Thursday, September 3, 2020

SECRETS OF LOST RACES continued


 Secrets of Lost Races #4

From the book by the same name published in 1977


Prehistoric Aviation!



CHAPTER 4



ADVANCED AVIATION IN PREHISTORIC TIMES!



Soon after the destruction of the Babel world center, a

number of secondary civilization centers emerged in various parts

of the world. The initial catastrophe that cast the globe into a

period of chaos and confusion may have lasted as long as a

century, during which time many of the pre-Babel nations lost

contact with one another, while still others were probably

overrun by migrating tribes uprooted in the confusion.

     The technology of many of them was not affected, however,

and they were able to maintain their high level of sophistication

and knowledge. The Renaissance maps tell us that at least five

generations of ancient cartographers from a highly advanced

civilization made a series of uninterrupted surveys of the world

before, during and at the end of the Ice Age. The conditions

under which they operated must have been subject to major

modifications, for whereas in pre-Babel days they had lived under

a "one world command," the post-Babel world presented an entirely

different situation. The world was now split into political

factions, each one claiming sovereignty over and independence of

the others. The former global cooperation had evaporated, and the

various political and national entities began to strive for world

domination. During the first part of the century of confusion

after Babel, the rivalry did nothing to disturb the balance of

power, but toward the end of the first hundred years, natural

catastrophes, probably initiated by the beginning of the Ice Age,

greatly affected the already uneasy truce that existed between

them. The violence that followed led to the mutual destruction of

these groups. The advanced technology they had struggled so hard

to preserve for their national greatness now spawned an arsenal

of weaponry that ultimately destroyed them.


     There were eight centers of post-Babel high civilization

where the remnants of the pre-Flood technology were treasured and

utilized. These centers were in the Middle East, northern Europe,

the Arctic, India, what is now the Gobi Desert, Antarctica,

western and central South America, and southwestern North America

and the Caribbean. During the initial period of chaos, these

centers were cut off from one another, but communications were

soon reestablished. One of these contact methods appears to have

been by air, strange as that may seem in our age, for we still

consider the Wright brothers' invention a spontaneous outburst of

creativity befitting the twentieth century. Many legends recorded

by subsequent peoples contain remembrances of a period when

aviation was a well-known concept and flight was a frequent

occurrence.


     One of the earliest preserved records of flight is in a

Babylonian set of laws called the Halkatha, which contains this

passage: "To operate a flying machine is a great privilege.

Knowledge of flying is most ancient, a gift of the gods of old

for saving lives."

     The Babylonian "Epic of Etana," describing a prehistoric

flight, is preserved for us in fragmentary text and cuneiform

dating back to a period between 3000 and 2400 B.C. The epic tells

of Etana, a poor shepherd who finds an eagle with injured wings.

He nurses the eagle back to health, and in return the eagle

promises to take him on a journey up into the heavens. Etana

thereupon mounts the bird, and together they soar off into the

sky, gazing at intervals down on the earth below.

     At the first stage, the eagle cries, "Behold, my friend, the

land and how it is! Look upon the sea also. Lo, the land has

become like a hill and the sea like a watercourse!" This

observation is made after an ascent of a double hour's march - in

modern terms, six to eight miles high. Rising high above

Mesopotamia, Etana can see the mountains of Armenia in the north,

and to the southeast, the "sea" of the Persian Gulf looking like

a "watercourse" or river stretching to the horizon.

According to the inscriptions, the two climb three double marches

higher before the eagle again directs Etana's attention to the

earth's appearance. From here, he says, the earth looks like a

"plantation" and the land is like a "hut" surrounded by the

"courtyard of the sea." Etana has reached a height from which he

can see the waters of the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the

Mediterranean and the Black Sea, encompassing the Middle East.

As they look from still farther up, the land appears to be like a

"grinding stone" and the sea like a "gardener's canal" or

irrigation ditch. The mountains are no longer distinguishable;

from this altitude the surface appears even and curved, like the

surface of a grindstone. At the circumference Etana sees the

waters of the oceans surrounding Asia, Europe, and Africa.

