The Gold of the Gods (16 page)

Physicists know this today, but astronomers have also discovered that the speed of light is not the absolute limit of velocity. A British research group from Oxford University led by Y. S. Allen and Geoffrey Endean came to the conclusion, after many years of study, that the electro-magnetic fields in the Crab nebula in the constellation Taurus must move at a speed of 375,000 miles per second. The celebrated English scientific periodical
Nature
also mentioned the possibility of speeds faster than light.

Yet these new discoveries are merely the first indications of conceivably
infinite
velocities.

How long is it since an
atom
was simply identified as the smallest particle with the qualities of a chemical element, and how old is the knowledge that every piece of matter is composed of an inconceivably large number of atoms? It was in 1913 that the Danish Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr (1885-1962) laid the foundations of atomic theory with his atomic model. Today atomic energy, obtained from the combined energy of protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus, is made use of industrially. Atomic energy alone can ensure the world’s supply of energy. Mankind became terrifyingly aware of this effective application of a radical physical idea when the USA exploded the first hydrogen bomb near the Marshall Islands in November, 1952—a bomb which was also a product of atomic energy, but whose “atomic mushroom” image still lowers menacingly over the peaceful use of such energy.

This recent example could be a very practical pointer to how rapidly original discoveries can lead to effective results via the imaginative applications of technicians. At least the stars have become a little bit closer to us with the establishment of faster than light particles.

 

IT is not so long since authors of adventure stories equipped mysterious foreign powers with ray guns which could cut holes in walls, destroy other weapons and vaporize men.

 

Today these rays exist. Every schoolboy knows them as lasers. The whole secret is an apparatus for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation using a crystal. Very rapid technological development replaced the ruby originally used by other solid bodies, and even by gas mixtures that continually send out light. The heat at the focusing point of a lens placed in a laser beam is so high that even metals with a high smelting point vaporize. When these rays are directed on to a microscopically fine point, they can be used not only for amplifying light in astronomical telescopes and for the transmission of radio programs without disturbance, but also for cutting tiny holes in skin-thin metal plates in watch factories. In eye operations they are used to weld detached retinas back on. It is no longer a secret that in both east and west experiments with laser rifles and laser cannon are being carried out.

Could it be that the idea of laser beams is not really so new?

In Exodus 17:10-14, I think the text refers fairly clearly to the use of a laser weapon:

“. . . and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill.
“And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.
“But Moses’ hands were heavy: and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he stayed thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.”

 

What happened here?

In the battle against the Amalekites, the Israelites only went on winning as long as Moses, up on the mountain, kept his arms raised. Now the raised arms of the weary commander
alone
could have been of little use, nor would they have been any more dangerous when the faithful supported them. So I assume that Moses held a rather heavy object in his hands that could decide the battle in his favor. On his field-marshal’s hill he had the hostile armies within his field of vision. If he “hit” the Amalekites with his ray guns, his people conquered, if he let his arms sink (and with them the ray guns), the Amalekites, fighting with old-fashioned weapons, attacked successfully. This speculation of mine gets strong support in the same chapter, verse 9, where it says that Moses stood on the top of the hill “
with the rod of God
” in his hand. Looked at from this point of view, isn’t it logical that the battle turned against the Israelites when Moses grew tired and let the ray guns sink?

 

IN
Gods from Outer Space
I included a petroglyph from Easter Island which showed a strange figure, half fish, half man. Since then a technically minded reader (Horst Haas) has pointed out to me that this drawing on the rock near the shore of Easter Island could easily be the representation of a ram jet engine. The “head” of the drawing would be the air intake, the narrow neck the fuel inlet, the paunch-like broadening out the combustion and pressure chamber and the concluding narrow part the exhaust for the high velocity gases, while the engraved star would be a symbol of the ignition spark. In this way the whole drawing would be a stylized model of a ram jet propulsion unit. “Even if the drawing as a whole does not conform to an aerodynamic shape,” writes Horst Haas, “perhaps further references to its flying behavior, etc., could be deduced by accurate measurements of the landing grounds marked out on the plain of Nazca.”

