Return to the Stars: Evidence for the Impossible (7 page)

So far the C-I4 method is the most accurate used by science. When using it, scientists start from the premise that the radioactive isotope of carbon (C), with the atomic weight 14, is present in our atmosphere in constant amounts. This carbon isotope is absorbed by all plants, so that trees, roots, leaves and grasses contain it in amounts that remain the same. But all living organisms absorb vegetable matter in some form or other, so men and animals also contain C-14 in the same proportion. Now radioactive substances have a definite period of disintegration, provided no new radioactive substances are added. This period of disintegration in men and animals begins with death, in plants with harvesting or burning. The carbon isotope C-I4 disintegrates at the rate of one half its amount in about 5,600 years. This means that 5,600 years after the death of an organism, only half the original amount of C-I4 is detectable, after 11,200 years only a quarter, after 22,400 only an eighth and so on. Since the original amount of C-I4 in the atmosphere is known, the C-14 content of fossilised organic matter can be found out by a complicated laboratory process. In relation to the constant C-I4 content of the atmosphere the age of a bone or a piece of charcoal can then be determined.

If grasses and bushes on the edge of a motorway are cut and burnt, the ashes give a false age of many thousands of years. Why is that? Day after day the plants have absorbed large amounts of carbon petroleum, but that in turn comes from organic material that stopped absorbing C-14 from the atmosphere millions of years ago. Thus a tree cut down in an industrial district may be only fifty years old according to its annual rings, but examinations by the C-14 method would date the wood ash so far back that the fifty-year-old tree would have had to have been planted in very remote times.

I doubt the accuracy and consequently the dependability of this method. Measurements made so far start from the firm assumption that the proportion of a C-14 isotope in the atmosphere is and was always the same.

But who knows if that is true?

And what happens if this premise is based on an error? In my book Chariots of the Gods?, I referred to ancient texts which said that the gods were capable of producing tremendous heat of the kind that only nuclear explosions can generate, and also that they were familiar with radiation weapons. In the Epic of Gilgamesh Enkidu dies because he has been smitten by 'the poisonous breath of the heavenly beast'. The Mahabharata tells us how warriors hurled themselves into the water to wash themselves and their armour, because everything was covered 'with the death-dealing breath of the gods.'

----

[Insert pic p055]

Are the symbols on this stone from Mexico just ornamentation or are these motifs from a forgotten technological age?

----

Supposing that in both this case and that of the 'explosion' in the Siberian Taiga on the morning of 30 June, 1908, what had really taken place was an atomic explosion?

Whenever and wherever—including Hiroshima, and all the nuclear weapon tests on Bikini atoll, in the Soviet Union, the Sahara and China—radioactive substances are released, the balance of the radioactive isotope C-I4 must be disturbed. So plants, animals and men had and have more C-I4 in their cells than the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere constantly accepted as a reference figure. This theory cannot be disputed. If it is accepted, then the so-called exact scientific datings would be called in question. In our theory of visits by unknown astronauts we are dealing with such vast periods of time that 'small' miscalculations can easily creep in and such a 'small' error can very quickly amount to 20,000 years or more.

That is one reason which makes me sceptical about datings that go very far back. Let us take the case of Tiahuanaco. If cosmonauts did leave our planet from there after completing their mission, they certainly did not leave any fossil heirlooms behind for the anthropologists and archaeologists. They had modern equipment and did not use charcoal fires for heating, and they took their bones away with them. In other words, they left absolutely no datable traces behind them. Bones and charcoal remains that are found on the presumed landing places of the astronauts and then analysed and dated come from men who settled among the ruins of the gods' fortress thousands of years later. I think it is a mistake to assume that the bones that have been excavated came from the builders of Tiahuanaco. I ask new questions because the old answers do not satisfy me.

Archaeology has only existed as a scientific discipline for 200 years. Its representatives scrupulously collect coins, clay tablets, fragments of utensils, shards of vessels, figures, drawings, bones and everything the earth yields up to the spade. They arrange the finds neatly in a system that only has a relative validity for about 3,500 years. Anything that lies further back remains hidden behind a veil of riddles and suppositions. No one knows and no one can explain what made our ancestors capable of outstanding technical and archaeological achievements. People say a compulsive longing for the 'gods', the desire to please the 'gods', to carry out the duties imposed on them by the 'gods'—all these were the driving forces behind the many wonderful buildings.

Longing for the 'gods'? Which 'gods'?

Carrying out duties imposed by 'gods'? Which 'gods' imposed the duties?

'Gods' have to perform wonders; they have to be able to do more than other beings. Invented 'gods', pure products of the imagination, would not have stayed long in the consciousness of mankind. Men would soon have forgotten them. That is why I hold the view that the 'gods' of whom we speak must have been real figures who were so clever and so mighty that they made a deep impression on our ancestors and dominated man's ideological and religious world for many centuries.

Then who was it who manifested himself to the primitive peoples?

We should not be afraid to give fanciful theories a fair hearing. For unfortunately what Heracleitus (ca. 500 B.C.) once said still holds good today: 'Because it is sometimes so unbelievable the truth escapes becoming known.'

