Could the Indian cultures of Mexico and Peru - with their pyramids, hieroglyphic writing, mummification and colossal stone statues - have received their inspiration from the similar cultures in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia? Having failed once in his attempt to prove that a papyrus boat built on the pattern of the Pharaohs could cross the Atlantic, Thor Heyerdahl set sail again a year later from the coast of Morocco.

Heyerdahl's second voyage in his new reed boat Ra II is a true adventure story as epic, significant and exciting as his celebrated Kon-Tiki expedition.

Siberia first became notorious as a place of exile; now the Russians have discovered there a wealth of oil, diamonds, gold and minerals. But all these treasures are largely inaccessible. Siberia is huge - it takes up nearly a tenth of all the land on earth -much of it in the 'permafrost' belt where the earth is always frozen solid down to hundreds of feet below the surface.

Douglas Botting is one of the few people to have seen Siberia from the far north - where the tribes-men herd their reindeer across a vast desert of snow - to the industries and research establishments further south. This is the new Siberia: the living's still hard but the wages are high and some people now go there willingly.