to conform them to "normal" things.

For Jake, that meant astronomy. As a 3-year-old, he loved looking at a book about stars, over and over again.

So off they went on a tour of the Holcomb Observatory and Planetarium at Butler University.

Kristine Barnett will never forget the day.

"We were in the crowd, just sitting, listening to this guy ask the crowd if anyone knew why the moons going around Mars were potato-shaped and not round," she recalls. "Jacob raised his hand and said, 'Excuse me, but what are the sizes of the moons around Mars?' "

The lecturer answered, and "Jacob looked at him and said the gravity of the planet . . . is so large that (the moon's) gravity would not be able to pull it into a round shape."

Silence.

"That entire building . . . everyone was just looking at him, like, 'Who is this 3-year-old?' "

After that, the Barnetts began to feed Jake's hunger for knowledge, through more books and more visits to the planetarium. By the time he was 8, he got permission to sit in on an advanced astronomy class at IUPUI.

Meanwhile, his math skills were reaching astronomical levels.

By the time he was in fifth grade, Jake had become bored with elementary math. He was a student, first at Carey Ridge Elementary School and then at Westfield Intermediate School, an experience he now says he enjoyed for a while.

"The first couple of years were great, but then eventually the math started being, like, OK, we've been discussing this for a while, and it really isn't that hard," Jake said. "Can I move on to calculus now? Can I move on to algebra now?"

The boredom did not go unnoticed at home. Jake was coming home from school quiet, huddling in a safe space in the house and starting to show signs of withdrawing.

"I was really afraid we were going to lose him back into the world he was in when he was 2," his mom said.

Frank Lawlis, a Texas-based psychologist who serves as a testing supervisor for the American Mensa organization -- a society for geniuses -- said it would not have been unusual for a child with symptoms of autism to regress backward after a brief time of growth.

"One of the aspects of autism is that these kids' brains grow at an accelerated rate and then, generally speaking, there is kind of a reversal that happens," said Lawlis, who last year wrote "The Autism Answer," a book for parents of children with autism.

"The theory is that the brain reaches a certain capacity, can't grow, becomes inflamed, and then a reversal effect occurs. It's just a theory, but it's very common."

That did not happen to Jake, thanks in part to a third psychological evaluation done nearly two years ago. It showed that this fifth-grader was not regressing but was simply bored and needed to be stimulated -- in a very big way.

As in dropping out of school.

"Indeed, it would not be in Jacob's best interest to force him to complete academic work that he has already mastered," clinical neurophysiologist Carl S. Hale, Merrillville, said in a report provided by the Barnetts.

"He needs work at an instructional level, which currently is a post college graduate level in mathematics, i.e., a post master's degree. In essence, his math skills are at the level found in someone who is working on a doctorate in math, physics, astronomy and astrophysics."

The Barnetts were blown away. They knew Jake was smart, but doctorate-level smart?

"I flunked math," Kristine said with a laugh. "I know this did not come from me."
Off to college, where he tutors classmates

Encouraged by this new assessment, the Barnetts made the tough decision to pull Jake out of Westfield Washington Schools and enroll him in IUPUI's early college entrance program that caters to gifted and talented kids -- although typically they are advanced high school students, not 12-year-old whiz kids.

As he prepared for the more rigorous work of a college class, Jake decided he ought to make sure he could master all high school-level math that would be required in college.

"In one two-week period, he sat on our front porch and learned all of his high school math," Kristine said. "He tested out of algebra 1 and 2, geometry, trigonometry and calculus."

At this point, Jake's math IQ -- which has been measured at 170 (top of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) -- could not get any higher.

"You could tell right off the bat, his performance has been outstanding," said Ross, who, at age 46 with a Ph.D. from Boston University, has never seen a kid as smart as Jake.

"When he asks a question, he is always two steps ahead of the lecture," Ross said. "Everyone in the class gets quiet. Poor kid. . . . He sits right in the front row, and they all just look at him.

"He will come to see me during office hours and ask even more detailed questions. And you can tell he's been thinking these things through."

Jake is driven by Mom or Dad from his home in Hamilton County to IUPUI's campus, where he attends classes a few days each week. In between classes, he spends time at the Honors College lounge, where he has become a go-to guy for much older classmates needing tutoring.

