Is the Metal Library or the “treasure of the Aztecs” as revealed to White Tiger evidence of alien beings, on par with what Indiana Jones discovers in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? No. But it is evidence that the civilization of the New World was far more complex than we think or even can imagine. It is evidence that there is so much left to discover, if only we are willing to believe that history isn’t a closed book. What the New World does prove is that it is very much like the Old World. There are pyramids. There was building on a massive scale. Some of these buildings were constructed using massive stones. There are stories of gods apparently coming out of nowhere, who taught the people civilization. The ensuing civilization ever since has contained evidence of that encounter with the divine, for those who are willing to recognize the artifacts for what they are.
All of this is clearly evidence that our history is not as simple as what we read in standard reference works. There is a large body of evidence, on various continents, that shows that someone in our past was far more advanced than we assume, possessing technology and/or knowledge that today is not part of our society, which is precisely why we cannot truly explain these archaeological sites and artifacts. But they do not prove that we were not alone. Fortunately, however, they are not the best evidence available in our efforts to answer the Ancient Alien Question.
Chapter 6
The Best Evidence
What would constitute the “best evidence” to convince a jury that ET dropped by, maybe as early as many millennia ago? First, we need to assume that ET will have left physical traces of his presence, and further that these traces have withstood the test of time. This is not a given. A spaceship landing off the shores of some country, followed by ET walking onto the beach and speaking with the local inhabitants, will have left no physical traces—except, perhaps, an oral or written tradition of “some ancestor” conversing with “a mysterious being” on the shore “a long time ago.” We could hope that this being left a gift with our ancestors, who in turn carefully preserved it, and that this gift can be proved to be of alien origin. But this is once again not a given.
The “best evidence” therefore needs to be a clear, long-lasting sign that contact was made. There have been a number of “oop-arts” (out-of-place artifacts) that have been looked upon as furthering the cause of the Ancient Alien Theory, but they are not evidence of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization—only evidence that some of our ancestors, or entire civilizations, were (and sometimes are) far more clever than academics are willing to concede.
Dr. Vladimir Rubtsov thinks that “the search for ancient ‘extraterrestrial artifacts’ (ETAs) is one of the most important and worthwhile directions of investigation in paleovisitology.”1 His focus has been on trying to identify artifacts on planet Earth that might be of extraterrestrial origin, and he believes he has found a few candidates for that extraordinary distinction.
Rubtsov has identified a metal object found in 1976 near the Vashka River, a river in the Komi Republic and Arkhangelsk Oblast in Russia, as a possible alien artifact. The object is a cylinder, about 4 feet in diameter. When it was subjected to coercion, or rubbing, the object sparkled. The object was cut into several pieces and studied in various Soviet laboratories, including the All-Union Institute of Nuclear Geophysics and Geochemistry, the S.I. Valiov Institute of Physical Problems, and the V.I. Vernadsky Institute of Steel and Alloys. Dr. Vladimir Fomenko coordinated the research, and published its findings in 1985, noting that the object consisted of an alloy of the following rare earths: cerium (67.2 percent), lanthanum (10.9 percent), and neodymium (8.78 percent). There were also small amounts of uranium and molybdenum (less than 0.04 percent). The alloy clearly had artificial origins, but, as it contained no traces of calcium or sodium, it was noted that it was impossible to create such an artifact on planet Earth with the current technologies. The fragment appeared to be made of a mixture of powders with various crystalline structures. The finest particles of the powder each consisted of several hundreds of atoms only.
Unfortunately, as the discovery and announcement of the artifact was made during the Cold War, Western science as a whole is largely unaware of it, and uninterested in it. In the eyes of the people who studied the object it is a candidate for best evidence, but it is definitely not the best-known evidence.
One famous example of an oop-art is the so-called Baghdad Battery. It was found in 1936, when the Directorate General of Antiquities carried out excavations in the mounds east of Baghdad, known as Khuit Rabboua. The finds date back to the Parthenian Period (227–126 BC), though the excavations were not well recorded and the style of the pottery is actually Sassanid, which is AD 224–640.
