There was a time, and it lies in the far distant past, when our ancestors had not yet mastered writing. How were messages to be left for future generations? Where could people draw and paint—for their own pleasure—and proudly show the results of such new art to the members of their tribe? The people of the Stone Age across the world all had the same idea. They decided to chisel drawings and engravings into the rock and cave walls.
From a present perspective, that represents an incredible research field. At first, this field may seem, perhaps, just as boring as collecting stamps…until the collector suddenly sees the light. There is something fascinating about this millennia-old art form, celebrated by peoples who knew nothing about one another and were incapable of knowing anything about one another. Why? What is so interesting about boring rock drawings? They exist in Yemen, in the Mato Grosso rainforest of Brazil, and on the coast of southern Chile. From Hawaii to central China, from Siberia to South Africa, we find these pictorial greetings from the people of the Stone Age, postcards from a far-distant past. In very few instances do we know the tribes which scribbled on their rocks, and thus many a Stone Age people posthumously obtained their name—christened by contemporary science.
How many rock drawings might there be worldwide? There must be millions of them. Even small islands and the highest mountains can yield petroglyphs—the technical term for these rock engravings. They exist in Ice-Age Alaska as much as on the blisteringly hot rock walls of the Kimberley range in Australia, in California, on Easter Island, or in the Indus Valley in Pakistan. And the incredible thing about them is the motifs.
Now, it is not surprising that Stone Age people kept depicting hunting scenes. The sun, moon, circles, matchstick figures, and handprints are also part of everyday life. I could show several thousand examples of this kind of rock drawing. My archive is full of them. There are many photographic volumes with such pictures; I only refer to the most important ones in the References (Numbers 1–11 under “Saluting the Gods”). What is the difference between other photographic books with rock drawings and this one? Other researchers always concentrated on one specific geographic area. But it only becomes interesting once specific forms are given the same attributes everywhere, as if talking drums had carried the message across all continents: the gods are the ones with the rays! My purpose is the intercontinental comparison of these amazing figures.
Australia lies a long way from the other continents, and in prehistoric times, the original inhabitants of Australia, the Aborigines, doubtlessly had no contact with the rest of the world. Yet, whole picture galleries by the indigenous inhabitants were created, primarily in the Kimberley range in the northwest of the continent. The motifs keep repeating themselves: gods with gleaming faces, with radiating auras around their heads—indeed, with suits enclosing their bodies. In 1981, I took hundreds of photographs, some of them in magnificent color, and kept asking myself the same question: what did the indigenous inhabitants use as a model? There is an elongated figure with two “antennae.” (Image 66) Then there are gods and goddesses with large eyes and goggles. The Aborigines call them wondinas, mother goddesses. One large figure is lying horizontally (Image 67); she seems to be wearing some kind of coat. The angel-like head in Image 68 has lines on both sides, as if they were messages. Although the wondina figures all appear in the same colors and with the same faces, they are nevertheless different depictions. Take a look at the accompanying drawings in Images 69 and 70. At a brief glance, one might think the figure with the outstretched arms and legs (Images 71 and 72) is the same. Not so. The “garland” around the radiant head, the different widths of the tongue, and the boomerang-like object at the bottom right prove it. It is missing in the one picture. The two beings with rays around their heads in Images 73 and 74 are not identical either. The large figure on Image 75 has a second, much larger radiating aura over its “halo.” The subject of special veneration? When the German flyer Hans Bertram had to make an emergency landing in the Kimberley mountains in October 1940, he was only spared by the Aborigines because he was wearing flying goggles with a wide leather rim. The indigenous inhabitants saw him as a messenger of wondina.
There are several thousand of these rock drawings in Australia, made thousands of years ago by the original inhabitants, the Aborigines. In more recent times, some of them have been traced with colored chalk to make them more visible. Image 76 was left in its original state and a “round head” appears in Image 77, which could equally well be found on a rock wall in the Tassili N’Ajjer mountains in the Sahara. And that makes it inexplicable.
Half the globe lies between the Algerian Sahara and the Kimberley mountains in Australia. Yet in the Tassili N’Ajjer massif in the Sahara, petroglyphs were discovered among hundreds of others that actually require no introduction. The first thing we recognize is the plump heads, then the puffed up suits. Because these rock drawings are very difficult to photograph, we sprinkled them with water to make the contours visible.
What stared back at us from the rock face here is described by archeologists as the “round head period.” The largest figure measures 8 meters in height. Its discoverer, the French specialist in prehistory Henri Lhote, described it spontaneously as “the great Martian god.”11
What was going on inside these Stone Age people, dressed in furs or naked, that they wanted to show something like this to posterity? What impressed them so hugely that they made the figure 8 meters high, towering over everything else? What did they see, what did they worship? The answer is staring us in the face. Images 78 and 79 are not the same. That can easily be seen in the helmet-like head. In Image 79, there are clear rings around the upper arms of this well-padded being, reinforcement rings not dissimilar to the ones in space suits. No psychological explanation can help us out here. Something mighty impressed the rock artists a great deal.
In Image 80, we traced the contours without adding a single extra line. What is unclear about that?