"A lot of people come to him for help when they don't understand a physics problem," said Anderson, his class partner. "People come up to him all the time and say, 'Hey Jake, can you help me?' "

"A lot of people think a genius is hard to talk to, but Jake explains things that would still be over their head."

His professor has noticed.

"Is he a genius? Well, yeah," Ross said. "Kids his age would normally have problems adding fractions, and he is helping out some of his fellow students."

If Jake stays on track, Ross could see him working someday at a government lab or an observatory. Maybe he'll be a professor or a highly respected researcher.

"He can do anything he wants."

A normal boy, except for the numbers

Despite this new experience, his parents insist that Jake remain close with his friends in Westfield. Social activity is important, they know.

For Jake, life is not all centered on math and astrophysics.

He also likes playing video games. ("Guitar Hero" and "Halo: Reach" are his current favorites.) He plays basketball with friends, has a girlfriend and recently attended his first dance.

He likes music -- classical, which he plays by memory on a piano, but he also plays some contemporary songs he hears on the radio. He loves sci-fi movies and the Disney Channel. He watches documentaries on the History Channel.

A normal kid.

But then, late at night, when the TV is off, the homework is done and everyone in the house is sleeping, the numbers start to percolate again.

They percolate so much that he has trouble sleeping. His parents got so worried a few years ago that they took him for medical tests, but no malady was diagnosed. He just can't fall asleep easily.

"A lot keeps me awake," Jake said. "I scare people."

The numbers that keep him from snoozing are the same that led him to develop his own theory of physics -- an original work that proposed a "new expanded theory of relativity" and takes what Einstein developed even further.

His mom, still not sure whether her son was truly a genius at work or a kid at play, decided to send a video of Jake explaining his theory to the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study near Princeton University, one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry.

That's where astrophysics Professor Scott Tremaine does his work. Tremaine is one of the world's leading scientists and is an expert in the evolution of planetary systems, comets, black holes, galaxies -- all the stuff Jake really likes.

In a letter to the Barnetts, Tremaine confirmed the brilliance.

"I'm impressed by his interest in physics and the amount that he has learned so far," Tremaine wrote in an email, provided by the family. "The theory that he's working on involves several of the toughest problems in astrophysics and theoretical physics.

"Anyone who solves these will be in line for a Nobel Prize."

He then encouraged Jake to spend as much time as possible to learn more and to further develop his theory.

Contacted by The Indianapolis Star, Tremaine confirmed the exchange of notes.

"I have seen a YouTube video in which Jake describes his theory, and I have spoken with his mother and corresponded with both her and Jake by email," Tremaine said. "I hope that Jake continues his interest in physics and mathematics."

Thinking big is what he does

Meanwhile, Jake is moving on to his next challenge: proving that the big-bang theory, the event some think led to the formation of the universe, is, well, wrong.

Wrong?

He explains.

"There are two different types of when stars end. When the little stars die, it's just like a small poof. They just turn into a planetary nebula. But the big ones, above 1.4 solar masses, blow up in one giant explosion, a supernova," Jake said. "What it does, is, in larger stars there is a larger mass, and it can fuse higher elements because it's more dense."

OK . . . trying to follow you.

"So you get all the elements, all the different materials, from those bigger stars. The little stars, they just make hydrogen and helium, and when they blow up, all the carbon that remains in them is just in the white dwarf; it never really comes off.

"So, um, in the big-bang theory, what they do is, there is this big explosion and there is all this temperature going off and the temperature decreases really rapidly because it's really big. The other day I calculated, they have this period where they suppose the hydrogen and helium were created, and, um, I don't care about the hydrogen and helium, but I thought, wouldn't there have to be some sort of carbon?"

He could go on and on.

And he did.

"Otherwise, the carbon would have to be coming out of the stars and hence the Earth, made mostly of carbon, we wouldn't be here. So I calculated, the time it would take to create 2 percent of the carbon in the universe, it would actually have to be several micro-seconds. Or a couple of nano-seconds, or something like that. An extremely small period of time. Like faster than a snap. That isn't gonna happen."

"Because of that," he continued, "that means that the world would have never been created because none of the carbon would have been given 7 billion years to fuse together. We'd have to be 21 billion years old . . . and that would just screw everything up."

So, we had to ask.

If not the big bang, then how did the universe come about?

