heads in the ground again when weird unknown 'animals' soar in the air, droning, buzzing and snorting (helicopters, all-purpose vehicles), and lastly they take flight to the safe refuge of their caves when a frightening boom and rumble resounds from the mountains (a trial explosion). Undoubtedly our astronauts must seem like almighty gods to these primitive people 1
Day by day the space travellers continue their laborious work and after some time a delegation of priests or medicine men will probably approach the astronaut whom their primitive instincts tell them is the chief in order to make contact with the gods. They bring gifts to pay homage to their guests. It is conceivable that our spacemen will rapidly learn the language of the inhabitants with the help of a computer and can thank them for the courtesy shown. Yet although they can explain to the savages in their own language that no gods have landed, that no higher beings worthy of adoration have paid a visit, it has no effect. Our primitive friends simply do not believe it. The space travellers came from other stars, they obviously have tremendous power and the ability to perform miracles. They must be gods! There is also no point in the spacemen trying to explain any help they may offer. It is all far beyond the comprehension of these people who have been so terrifyingly invaded.
Although it is impossible to imagine all the things that might take place from the day of landing onwards, the following points might well figure on a preconceived plan:
Part of the population would be won over and trained to help search a crater formed by an explosion for fissionable matter needed for the return to earth.
The most intelligent of the inhabitants would be elected 'king'. As a visible sign of his power, he would be given a radio set through which he could contact and address the 'gods' at any time.
Our astronauts would try to teach the natives the simplest forms of civilisation and some moral concepts, in order to make the development of social order possible. A few specially selected women would be fertilised by the astronauts. Thus a new race would arise that skipped a stage in natural evolution.
We know from our own development how long it would take before this new race became space experts. Consequently, before the astronauts began their return flight to earth, they would leave behind clear and visible signs which only a highly technical, mathematically based society would be able to understand much much later.
An attempt to warn our proteges of dangers in store would have little chance of success. Even if we showed them the most horrifying films of terrestrial wars and atomic explosions, it would not prevent the beings living on this planet from committing the same follies any more than it now stops (almost) the whole of sentient humanity from constantly playing with the burning flame of war.
While our space-ship disappears again into the mists of the universe, our friends will talk about the miracle—'the gods were here!' They will translate it into their simple language, turn it into a saga to be handed down to their sons and daughters and they will turn the presents and implements, and everything that the space travellers left behind into holy relics.
If our friends have mastered writing, they may make a record of what happened: uncanny, weird, miraculous. Then their texts will relate—and drawings will show—that gods in golden clothes were there in a flying boat that landed with a tremendous din. They will write about chariots which the gods drove over land and sea, and of terrifying weapons that were like lightning and they will recount that the gods promised to return.
They will hammer and chisel in the rock pictures of what they had once seen:
Shapeless giants, with helmets and rods on their heads, carrying boxes in front of their chests; balls on which indefinable beings sit and ride through the air; staves from which rays are shot out as if from a sun; strange shapes, resembling giant insects, which were vehicles of some sort.
There are no limits to the fantasy of the illustrations that result from the visit of our space-ship. We shall sec later what traces the 'gods' who visited the earth in our remote antiquity engraved on the tablets of the past.
It is quite easy to sketch the subsequent development of the planet that our space-ship visited. The inhabitants have learnt a lot by watching the 'gods' surreptitiously; the place on which the space-ship stood will be declared holy ground, a place of pilgrimage, where the heroic deeds of the gods will be praised in song. Pyramids and temples will be built on it—in accordance with astronomic laws, of course. The people grows, there are wars that devastate the place of the gods, and then come generations who rediscover and excavate the holy places and try to interpret the signs.
This is the stage we have reached. Now that we can land men on the moon we can open our minds, to space travel. We know the effect the sudden arrival of a large oceangoing sailing vessel had on primitive people in for example the South Sea Islands. We know the devastating effect a man like Cortes, from another civilisation, had on South America. So then we can appreciate, if only dimly, the fantastic impact the arrival of space-craft would have made in prehistoric times.
We must now take another look at the forest of question marks—the array of unexplained mysteries. Do they make sense as the remains of prehistoric space travellers? Do they lead us into our past and yet link up with our plans for the future?
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Chapter Three - The Improbable World Of The Unexplained
Our historical past is pieced together from indirect knowledge. Excavations, old texts, cave drawings, legends and so forth were used to construct, i.e. a working hypothesis. From all this material an impressive and interesting mosaic was made, but it was the product of a preconceived pattern of thought into which the parts could always be fitted, though often with cement that was all too visible. An event must have happened in such and such a way. In that way and no other. And lo and behold—if that's what the scholars really want—it did happen in that way. We are entitled, indeed we ought to doubt every accepted pattern of thought or working hypothesis, for if existing ideas are not called in question research is at an end. So our historical past is only relatively true. If new aspects of it turn up, the old working hypothesis, however familiar it may have become, must be replaced by a new one. It seems the moment has come to introduce a new working hypothesis and place it at the very centre of our research into the past.
New knowledge about the solar system and the universe, about macrocosm and microcosm, tremendous advances in technology and medicine, in biology and geology, the beginning of space travel—these and many other things have completely altered our world picture in less than fifty years.
Today we know that it is possible to make space-suits that can withstand extremes of heat and cold. Today we know that space travel is no longer a Utopian idea. We are familiar with the miracle of colour television, just as
