There is another engraving on a stone plaque, 11 1/2 inches high and 1 foot 8 1/2 inches wide, this time depicting an animal. I suspect that it is a representation of a dinosaur. This extinct prehistoric animal moved on land with the help of long hind legs as shown in the engraving. Even its gigantic size—dinosaurs were as much as 65 feet long—can still be sensed in the foreshortened squat version of the body, and the feet with three toes strengthen my suspicion. If my identification of this picture is correct, it will be most uncanny. This extinct reptile lived in the earth’s Middle Ages during the Upper Cretaceous, i.e., 135,000,000 years ago, when the modern continents began to assume their present configuration. I am not going to speculate any further. I simply ask this question: what intelligent, thinking being ever saw a saurian?
In front of us lay the skeleton of a man, carved out of stone. I counted ten pairs of ribs, all anatomically accurate.
IN an office, I beg your pardon, a square stone room, Moricz showed me a dome. Figures with dark faces stood like guards around its circumference. They had hats on their heads and held spear-like objects in their hands, as if they were ready to defend themselves. Figures flew or floated through the air near the top of the dome. By the light of my torch I discovered a skeleton crouched behind the “Romanesque” entrance to the dome. It did not shock me, but what did shock me was this model of a dome. Heinrich Schliemann discovered the first dome when he excavated Mycenae, a fortress and town in the northeast Peloponnese, from 1874 to 1876, and that dome was supposed to have been built by the Achaeans at the end of the fourteenth century B.C. I actually learnt at school that the Pantheon in Rome, built in Hadrian’s reign between A.D. 120 and 125, was the first dome. But from now on I shall consider this piece of; stonework as the oldest example of a dome.
A clown with a bulbous nose knelt on a stone plinth. The little fellow sported a helmet that covered his ears. Earphones like those on our telephones were attached to the lobes of his ears. A ring in relief, with a diameter of 2 inches and 2/5 inch thick, was stuck to the front of the helmet. It was fitted with 15 holes, which seemed to be admirably adapted for fitting plugs into. A chain hung round his neck and it, too, had a ring with a number of holes in it like those we use for dialing telephone numbers. Other remarkable features were the spacesuit accessories on the suit that the gnome wore, and the gloves, in which his fingers were well protected against dangerous contacts.
I would not have paid any attention to a winged mother figure, between whose arms knelt a slit-eyed child in a crash-helmet, if I had not seen the identical figure, though in clay, during a visit to the American Museum in Madrid.
Whole books could and
will
be written about these tunnels and their treasures. Among many other things, they will mention the 6-feet high stonemason’s works, representing beings with three and seven heads; the triangular plaques, with writing on them as if schoolchildren had been making their first attempts at writing; dice with geometrical figures on their six plane surfaces; the piece of soapstone, 3 feet 8 inches long and 9 1/4 inches wide, which is curved like a boomerang and covered with stars, etc.
No one knows who built the tunnels; no one knows the sculptors who left behind these strange ambiguous works. Only one thing seems clear to me. The tunnel builders were not the same men as the stonemasons; their stark practical passages were obviously not meant to be decorated. Perhaps they showed the underground vaults to a chosen group and the latter fashioned in stone things they had seen and heard and stored the results in the depths.
So far the entrance to this underground treasure-trove of human history is known only to a few trustworthy people and it is guarded by a wild Indian tribe. Indians lurk unseen in the undergrowth and watch every movement made by strangers. Moricz has been accepted as a friend by the chieftain of the cave guardians and three members of the tribe who are occasionally in contact with civilization.
Once a year, at the beginning of spring, on March 21, the chieftain climbs down alone to the first platform in the underworld to offer ritual prayers. Both his cheeks bear the same signs as are marked in the rock at the entrance to the tunnels. To this day the tribe of tunnel guardians still make masks and carvings “of the men with long noses” (gas masks?) and they tell, as Moricz knows, of the heroic deeds of the “flying beings” who once came from heaven. But the Indians will not go into the tunnels for love or money.
“No, no,” they said to Moricz. “Spirits live down there.”
