The Gold of the Gods (12 page)
The blinkers come down as soon as subjective explanations based on the knowledge available in this space age are attempted. They are not allowed.
Because there is no flying in prehistory, there cannot have been any contact with other planets. Full stop. But how do people try to extricate themselves from the morass of the inexplicable? They turn to psychology. The legends were wishful thinking on the part of the unconscious. They even enroll my fellow-countryman Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) with his doctrine of psychic energy, his theory of individuation, and especially his theory of the archetype with primordial innate ways of behavior and images. The world is in order again. “Man has always wanted to be able to fly like a bird.” Innate ways of behavior? Primordial images? I have nothing against the wish to be able to fly, I like flying very much myself. Does that mean that our early ancestors had the same longing? Did the unconscious supply them with absolutely realistic mental images of flying machines; did it give them accurate data about worlds that they had never seen? Did it guide their hand when they sketched technical details in cave paintings? Or when they carved integrated circuits on the Gate of the Sun at Tiahuanaco?
In the Babylonian epic Etana is obsessed with the wish to fly. He may have dreamt about it, he may have talked about it, but neither dreams nor imagination can have given him such a picturesque description of the earth’s surface as the one in the epic:
“The earth was like a garden
and the sea furrowed into the land
like the trenches dug by a gardener.”
And wishful thinking could not possibly have supplied Enkidu with the description of the earth—as seen from above—in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
“And the land was like a mountain and the sea like a small puddle . . . And the land looked like porridge and the sea like a water trough.”
In Volume 18 of the
Yearbook of the Society of German Engineers
, Berlin, 1928, Professor Richard Henning examines texts relevant to the prehistory of air travel. He describes the Etana legend as definitely the “oldest flying saga in the world,” and one which must go back to the very beginning of history, because it is already represented
pictorially
on a cylinder seal from the period between 3000 and 2400 B.C., whereas the text has been only partially preserved in a cuneiform inscription. This passage struck the professor as especially noteworthy:
“Not on the eagle’s back, but clamped breast to breast with it was Etana carried up to the heaven of the fixed stars . . . Six times during the upward flight the eagle drew Etana’s attention to the earth which was growing smaller and smaller before their eyes.”
Accurate descriptions, pictorial representations as products of the unconscious? Here I think the psychoanalysts should curb the adepts of their science if they themselves want to remain credible.
Our research into myths and legends and the interpretations of archaeology are—as far as they concern prehistory—tied up in a straitjacket of preconceived views. Eyes have grown blind, ideas become dead. Science says that it cannot accept imaginative solutions because they have no empirical or demonstrable foundation. But now serious conclusions become more and more fantastic every day, while at the same time the disparaged fantasies acquire a firmer background. Three premises are the basis of all research: freedom of thought, a gift for observation and a sense of connections. Laymen can make use of them too.
Let us fly back to the South Seas again!
There Maori legends are haunted by the god Pourangahua, who flew from his legendary seat of Hawaiki to New Zealand on a magic bird. Hawaiki is a compound word that conies from Old Indian and can be translated as “from the Milky Way.” The oldest Maori prayer is attributed to this Pourangahua:
“I come,
and an unknown earth
lies below my feet.
I come
and a new heaven turns above me.
I come
on to this earth and it is
a peaceful resting-place for me.
O spirit of the planets!
The stranger humbly offers you
his heart as nourishment.”
On the beaches and roadsides visitors to New Zealand see large round balls with diameters up to 10 feet 5 inches. On Moeraki Beach, north of Dunedin, dozens of them of all sizes are strewn about. Having become interested in balls after seeing the
artificial
stone balls of Costa Rica, I naturally examined the New Zealand variety very closely.
These
balls originated from
natural
causes. They form in soft sandstone by deposits of calcspar around a core. Geologists date the beginning of the formation of the balls to the Upper Cretaceous, 135,000,000 years ago. Although they are of natural origin, there are some strange varieties among them, the so-called geodes.
A geode is a word used in geology that comes from the Greek. It consists of a stone in which a hollow space has been caused by gas, the space being wholly or partially filled with minerals or crystalline deposits. Geodes are not only eagerly sought after by geologists, but also by business-like laymen who turn them into desirable trinkets for sale in gift shops by cutting, halving, quartering and polishing them. Treasure seekers of this kind found a stone that looked like a geode in 1961 near Olancha, on the edge of the Amargosa Desert. So they put it in their collecting basket, the contents of which they prepared for sale on their return. When they tried to saw through the putative geode, the diamond saw broke, because the stone was not hollow, but solid, in spite of its appearance. Geologists who dissected the stone found inside it an unknown stone with an iridescent surface that had been formed under the effect of intense heat. In its core was a shining metal rod 2 millimeters in diameter and 17 millimeters long.
Strange?
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
The American Trust Administration is doing its best to improve the infrastructure of the island. Roads are being built on Ponape; an electricity works is already functioning; the harbor is being enlarged, a radio station floods the island and its islets with music. But this is all in its early stages, which makes it all the more surprising that nearly every native family on the impoverished island is the proud possessor of a car! In many huts, even those without electricity, there are juke-boxes. The owner of my so-called first-class hotel had three of them and they were always nerve-rackingly in use. The few guests could pass the time playing the two pin-tables and on the day I left the island an electric adding machine was delivered to his establishment. I could not find the secret behind this absurd wealth. The natives are poor and incurably lazy and have no interest in business. I had to use all my powers of persuasion even to find two boys to take me over to Nan Madol every day. Americans are known to be wonderful salesmen, but they want to see some money for their goods. Where do the islanders get all the money for so many useless things? I kept on remembering the Japanese divers who had brought pieces of platinum up from the ocean bed.
