Return to the Stars: Evidence for the Impossible (15 page)

But the Pre-Inca tribes, who had observed these beings at work and been tremendously impressed by them, longed passionately for the return of these 'gods'. They waited for years and when their wish was not fulfilled, they began to make new lines on the plain, just as they had seen the 'gods' make them. That is how the extensions of the first two landing strips originated.

Yet still the 'gods' did not appear. What had gone wrong? How had they annoyed the 'heavenly ones'? A priest remembered that the 'gods' had come from the stars and advised them to lay the enticing lines out according to the stars. The work began again and the tracks laid out according to the constellations came into being.

But the 'gods' still stayed away.

In the interim, generations were born and died. The original genuine strips made by the unknown cosmonauts had long fallen into ruin. The Indian tribes who came after only knew of the 'gods' who had once come down from heaven by oral accounts. The priests turned the factual accounts into sacred traditions and made the people constantly build new signs for the 'gods' so that they might return one day.

As this kind of linear conjuring was unsuccessful, they began to scratch large animal figures in the ground. At first they drew all kinds of birds that were supposed to symbolise flight, but later their imagination suggested outlines of spiders, apes and fish.

Admittedly that is a hypothetical explanation of the pictures at Nazca, but surely something like it could have happened? I have seen—and anyone else can see, too—that the animal symbols and the coordinates of the landing strips are only recognisable from a great height.

But that is not all. In the vicinity of Nazca, on the rock faces, are drawings of men with rays shooting out of their heads, rather like the gloriole in paintings of Christ.

Nazca is 100 miles as the crow flies from Pisco. Suddenly I had a brainwave. Was there some connection between the trident in the Bay of Pisco, the figures on the plain of Nazca and the ruins on the plateau of Tiahuanaco? Apart from a very slight deviation, they are joined by a straight line drawn on the map. But if the plain of Nazca was a landing ground and the trident at Pisco a landing signal, then there would have to be landmarks south of Nazca too, because one can hardly imagine that all the astronauts flew in from the north, i.e. from Pisco.

And in fact large markings, whose meaning and purpose have not yet been explained, were found on high rock faces near the south Peruvian town of Mollendo, 250 miles as the crow flies from Nazca, and others continue into the deserts and mountains of the Chilean province of Antofagasta. In many places right-angles, arrows and ladders with curved rungs can be identified, or one sees whole hillsides covered with rectangles partly filled in ornamentally. All the way along the map line steep rock faces exhibit circles with rays directed inwards and ovals filled in with a chessboard pattern, while on the inaccessible hillside in the desert of Tarapacar there is a gigantic 'robot'.

On 26 August, 1968, the Chilean newspaper el Mercurio wrote about its discovery (a little less than 500 miles south of Nazca) under the headline 'New Archaeological Discoveries by Aerial Photography': 'A group of experts have succeeded in making a new archaeological discovery from the air. When they were flying over the desert of Tarapacar, which lies in the extreme north of Chile, they discovered the stylised figure of a man drawn in the sand. This figure is about 330 ft high, and its outline is marked with stones of volcanic origin. It is on a solitary hill about 650 ft high ... Scientific circles are of the opinion that aerial searches of this kind are of great importance for the investigation of prehistory ...'

According to the members of the expedition the 'robot' is about 330 ft high. His body is rectangular, like a chest, his legs are straight and on the thin neck sits a square head from which twelve straight antennae of equal length stick up. From hip to thigh triangular fins like the stubby wings of supersonic fighters are attached to the body on both sides.

We owe this discovery to Lautaro Nunez of the University of the North in Chile, General Eduardo Jensen and the American Delbert Trou, who observed the ground formations closely during a flight over the desert. This genuinely sensational find was fully confirmed during a second reconnaissance flight by the Director of the Archaeological Museum of Antofagasta. Mrs Guacolda Boisset. On the heights of Pintados, she discovered and confirmed with aerial photographs a series of other stylised figures over a distance of three miles.

In the summer of 1968, the government newspaper El Arauco, Santiago, Chile, wrote: 'Chile needs the help of someone to satisfy our chronic curiosity, for neither Gey nor Domeyko (archaeologists) has ever said anything about the platform of El Enladrillado, of which some people say that it was laid out artificially and others that it is the work of beings from another planet.'

Details about the discoveries on the plateau of El Enladrillado were made known in August, 1968. The rock-strewn plateau is about 2 miles long and at the place undestroyed by the passage of time about 870 yards wide. This terrain looks rather like an amphitheatre. If its builders were men, they must have possessed the legendary 'superhuman strength'. The stone blocks that have been moved here are rectangular, 12 to 16 ft high and 20 to 30 ft long. If giants lived here, they must still have been exceptionally big. Judging by the stone chairs, their shinbones must have been 13 ft long. No fantasy is rich enough to imagine what kind of mortals could have assembled these blocks to form an amphitheatre. The newspaper La Mariana of Talca, Chile, for 11.8.68 asks: 'Could this place have been a landing ground (for gods). Undoubtedly it could.' What more can one want?

The plateau of El Enladrillado can only be reached on horseback. You ride for three hours from the little village of Orto Alto de Viches to the rewarding goal at a height of 1,378 ft. The volcanic blocks that are found there in large numbers have such a smooth surface that they could only have resulted from very careful dressing. A partially interrupted landing strip, about 1,000 yards long and 65 yards wide, is also clearly recognisable on this plateau. In the neighbourhood scholars have found and still find prehistoric tools with which—presumably—the 233 geometrically shaped stone blocks, each weighing 20,000 lb, were supposed to have been dressed.