The finds included a pottery jar that measured 5 inches and contained a copper cylinder with an iron bar fixed in its center that extended a little out of its opening. The cylinder was covered by a layer of bitumen (tar) and its copper base was also covered with bitumen, as was the jar itself.
In 1940, Wilhelm König, the German director of the National Museum of Iraq, published a paper speculating that the objects might have been galvanic cells, perhaps used for electroplating gold onto silver objects. If he’s correct, the Baghdad Battery would predate Alessandro Volta’s 1800 invention of the electrochemical cell by more than a millennium. In 1973, the battery was displayed in the Baghdad Museum and was regarded as the oldest kind of dry battery ever discovered. Around that time, German Egyptologist Arne Eggebrecht built a replica of the battery and filled it with freshly pressed grape juice. He generated 0.87 volt of current, which he then used to electroplate a silver statuette with gold.
Another oop-art is the Antikythera Device. In 1900, a Greek sponge diver named Elias Stadiatos, working off the small Greek island of Antikythera, found the remains of a Greek ship at the bottom of the sea. In early 1902, Valerio Stais was sorting through the recovered material, all donated to the Museum of Athens, when he noticed a calcified lump of bronze that did not fit anywhere, and that looked like a big watch. He guessed it was an astronomical clock and wrote a paper on the artifact. But when it was published, he was ridiculed for even daring to suggest such a thing. His critics argued that sundials were used to tell time. A Greek dial mechanism was unknown to the archaeological community, even though it was described on what must therefore have been a purely theoretical basis. The status quo was that “many of the Greek scientific devices known to us from written descriptions show much mathematical ingenuity, but in all cases the purely mechanical part of the design seems relatively crude. Gearing was clearly known to the Greeks, but it was used only in relatively simple applications.”2 And therefore, because scientific dogma had said so, the Antikythera Device could not be. It was physical evidence, but deemed to be impossible, and therefore ridiculed and debated away.
The Antikythera Device was found in 1900 in a shipwreck. It was 50 years before anyone realized the device was a mechanism that incorporated accurate workings for various bodies of our solar system. It is now often considered to be the first computer. © Marsyas via Wikipedia.
In 1958, Yale science historian Derek J. de Solla Price stumbled upon the object and decided to make it the subject of a scientific study, which was published the following year in Scientific American. This marked the revival of interest in the Antikythera Device, more than half a century after its discovery. Part of the problem, Price felt, was the device’s uniqueness. He stated: “Nothing like this instrument is preserved elsewhere. Nothing comparable to it is known from any ancient scientific text or literary allusion. On the contrary, from all that we know of science and technology in the Hellenistic Age we should have felt that such a device could not exist.”3 He likened the discovery to finding a jet plane in Tutankhamen’s tomb, and at first believed the machine was made in 1575—a first-century BC creation date remained hard to accept, let alone defend.
Ever since, the Antikythera Device has been subjected to some of the most innovative scientific studies. They have shown tha
t the Greeks were extremely advanced when it came to applying their astronomical knowledge. Today, the Antikythera Device is worshipped by many as the first calculator—the first computer. Price labeled it “In a way, the venerable progenitor of all our present plethora of scientific hardware.”4
It took more than a century from the discovery of the Antikythera Device until we had some understanding of its technical complexity, as well as a general consensus that it is indeed a highly technical artifact. Part of the problem was that the find was unique; if ET in fact only gave us one present, then it appears it’s not good enough proof.
Palenque’s Ancient Astronaut Slab
The lid of Lord Pacal’s tomb in Palenque is among the most often quoted evidence for the Ancient Alien Theory. The discovery of this tomb occurred once Alberto Ruz Lhuillier was appointed director of archaeological exploration of the Mayan ruins of Palenque in 1949. Though the site had been known since 1750, it was only in 1925 that the first archaeological work was carried out. Ruz Lhuillier began by clearing the ruins of earth and rubble, and in 1952 he penetrated deep inside the so-called Temple of Inscriptions, where he discovered a sarcophagus belonging to Hanab-Pacal, the ruler of Palenque, who died in AD 683 at the age of 80, after an impressive 68-year reign.