Perhaps I missed a chance to get to the bottom of all secrets in one moment of complete clairvoyance.
On the day before my departure, I was invited by some natives to their village. I had known for a long time that such gestures of hospitality ought not to be rejected. You can never return to the village which has invited you, if you have been impolite. The oldest woman of the tribe greeted me and led me through some huts to the village square. Women and girls crouched in front of a hollow tree trunk and when they caught sight of me began to beat out a rhythm with sticks that had a kind of blues tempo. Men and boys entered the circle and began to stamp their feet, and as they gyrated they beat very skillfully on some more tree trunks that gave out a different note. They drew me into their ring, which was quite calm to begin with, but hotted up terribly as the ladies’ rhythm group set a fearful tempo. The air was hot and sticky and I had to join in, jumping up and down, running and stamping in the circle—the only thing I was spared was the wooden spear. The rock ’n’ roll of the fifties was like a tango compared to our performance.
But there was worse to come.
I was led into a hut. There was a large flat stone on the ground and I and six men were placed round it. Teenagers brought the fresh roots of a young tree (Lat.
piper methysticum
). The roots were superficially cleaned with bunches of lianas and laid on the stone. The men took stone pounders and hammered the roots in unison for about half an hour. The roots turned into a sticky brown porridge-like mass. The teenagers brought vegetable fibers and spread them carefully on the edge of the stone. Then the men who had been pounding the roots spread the mixture on the fibers, which were then tied to a rope. The evil sauce that dripped into coconut shells was
sakao
. An innocent youth—the rites prescribe that it must be an innocent youth—knelt before me and proffered me the shell, without looking me in the eyes (which is strictly forbidden). The things one does in the name of international understanding! I raised the shell to my lips; all eyes were on me and I forced down a couple of mouthfuls. I handed the shell to my neighbor who swallowed the fearful brew as if it were vintage champagne. The shell was refilled and everyone enjoyed the festive drinking bout until they soon lay down and fell into a deep blissful sleep.*
*The same drink is called
yangona
in the Fiji Islands and
kava
on Tonga and Samoa.
Sakao
acts like a drug, but is not addictive and does not give you a headache when you wake up. Connoisseurs told me that
sakao
is supposed to have an effect like LSD. I have read that LSD produces moments of unprecedented, incredible clairvoyance. If I had swallowed more of the vile juice, I might possibly have been granted that illumination which would have explained the secrets of Nan Madol in a flash. So I shall have to hand on my questions to the experts, who so far have been seeing “in a glass darkly,” with singular lack of clairvoyance.
By the way,
Nan Madol is a composite word from the language of the Ponapes and means “Place of the intermediate spaces.”
Besides being vast, Brazil is full of mysteries.
If a pilot of the VASP airline on a routine flight of 1,250 miles sees towers or villages or ruins that are not marked on the map, he notes down their geographical position and makes a report. But if someone sets out to verify the data only three days later, the towers, villages or ruins may have already disappeared. What was only briefly visible in favorable weather conditions, when the wind was right or after a forest fire, has already been overgrown, swallowed up again by that green Moloch, the forest.
Brazil is a country of extremes. It is as difficult to get to know its present as it is to get to know its past. Since Dodge, VW, Ford and Chevrolet have been making all kinds of cars here, army pioneers are constantly turning up archaeological finds when building the new roads intended to open up the vast territories which are still inaccessible. No one can estimate how much unique material is lost forever in the mountains of debris excavated.
Archaeology is a universal hobby in Brazil, but professional archaeologists are rare. If finds as rich as these were made in other countries, universities would initiate research projects or governments provide financial aid for excavation teams under expert leadership. It is quite different here.
The size of the country and the multiplicity of archaeological riches, most of them virtually inaccessible, mean that planned digging, classification and excavation scarcely ever take place. Even if a forgotten prehistoric town is accurately located and accessible with the right kind of vehicle, it takes years before the money to equip a modern expedition is available. Only too often the result is that it comes too late.
Archaeological finds in Brazil are mostly due to the luck, industry and keenness of enthusiastic laymen. The Austrian Ludwig Schwennhagen was one of them. He was a teacher of philosophy and history and lived for a long time in Teresina, the capital of the north Brazilian state of Piaui. Schwennhagen was the first man to give a detailed description of the mysterious Sete Cidades (Seven Cities) in his book
Antiga Historia do Brasil
, published in 1928. When the second edition of his book came out in 1970, Schwennhagen had long since died a poor schoolmaster.
I first heard the name of Schwennhagen from the lips of Dr. Renato Castelo Branco, who brought me an invitation to visit Sete Cidades as the guest of the Government of Piaui.
“Whereabouts are these Sete Cidades?” I asked.
“Only 1,875 miles away as the crow flies,” answered Dr. Branco. “North of Teresina, between the town of Piripiri and the Rio Longe. We can be there the day after tomorrow.”
There were two reasons why we landed at Teresina at government expense. Firstly,
Chariots of the Gods?
and
Gods from Outer Space
have gone into several editions in South America (especially in Brazil) and open all doors to the author. Secondly, the Governor of Piaui wants to turn the site of Sete Cidades into a national park and is grateful for any publicity which will further his plans.