We know the Native American Hopi rock drawings were both markings for fellow tribes and history books for their own people. The first world, Hopi tradition teaches, was Toktela. Literally Toktela means “infinite space.”12 This first world had been inhabited by only Taiowa, the creator. The ancestors had made contact with various worlds until they found their home on this planet. The supreme law was you shall not kill any brother. If over the course of time differences occurred between Hopi, the opposing parties separated and went off in separate directions in search of new hunting grounds. But each party kept to the ancient laws and, on its long marches, marked the rocks with inscriptions that could be read by their fellow tribesmen and women. Thus, these rock drawings are nothing other than messages to other Hopi who might pass at some later time. (Incidentally, the same thing was practiced by the ancestors of the Mormons.) Such messages might be, for example, “We have dug a well…. Deadly scorpions live here…. We have seen the gods.” These drawings had the same value for the Native Americans of the time as the wall newspapers in China today. In 1982, when I was taking photographs at a Hopi rock massif not far from the hidden Hopi settlement of Oraibi in Arizona (Image 81), a Native American on a horse suddenly appeared and told me in no uncertain terms to stop. He even demanded that I hand over the films. Thankfully, White Bear, one of the Hopi elders, was with me and calmed down his young fellow tribesman. I was—White Bear said—one of the initiates.
The rocks are full of engravings—there must be thousands of them. (Images 82–85) Often they are positioned at a height of several meters. The artists must have built scaffolding or descended the walls on ropes. The highlighted Image 86 is called “The Starblower” by the Hopi.
Images 87 and 88 both show the same motif, one of them highlighted. Beings from other worlds? The suspicion is confirmed in Images 89 and 90. An extraterrestrial and a UFO shape? And of course, in Hopi art, we also find art figures with rays and antennalike structures on their heads, as well as kachinas, which have been immortalized in stone. (Image 91) According to Hopi tradition, the kachinas were the heavenly teachers of their ancestors.13
Today, kachinas are made in the form of wooden dolls and sold to tourists. The aim is to remind people of the former teachers, who promised to return one day. I have shown pictures of kachina dolls several times in previous books. Why again? Please compare the kachina dolls with the rock drawings. (Images 92–95) Something that was laboriously entrusted to the rock thousands of years ago is presented today much more simply in wooden form. The ancient motif remains the same. Kachinas were the teachers from the stars, and they were represented in a uniformly similar way around the globe—even in Val Camonica above the small town of Capo di Ponte in South Tyrol, Italy. There the rock drawings may be small compared to those in the Sahara or Australia, yet they fit just as much into the worldwide merry-go-round of the gods. Image 96 shows two figures with “haloes,” just like at the bottom in Image 97. Archeologists interpret the figure as a “dancer.” In Image 98, the “star with the planets” in the upper left corner of the picture stands out. Identical depictions can be admired on Sumerian cylinder seals.
Which psychology will provide yet another excuse for this phenomenon? The motifs of intercontinental rock art can of course be photographed. Our “Stone Agers” did not engage in global tourism. So only a single answer remains: they must have observed similar things. Something mighty and incomprehensible revealed itself worldwide, which imprinted itself on the minds of the Stone Age artists. And they left traces for eternity.
In the vastness of Brazil, prehistoric finds are often the discovery of amateurs. The Austrian Ludwig von Schwennhagen was an amateur with an obsession. He lived as a philosophy and history teacher in Teresina, the capital of the northern Brazilian state of Piaui. He discovered a giant area with rock drawings, divided the region into seven districts, and called them Sete Cidades, or seven cities. His book about Sete Cidades14 appeared in 1928, but it generated no great interest. Ludwig von Schwennhagen died as an impoverished school teacher.
Sete Cidades lies to the north of Teresina, between the towns of Piripiri and Rio Longe (about 3,000 kilometers north of Rio de Janeiro). The landscape is flat and of an intensive green, the roadsides lined with bushes. It alternates with sections of rainforest. Wild pigs, wild cows, and even wild horses make driving hazardous. Though Sete Cidades is almost at the equator, the climate is nevertheless bearable, because a light breeze is constantly blowing from the Atlantic coast 300 kilometers away. Sete Cidades is reached from Piripiri by a 16-kilometer-long road.
The visitor unexpectedly comes up against the rock walls. It is as if one were standing amidst burning chaos, torn apart like the Biblical Gomorrah, destroyed by fire and brimstone. A hill lies hidden beneath the shell of a tortoise—that, at least, is what it looks like, but science assures us that these are unusual forms of glacial deposits. (Image 99) Glacial deposits? Here? By the equator? When is that supposed to have happened? My escort, an official from the state of Piaui, offered another explanation: In earlier times, Sete Cidades had been an ocean basin and the strange rocks were nothing more than eroded rocks. Wind and weather had sculpted the curious forms over millennia. (Images 100 and 101)
Even if the origin of the strange landscape formations remains a mystery, the rock drawings are a fact. There are tens of thousands of them. They cling to overhanging rocks (Image 102) or salute us from walls at a height of 15 meters (Image 103). Once again, the same questions arise as in the rock cauldron of the Hopi near Oraibi, Arizona: Did the artists build scaffolding? Descend on ropes? Pile stones on top of one another? Why so many colored drawings in a single place at all? A Stone Age meeting point? And, as if by agreement, those “gods” on the rock walls with their haloes, rays, or helmet-like forms around their heads. (Image 104)
Once again, even the cleverest mind under the sun does not know who painted or engraved the paintings on to the walls. Yet it quickly becomes clear that the prehistoric artists preferred the same motifs as their colleagues on the other side of the world: circles, wheels with spokes, suns, squares, hand prints, crosses, stars, and highlighted beings. Additionally there are a few paintings that do not occur anywhere else. (Images 105–109) There are red and yellow circles, which today would be assigned signal character, bright red rings arranged above one another, or a round structure with a rootlike outgrowth. In the round object, there is something like a small window. A UFO? Heaven help us! I cannot think of any reasonable explanations, the exception being my adored “gods.” They greet us from the walls also in Sete Cidades, like everywhere. (Image 110) And all we can come up with for such a worldwide concurrence is a psychological angle? Our Stone Age ancestors are hardly likely to have all visited the same painting school. So where does the initial spark for these depictions of the gods come from? The gods are the ones with the rays!