It was highly unusual to find an intact tomb, and it was a minor miracle that when Ruz Lhuillier lifted up the lid of the coffin, it did not break. Inside was a mummy, its head covered by a mask made up of 200 pieces of jade. Very quickly one magazine ran a story on the “Palenque giant,” claiming Lord Pacal was 12 feet tall. In reality, he was 5.9 feet, which was still remarkably taller than the average height of his subjects.
If Pacal had been a giant, that would have received widespread interest, but instead, it was the slab of the sarcophagus, which weighs 4.5 tons, that took the limelight, as it depicted one of the most intricate and baffling reliefs found anywhere in the world. The carvings are about 1 inch deep and depict a human being in an unusual pose. That’s about the only thing everyone agrees on. The first explanation offered was that this was a Native American on a sacrificial altar, about to have his heart ceremonially removed. Ancient astronaut proponents thought differently: In Chariots of the Gods? von Däniken compared the pose to that of the 1960s Project Mercury astronauts. The relief has since attracted decades of intense speculation by other Ancient Alien enthusiasts, who believe that the relief should be turned 90 degrees, at which angle it depicts Lord Pacal riding a technical device resembling a low-flying scooter. Engineer Laszlo Toth has done a series of technical drawings that detail the workings of the machine on which Pacal supposedly rides. He claims to have identified a mask on Pacal’s nose, his hands manipulating controls, the heel of his left foot on a pedal, and a little flame issuing from the machine’s exhaust.
The Pacal tomb is one of the best-known billboards for the traditional Ancient Alien Theory. When flipped 90 degrees, it appears as if Pacal is riding a type of flying scooter. Only when confronted with this challenge did archaeologists finally begin to look more carefully into the potential meaning of this tomb slab. © Madman2001 via Wikipedia.
Archaeologists strongly disagree. To their credit, they no longer argue that the image is of a brutal human sacrifice, but instead interpret the lid depicting Pacal descending into Xibalba, the Mayan Underworld. They support their conclusion by showing that below Pacal is the Mayan water lord, the guardian of the underworld, and the “device” is in fact the world tree. As he falls, he travels down the tree, which was identified with the Milky Way, or Sak Beh. Along the edge of the sarcophagus are a series of inscriptions, which lists the death sequence of the eight generations of kings before Pacal. One of the best detailed explanations of the lid is offered by Linda Schele and Peter Mathews, who in The Code of Kings conclude that “Pacal falls in death, but his very position also signals birth—his birth into the Otherworld.”
There are numerous other examples of this imagery depicted on various Mayan sculptures, some dating to the Olmec period. The difference between Pacal’s tomb and the other depictions is that Pacal’s rendition of this descent is highly stylized, and the end result, when tilted 90 degrees, is indeed suggestive of a space-bike-riding king. Given that this image is on Pacal’s tomb, depictions of the Underworld and the world tree are definitely more apt than a vehicle.
Pacal’s tomb is evidence that treating objects in isolation can sometimes mean that the answer is no. As with the Nazca lines, though, posing the Ancient Alien Question did mean that science was pushed to come up with the correct answer.
One of the dangers of any theory, of course, is interpretation. For example, the statues at Tula, in Mexico, have enigmatic ears—largely rectangular, which some Ancient Alien theorists have proposed could be interpreted as hearing protection. A more logical explanation is that the ears are either overly stylized or protected by a rectangular part of a headdress. Though the statue indeed holds an object in its right hand that could be interpreted as a type of laser, it could just as well be a wooden or metal object. What it is—or should be—is largely determined by the perspective of the observer. And when one has only a simple depiction for evidence, that depiction, or any analysis of it, will never be proof of an alien presence.
The Goldflyer
Looking at the archaeological record and finding anomalies is precisely how major advances in the alien debate have progressed. In Chariots of the Gods, Erich von Däniken remarked that, in his opinion, a particular artifact recovered from Colombia was nothing short of a prehistoric airplane. His statement was controversial, as archaeologists had catalogued the small artifact as an insect. The artifact in question is currently on display in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Its explanation states: “Gold artifact, a stylized insect, from the Quimbaya culture, Antioquia province, Colombia, ca. 1000–1500 AD.” At one point, replicas of the piece could be bought from the Smithsonian gift shop.
