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In Egypt and Iraq there were finds of cut crystal lenses which today can only be made using caesium oxide, in other words an oxide that has to be won by electro-chemical processes.
In Helwan there is a piece of cloth, a fabric so fine that it could only be woven today in a special factory with great technical know-how and experience.
Electric dry batteries, which work on the galvanic principle, are on display in Baghdad Museum.
In the same place the visitor can see electric elements with copper electrodes and an unknown electrolyte.
In the mountainous Asian region of Kohistan a cave drawing reproduces the exact position of the constellations as they actually were 10,000 years ago. Venus and the earth are joined by lines.
Ornaments of platinum were found on the Peruvian plateau.
Parts of a belt made of aluminium lay in a grave at Chu-Chu (China).
At Delhi there is an ancient pillar made of iron which contains neither phosphorus nor sulphur and so ca
This strange medley of 'impossibilities' should make us curious and uneasy. By what means, with what intuition, did the primitive cave-dwellers manage to draw the constellations in their correct positions? From what precision workshop did the cut crystal lenses come? How could anyone smelt and model platinum, since platinum only begins to melt at temperatures of 1,800° C? And how did the ancient Chinese make aluminium, a metal which can only be extracted from bauxite with considerable difficulty.
Impossible questions, to be sure, but does that mean that we should not ask them? Since we are not prepared to accept or admit that there was a higher culture or an equally perfect technology before our own, all that is left is the hypothesis of a visit from space! As long as archaeology is conducted as it has been so far, we shall never have a chance to discover whether our dim past was really dim and not perhaps quite enlightened.
A Utopian archaeological year is due, during which archaeologists, physicists, chemists, geologists, metallurgists, and all the corresponding branches of these sciences ought to concentrate their efforts on one single question: did our forefathers receive visits from outer space?
For example, a metallurgist would be able to tell an archaeologist quickly and concisely how complicated the production of aluminium is. Is it not conceivable that a physicist might instantly recognise a formula in a rock drawing? A chemist with his highly developed apparatus might be able to confirm the assumption that obelisks were extracted from the rock by wetting wooden wedges or using unknown acids. The geologist owes us a whole series of answers to questions about what is of significance in certain Ice Age deposits. The team for a Utopian archaeological year would naturally include a group of divers who would investigate the Dead Sea for radioactive traces of an atomic explosion over Sodom and Gomorrha.
Why are the oldest libraries in the world secret libraries? What are people really afraid of? Are they worried that the truth, protected and concealed for so many thousands of years, will finally come to light?
Research and progress ca
We have a thousand and one errors of the past to correct. The self-assurance that is feigned is threadbare and is really only an acute form of stubbor
In the past the man who put forward a brand-new idea had to count on being despised and persecuted by the church and his colleagues. Things must have become easier, one thinks. There are no more anathemas and fires at the stake are no longer lit. The snag is that the methods of our time are less spectacular, but they are hardly less obstructive to progress. Now everything is more 'civilised' and there is much less fuss. Theories and intolerably audacious ideas are hushed up or dismissed by killer phrases, as the Americans say. There are many possibilities:
• It's against the rules! (Always a good one!) It's not classical enough! (Bound to impress.)
• It's too revolutionary! (Unequalled in its deterrent effect!)
• The universities won't go along with that! (Convincing!)
• Others have already tried that! (Of course. But were they successful?)
• We can't see any sense in it! (And that's that!)
• That hasn't been proved yet! (Quod erat demonstrandum!)
Five hundred years ago a scientist cried out in the law courts, 'Common sense must tell anyone that the earth ca
'Nowhere in the Bible,' asserted another, 'does it say that the earth revolves round the sun. Consequently every such assertion is the work of the devil!'
It seems us if narrow-mindedness was always a special characteristic when new worlds of ideas were begi
When the first such photos were radioed to Earth from Mars in the spring of 1958, the strength used was 0.000,000,000,000,000,01 watts, an almost incredibly weak output.
Yet NOTHING is incredible any longer. The word 'impossible' should have become literally impossible for the modern scientist. Anyone who does not accept this today, will be crushed by the reality tomorrow. So let us stick tenaciously to our theory, according to which astronauts from distant planets visited the earth thousands of years ago. We know that our ingenuous and primitive forefathers did not know what to make of the astronauts' superior technology. They worshipped the astronauts as 'gods' who came from other stars and the astronauts had no other choice but patiently to accept their adoration as divinities— a homage, incidentally, for which our astronauts on unknown planets must be quite prepared.
Some parts of our earth are still inhabited by primitive peoples to whom a machine-gun is a weapon of the devil. In that case a jet aircraft may well be an angelic vehicle to them. And a voice coming from a radio set the voice of a god. These last primitive peoples, too, naively hand down from generation to generation in their sagas their impressions of technical achievements that we take for granted. They still scratch their divine figures and their wonderful ships coming from heaven on cliffs and cave walls. In this way these savage peoples have actually preserved for us what we are seeking today.
Cave drawings in Kohistan, France, North America and Southern Rhodesia, in the Sahara and Peru, as well as Chile, all contribute to our theory. Henri Lhote, a French scholar, discovered at Tassili (Sahara) several hundred (!) walls painted with many thousands of pictures of animals and men, including figures in short elegant coats. They carry sticks and undefinable chests on the sticks. Next to the animal paintings we are astonished by a being in a kind of diver's suit. The great god Mars—so Lhote christened him—was originally over 18 ft high; but the 'savage' who bequeathed the drawing to us can scarcely have been as primitive as we should like him to be, if everything is to fit neatly into the old pattern of thought. After all the 'savage' obviously used a scaffolding to be able to draw in proportion like that, for there have been no shifts in ground level in these caves during the last few mille