You might think that Sete Cidades, with its impossible motifs on the rock walls, was probably a singular aberration of the Stone Age artists. What do we know about the Stone Age anyway? Maybe there was some kind of painters’ convention every few years near the equator in Sete Cidades, and a few whiz-kids managed to get from California to Sete Cidades and back. Or perhaps they sent their latest creations around the world on some kind of hocus-pocus telepathic wave. I know that such a suggestion is ridiculous. That is why the question bothers me all the more as to why various rock paintings southeast of Santa Barbara, California, are similar to those in Sete Cidades. The art gallery of Santa Barbara is just as incomprehensible for us thinkers of the 21st century as the one in Sete Cidades. What else can one say except that in Santa Barbara, too, the large figures with the rays indicate the gods, no matter whether they are called “Great Manitou” or “Rongomai.” Images 111–117 speak for themselves.
The people thousands of years ago left their god-like messages not just in rock drawings but also on the ground and on mountain slopes. The best-known example of this is the Nazca plains in Peru. I have written a separate book about the runway-like lines in the desert sand.15 I will therefore refrain from discussing the kilometer-long lines. Here I will present a comparative study of similar motifs worldwide. The unsolved riddle lies in the little word “worldwide.” It simply does not fit into the Stone Age.
Alongside Las Pistas, as the indigenous people of Nazca call their lines, the area in and around Nazca is teeming with figures of gods with the same attributes as in the rock art. On the brow of a brown and rocky slope, my lens alighted on a “manikin” with large eyes and two antennae. (Image 118) There was a similar figure slightly lower on another hill. Here are the precise coordinates for photographers: latitude 14°42’26 ”S, longitude 75°6’38”W. The “antenna beings” cannot be overlooked. One figure is wearing a hat-like form with a wide brim and feelers sticking out of the headdress. The arms are spread wide in a dance-like gesture and the figure is grasping something with both hands which is not clearly defined. (Image 119) The object reminds me of similar things in the hands of the “dancers” of Val Camonica in South Tyrol. (Compare Images 96 and 112. Other ray beings are stuck on various mountain walls around Nazca, Image 120) They make more of an impression than any rock drawing and include some with an “antenna head” and rectangular body. (Image 121)
Then there are two very curious drawings next to one another. To the left in Image 122, the figure is wearing a flower-like decoration on its head. The whorl-covered body turns into strips with indecipherable symbols. A robot figure is right next to it (Image 123) from whose head straight “antennae” extend in every direction. The lower body widens like a skirt or wing. This depiction occupies a special place in my collection, because there is a copy of it in Chile.
There the air force general Eduardo Jensen discovered the picture on a dry mountain slope above the Tarapaca desert in northern Chile. It is called the Atacama Giant. That’s right! The figure is a full 121 meters high. (Images 124 and 125) The region of Tarapaca is part of the larger Atacama desert and the territory lies on a Chilean air force firing range. In years past, pilots used the Atacama Giant for target practice. That has in the meantime ceased. Like his double in Nazca, the head of the giant is equipped with “antennae” on both sides. The rectangular body is concluded at its lower end with a transverse beam. Be it in Nazca or Chile, the arms are angled in both cases and end in rough, plier-like grippers. Such duplication should really give archeologists cause for reflection, because the linear distance between Nazca and the firing range is 1,300 kilometers. But archeologists undertake their research in isolation and rarely transnationally. Their field of work is narrow and rarely intercontinental.
I have heard the objection that the Atacama Giant had been created in our time by ground personnel to make a fun target for the pilots. Total humbug! General Eduardo Jensen’s discovery in August 1967 was a pure accident. He had flown along the steep coast in the early morning light and at first thought that he had seen an optical illusion. It required another two flights to confirm the find, which only becomes visible on the brown hillside under certain light conditions.
Another objection from amateurs, even if they are in possession of an archeological title, is beguiling but just as wrong: the Stone Age people of Nazca and Chile had copied their figures from old ceramic vessels. There are undoubtedly individual vessels with similar depictions as on the hillsides. What came first? The ceramics or the large depictions? If the ceramics came first, in which school did the motifs on them originate? And what means did the native people use to transform the small pictures on the vessels into the giants on the mountain sides? And why? The same applies with regard to textiles.