But it is a remarkable fact that Indian chiefs occasionally use gold to pay the debts they have incurred with the civilized world or present friends who have rendered their tribe a service with precious gold objects from their five-hundred-year-old past.
On several occasions Moricz had stopped me taking photographs as we passed through the tunnels. He kept on making different excuses. Sometimes it was the radiation that would make the negatives unusable, sometimes it was the flash which might damage the metal library with its blinding light. At first I could not understand why, but after a few hours underground I began to sense the reason for Moricz’s strange behavior. You could not get rid of the feeling of being constantly watched, of destroying something magic, of unleashing a catastrophe. Would the entrances suddenly close? Would my flash ignite a synchronized laser beam? Would we never see the light of day again? Childish ideas for men engaged on serious investigation? Perhaps. But if you had experienced what it was like down there, you would understand these absurd ideas. Teams equipped with modern technical aids will have to work down there to see whether there are any dangers to be overcome or avoided.
When I first saw the pile of gold, I begged to be allowed to take just one photo. Once again I was refused. The lumps of gold had to be levered from the pile and that might make a noise and start stones falling from the roof like an avalanche. Moricz noticed my frustration and laughed.
“You’ll be able to photograph plenty of gold later, but not in such vast quantities. Will that do?”
Today I know that the biggest treasure from the dark tunnels is not on show in South American museums. It lies in the back patio of the Church of Maria Auxiliadora at Cuenca in Ecuador, some 8,100 feet above sea level.
Father Crespi, the collector of the treasure, which is priceless just for its weight in gold, has been living in Cuenca for forty-five years. He is accepted as a trustworthy friend of the Indians, who during past decades fetched the most valuable gold, silver and metal objects from their hiding places piece by piece and gave them to him, and still do so today.
I had been warned beforehand that the good Father was fond of pulling his visitors’ legs. I soon had a taste of this. In all seriousness he showed me an object that was obviously the lower part of a flatiron. “Look,” he said, “that proves that the Inca rulers had their trousers pressed even in those days!” We laughed and Father Crespi led us through his treasure chambers. Room I houses stonemason’s work; Room II contains Inca artifacts of gold, silver, copper and brass, while Room III holds the gold treasure, which he very seldom shows anyone, and then unwillingly. Cuenca has a “Gold Museum” of its own, but it cannot compare with Father Crespi’s.
“Have you seen this lady?’ asked Moricz.
She was 12 1/2 inches high and naturally of solid gold. Her head was formed of two triangles, whose planes seemed to have wings welded to them. Coiled cables emerged from her ears; they were obviously not jewelry, for the lady’s earrings were clipped to her ear lobes.
She had healthy, if triangular proportions, with well-formed breasts and stood with legs apart. The fact that she had no arms did not mar her beauty. She wore long, elegant trousers. A sphere floated above her head and I felt that the stars on either side referred to her origin. A star from a past age? A maiden from the stars?
Next came a brass discus, 8 1/2 inches in diameter. It cannot have been a shield, as the archaeologists would catalog it. For one thing it is too heavy, for another it has never had a hand-hold on its smooth reverse side. I believe that this discus, too, was intended to transmit information. It exhibits two stylized, but incredibly accurate spermatozoa, two laughing suns, the sickle of a waning moon, a large star and two stylized triangular men’s faces. In the middle are small raised circles, arranged to give the beholder visual pleasure, but apparently intended to produce a different and more serious effect. Father Crespi put a heavy copper plaque in front of the camera.
“Here is something special for you, my young friend. This piece dates to the period before the Flood.”
Three creatures, holding a tall tablet with some signs on it, stared at me. The pairs of eyes looked as if they were peering from behind goggles. The upper left-hand monster pointed to a sphere, the right-hand one was clad from head to foot in an overall, which was fastened at the sides, and proudly wore a three-cornered star on his head. Above the tablet with signs floated two winged spheres. What were the monsters holding? Some kind of Morse code, dots, dashes, SOS’s? A switchboard for electric contacts? Anything is possible, but I suspect technical analogies rather than letters on this tablet. And according to the Father, who has been given special Vatican permission to carry out his archaeological research, it does date to the period before the Flood.