Higher still, the eagle remarks that the earth now looks like a

"garden," the sea like a "wicker basket." The various

characteristic shapes of the continents are now apparent, as are

their orange deserts, dark green forested areas, gray valleys and

brown-yellow mountains, which look like the colored patches of a

garden. Now Etana also sees the oceans of the world, this time no

longer as a surrounding ditch but as separate basins, like

various "baskets" filled with water.

     Finally he reaches a height where he in unable to

distinguish between land and sea. He has reached an altitude

where the clouds and water vapor of the atmosphere hide most of

the earth's features in a bluish-white haze. At this point the

journey ends, and Etana is returned to earth.


     The only myth element the epic contains is the eagle, who

may represent some form of aircraft that with the passing of time

was transformed into a bird by a people ignorant of the mechanics

of flight. Whatever the vehicle of ascent may have been, the

"Epic of Etana" certainly supplies us with a very accurate

description of the earth's surface from various altitudes -

descriptions which were not verified in our own era until the

high-altitude aerial flights of the 1950s and the first space

shots of the 1960s.


     Question: Who made and recorded this observation in the

ancient East before 2400 B.C.?


     Another Chaldean work, the Sifr'ala, dates back more than

5,000 years, and though fragmentary, it is a work filling almost

a hundred pages of English translation. Archaeologist and

ethnologist Y. N. Iban A'haraon, who worked on its decipherment,

found to his astonishment that the Sifr'ala is a detailed account

of how to build and operate an aircraft. The text speaks of

various parts such as vibrating spheres, graphite rods and copper

coils; and on the subject of flight the writer comments on wind

resistance, gliding and stability. Unfortunately, many key lines

of the text are missing, making any attempt at reconstructing the

craft impossible.


     Early Chinese annals also contain several references to the

art of flying. Emperor Shun, who reigned between 2258 and 2208

B.C., reportedly not only constructed a flying craft but also

tested a parachute - more than thirty-six centuries before

Leonardo da Vinci.

     In 1766 B.C. another Chinese Emperor, Cheng Tang, ordered a

court artisan named Ki-Kung-Shi to construct a flying apparatus.

The craftsman built the machine and flew it to the province of

Honan on a test flight. The Emperor, however, had the aerial

craft destroyed so that its secret might not fall into the wrong

hands.


     The secret of flight seems to have survived until the third

century B.C., for the Chinese poet Chu Yun penned his experiences

while flying in a jade-colored craft over the Gobi Desert to the

Kunlun mountains in the southwest. He made an aerial survey of

the region and accurately described how the high-soaring craft

was unaffected by the wind and dust of the wasteland below.

And even as late as the fourth century A.D. another Chinese

writer, Ko-Hung, spoke of a "flying car" made of wood and

possessing "rotating blades" that caused the car to travel

skyward. In the same century, a flying craft also appeared in

Ceylon, where the Buddhist monk Gunarvarman used it to fly to the

island of Java - a distance of 2,000 miles.


     References to flight also appear in the Budhasvamin Brihat

Katha Shlokasamgraha of Nepal, a twelfth-century written version

of an oral tradition of unknown age. It was first published in

Europe in Felix Lacote's French translation in 1908. The Brihat

Katha tells the story of Rumanvit, the servant of a king who

desired to travel about the earth in a flying vehicle. In order

to satisfy his master, Rumanvit commanded the court designers to

construct the needed flying apparatus, but they informed him that

they were unable to do so. They knew the workings of many

machines, they declared, but the secret of flying machines was

known only to the "Yavanas."

     Yavana was the Sanskrit name for the lighter-skinned peoples

of the eastern Mediterranean. More specifically, Yavana is

derived from Javan, the name of one of Noah's grandsons, whose

descendants inhabited mainland Greece and the Mediterranean

islands in the first few centuries following the Flood.


     The story of Rumanvit ends with the appearance at his

master's court of a Yavana from the west who fulfills the

monarch's wish to see the world from the air, but without

revealing to him the mechanics of flying. There appears to have

been a conscious effort on the the part of the high civilization

centers not to proliferate advanced technology among those

post-Babel peoples who had lost knowledge, but rather to keep

that technology for their own use and power.