The Atacama desert in Chile (northwest of Antofagasta near the town of San Pedro de Atacama) might just as well be on Mars: dried up without a drop of water anywhere. There the mountain slopes are decorated with curious drawings that all stare up at the sky. For the native peoples, it must have been torture to create the figures in the burning heat. There are two squares with an arrow in the middle. It is pointing toward the earth with rungs like a ladder. (Image 126) Right next to it are symbols which, at first glance, look like writing. A message for the heavenly arrivals? Descend to us? (Images 127 and 128)
Or what about the “winged god with wheel” consisting of a wheel with spokes and below it two wings pointing down toward the earth? (Image 129) In between, there are rectangles, squares, animals…and they are not at all puny, but with side lengths of up to 20 meters. (Images 130 and 131) The two squares next to one another consisting of 12 smaller squares are also difficult to understand. A dual arrow runs down toward the earth from the right square. (Image 132) What was this message, which is only recognizable from the air, supposed to indicate? You will find us in the direction of the arrow? The question also applies with regard to the curved line that runs up a mountain slope and ends in a circle at its tip. (Image 133) Nothing but meaningless symbols to us—but they did mean something to those who created these messages. And these artistic minds were—and here we come to the crux of the matter—in similar mode worldwide. These symbols pointing toward the heavens are present in the desert soil of Majes and Sihuas in the Peruvian region of Arequipa, as much as in the Chilean region of Antofagasta. All made for the eyes of the gods. The same applies in the north in the extensive lava fields of the Mexican Sonora desert. There, too, we have the messages pointing upward. Farther north still, at the border between Mexico and California in the desert landscape of Macahui, some bushes manage to grow; that is also the reason why the symbols on the ground were not discovered immediately. The area extends northward from the Tijuana-to-Mexicali road—at a point 25 kilometers from Mexicali heading toward Tijuana. (I am deliberately describing the geographical location in the hope that the younger generation will start searching for the clues. Nothing can be seen on Google Earth because of the bushes.) There, in an area that comprises at least 400 km2, there are symbols on the ground which defy any explanation. There are circles, one next to the other, as far as the eye can see, as well as rectangles, half moons, wheels with several spokes, intertwined rings, and beings with radiating haloes. The diameters of the individual markings can reach up to 40 meters. But a warning for future researchers: the area lies on both sides of the border between the United States and Mexico. Permission must be sought at least from the U.S. border authorities. And there are dangerous poisonous snakes under the hot stones.
Still farther northward, not far from the little town of Blythe directly on the Colorado River, there are figures of people and animals that are up to 100 meters in size and which can only be seen from the air. (Images 134 and 135)
There can be no dispute: be it in South, Central, or North America, the native populations clearly operated a cult of mighty geoglyphs. Equally beyond dispute is the fact that the large majority of these geoglyphs are only recognizable from the air. Scientific work should look beyond its narrow local confines. Science normally looks for a common factor if there are several problems of the same kind. What is the common factor in all these geoglyphs? They are only recognizable to flying beings and have been created in areas in which they cannot be destroyed by flooding.
Thus we are entitled to assume that our artistic ancestors around the world at least believed that someone “up there” would see their pictures. Smart alecks often accuse me of categorizing the people who lived thousands of years ago as not particularly intelligent. On the contrary, I consider them to be very clever. They were not so stupid as to lay down huge markings on the ground over generations without knowing that they would also actually be registered by some god or other. Which gods? All the gods that emerge from the psychological fog are of no use, because they would at best be relevant over only a narrowly restricted area. People for whom that is sufficient are welcome to look for the Nazca gods in Nazca—not in the Sonora desert! Let anyone who sees the indigenous Nazca people as being so restricted that they created their gigantic lines and markings for water gods be satisfied with that, but we can say with “divine certainty” that the water gods had nothing to do with the Atacama Giant in Chile. The rectangles scraped into the ground of the Nazca desert are “ceremonial sites,” I read.16 And what about the ones on the mountain slopes of San Pedro de Atacama? Scraped-out areas exist there too, only there is no opportunity for pious pilgrims to gather, because the slope is too steep, in addition to the horrific heat and the absence of any trails. Professor William Isbell argues in the journal Spektrum der Wissenschaft that the native Nazca people had scraped their symbols into the ground and on to the mountain slopes as “occupational therapy.”17 It strains credulity! Does “occupational therapy” not apply in other deserts, then? Or take Professor Helmut Tributsch, who saw a “Fata Morgana” behind the symbols.18 That does not even apply to Nazca, let alone the Atacama desert.
And there is lots more in the same vein. A flood of academic nonsense, and each one of them is convinced of the correctness of his or her theory—indeed, considers it to be proven. Yet none of them can think outside the box. Rock drawings and large geoglyphs are a worldwide phenomenon which cannot be looked at in isolation. Even England boasts large figures on hillsides, such as the Cerne Abbas Giant or the 110-meter-long Uffington White Horse in Berkshire. (Images 136 and 137) Although the depictions in England look “modern” because the colors have been restored, they were nevertheless created in ancient times.
