Such records have indeed been found ... in China. These were contained in a large number of peculiar stone disks discovered in some underground repositories in the Himalayas near the border of Tibet.

The discovery of the disks was made in 1938 by Professor Chi Pu

Tei, an archaeologist who was leading students on an expedition into the Bayan Kara Ula Mountains in the then-disputed frontier territory of Tibet and China. Professor Chi Pu Tei and his students discovered what was first described as a series of caves, but later admitted to be a complex system of artificial tunnels and underground storerooms. These tunnels were perfectly squared and the walls, ceilings and floors were highly glazed, as if the passages and rooms were carved by a device emitting heat of such intensity that it simply melted its way into the mountains.

The archaeological group followed some of these passages and encountered larger chambers in which numerous un-described implements were discovered. The implements evidently differed from one chamber to another, but one item was found in common in each of the chambers -- the stone disks mentioned earlier. In each chamber, they were found in the same position -- on a smooth cube of rock, glazed just as the tunnels were, with anywhere from seven to 20 of the disks neatly stacked on top.

Each disk was 22.7 cm (9 inches) in diameter and 2 cm (3/4 inch) thick. Each disk also had a perfectly circular 2 cm hole in the exact center. The outside edges were regularly indented all the way around, almost like the fluting on a pie crust. Each disk also had a twin groove which began at the center hole and gradually moved in an expanding counterclockwise spiral to the outer rim. The individual disks thus bore a certain similarity to the phonograph records of today.

All of the disks -- a total of 716 -- were removed and taken for study to the Peking Academy of Prehistory. Nothing was heard about this discovery by Western scientists for the next 27 years. During that period, the disks were being studied intensively by Professor Tsum Um Nui.

The Bayan Kara Ula Mountains area is one of the most isolated and least known areas on Earth today. The nearest city of any consequence is Lhasa, Tibet, about 400 miles to the south through virtually impassable terrain.

It is an area presently inhabited by two tribes of very unusual people. The tribes call themselves Dropa and Han, and simply do not fit into any racial category established by anthropologists. For one thing, they are both of pygmy stature. The tallest and shortest adults have measured 4' 7" and 3'6" respectively, but the average height is 4'2". They are yellow-skinned. Their heads are disproportionately large and sparsely haired, and their eyes are large but not Oriental in aspect, with pale bluish irises. Their features are very nicely formed, most nearly approximating Caucasian, and their bodies are extremely thin and delicate. Adult weight is estimated to average about 38 to 52 pounds.

The disks underwent extensive study by Professor Tsum Um Nui, interrupted at times by war. It took him and his coworkers only a short time to discover that the spiral grooves were not sound tracks but, rather, an incredibly ancient writing inscribed in some unknown way and very nearly microscopic in size. The disks were determined to be no less than 3,000 or 4,000 years old at the youngest, and more likely anywhere from 8,000 to 12,000 years old.

This would make them the oldest known form of writing in the world.

Deciphering was incredibly difficult. It took 24 years -- until 1962 -- before Professor Nui and a young colleague found the key and began deciphering=! The deciphered spiral text of the stones, even though only a small amount was completed, was so startling in its content that the Chinese government prohibited any publication of the resultant papers.

The precise location of the site has never been released, and that area has been termed 'Positively Forbidden Territory' for the Western world since 1938.

Then, in 1965, in a mysterious manner, an article written by the Russian philologist Vyacheslav Saizev appeared in Das Vegetarische Universum, a German magazine, and in the Russian-English magazine Sputnik, telling about the disks, their qualities and composition, and a little about what had been deciphered from them. It's rather startling.