Ancient Flight in the Pacific


     Legends very similar to those of the Nepalese are found

among the Polynesians. On the South Pacific island of Ponape, the

natives tell of learned men with lighter skins than their own,

who came from the west long before the European explorers

arrived. These former lightskinned men came in "shining boats"

that "flew above the sea." Their stay was very brief, but the

natives still speak of the "magical works" the ancient Westerners

performed.     

     The aboriginal inhabitants of Mangareva, the largest of the

Gambier Islands, also have a tradition of flight which dates from

the ancient past. They recount how a "flying canoe" with "great

wings clasped tightly to the side" appeared before them, and how

the "priests" who operated it were able to fly great distances -

as far as the Hawaiian Islands, nearly 2,500 miles away. Robert

Lee Eskridge, a collector of Polynesian folklore, found a native

on the island of Tara-Vai who gave him a detailed description and

showed him an actual artist's model of the ancient flying canoe.

According to Eskridge, it certainly represented some form of

flying apparatus, and the wings in particular reminded him of

those of the winged solar disc of the god Horus, frequently

pictured in Egyptian art.



The Saqqara "Bird"


     In 1898, a small model plane was discovered in a tomb near

Saqqara, Egypt, and was dated at approximately 200 B.C. At the

time of its discovery, the birth of modern aviation was still

several years away, and so, when the strange object was sent to

the Cairo Museum of Antiquities, it was catalogued as Special

Register No. 6347, Rm. 22, and then shelved to gather dust among

other miscellaneous artifacts - unrecognized for what it really

was.

     An artist's conception of the Saqqara "bird" as it was

discovered in an Egyptian tomb in 1898. This object, which at

first was thought to be a model of a bird, flies perfectly as a

glider, even though there are indications that it may originally

have possessed a propulsion mechanism at the tail. The design of

the "bird" is highly sophisticated.

     In 1969, Dr. Kalil Messiha, an Egyptologist and

archaeologist, was cleaning out the museum's basement storage

area when he happened on a box marked simply "bird objects" and

discovered the model. The other contents of the box were obvious

bird figurines, but one artifact was definitely out of place,

possessing characteristics which, though not found in birds, yet

are part of modern aircraft. Dr. Messiha, who as a youth had been

a model-plane enthusiast, immediately recognized the aircraft

features and persuaded the Under Secretary of the Egyptian

Ministry of Culture, Dr. Mohammed Gamal El Din Moukhtar, to form

a committee to investigate the model. The research committee was

formed on December 23, 1971, and consisted of a number of

historians and aviation experts. They were so impressed by the

preliminary findings that they recommended the model be hung as a

centerpiece in the Central Hall of the Cairo Museum.

The model's wings are straight and aerodynamically shaped, with a

span of 7.2 inches. The pointed nose is 1.3 inches long, and the

body of the craft measures 5.6 inches long, tapered and

terminating in a vertical tail fin. A separate slotted piece on

the tail is precisely like the back stabilizer section of a

modern plane. The small craft is made of very light sycamore wood

and weighs 1.11 ounces.

     When asked to analyze the model, several aerodynamics

engineers and pilots found a number of remarkable features, all

indicating knowledge of principles of aircraft design which had

taken European and American designers a century of airfoil

experimental work to discover and perfect. Besides an aerodynamic

shape of fuselage and wing that revealed design compensation for

camber - the rise of the curve of the wing - the wing itself was

found to be counter-dihedral, which provided a tremendous lift

force. It appears the ancient craft's purpose was more for

carrying large amounts of freight than for reaching high speeds,

for designers agreed it could have carried heavy loads, but at

extremely slow speed, i.e., below 60 miles an hour. One expert,

in fact, noted that there is a remarkable similarity between the

down-pointing nose and pointed wing of the Egyptian plane and a

new oblique-wing aircraft under consideration by NASA. It too is,

specifically designed for heavy cargo and low-powered flight. We

do not know, however, what the power source of the ancient craft

was. The lower part of the tail is jagged - evidently something

has been broken off - so that it may have held some form of

motor. The engineers noted that the model did make a perfect

glider just as it was; in fact, it would have taken only a small

catapult to get a life-sized model into the air. Even today,

though it is over 2,000 years old, the little plane still soars

through the air for a considerable distance with only a slight

push of the hand!