The knockout argument put forward by the so-called serious authorities is always the same. After all, the sun, moon, and stars just happen to be located in the heavens, and therefore the naïve people had created symbols for these nature gods, they say. Anyone who advances those kind of arguments has no idea about ancient Indian culture,19, 20 in which the flying machines of the gods are described in detail; knows nothing about what the Prophet Enoch said before the Great Flood,21 who gives a first-person eyewitness account of his visit to the gods in the heavens; or has never heard anything about the Kebra Nagast.22 Various airborne journeys of King Solomon are described there in the Kebra Nagast, including the speed with which the flying king was able to manage the great distances: “…thus Solomon covered a distance of three months in one day on his flying machine, without sickness and suffering, without hunger and thirst, without sweat and exhaustion. (Kebra Nagast, Chapter 58)
Arabia’s most important geographer and encyclopedist, Al-Mas’udi (895–956) wrote in his Histories that Solomon had owned maps which showed “…the heavenly bodies, the stars, the earth with its continents and oceans, the inhabited regions, its plants and animals, and many other amazing things.”23 They did exist, these flying chariots of early times, and the people on the ground produced their large markings precisely for these flyers in the sky—a salute to heaven. The prehistoric pilots landed in various places. After all, they needed fresh food and water. In doing so, they were observed by the Stone Age people, who engraved the gods they did not understand into the rock walls. This happened worldwide, of course, because the flyers of antiquity were globally on the move in their airworthy crates. Their traces can be found everywhere.
In the fifth century, India’s greatest poet, Kalidasa, lived at the court of the Gupta kings. In his epics, he draws on ancient Indian literature, to which he had access at the royal court. Thus he tells the story of the ancient rulers of Raghu in the Raghuvamsa, and in canto 13.1–79 there is a detailed and very precise account of a flight from Lanka to Ayodhya. There is a description of the panoramic view of the ocean from above, with its various depths, colors, and submarine mountains. The flying chariot sometimes flew between startled birds, then in the clouds, and even on paths “which are travelled by the gods.” The regions and places over which the flight passes are precisely listed: “The Godavari River…the Agastya hermitage…Chitrakuta mountain near Allahabad and the cell of Atri on the Ganges…past the capital of the King of Nishada to the territory Uttarakoshala on the Sarayu River…” The people gathered on the ground watched the heavenly vehicle with astonishment from which Rama disembarked on steps of flashing metal.24
All in all, according to the description, the prehistoric journey by air covered a distance of 2,900 kilometers from Lanka (Ceylon) to Ayodhya, via Setubandha, Mysore, and Allahabad. When King Dushyanta came out of the aircraft, he noted to his surprise that although the wheels were turning, they did not stir up any dust. Furthermore, they did not touch the ground, although Rama emerged from the heavenly vehicle on metal steps. Matali, one of the pilots, enlightened the king: the difference was that, on this occasion, a heavenly vehicle of the gods had been used—and not one belonging to humans.
Precisely this remark highlights the essential difference. In those prehistoric times, there were a variety of flying machines: the flying crates of the human rulers and the high-tech flying vehicles of the gods, which were considerably more sophisticated than their earthly imitations. The mysterious Chi Kung people who built “flying chariots” for the founder of the Shang dynasty operated on the earth. The Indian King Rumanvat, who set off not only with his harem but also a crowd of dignitaries, engaged in human aviation, as did King Solomon and the Pacific god Rongomai. Selected, intelligent people were instructed by the gods in how to produce flying vehicles. That does not require any technical evolution or physical infrastructure. I could teach any Stone Age society how to make a hot air balloon and produce steam for a primitive drive. A propeller from hard wood would not represent any great feat either.
The differences between “gods from space” and earthly kings, between flying chariots built by humans and the “heavenly designs,” is clearly established in the ancient texts. Typical in this respect is Arjuna’s journey to heaven. Arjuna is the hero of the story, and he flies off with Matali, the pilot. Even before they set off, Arjuna notices chariots that were lying on the ground unable to fly, as well as others hovering over the ground:
…Arjuna wished that Indra’s heavenly chariot would come to him. And the chariot suddenly arrived in a blaze of light with Matali, driving darkness out of the air and illuminating the clouds, filling the regions of the world with noise, like thunder…. He joyously drove upward with the magic construct toward the sun-like chariot. When he neared the area invisible to mortals, inhabitants of earth, he saw heavenly chariots of wondrous beauty, thousands of them. There the sun does not shine, nor the moon, there fire does not sparkle, but in their own brightness shine what are seen on earth as the stars. Because of the great distance, they do so look like lamps, although they are large bodies.25
I could really conclude this excursus about flying chariots—which, I am convinced, are the only reason for the giant markings on the ground and rock drawings of the gods (those with the rays)—with this comment: what more do you want? But cross-connections are like flashes of lightning in the memory. What was that about the heavenly vehicle? “…filling the regions of the world with noise, like thunder….” Just the same as in the Prophet Ezekiel in the Old Testament. There the noise of the heavenly chariot is compared with the noise of a host, the rushing and thunder of many waters. I know what that is about. After all, I have written 30 books on the subject.
And what did these “gods” actually want on earth? The answer is written in Chapter 11, verses 1–4 of the “Sabha Parva” (part of the Indian Mahabharata).26 There it is reported that those gods had come in ancient times from a far distant place in space to study human beings. Interstellar ethnologists were at work.
But it was not just human beings who left rock drawings in honor of the gods and markings on the ground pointing toward the heavens. The gods themselves put a stamp on the earth’s surface in a few places. Why on earth would they do that? It was probably for their heavenly “colleagues” or as messages for future generations. There might have been something important at specific locations to which the flying gentlemen wanted to draw the attention of other members of the airborne establishment.
