3. THE ENIGMA OF THE ASHOKA PILLAR
A
testimony to ancient metallurgical skills in Delhi, India is called
the Ashoka Pillar. Standing over 23 feet, it averages
16 inches in diameter and weighs about 6 tons. The solid
wrought-iron shaft is made up of expertly welded discs.
An inscription on the base is an epitaph to King Chandra Gupta
II, who died in A.D. 413.
Despite
being well over a millennium and a half in age, the Pillar's
constitution is remarkably preserved. The smooth surface is
like polished brass with only occasional instances of pock-marks and
weathering. The mystery is that any equivalent mass of iron,
subjected to the Indian monsoon rains, winds and temperatures for
1,600 years or more would have been reduced to rust long ago.
Production of the iron and the techniques of preservation are far
beyond 5th century abilities. It is probably far older, maybe
several thousand years. Who were the mysterious metallurgists who
made this wonder, and what happened to their civilization? |
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4. AN OUT-OF-PLACE COMPUTER FROM ANTIKYTHERA
A few days before Easter Sunday in 1900, Greek sponge divers off the
small island of Antikythera discovered the remains of
an ancient ship filled with bronze and marble statues and assorted
artifacts later dated between 85 and 50 B.C.
Among
the finds was a small formless lump of corroded bronze and rotted
wood. which was sent along with the other artifacts to the
National Museum in Athens for further study. Soon, as the
wood fragments dried and shrank from exposure to air, the lump split
open revealing inside the outlines of a series of gear wheels like a
modern clock.
In 1958 Dr. Derek J. de Solla Price successfully reconstructed
the machine's appearance and use. The gearing system calculated the
annual movements of the sun and moon. The arrangement shows that the
gears could be moved forward and backward with ease at any speed.
The device was thus not a clock but more like a calculator that
could show the positions of the heavens past, present and future.
It is highly possible that the device may have origins ages long
before the Greeks, and in a land far removed, now unknown.
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5. FLIGHT IN ANCIENT EGYPT
In 1898
a curious winged object was discovered in the tomb of Pa-di-Imen
in north Saqqara, Egypt dated to about 200 B.C. Because the
birth of modern aviation was still several years away, when the
strange artifact was sent to the Cairo Museum, it was catalogued and
then shelved among other miscellaneous items to gather dust.
Seventy
years later, Dr. Khalil Messiha, an Egyptologist and
archaeologist, was examining a Museum display labeled bird
figurines. While most of the display were indeed bird sculptures,
the Saqqara artifact was certainly not. It possessed
characteristics never found on birds, yet which are part of modern
aircraft design. Dr. Messiha, a former model plane
enthusiast, immediately recognized the aircraft features and
persuaded the Egyptian Ministry of Culture to investigate.
Made of
very light sycamore the craft weighs 0.5 oz. with straight and
aerodynamically shaped wings, spanning about 7 inches. A separate
slotted piece fits onto the tail precisely like the back tail wing
on a modern plane.
A full-scale version could have flown carrying heavy loads, but at low
speeds, between 45 and 65 miles per hour. What is not known,
however, is what the power source was. The model makes a perfect
glider as it is. Even though over 2,000 years old, it will soar
a considerable distance with only a slight jerk of the hand. Fully
restored balsa replicas travel even farther.
Messiha notes that the ancient Egyptians often built scale
models of everything familiar in their daily lives and placed them
in their tombs, temples, ships, chariots, servants, animals and so
forth. Now that we have found a model plane, Messiha wonders
if perhaps somewhere under the desert sands there may yet be
unearthed the remains of life-sized gliders.
6. A JET FROM SOUTH AMERICA
(see "Aviones
Precolombinos")
In 1954 the government of Colombia sent part of its collection of
ancient gold artifacts on a U. S. tour. Emmanuel Staubs, one
of America's leading jewelers, was commissioned to cast
reproductions of six of the objects. Fifteen years later one was
given to biologist-zoologist
Ivan T. Sanderson for analysis. After a thorough examination
and consulting a number of experts, Sanderson's mind-boggling
conclusion was that the object is a model of a high-speed aircraft
at least a thousand years old.
Approximately 2 inches long the object was worn as a pendant on a neck
chain. It was classified as Sinu, a pre-Inca culture
from A.D. 500 to 800. Both Sanderson and Dr. Arthur
Poyslee
of the Aeronautical Institute of New York concluded it
did not represent any known winged animal. In fact, the little
artifact appears more mechanical than biological. For example, the
front wings are delta-shaped and rigidly straight edged, very
un-animal-like.
The rudder is perhaps the most un-animal but airplane-like item. It is
right-triangle, flat-surfaced, and rigidly perpendicular to the
wings. Only fish have upright tail fins, but none have exclusively
an upright flange without a counter-balancing lower one. Adding
to the mystery, an insignia appears on the left face of the rudder,
precisely where ID marks appear on many airplanes today. The
insignia is perhaps as out-of place as the gold model itself, for it
has been identified as the Aramaic or early
Hebrew letter beth or B. This may indicate that
the original plane did not come from Colombia, but was the product
of a very early people inhabiting the Middle East who knew the
secret of flying.
7. CRYSTAL SKULL FROM ATLANTIS
(see "Los
Craneos de Cristal")
Without doubt the most famous and enigmatic ancient crystal is the
skull, discovered in 1927 by F.A. Mitchell-Hedges atop a
ruined temple at the ancient Mayan city of Lubaantum,
in British Honduras, now Belize.