There are a number of other such “insects,” five in the collection of the Gold Museum at the Bank of the Republic in Bogota. The “Bogota aircraft” was first publicized by Ivan T. Sanderson, who thought the artifact represented a high-speed aircraft. He sought the opinion of a number of aircraft engineers, who supported his idea. Another stylized “goldflyer” is in the possession of the Museum of Primitive Art in New York City, where it is identified as a “winged crocodile.” Dr. Stuart W. Greenwood has tracked down 18 of these artifacts in museums and private collections, but in all instances, archaeological officialdom labeled them insects or something similar.
The Goldflyer is one of a series of scale models produced by a team of German enthusiasts who demonstrated that the “bees” found in the gold collections of many museums were actually planes, as von Däniken alleged.
The standoff between archaeologists and Ancient Alien researchers did not break until 1994, when three Germans, Algund Eenboom, Peter Belting, and Conrad Lübbers, decided to create a scale model of the Colombian “airplane.” They wanted to experiment with its flight capabilities. At the same time, they began to draw parallels between the features of this artifact and similar artifacts, which were indeed likely to be bees and insects.
A key point in the debate is that all insects have their wings on the tops of their bodies. However, there were some golden artifacts, like the one from Colombia, that had the wings underneath the body—anatomically incorrect, but valid for an airplane, as we can see on any airport runway, where Boeings and Airbuses all have under-fuselage wings.
The German trio soon realized that the people of South America were able to depict insects and other flying animals anatomically correctly, so if this gold artifact was indeed an insect, then it was an anomaly, and a serious mistake at that. Eenboom, Beltung, and Lübbers therefore concluded that it could not be an insect. Their drawings showed that the design of the artifact corresponded perfectly with the design of a modern jet-engine aircraft—such as the space shuttle and the supersonic Concorde.
In 1996, they were a
llowed to photograph all of the “golden airplane” specimens on display at the Bremen Overseas Museum in Germany. They were also allowed to measure them and even make impressions of the originals. That same year, Peter Belting created his first scale model—an area he was well-versed in. In fact, it was his interest in the field of scale models that had led to his decision to study the Colombian artifact in the first place. The scale model was baptized “Goldflyer I.” Built at a scale of 16:1, the plane measured 35 inches long, with a wingspan of approximately 3 feet. It weighed 1.5 pounds. A propeller was added to the nose of the plane and the wings were equipped with the necessary flaps and rolls, so that it could take off and land. Early test flights were a success: The plane had a stable flight path and was able to make accurate and comfortable landings. In short, the artifact behaved as a plane was meant to behave, and this was the first demonstrable evidence that the “bee” was a plane.
Next in the development line was the Goldflyer II. This model had the same dimensions as the first, but was equipped with landing gear and a jet engine. The engine itself was a “Fun jet,” able to make 20,000 rotations per minute. The modification from a propeller to a jet engine was made because the original gold artifact did not have a propeller. (If it had, it would have been quite a task for established scientists to have labeled the artifact an insect!)
The problem to overcome was where the jet engine should be placed. On modern airplanes, the jet engines are on the wings (as on modern Boeings and Airbuses) or at the back of the fuselage (as on the Fokker); the space shuttle has them at the very back of the craft, but its takeoff and flight are vastly different from traditional airplanes, as its flight is aided by booster rockets. In the end, Goldflyer II’s jet engine was positioned at the back of the aircraft, in an unusual position when it comes to what we know from modern aviation, but it was the only position the original gold artifact allowed for such an engine. The insertion of the jet engine in that position was not only a novelty, but also a risk: The air flow into the engine would be different from the accepted standards as used in the airline industry. Subsequent test flights revealed that the plane continued to behave impeccably: Takeoffs and landings were perfect, and its flight path was stable. In short, the insertion of an engine at the back of a plane could be perfectly achieved in modern aviation—the team had just shown modern aviation a novel approach, based on ancient technology!
The Ancient Alien Question Page 17