There is an area of ruins on the mountainsides of Cajamarquilla, east of the Peruvian capital of Lima. Evidence of our human past to which scholars have not yet paid enough attention is being destroyed there daily by voracious bulldozers engaged in making roads.

----

[Insert pic p058]

This painting with a heavenly snake, priests sacrificing (?) and strange flying objects comes from a Peruvian ceramic vessel now in The Linden Museum, Stuttgart.

----

We trudged through this wilderness. We did not need anyone to draw our attention to curiosities, for we literally stumbled into them. In the roads there are hundreds of foxholes, like the ones dug by the Viet Cong which we know about from magazines and television. Of course, I cannot assert that these fox-holes were once dug to protect the inhabitants from air-raids. I dare not say that, because it is a well-known fact that no air-raids took place before the twentieth century!

In section the fox-holes of Cajamarquilla have a diamenter of 23 ins and a depth of 5 ft 7 ins. I counted 209 holes (!) in a single street. They must have served a very important and practical purpose, otherwise why all the expenditure of effort?

How did the local inhabitants explain the hundreds of holes?

They told me that they had once been grain silos.

This explanation is not very convincing when one examines the holes, which are hollowed out to human size. Naturally such holes could be filled with grain, but surely it would soon begin to germinate or spoil in the damp ground and moist heat? And how was the grain shovelled out of the narrow silos again?

In the absence of grain we filled one of the silos with sand. Then we tried to scoop it out again with our hands and shovels. The upper third did not take much effort, but from the middle downwards the work became exhausting. The last third was sheer torture. With head hanging downward, one leant into the hole, scooped up a handful of sand, raised oneself up and put it near the edge. But then we reached a depth when we could no longer lift our hands past our heads without the sand trickling out of them. We soon put our shovels away because the narrowness of the shaft no longer permitted any leverage. Finally we tied small pails to ropes and lowered them into the depths. If we tried to fill them with the shovels, half the contents tipped out. We tried all kinds of dodges. After working all day and using every device we could think of, we had emptied one silo until only six to eight inches of sand were left. That remnant is probably still there today.

Ever since I was told that the numerous fox-holes were 'grain silos', one question has been bothering me. Why did the peoples of Cajamarquilla take such tremendous pains over the excavation of such narrow holes?

Why didn't they install one big family silo?

As Cajamarquilla was obviously a well organised urban community, the idea of one large and practical communal silo must have suggested itself.

After investigating on the spot, I am by no means convinced that the time-honoured explanation is valid, but, people say, they must have been grain silos.

-------------------------------

4 - Mankind's Storehouse Of Memory

Why is it that we often cannot remember names, addresses, telephone numbers and ideas even when we try our hardest? We 'sense' that what we are looking for is hidden somewhere in the grey cells of our brain and is only waiting to be rediscovered. Where has the memory of something we know perfectly well gone to? Why cannot we make use of our store of knowledge as and when we require?

Robert Thompson and James McConnell of Texas spent fifteen years tracking down the secret of memories and their whereabouts. Having carried out all kinds of experiments, they finally made flatworms from the family with the sonorous name Dugesia Dorotocephala the stars of an experiment that was to lead to fantastic results. These creatures are among the most primitive organisms that possess cerebral substance, but at the same time they have a complicated structure which can be completely regenerated by cell division. If one of these little worms is cut in pieces, each single piece renews itself and becomes a complete and absolutely intact flatworm.

Thompson and McConnell let their starlets crawl about in a plastic trough, to which they connected a weak electric circuit. In addition, they installed their desk lamp with a sixty watt bulb above the trough. As flatworms are very aphotic (averse to light), they curled up every time the lamp was switched on. After the two scientists had repeated this game of 'light on, light off' for a few hours, the worms no longer took any notice of the constant changes. They had realised that no deadly peril threatened them, that darkness followed light and vice-versa. Now Thompson and McConnell combined the light stimulus with a weak electric shock, which affected the creatures a second after the light went on. Whereas the worms had ignored the light stimulus before, now they curled up again when they felt the electric current.

The worms were allowed a break of two hours before they were put on the rack again. Then it turned out that they had not forgotten that they must expect an electric shock after the light came on. They curled up after it was switched on even if the expected shock did not come.

Next the two patient investigators cut the worms into small pieces and waited for a month until the parts had regenerated to complete worms. Then they were returned to the test trough and the desk lamp was switched on at irregular intervals. Thompson and McConnell made the astounding discovery that not only the heads which had regenerated a new tail, but also the tail pieces which had built up a new brain curled up for fear of the expected electric shock!

Had chemical processes taken place in the cells which had stored the 'old' memories and transmitted the past experiences to the newly formed cells?

That was exactly what had happened. When an 'unskilled' flatworm devours a 'skilled' fellow creature, he takes over the abilities his victim has acquired. Experiments in other laboratories confirmed that if the cells from an animal that had been taught certain skills were inserted into the body of another animal the same skills continued to function. For example, rats were taught to press a specially coloured key if they wanted to reach their food. When the animals had completely mastered their lesson they were killed, an extract was taken from their brains and injected into the abdominal cavities of untrained rats. After only a few hours the untrained rats were already using the same coloured key. Experiments with goldfish and rabbits confirmed the assumption that learned knowledge can be transmitted from one body to another by the transfer of certain cells.