Take my word for it, when you catch sight of the treasures in the back patio of Maria Auxiliadora, you have to be very strong-willed not to get “gold-drunk.” But it was not the large amounts of gold that impressed me, it was the representation of stars, moons, suns and snakes that gleamed on hundreds of metal plaques—nearly all of them unequivocal symbols of space travel.
I picked some exceptionally photogenic examples of such pictures out of what is presumably the lost heritage of the Incas, who were very familiar with the snake sign and used it decoratively in representations of their ruler, the “Son of the Sun.”
One is a relief with a pyramid. The steep sides are bordered by snakes. There are two suns, two astronaut-like monsters, two deer-like animals and some circles with dots in them. Do the circles indicate the number of space travelers buried inside the pyramid?
There’s another plaque with a pyramid. Two jaguars, symbols of strength, have their paws on the sides. There are obvious signs of writing at the foot of the pyramid. To the right and left we see elephants, which lived in South America about 12,000 years ago before any civilizations or cultures are supposed to have existed. And the snakes are at last where they ought to be, in the sky.
No one can deny that snakes and dragons have a special place in all myths about the creation. Even a scientist such as Dr. Irene Sanger-Bredt, who is an engineer in the aircraft and space industries, puts the following question in her book
Ungeloste Ratsel der Schopfung
(
Unsolved Puzzles of the Creation
):
“Why does the dragon motif play such an important part in the figurative representations and myths of the ancient Chinese, Indians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Jews, Germans and Mayas?”
In her answer, Dr. Sanger-Bredt thinks it probable that snake and dragon symbols must have some connection with the creation and the universe.
In his book
The Masters of the World
, Robert Charroux quotes ancient texts to show that gleaming snakes which floated in the air have occurred everywhere, that the Phoenicians and Egyptians raised snakes and dragons to the godhead, and that the snake belonged to the element of fire, because in it
there is a speed which nothing can exceed, because of its breath
. Charroux quotes Areios of Heracleopolis literally: “The first and highest divinity is the snake with the sparrow-hawk head; when it opens its eyes, it fills the whole of the newly created world with light; when it shuts them, the darkness spreads over everything.”
The historian Sanchuniaton, who lived in Beirut
circa
1250 B.C., is reputed to have recorded the mythology and history of the Phoenicians. Charroux quotes this passage from him:
“The snake has a speed which nothing can exceed, because of its breath. It can impart any speed it likes to the spirals it describes as it moves . . . Its energy is exceptional . . . With its brilliance it has illuminated everything.”
These are not descriptions of the sort of snakes that intelligent human beings saw crawling about on the ground.
But why have snakes so persistently made their home in all the creation stories and myths?
For once, I shall obey the call of the scholars, according to whom our primeval ancestors can only be understood in terms of their own mental level at the time when they lived, and use simple depth psychology.
If our ancestors saw a large unusual bird, they described what they had actually seen, as the concept for it was included in their limited vocabulary. But how could they have described a phenomenon in the firmament seen for the first time for which words and concepts were lacking? Probably the alien cosmonauts were not over-particular about casualties during their first landing on our planet. Perhaps spectators were hit and scorched by the red-hot trail of a jet during the landing or destroyed by the thrust of a rocket on the return launching. There was absolutely no technical vocabulary for an eyewitness account of this terrifying yet grandiose event. The unknown gleaming (metal) thing that landed or took off, snorting, smelling and kicking up a din was obviously not a bird. So they described what they had seen—using current ideas—as a thing “like a dragon” or “like a great gleaming bird,” or, because it was so far beyond their comprehension, as “a feathered fire-breathing serpent.” Horrified by what they had experienced, fathers told their sons and they told their grandsons for centuries and millennia about the terrifying apparition of the dragon or snake. With the passage of time the eye-witness account using a makeshift vocabulary gradually became vaguer. Sometimes the fire-breathing dragon would loom largest, sometimes the flying snake, until they assumed their predominant position in mythology.