In a story dated 25.8.68 the newspaper Concepcion, El Sur, Chile, calls the plateau of El Enladrillado 'a mysterious place'. The site is indeed mysterious—as all sites with prehistoric traditions still are today. One's gaze turns westward over vast abysses, above which condors and eagles circle and behind which volcanoes soar up like dumb sentinels. Over towards the western hills there is a 30o-foot-deep natural cave in which traces of work done by human hands are still discernible. At present scholars toy with the idea that stone-age men excavated a vein of obsidian (a glasslike formation of various recent lava deposits) in order to leave behind a sample of their industrial abilities in the form of tools containing metal. I cannot quite go along with this. Stone-age men would hardly have had tools containing metal. I think that the present theory cannot be correct.

During archaeological and geological investigations scholars found a fallen monolith, which even on its side rose 6ft from the ground. When they had turned it over with great effort, they found several faces on the other side. A puzzle worthy of inclusion in the forest of questions surrounding Easter Island.

One other remarkable find deserves to be mentioned. In the middle of the plateau stand three boulders with a diameter of 3 ft to 4 ft 6 ins. When taking measurements at the beginning of last year, it was discovered that two of these boulders are in accurate compass line from north to south. With a minimal deviation the line that runs from the first two boulders to the third cuts the horizon at the point where the sun is at its zenith in summer. Here again we must ask whether an extinct race left behind traces of astonishing astronomical knowledge or whether our ancestors were working on a 'higher task'.

Such exact evidence of the past cannot be just brushed off as coincidence.

In El Mercurio, Santiago, Chile, for 28.8.68, the leader of the scientific expedition, Humberto Sarnataro Bounaud, supported the point of view that an ancient unknown culture must have been at work here, because natives of the region would never have been capable of such an achievement. But, said Bounaud, somebody already knew that the plateau would make a first-class landing ground for all kinds of flying bodies. That would explain the 233 symmetrically arranged stone blocks which could have been visual signs directed skywards.

Bounaud also writes: 'Or the explanation may quite simply be that unknown beings used this place for their own ends.'

I have gone into the most recent finds on the plateau of El Enladrillado in such detail for two reasons. Firstly, because they are only known in Europe to a comparatively small circle of specialists and secondly because they fit so splendidly into my theory that the markings in the Bay of Pisco were the beginning of a straight line along which landing grounds for the cosmonauts were laid out right up to the far north of Chile.

We should always bear in mind that although the creators of ancient cultures have disappeared, the traces they left behind still question and challenge us. To find the correct answers to their questions, to meet their challenge, archaeological research institutes should receive adequate funds from their governments, but perhaps also from an international organisation, so that they can systematise and intensify their investigations. It is right and necessary for the industrial nations to invest millions of pounds in research for the future, but should research into our past be treated as the Cinderella of the present for that reason? The day may come when the nations begin an archaeological research race that they all keep a strict military secret. Then a situation will arise of the kind we experienced with the first landing on the moon, but the race that begins then will not be a question of prestige so much as a matter of cashing in.

In this connection I should like to mention a number of sites where intensive modern research could probably 'decipher' many riddles of our past in a way that would benefit technology.

The remains of a human settlement whose C-14 dating gave an age of 29,600 years were found on the island of Santa Rosa, California.

Twelve miles south of the Spanish town of Ronda, in a solitary mountain valley, lies the cave of La Pileta. It can be proved that men lived in this cave from 30,000 to 6,000 B.C. The cave walls are covered with strange stylised signs that are not just senseless scribbles, for they are executed in a masterly fashion and are often repeated. They might be a kind of writing.

In the mountains of Ennedi in the southern Sahara, Peter Fuchs found rock engravings of four female figures of a kind found nowhere else in Africa. The bodies of the figures wear clothes and exhibit tattoos similar to those found in the South Pacific. Yet the distance between the southern Sahara and the Pacific islands is 15,625 miles as the crow flies!

So-called meanders have long been known from many cave drawings in Africa and Europe. They are drawings of mazes and so far no one knows what to make of them. But now these labyrinth symbols have also been found on South American cave walls, especially in the Territorio Nacional de Santa Cruz and the Territorio de Neuguen, Argentine. Was there an exchange of ideas between the artists who created them? How else can the repetition of the same symbols be explained?

The Argentinian scholar Juan Moricz has shown that the language of the Magyars was spoken in the ancient kingdom of Quito even before the Spanish conquest. He found the same family names, the same place names and identical burial customs. When the ancient Magyars buried a dead man, they said farewell to him with the words: 'He will disappear into the constellation of the Great Bear.' And in the South American valleys of Quinche and Cochasqui there are burial mounds which are faithful reproductions of the seven main stars of Ursa Major.

A stone 7 1/2 ft high and 33ft in circumference has been lying since prehistoric times on a small hill between Abancay and the River Apurimac, Peru, on the stretch Cuzco-Macchu Picchu. This Piedra de Saihuite bears reliefs which show wonderful terraces, temples and whole blocks of houses, as well as strange 'drains' and writing that is still undeciphered. Similar reliefs in this area are known by the names Rumihuasi and Intihuasi. Rumihuasi exhibits a model of a temple with a niche 4 ft 7 ins high.

In February, 1967, the well-known National Geographic Magazine, USA, published a story about the small tribe of the Ainus, who live on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. The Ainus still claim today with complete conviction that they are the direct descendants of 'gods' who came from the cosmos, and they repeat it in their myths.

Apollo is pictured flying over the sea on a vase which is kept in the Vatican and dates to the sixth century B.C. Apollo is sitting, playing the lyre, on a kind of shell with three long legs. The construction is drawn through the air by three massive eagle's wings.