Such messages can be viewed at a mountain slope near Palpa in Peru. Palpa is actually a part of the Nazca desert. The difference between Palpa and Nazca is academic more than anything else. In Palpa, there is a rectangular “chessboard pattern” on the ground which only becomes visible under certain conditions of daylight. A second one extends from the first. (Image 138) Somehow the image is reminiscent of binary code. Then there is a giant “mandala,” a geometric shape, whose message could never have been invented by Stone Age people. It was human hands which did the work—but under the guidance of a genius of geometry.
From the air, the first thing that becomes visible is a large circle with innumerable little dots on the circle line. In the middle, there are two superimposed rectangles divided into eight squares. (Image 139) These squares are subdivided by crossed lines and in the center there is a bundle of 16 lines raying out. The large geometrical figure is flanked on the right and left by two circles. The image as a whole produces a gigantic triangle consisting of three circles (two smaller ones and one larger one), a square, and the base lines around the geometrical message.
Why is this incredible image ignored in the specialist literature? Why do no mathematicians dare to think about the solution? It is claimed that the whole thing is a forgery created in our time. What led to that conclusion?
Two small wooden pegs were found at the edge of the mandala-like shape and dated using the C-14 method. The result suggested wood from our time. Case settled. Furthermore, someone had—intentionally?—left a small piece of cloth torn off some blue jeans lying about. That was sufficient for the supporters of the forgery theory. Sorry, friends from the other faculty: your rejection is premature.
In the 1960s, two teachers from Nazca attempted to measure out the mandala, which has been resting in the ground for an eternity, in order to draw a copy. They stumbled about the burning-hot stone desert with small sections of branch. The string for making the measurements was to be attached to the wood. The work was soon abandoned. The task was too enormous and too complicated. Today such measurements could be undertaken from the air.
The proportions of the whole diagram argue against a forgery. All three circles in the triangle have a side length of several hundred meters. Furthermore, and this is something that the critics should really have noticed, an ancient cut in the terrain runs right through the middle of the image. (Image 140) It starts at the edge of the inner rectangle, widens, goes through the inner and outer circle and beyond the frame of the encompassing square. Here—and this is the crucial point!—the circle and lines also pass through the cut in the terrain. For the unknown creators of the diagram, that seems not to have mattered—for today’s forgers, in contrast, it would have represented a serious problem.
It is true that there are figures and messages in Peru which originate in our time, including in the area around Nazca and Palpa—for example, the emblems or initials of political parties. But they are created in places which are easy to reach, not on mountain slopes with cuts in the terrain.
A precise study of the geometric depiction on the high plateau supports the genuine nature of the shape. To the right and left of the large square in the middle, there are circles consisting of an outer and inner ring each. At the center of each, a star can be seen with a central point and eight lines raying out. (Image 141) From this center point, a long, straight line goes to the two smaller circles on the right and the left. This line also goes over the cut in the terrain. The extension ends in the “Nazca piste” (not visible on the picture). The center of the large circle also forms a point from which lines ray out, with two overlapping rectangles. Then there is an inner and an outer ring. The stones of the inner ring run both through the cut in the terrain and a hollow. I took the trouble to count the points in so far as possible. In the inner ring, there are about 90 points, in the outer about 63.
The superimposed rectangles in the center of the large circle are, in turn, bisected by lines which precisely intersect the corner points of the square in the middle. The whole structure is a masterpiece of geometry. Furthermore—just like the chessboard pattern—the geometric message is embedded in the Nazca network.
Just imagine that forgers today had produced the geometric message. The first question is, What for? Well, maybe to make Nazca and Palpa more attractive for tourists. Tourists are flown over Nazca daily in small aircraft. But the thing that the pilots precisely do not do is fly their guests over the mandala and chessboard pattern, because they are not part of the scraped out drawings of Nazca at all. All that forgery for nothing? Friends, the matter is more complicated than might appear at first sight: both the mandala (the large geometric creation) and the chessboard pattern only become visible if approached from the air at a particular angle. If the pilot approaches from the wrong angle or height, the structure does not exist. In a complex piece of work, several geometric points would have to have been fixed and marked with string before work started. The boss of the team of forgers would need to be a geometry professor and his gang prepared to gather stones into huge triangles, circles, and rectangles for weeks in the burning heat. All that sweat-soaked effort just for a forgery? No one goes voluntarily into hell, not even the members of the Peruvian army. Furthermore, they would have arrived in all-terrain vehicles. Finally, the work gang would sweat off a large quantity of water. Where are the tracks of the vehicles? Where the paths of the industrious forgers?
If a clique of forgers had been at work in Nazca/Palpa in our time, such months of effort would most certainly not have gone unnoticed. Where are the triumphant sensational reports in the local press? We did it!
When I flew over Nazca and Palpa each evening in the autumn of 1996, I asked Eduardo, the chief pilot of Nazca at the time, “Who scraped these forgeries into the ground? Who gathered the stones?”
“That is no modern forgery! That thing has always been here!”
“Why don’t any of the many Nazca reporters write about it? I can’t remember having seen a picture of it.”
Eduardo, the oldest pilot at the time, informed me that, first, the diagram was not located on the plain of Nazca but in Palpa and, second, no one knew what to say about it. All that remained was a big silence.