The skull was made from a single block of clear quartz, 5 inches high,
7 inches long and 5 inches wide. It is about the size of a small
human cranium, with near perfect detail. In 1970, art restorer
Frank Dorland was given permission to submit the skull to tests
at the
Hewlitt-Packard Laboratories. Revealed were many anomalies.
The skull had been carved with total disregard to the natural crystal
axis, a process unheard-of in modern crystallography. No metal tools
were used. Dorland was unable to find any tell-tale scratch marks.
Indeed, most metals would have been ineffectual. A modern penknife
cannot mark it. From tiny patterns near the carved surfaces,
Dorland determined it was first chiseled into rough form, probably
using diamonds. The finer shaping, grinding and polishing,
Dorland
believes, was done with innumerable applications of water and
silicon-crystal sand. If true, it would have taken 300 years of
continuous labor. We must accept this almost unimaginable feat,
or admit to the use of some form of lost technology.
Modern science is stumped to explain the skill and knowledge
incorporated. As Garvin summarized: It is virtually
impossible today, in the time when men have climbed mountains on the
moon, to duplicate this achievement...It would not be a question of
skill, patience and time. It would simply be impossible. As one
crystallographer from Hewlitt-Packard said, The damned thing
shouldn't be.
8. WHO SHOT THE NEANDERTHAL MAN?
The Museum of Natural History in London displays an
early
Paleolithic skull, dated at 38,000 years old, and
excavated in 1921 in modern
Zambia. On the left side of the skull is a
perfectly round hole nearly a third of an inch in diameter.
Curiously, there are no radial split-lines around the hole or other
marks that should have been left by a cold weapon, such as an arrow
or spear. Opposite the hole, the cranium is shattered, and
reconstruction of the fragments show the skull was
blown from the
inside out, as from a rifle shot. In fact, any slower a projectile
would have produced neither the neat hole nor the shattering effect.
Forensic experts who have examined the skull agree the cranial
damage could not have been caused by anything but a high-speed
projectile, purposely fired at the prehistoric victim, with
intent to kill.
If such
a weapon was indeed fired at the man, then one of two conclusions
can be made: Either the specimen is not as old as it is claimed to
be, and was shot by a European in recent centuries, or the remains
are as old as claimed, and the marksman was ancient too. In view of
the fact that the Paleolithic skull was excavated from a depth of 60
feet, mostly of lead rock, the second conclusion is more plausible.
But who possessed gunpowder 38,000 years ago? Certainly not Stone Age
man himself. Another race must have existed, one far more
advanced and civilized, yet contemporary. The question is, where did
that rifle-toting marksman call home?
9. THE INCREDIBLE STONE OF DR. CABRERA
(see "Las
piedras de Ica")
A very unique time-capsule of images is housed in a warehouse in
Ica, Peru. Here are some 20,000 stone boulders, tablets,
and baseball-sized rocks, decorated with an astounding assortment of
pictures, in many cases very much out of time and place. The owner
is local physician, amateur archeologist and geologist Dr. Javier
Cabrera Darquea.
Most material employed is a gray andesite, an extremely hard granitic
semi-crystalline matrix, that is very difficult to carve. But as
Dr. Cabrera observed, People have been finding these engraved
stones in the region for years. They were first seen and recorded by
Jesuit missionary Father Simon, who accompanied Pizarro
in 1525. Samples were shipped to Spain in 1562.
The stone portraits show very sophisticated surgery skills and medical
knowledge, in some cases as advanced, and even more advanced, than
today. There are scenes of Caesarean sections, blood transfusions,
the use of acupuncture needles as an anesthetic (which only gained
use in the West since the late 1970s), delicate operations on the
lungs and kidneys, and removal of cancerous tumors. There are
likewise detailed images of open heart and open brain surgery, as
well as 20 stones showing a step-by-step heart transplant procedure.
This is a disturbing revelation in itself, that someone in unknown
antiquity achieved a level of sophistication rivaling our own. But
there are other pictures even more out-of-place. As Dr. Cabrera
noted, and as has been verified by other medical physicians, there are
stone etchings which show a brain transplant. The prehistoric
surgeons, it is evident, possessed knowledge several steps beyond
modern-day surgery.
10. MANUFACTURED METALS MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD
For the past three decades miners at the Wonderstone Silver Mine
near Ottosdal in the Western Transvaal, South Africa,
have been
extracting out of deep rock several strange metallic spheroids. So
far at least 200 have been found. In 1979, several were closely
examined by J.R. McIver, professor of geology at the
University of Witwaterstand in Johannesburg, and geologist
professor
Andries Bisschoff of
Potsshefstroom University.
The metallic spheroids look like flattened globes, averaging 1 to 4
inches in diameter, and their exteriors usually are colored steel
blue with a reddish reflection, and embedded in the metal are tiny
flecks of white fibers. They are made of a nickel-steel alloy
which does not occur naturally, and is of a composition that rules
them out, being of meteoric origin. Some have only a thin shell
about a quarter of an inch thick, and when broken open are found
filled with a strange spongy material that disintegrated into dust
on contact with the air.
What makes all this very remarkable is that the spheroids were mined
out of a layer of pyrophyllite rock, dated both geologically
and by the various radio-isotope dating techniques as being at least
2.8 to 3 billion years old.
Adding mystery to mystery, Roelf Marx, curator of the
South African Klerksdorp Museum, has discovered that the
spheroid he has on exhibit
slowly rotates on its axis by its own power, while locked in
its display case and free of outside vibrations. There may thus be
an energy extant within these spheroids still operating after three
eons of time.
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