 

I suggest that the archaeologists ask their colleagues at a technical college for advice for a change!

 

EASTER ISLAND is an island full of puzzles where research would be well worthwhile. In his book
Phantastique Ile de Pâques
, Francis Mazière tells of an excavation which brought to light an unknown type of stone head. Whereas the heads of all the other statues are clean-shaven, this head sported a beard and it had faceted eyes of the kind insects have (and as we know them from Japanese Dogu sculptures). But the most extraordinary thing was two staves that sprouted from the head. Now if anyone wants to claim that they were symbolical representations of animal horns, he is off target. There have never been horned animals on Easter Island! Even a humorous prehistoric sculptor had no model from which he could copy horns to put on a man! It is ridiculous to deny that prehistoric artists—without drawing on their imagination—carved antennae as they had seen them on the gods who came to them from the cosmos.

 

Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier describe representations of non-human beings wearing technical accouterments found in a quite different corner of the world. Granite reliefs depicting beings in diving or spacesuits with “elephants’ trunks” were discovered in the Hunan Mountains (People’s Republic of China). We cannot avoid asking ourselves whether these trunks were not really breathing apparatuses. Interpreters of such finds will dismiss the question as absurd, because these trunked men are ascribed a date of 45,000 B.C. Yet every find of this type should worry us because every find increases the certainty of prehistoric visits by alien astronauts. Must the cobbler stick to his old last?

 

AT Delhi there is an ancient iron column that contains no phosphorus or sulphur and so cannot be destroyed by the effects of weathering. However, it is not always necessary to leave the ransacked west to come upon equally wonderful discoveries. At Kottenforst, a few miles west of Bonn, there is an iron column which has been known locally since time immemorial as the Iron Man, writes Dr. Harro Grubert of Cologne. The iron column rises 4 feet 10 inches out of the ground, but according to various estimates and magnetic resistance measurements it sticks 90 feet deep into the ground. The part above ground exhibits slight surface weathering, but surprisingly enough no trace of rust. The column is first mentioned in a fourteenth-century document, where it is described as marking a village boundary. In the immediate vicinity of the iron column lie a well-built stone walk and the remains of an aqueduct, which does not—wonder of wonders—run in the usual direction Eifel-Bonn or Eifel-Cologne, but straight towards the column. So far no one knows what to make of the long rectangular column, and people know a lot about iron in this part of the world. Why should not metallurgists spare the time to travel to that developing country India to check whether or not the iron column in the temple courtyard at Delhi has a similar alloy to the strong column at Kottenforst? Such factual
knowledge
might produce evidence as to the age of both columns, for I think it is absurd to accept the Iron Man as being no more than a village boundary mark. If it were, why should it stick 90 feet into the ground? Central Europe, too, may have been
one
goal of “visits by the gods” and then the Iron Man’s real significance would emerge.

 

 

 

THERE
used
to be a rarity in Salzburg, too. Johannes Von Butlar says:

 

“Who knows how to solve the mystery of Dr. Gurlt’s dice? It was the strangest object ever discovered in a block of coal from the Tertiary, where it was enclosed for many millions of years. This almost perfect dice was found in 1885. There was a deep incision round its middle and two parallel outer surfaces were rounded off. It consisted of a hard alloy of coal and nickel steel and weighed 785 grains. Its sulphur content was too low for it to have come from natural gravel, which occasionally occurs in remarkable geometrical shapes. Scientists were never able to agree about the dice’s origin. It was preserved in the Salzburg Museum until 1910 and then disappeared mysteriously. Mystery piled on mystery!”

 

If the dice came from the Tertiary, I can only ask: did monkeys know a process for making steel?

 

THE print of a shoe was found in a coal seam in Fisher Canyon, Nevada. The impression of the sole is so clear, says Andrew Thomas, that even traces of strong thread are recognizable. The age of this shoeprint is estimated at 15,000,000 years. I can only answer the question with suppositions. Either the monkeys made shoes and plaited soles (in which case the horizontal profession is not the oldest profession in the world!), or beings who already knew that shoes were the ideal protection for the feet walked the earth millions of years ago.