That has not changed to the present day. Neither the geometric message nor the chessboard pattern are discussed anywhere. Not even the young pilots who today fly tourists over Nazca know what is correct. Hardly any of them even know of the geometric drawings. That does not surprise me. After all, they can only be seen under certain conditions of light and angles of approach. So the younger pilots think, with a shrug of the shoulders, that it is probably a forgery while the older ones maintain that the geometry has always been there, but has hardly been noticed because of the light conditions. No one wants to burn their fingers. No one dares to refute the loud claims of forgery. But they can be refuted. How?
Image 142 shows a section of the smaller accompanying ring on the right. Two straight lines cross the center and extend beyond the outer ring. Part of the line which frames the large mandala in the center can be seen to the left of the picture. The twin tracks of this line can be seen clearly in the picture. The alleged forgers would therefore not only have taken the trouble to frame the central representation with a square, but they would also have drawn the white line of this square twice—totally daft for forgers. They do not create extra work for nothing.
Image 143 shows a close-up outside the central depiction. We can still barely recognize strange rectangular shapes on the ground, which move outward from a point in a star shape. One line of the Nazca network runs toward it and touches the central mandala. So the “forgery” somehow belongs to the complex of lines of Nazca. In whatever form, flying planners were at work.
Image 144 is not about the geometric figures but about the surrounding terrain. Where is the car park for the vehicles of the forgers with their water barrels? They would not even have been able to ascend the steep slope on the right at the front (lower edge of picture). Where are the tire tracks? How and why would one plant an incredible geometric shape on a section of land which cannot be seen from anywhere, except when approached from the air in a particular direction? Why undertake the exercise in a dried-out desert when no human soul would ever see this magnificent stroke of genius? Forgers who produce a work like that want an audience, admirers, and applause for their achievement. All markings from our time—political messages, for example—are located on hillsides near roads with traffic, such as the famous Pan-American Highway, the route from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. It runs through the deserts of Nazca/Palpa. Yet the geometric miracle lies completely off any road in a burning hell hostile to any humans. Where is the signature of the genius forger? I have heard the objection that it sometimes rains violently for a brief period in Nazca/Palpa. The downpours should have washed the shapes away a long time ago if they were actually old. Not true. The same rain would have made the shapes, pistes, and zig-zag lines on the plain of Nazca/Palpa disappear. But that did not happen.
The chessboard pattern consists of more than 800 individual points, though they cannot be counted precisely. Just as with the mandala, a kind of water course runs transversely across the pattern here too. (Image 145) Should the rare rain water not have made these points disappear a long time ago as well if they were old? Precisely not. Why? Several undisputed old lines run their course to the left of the chessboard pattern. Irritatingly, they do so just as directly across water courses as those in the chessboard pattern. Any rainfalls were not able to wash away these definitively old lines at all. They exist beyond dispute. The fourth and fifth from the left even run for two meters in the water course. No trace of wearing away. The proponents of the forgery theory should think again. And the question about the tire tracks is also resolved under the magnifying glass: there aren’t any, neither on the first nor the second chessboard pattern.
It seems to me that a discussion of the geometric figures is not wanted, hence the moaning about forgeries—nothing unusual about that in our society. The spirit of the times only permits what is reasonable. And a geometric message from the past cannot exist. Period! Anyone who speaks about it is unreasonable. Who, actually, can protect us from reasonable people?
In fact, I can produce even more impressive pictures, whether the spirit of the times likes it or not. In Ica, a provincial capital 140 kilometers north of Nazca/Palpa, a giant salutes the heavens from a rocky plateau. Image 146 is the original; in Image 147, we have outlined the contours. The monster has broad feet angled outward and long legs, and its left arm is held at an angle. The head has been destroyed and the right arm appears to hold a long object. What is that all about? Another forgery? This time the figure was not laid out with stones but chiseled directly into the rock. Not in this and not in the last century. Anyone who argues that the Giant of Ica, as the figure is known, is not pointing at the heavens probably cannot cope with the message to the gods.
Even in Nazca, among the tangle of lines, a 29-meter-high figure generally called El Astronauta, “the astronaut,” is stuck to a hillside. (Image 148) The skull is dominated by two round eyes, the proportions of the body are correct, and the feet appear to be wearing heavy shoes. The arms are remarkable: one arm is pointing toward the sky, the other toward the earth. Is this intended to signal the connection of Heaven–Earth? (Incidentally, the whirling dervishes in Turkey, who rotate their body at great speed in their flowing robes, point one arm at the earth and the other at the sky, with the intention of indicating the connection between heaven and earth.) El Astronauta in Nazca is framed by two vertical lines. There must originally have been other figures on the same hill. Their contours can only just still be recognized. And there is a surprising three-dimensional effect which only becomes visible when the sun is low. Suddenly El Astronauta appears to step out of the hill.
