Flood kingship came down from heaven once again,' it says in a Sumerian cuneiform inscription.
In what form did the Sumerians imagine and depict their 'gods'? Sumerian mythology and some Akkadian tablets and pictures provide information about this. The Sumerian 'gods' were not anthropomorphic and every symbol of a god was also connected with a star. Stars are depicted in Akkadian picture tablets as we should draw them today. The only remarkable thing is that these stars are circled by planets of various sizes. How did the Sumerians, who lacked our techniques for observing the heavens, know that a fixed star has planets? There are sketches in which people wear stars on their heads, while others ride on balls with wings. There is one picture that instantly reminds one of a model of an atom: a circle of balls arranged next to each other that radiate alternately. If we look at the legacy of the Sumerians with 'space eyes' it teems with questions and enigmas beside which the terrors of the deep and the wonders of the heavens pale into insignificance.
Here are only a few curiosities from the same geographical area:
• Drawings of spirals, a rarity 6,000 years ago, at Geoy Tepe.
• A flint industry credited with an age of 40,000 years at Gar Kobeh.
• Similar finds at Baradostian are estimated to be 30,000 years old.
• Figures, tombs and stone implements at Tepe Asiab are dated 13,000 years back.
• Petrified excrement, which is possibly not of human origin, was found at the same place.
• Tools and stone engravers were found at Karim Shahir. Flint weapons and tools were excavated at Barda Balka. Skeletons of grown men and a child were found in the Cave of Shandiar. They were dated (by the C 14 method) to about 45,000 B.C.
The list could be considerably enlarged and every fact would strengthen the assertion that a mixture of primitive men lived in the geographical territory of Sumer about 40,000 years ago. Suddenly, for reasons inexplicable so far, the Sumerians were there with their astronomy, their culture and their technology.
The conclusions to be drawn from the previous presence on earth of unknown visitors from the universe are still purely speculative. We can imagine that 'gods' appeared who collected the semi-savage peoples in the region of Sumer around them and transmitted some of their knowledge to them. The figurines and statues that stare at us today from the glass-cases of museums show a racial mixture, with goggle eyes, domed foreheads, narrow lips and mostly long straight noses. A picture that is very difficult to fit into the schematic system of thought and its concept of primitive peoples.
Visitors from the universe in remote antiquity?
In the Lebanon there are glass-like bits of rock, so-called tektites, in which the American Dr Stair discovered radioactive aluminium isotopes.
In Egypt and Iraq there were finds of cut crystal lenses which today can only be made using caesium oxide, in other words an oxide that has to be won by electro-chemical processes.
In Helwan there is a piece of cloth, a fabric so fine that it could only be woven today in a special factory with great technical know-how and experience.
Electric dry batteries, which work on the galvanic principle, are on display in Baghdad Museum.
In the same place the visitor can see electric elements with copper electrodes and an unknown electrolyte.
In the mountainous Asian region of Kohistan a cave drawing reproduces the exact position of the constellations as they actually were 10,000 years ago. Venus and the earth are joined by lines.
Ornaments of platinum were found on the Peruvian plateau.
Parts of a belt made of aluminium lay in a grave at Chu-Chu (China).
At Delhi there is an ancient pillar made of iron which contains neither phosphorus nor sulphur and so cannot be destroyed by the effects of the weather.
This strange medley of 'impossibilities' should make us curious and uneasy. By what means, with what intuition, did the primitive cave-dwellers manage to draw the constellations in their correct positions? From what precision workshop did the cut crystal lenses come? How could anyone smelt and model platinum, since platinum only begins to melt at temperatures of 1,800° C? And how did the ancient Chinese make aluminium, a metal which can only be extracted from bauxite with considerable difficulty.
Impossible questions, to be sure, but does that mean that we should not ask them? Since we are not prepared to accept or admit that there was a higher culture or an equally perfect technology before our own, all that is left is the hypothesis of a visit from space! As long as archaeology is conducted as it has been so far, we shall never have a chance to discover whether our dim past was really dim and not perhaps quite enlightened.
A Utopian archaeological year is due, during which archaeologists, physicists, chemists, geologists, metallurgists, and all the corresponding branches of these sciences ought to concentrate their efforts on one single question: did our forefathers receive visits from outer space?
For example, a metallurgist would be able to tell an archaeologist quickly and concisely how complicated the production of aluminium is. Is it not conceivable that a physicist might instantly recognise a formula in a rock drawing? A chemist with his highly developed apparatus might be able to confirm the assumption that obelisks were extracted from the rock by wetting wooden wedges or using unknown acids. The geologist owes us a whole series of answers to questions about what is of significance in certain Ice Age deposits. The team for a Utopian archaeological year would naturally include a group of divers who would investigate the Dead Sea for radioactive traces of an atomic explosion over Sodom and Gomorrha.
Why are the oldest libraries in the world secret libraries? What are people really afraid of? Are they worried that the truth, protected and concealed for so many thousands of years, will finally come to light?
Research and progress cannot be held back. For 4,000 years the Egyptians considered their 'gods' to be real beings. In the Middle Ages we still killed 'witches' in our burning ideological zeal. The belief of the ancient Greeks that they could tell the future from a goose's entrails is as out of date today as the conviction of ultra-conservatives that nationalism still has the slightest importance.
We have a thousand and one errors of the past to correct. The self-assurance that is feigned is threadbare and is really only an acute form of stubbornness. At the conference tables or orthodox scientists the delusion still prevails that a thing must be proved before a 'serious' person may—or can—concern himself with it.
In the past the man who put forward a brand-new idea had to count on being despised and persecuted by the church and his colleagues. Things must have become easier, one thinks. There are no more anathemas and fires at the stake are no longer lit. The snag is that the methods of our time are less spectacular, but they are hardly less