     Another feature aerodynamics experts discovered when they

attempted to make a blueprint of the plane was that all of its

highly accurate integral proportions were present in ratios of

2:1 or 3:1. It is clear that the ancient model was not accidental

or meant only to be a toy; rather, it was the end product of an

enormous body of computation and experimentation. Dr. Messiha

noted that the ancient Egyptians always built scale models of

everything they made, for their tombs were filled with small

detailed temples, obelisks, houses, chariots, ships, etc. Now

that a model plane has been found, Dr. Messiha wonders whether

somewhere under the desert sands along the Nile there may be the

remains of life-sized gliders.


     More recently, several other model planes have been

uncovered from other tombs and identified, bringing the total

number of Egyptian gliders to fourteen. As biologist-zoologist

Ivan T. Sanderson, head of the Society for the Investigation of

the Unexplained, commented, "The concrete evidence that the

ancients knew of flight was forced upon us only a few years ago.

Now we have to explain it. And when we do we will have to

rearrange a great many of our concepts of ancient history."



A Gold Plane from the New World


     In 1954 the government of Colombia sent part of its

collection of ancient gold artifacts on a tour to six museums in

the United States. During the U.S. tour, Emanuel M. Staubs, one

of the leading jewelers in America, was commissioned to make cast

reproductions of six of the gold pieces. Fifteen years later, one

of the casts was given to Ivan T. Sanderson for an analysis.

After making a thorough examination of the artifact and

consulting a number of aerodynamics experts, Sanderson came to a

mind-boggling conclusion. In his opinion, the gold object is a

model of a jet aircraft at least a thousand years old.

The object is approximately two inches long and was worn as a

pendant on a chain around the neck. Discovered in northern

Colombia, the artifact has been classified as Sinu, a pre-Inca

culture dating between A.D. 500 and 800. For want of better

identification, the Colombian government labeled the find a

"zoomorfica"; that is, an animalshaped object. From a zoological

standpoint, however, both biologist Sanderson and Dr. Arthur

Poyslee of the Aeronautical Institute of New York concluded that

the object does not represent any known type of winged animal,

whether bird, bat, insect, flying fish, skate or ray. In fact,

the little Colombian artifact has features that are more

mechanical than biological.


     Among the important features are the front wings, which are

deltoid, with perfectly straight edges - very animal-like.

Aircraft designer Arthur Young also noted that if the gold object

did represent a flying animal, the front wings are located in the

wrong place. They are too far back on the body to coincide with

the animal's center of gravity. The wings are in the right place

aerodynamically, however, for a tail-engine jet.

     Test pilot and aerodynamics expert Jack A. Ullrich pointed

out further that the delta shape of the front wings and the

aerodynamic tapering of the fuselage imply that the original

aircraft was jetpowered, with the ability to fly at supersonic

speeds.

     After examining close-up photographs of the gold model,

taken from the front angle, still another aircraft engineer,

Adolph Heuer, noted a third indication of the original plane's

potential of performance. While most modern planes have wings

angled slightly upward, only the higher-powered planes have wings

that tilt downward. This feature can be seen on the supersonic

Concorde, and it can also be seen on the Colombian gold object.

The tail is perhaps the least animal - but most airplane - like

feature of the gold model. It is right-triangular in shape,

flat-surfaced, and rigidly perpendicular to the body and delta

wings. No bird or insect has a tail like this. Only fish have

upright tail fins, but none has an upright fin without a

counterbalancing lower one. The triangular configuration of the

gold model, however, is standard design on modern aircraft.