"I'm still working on that," he said. "I have an idea, but . . . I'm still working out the details."

Yahoo News: For 12-year old astrophysics prodigy, the sky’s the limit.

In some ways, Jacob Barnett is just like any other 12-year-old kid. He plays Guitar Hero, shoots hoops with his friends, and has a platonic girlfriend.

But in other ways, he's a little different. Jake, who has an IQ of 170, began solving 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzles at the age of 3, not long after he'd been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism. A few years later, he taught himself calculus, algebra, and geometry in two weeks. By 8, he had left high school, and is currently taking college-level advanced astrophysics classes—while tutoring his older classmates. And he's being recruited for a paid researcher job by Indiana University.

Now, he's at work on a theory that challenges the Big Bang—the prevailing explanation among scientists for how the universe came about. It's not clear how developed it is, but experts say he's asking the right questions.

"The theory that he's working on involves several of the toughest problems in astrophysics and theoretical physics," Scott Tremaine of Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Studies—where Einstein (pictured) himself worked—wrote in an email to Jake's family. "Anyone who solves these will be in line for a Nobel Prize."

Atheism to be Forced on 4 Year Olds

Darwinists reject separation of atheism and state.

Daily Mail: Children as Young as Four to be Educated in Atheism.

Reverend Kevin Logan, a local journalist, author and religious community leader, said: 'It is quite a change but it is completely right to recognise atheism and humanism.

'They are religions like any others. It is just that people worship man instead of a god.

'I am certainly not worried about Christianity. It can stand against any belief and come out in a good light.'

Jordan Battles to Regain "Priceless" Christian Relics

Pigott, R., Jordan Battles to Regain Priceless Christian Relics, BBC, Mar 29th

They could be the earliest Christian writing in existence, surviving almost 2,000 years in a Jordanian cave. They could, just possibly, change our understanding of how Jesus was crucified and resurrected, and how Christianity was born.

A group of 70 or so "books", each with between five and 15 lead leaves bound by lead rings, was apparently discovered in a remote arid valley in northern Jordan somewhere between 2005 and 2007.

A flash flood had exposed two niches inside the cave, one of them marked with a menorah or candlestick, the ancient Jewish religious symbol.

A Jordanian Bedouin opened these plugs, and what he found inside might constitute extremely rare relics of early Christianity.

That is certainly the view of the Jordanian government, which claims they were smuggled into Israel by another Bedouin.

The Israeli Bedouin who currently holds the books has denied smuggling them out of Jordan, and claims they have been in his family for 100 years.

Jordan says it will "exert all efforts at every level" to get the relics repatriated.

The director of the Jordan's Department of Antiquities, Ziad al-Saad, says the books might have been made by followers of Jesus in the few decades immediately following his crucifixion.

"They will really match, and perhaps be more significant than, the Dead Sea Scrolls," says Mr Saad.

"Maybe it will lead to further interpretation and authenticity checks of the material, but the initial information is very encouraging, and it seems that we are looking at a very important and significant discovery, maybe the most important discovery in the history of archaeology."

They seem almost incredible claims - so what is the evidence?

The books, or "codices", were apparently cast in lead, before being bound by lead rings.

Their leaves - which are mostly about the size of a credit card - contain text in Ancient Hebrew, most of which is in code.

Aposematism Associated With Athleticism

Science Daily: Treadmill Tests for Poison Frogs Show Toxic Species Are More Physically Fit.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 29, 2011) — The most toxic, brightly colored members of the poison frog family may also be the best athletes, says a new study.

So-named because some native peoples use their skin secretions to poison their darts, the poison dart frogs of the Amazon jungle are well known for their bitter taste and beautiful colors. The spectacular hues of these forest frogs serve to broadcast their built-in chemical weapons: skin secretions containing nasty toxins called alkaloids. Like the red, yellow and black bands on a coral snake or the yellow stripes on a wasp, their contrasting color patterns warn would-be predators to stay away, said lead author Juan Santos of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC.

As it turns out, the most boldly-colored and bad-tasting species are also the most physically fit, the authors report this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In forests in Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Panamá, Santos subjected nearly 500 poison frogs -- representing more than 50 species -- to a frog fitness test. He measured their oxygen uptake during exercise using a rotating plastic tube, turning the tube like a hamster wheel to make the frogs walk.