The next symbol which has not been understood lies in the Bay of Pisco, Peru, directly on the Pacific coast. The shape is reminiscent of a huge trident or a gigantic three-armed candelabra. (Image 149) The structure as a whole measures a full 250 meters in height, and the individual pillars of the trident are up to 3.8 meters wide. (Image 150) The substrate consists of a white, salt-like, and crystalline substance. (Image 151) In earlier years, I scrambled up the sandy slope with small groups of people to take close-up photos and make measurements. In doing so, we left masses of footprints. Yet the next day, our footprints were literally gone with the wind. Nothing—nothing at all—indicated that we had ever been there. Today, entering the Candelabro—as the figure is known locally—is prohibited. No one knows what the structure means, who created it, and when it was done. The logical explanation would actually be that the mark is a sign for shipping. But even that is controversial, because there is a small island off the coast, which is only inhabited by roaring and smelly sea lions. This island blocks the view from the sea, and also from the north and the south, one can only look into the Bay of Pisco from a few kilometers away. Furthermore, the island itself would be the best mark for shipping. It can be seen from a long distance away, while the Candelabro only appears once the island has been passed. I have read somewhere that the Candelabro points to the lines on the plain of Nazca about 100 kilometers away. Wrong. The central arm does not point to Nazca. In any event, the shape fits into the picture of symbols pointing heavenward on the Pacific coast.
What starts as an asphalt road runs from the Bay of Pisco into the Pisco Valley to Humay. The road turns into a dusty gravel track up into the Andes to Castrovirreyna and Huancavelica. Fruit and vegetables grow where fields can be irrigated with water piped to sprinklers. The sudden transition from desert to cultivated landscape is jolting. The Hacienda Montesierpe lays to the right of the track, and next to it is a small chapel. Behind the hacienda, there is an approximately 300-meter-wide strip of cultivated land on the hillside which is artificially irrigated. Another 200 meters farther on, there is one hole after another in the dry soil of the slope. Widthwise, there are always eight holes next to one another. Each hole is about one meter deep and of the same width. (Image 152) And each hole has remnants of a wall. No matter whether you look up or down the mountain, the “ticker tape” is always visible. It is like a tapeworm or as if a scarifier precisely eight spikes wide had been rolled up and down the hill. (Image 153) The width of the band is about 24 meters, the length could not be determined.
I crawled up the slope as far as possible—often on all fours. Sometimes the holes were porous, the stone crumbling, but the higher I climbed the more small walls surrounded the holes. (Images 154 and 155) What could that be? A former tree nursery? A kind of cemetery? A defensive position? The border of sovereign territory?
The cemetery variant did not make any sense. Bones, ceramics, or textiles have never been found here. A tree nursery or plantation of some other kind was also out of the question. The ticker tape ran up and down the mountain often at a sloping angle and there was no water in any case. So a defensive system? Useless. Any attacker could have come from both sides; the defenders would have been shooting at one another. Furthermore, the ticker tape ran across a slope which dropped off steeply to the right and left. The defenders could neither have escaped nor been given reinforcement. The strip often nestles in the slope, gently winding its way downward and across the valley. If the holes were something like one-man bunkers, the defenders would often have been positioned lower than the advancing attackers. There was no logic to it, no simple solution made any sense. The native inhabitants have for centuries called the strip “la avenida misteriosa de las picaduras de viruelas”—the mysterious avenue of pockmarks.
From the air, the “ticker tape” looks like the track of a tracked vehicle which scrambled up and down the mountain here. But no such tracked vehicle exists anywhere. Then take the idea of a snake. Who was going to engrave a snake on to the slopes? A snake which slithers down the mountain, across the valley, and then up again?
I do not want to exclude anything, because the Native Americans of North America, at least, have placed depictions of animals of all kinds on their hills. There are artificially created mounds showing birds, bison, bears, lizards, and snakes. The pictures are only recognizable as complete works of art from the air. In the state of Ohio in the United States, between the capital city, Columbus, and Newark, there is a gigantic rectangle. Nearby, in Adams County west of the town of Portsmouth, there is the Great Serpent Mound. The geoglyph is a good 400 meters long, and for its whole length, nuzzles the bends of Bush Creek—albeit a good 40 meters above the water. (Image 156) The head of the snake rests on the highest point of the hilly terrain, the body winds its way for the whole 400 meters like an endless serpent, finally terminating in a spiral. Local legend has it that Great Serpent Mound is a depiction of the constellation Ursa Minor, the Small Bear. (Image 157)
A grave mound with various small bones was discovered at the lower end of the serpent. They were lying on a layer of mica. (Image 158) Mica is a potassium aluminum hydrosilicate which is found in granite mountains. The substance sparkles in the sun and has both elasticity and tensile strength. Mica can resist temperatures of up to 800 degrees Centigrade and is resistant to all organic acids. The characteristics of mica are very much in demand today because mica is an excellent electrical insulator. It is also resistant against arcing and electrical discharges. Sheets of mica can be separated like turning the pages of a book. (Image 159) I keep being aggravated by the puzzling parallels between places which are far apart. A thick layer of mica was also discovered in Teotihuacan. The place is 40 kilometers distant from Mexico City. There, only a few meters away from the Avenue of the Dead, an underground chamber was discovered which had been insulated with mica. (Images 160, 161, and 162) All of this was done an unknown time ago—both Tiahuanaco/Mexico and the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio. My question is not why native tribes far apart from one another did the same thing. It happened in rock drawing as well, after all. I am aggravated for another reason: the native inhabitants must have known about the multiple properties of mica. Otherwise, they would neither have used it nor mined it in far-distant granite mountains. This would not have been a simple matter.
The danger when looking for new explanations is that you might actually find them.