 

 

 

IN 1972 the English archaeologist Professor Walter Bryan Emery found a lump of limestone in an underground passage near Sakkara in Egypt. As the scholar carefully scraped it, a statuette of the sun god Osiris appeared. Suddenly Professor Emery felt a stabbing pain and collapsed. Myocardial infarction. Two days later he died in a clinic in Cairo. He was the twentieth victim of the “curse of the Pharaohs.”

 

What hitherto unknown powers are to be sought behind these mysterious deaths, which are all officially documented? Is it possible that forms of energy that are still unidentified are activated as soon as anyone touches the accursed remains?

 

 

 

SUCH a speculation acquires a fairly solid background when we know that X-rays have only recently been used to verify the presence of the most peculiar objects in mummies that have lain in Cairo Museum since the beginning of the twentieth century. United Press International carried the report of the leader of an archaeological group, James Harris from Ann Arbor, Michigan. X-rays showed a
holy eye
on the left forearm of Seti I (died 1343 B.C.). Thutmosis III (died 1447 B.C.) wore a technical gadget on his right forearm which the investigators described as a
golden brooch
. Queen Notmet wore four tiny statuettes and an oval stone on her breasts. Previously it had been impossible to see anything of these adjuncts because the mummies were covered with a thick black resinous paste. X-rays disclosed these technical accessories for the first time, although they are sure to appear in archaeological literature as simple
ornaments
. According to James Harris, the Cairo authorities have not yet decided whether the precious, because hitherto unknown, finds can be removed from the mummies. It is devoutly to be hoped that this investigation can be continued with every kind of technical assistance. Perhaps science knows a solution to the puzzle of why small technical objects were placed in bodies whose insides had been removed. Perhaps they might even find out the secret behind the curse of the Pharaohs.

 

 

 

WHEN the Pharaohs built their pyramids by the Nile, European history had not even begun. The first European “buildings” consisted of megaliths, the most famous of which are at Stonehenge, England, a Mecca for tourists from all over the world. Professor Alexander Thom, of Oxford, who has examined nearly 400 similar megalithic structures, explained to the newspaper
Welt am Sonntag
: “Neolithic man had an almost incredible knowledge of astronomy and geometry.” Thom found out that some of these layouts were magnificent lunar observatories and that Paleolithic men could “work out results in advance that would need the help of a computer today.” Thus Neolithic men (4000 to 1800 B.C.) could calculate the place where the moon would come out daily to the very slightest fraction of a second of arc. Three thousand years later this lost knowledge had to be rediscovered. These findings coincided with the reports by Professor Dr. Rolf Muller, who proved that Stone Age men had laid out their megalithic monuments according to the constellations.

 

How is our book-learning about Neolithic men, who learnt how to bore through stone in order to make stone axes, who flaked knives from stone or obsidian, who began to domesticate animals and practiced agriculture for the first time with a few useful plants, who had just emerged from caves to build primitive dwellings, how is this book-learning to be reconciled with the achievements of such a highly developed culture? Did the torpid cave dwellers have highly intelligent teachers? If so, where did they come from?

 

ONE continually comes across similar absurd contradictions. The banana, a delicious item of food, has been known in every tropical and subtropical region of the earth for many thousands of years. The Indian saga tells of the “wonderful Kandali” (= banana bush) which the “Manu,” the loftiest spirits and protectors of mankind, brought to our planet from another star which was much further along the path of evolution than our earth. But a banana bush or banana tree simply does not exist! The banana is an annual plant which does not multiply by seeds, which it does not possess, but by suckers. Looked at in this light, the banana is a problem. It is found on even the most remote South Sea islands. How did this plant, which is so vital for the nourishment of mankind, originate? How did it make its way round the world, seeing that it has no seeds? Did the “Manu,” of whom the Indian saga tells, bring it with them from another star—as an all-round foodstuff?