Santos estimated the frogs' metabolic rates while at rest, and again after four minutes of exercise. The result? The most dazzling and deadly species had higher aerobic capacity than their drab, nontoxic cousins.

"They're better able to extract oxygen from each breath and transport it to their muscles, just like well-trained athletes," Santos said.

Poisonous species owe their athletic prowess to their unusual foraging habits, explained co-author David Cannatella of the University of Texas at Austin. Unlike snakes and other poisonous animals which make their own venom, poison frogs get their toxins from their food.

"They acquire their alkaloid chemicals by eating ants and mites," Cannatella said.

Because of their picky diet, poisonous frogs have to forage far and wide for food. "Nontoxic species basically stay in one place and don't move very much and eat any insect that comes close to them," Santos said. "But the bright, poisonous frogs are very picky about what they eat."

"It's not like a buffet where they can get everything they need to eat in one place," Cannatella added. "Ants and mites are patchy, so the frogs have to move around more to find enough food."

This combination of toxic skin and bold colors -- a syndrome known as aposematism

Scientists to Drill to Earth's Mantle

"The interior of the Earth is a problem at once fascinating and baffling, as one may easily judge by the vast literature and the few established facts concerning it." -- A. Francis Birch, geophysicist, 1952

National Geographic: Scientists to Drill Earth's Mantle, Retrieve First Sample?

It may not be a journey to the center of the Earth, but it could be the closest thing yet.

Scientists are planning to drill all the way through the planet's miles-thick crust to Earth's deep, hot mantle and retrieve samples for the first time. The samples, they say, would rival moon rocks for sheer scientific import—and be nearly as hard to get.

"That has been a long-term ambition of earth scientists," geologist Damon Teagle told National Geographic News.

But a lack of suitable technology and insufficient understanding of the crust have long tempered that ambition. (Get an overview of Earth's magma and other layers).

Now, better knowledge of the Earth's shell and technological advances—for example, a Japanese drill ship equipped with six miles (ten kilometers) of drilling pipe—have put the goal within reach, according to a commentary in this week's issue of the journal Nature, co-written by Teagle, a geologist at the U.K.'s University of Southampton.

Even so, drilling into the mantle would be "very expensive" and would require new drillbit and lubricant designs, among other things, according to the paper.

But if all goes as planned, drilling could begin by 2020, Teagle said. As soon as next month, the team will begin exploratory missions in the Pacific, where crews will "bore further into the oceanic crust than ever before," the paper says.

Texas Considers Protecting Those Who Question Darwin

Texas is considering legal protection for creationists who face academic discrimination from Darwinist bigots.

Unruh, B., Texas Considers Protecting Those Who Question Darwin, World Net Daily, March 19th 2011

A Texas lawmaker has proposed a legal protection for those in academia who question Charles Darwin's beliefs that man evolved from sludge and today's world is a result of the survival of the fittest.

State Rep. Bill Zedler told WND today that his House Bill 2454 is a pre-emptive effort to make sure problems don't arise in Texas with established scientific communities discriminating against someone who challenges their beliefs.

His plan is short and to the point:

An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member's or student's conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.

"Isn't it amazing in the halls of academia you can almost believe anything and espouse everything and they go right along with you. But lo and behold if someone talks about intelligent design, all of a sudden, we need to get rid of you," Zedler told WND.

Such actions already have been documented, and have produced court cases.

But is man really just a product of cosmic accidents and processes? Get Ray Comfort's "Nothing Created Everything" to expose the inconsistencies of evolution theory.

In Texas, it was several years ago that Baylor University Professor Bob Marks, whose research indicated a challenge to Darwin's theory of evolution, was ordered taken off the Internet by his employer.

Walt Ruloff, the executive producer of Premise Media, who worked with actor Ben Stein on the project called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," about the monopoly Darwinian beliefs hold in academia, wrote in the Baylor student newspaper about his concerns at the time.

"As many of you have heard, Marks, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering, has been conducting research that ultimately may challenge the foundation of Darwinian theory. In layman's terms, Marks is using highly sophisticated mathematical and computational techniques to determine if there are limits to what natural selection can do," he wrote. "At Baylor, a Christian institution, this should be pretty unremarkable stuff. I'm assuming most of the faculty, students and alumni believe in God, so wouldn't it also be safe to assume you have no problem with a professor trying to scientifically quantify the limits of a blind, undirected cause of the origin and subsequent history of life?

"But the dirty little secret is university administrators are much more fearful of the Darwinian Machine than they are of you," he said.

Zedler said the flow of research and information in academia sometimes is stifled because of the entrenched censorship of intelligent design questions by established scientists.

WND has reported on several other cases in which the intense criticism of anything related to intelligence design has created controversy. In one case, a NASA lab was accused of cracking down on one person's opinion.

David Coppedge, an information-technology specialist and systems administrator on the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab's Cassini mission to Saturn, contended he was discriminated against by managers and demoted because he shared intelligent design videos with co-workers.

"For the offense of offering videos to colleagues, Coppedge faced harassment, an investigation cloaked in secrecy and a virtual gag order on his discussion of intelligent design," said attorney Casey Luskin of Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.

Luskin was consultant to the Coppedge lawsuit, which was being handled by Los Angeles First Amendment attorney William J. Becker Jr. of the Becker Law Firm and included allegations of free-speech violations and wrongful demotion.

"Coppedge was punished even though supervisors admitted never receiving a single complaint regarding his conversations about intelligent design prior to their investigation, and even though other employees were allowed to express diverse ideological opinions, including attacking intelligent design," Luskin said.

Zedler's proposal has been referred to committee and he couldn't provide to WND an estimate for when, or if, it could reach the House floor for debate and vote. He said sometimes the politics are more important than the issue.

But he said the issue is something that needs to be raised as the dominance of the opinion supporting evolution in colleges and universities leaves those who disagree, or even just have questions, as targets.

"There are people that want to say something but [are] afraid to because there are people around the country that have been discriminated against," Zedler said.

It was just weeks ago when the University of Texas paid a settlement of $125,000 to astronomy professor Martin Gaskell, who alleged he was denied a position at least partly because he expressed questions about evolution.

He told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, "I think that it is important that the state of Texas stands firmly behind academic freedom."

Also, WND reported when Iowa State University regents, who had ruled against accepting evidence or hearing testimony from a professor in a dispute over the school's denial of his tenure, turned down his appeal.

The case involved Guillermo Gonzalez, an honored assistant professor of astronomy who had been actively working on theories of intelligent design, an effort that ultimately cost him his job, supporters say. Tenure is roughly the equivalent of a lifetime appointment.

The school has continued to deny the handling of Gonzalez' case was related to his support of ID, even though the Des Moines Register documented emails that confirmed Gonzalez' colleagues wanted him flushed out of the system for that reason.

"I think Gonzalez should know that some of the faculty in his department are not going to count his ID work as a plus for tenure," said one note, from astronomy teacher Bruce Harmon, before the department voted against tenure for Gonzalez. "Quite the opposite."

The newspaper reported what was revealed in emails was "contrary" to what ISU officials said when they rejected Gonzalez' request for tenure.

WND also reported recently on biochemist Christian de Duve, who suggested the forces of natural selection in evolution instilled mankind with an innate "original sin" that if not overcome could lead to humanity's extinction.

De Duve, a professor emeritus at New York City's Rockefeller University and 1974 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, said in an interview with NewScientist that the essential problem … is selfishness.

"Natural selection has resulted in traits such as group selfishness being coded in our genes," de Duve explains. "These were useful to our ancestors under the conditions in which they lived, but have become noxious to us today."

Unfortunately, de Duve says, that while evolution favored the survival of early tribes with a me-first nature, there are dire consequences to the success of a selfish race.

Put more simply, he says, natural selection "doesn't care about your grandchildren."

"The cost of our success is the exhaustion of natural resources, leading to energy crises, climate change, pollution and the destruction of our habitat," he continues. "If we continue in the same direction, humankind is headed for some frightful ordeals, if not extinction."

De Duve has written a book, "Genetics of Original Sin," in which he explains how he sees the intersection of his theories with the Bible.

With Timbuktu Myth Is Reality

BBC: Search on for Timbuktu's twin, Oct 2006

'Mythical place'

Mr Redler, who comes from Taunton in Somerset, said many Britons are a unaware of the existence of Timbuktu, let alone its culture, history and achievements.

A survey of 150 young people undertaken ahead of the exhibition found 34% did not think Timbuktu existed, and the remaining 66% considered it to be "a mythical place."