     Another interesting feature about the tail is the insignia

that appears on the left face of the rudder, precisely where

identification marks appear on many airplanes today. The insignia

is perhaps as out of place as the gold model itself, because it

has been identified as the Aramaic or early Hebrew letter beth,

or B. This would indicate that the original aircraft may have

come not from Colombia but from somewhere in the Middle East.


     The gold airplane is by no means the only such model

aircraft discovered in the New World. Six very similar gold

objects, each complete with aerodynamically designed fuselage,

wings, and right-triangular rudder, are on display in Chicago's

Field Museum of Natural History, and two others are on exhibit in

the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.,

and in the Museum of Primitive Art in New York City. Along with

those in Bogota, Colombia, such objects number fourteen in all.

Again, they are well over 1,000 years old, but the area from

which they come is quite extensive. These other planes were

discovered in Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Peru. If people from the

Middle East did make flights across the Atlantic, they must have

made a number of contacts with the semiprimitive inhabitants in

both Central and South America. Lookihg at the models together,

we find they appear to be variations of a single aircraft design.

They are either an artist's impression of something he saw

himself or his interpretation of a mythical or legendary

description of aircraft from the more distant past. The early

form of the Hebrew beth on the Colombian model strongly supports

this conclusion and puts the original aircraft and its flight to

the Americas before the second millennium B.C.



The Hindu Vimanas


     Some of the most remarkable descriptions of prehistoric

aircraft come to us from India. Among the ancient Hindu sacred

books we find the Samaranga Sutradhara, a collection of texts

compiled in the eleventh century but which date back to unknown

antiquity. The Samaranga contains 230 stanzas that describe in

detail every possible aspect of flying, from how the apparatus

was powered to the proper clothing and diet of the pilots.

Recently the International Academy of Sanskrit Research in

Mysore, India, conducted a special study of the ancient work and

published its findings in a book entitled Aeronautics,

"a Manuscript From the Prehistoric Past." The text revealed a

knowledge of aircraft design, function and performance that is

above and beyond what the laws of chance would permit had the

work been only the product of someone's imagination. The

following are a few translated excerpts from the text:


"The aircraft which can go by its own force like a bird - on the

earth or water or through the air - is called a Vimana. That

which can travel in the sky from place to place is called a

Vimana by the sages of old."


"The body must be strong and durable and built of light wood

[Laghu-data], shaped like a bird in flight with wings

outstretched [mahavinhanga]. Within it must be placed the mercury

engine, with its heating apparatus made of iron underneath.

"In the larger craft [Data-Vmana], because it is built heavier

[alaghu], four strong containers of mercury must be built into

the interior. When these are heated by controlled fire from the

iron containers, the Vimana possesses thunder power through the

mercury. The iron engine must have properly welded joints to be

filled with mercury, and when fire is conducted to the upper

part, it develops power with the roar of a lion. By means of the

energy latent in mercury, the driving whirlwind is set in motion,

and the traveler sitting inside the Vimana may travel in the air,

to such a distance as to look like a pearl in the sky."


     Conspicuously missing from the ancient text is any distinct

description of how the Vimanas were actually constructed. The

reason for the lack of detail, the ancient sages declared, was

that "any person not initiated in the art of building machines of

flight will cause mischief." In other words, the intricate

knowledge of aircraft and flying in the post-Flood era was

carefully controlled by a select few.


     The chief puzzle concerning the Hindu Vimanas as they are

described in the Samaranga, however, is their propulsion, which

as the text stated was somehow supplied by "the energy latent in

mercury." It is interesting that the element mercury had a

special place in the sciences of the ancients and of the

alchemists of medieval Europe. The British nuclear physicist

Edward Neville da Costa Andrade, in a speech delivered at

Cambridge in July 1946, noted that the famed discoverer of the

laws of gravitation, Sir Isaac Newton, knew something about the

secret of mercury. Quoting Lord Atterbury, a contemporary of

Newton, Andrade said, "Modesty teaches us to speak of the


ancients with respect, especially when we are not very familiar

with their works. Newton, who knew them practically by heart, had

the greatest respect for them, and considered them to be men of

genius and superior intelligence who had carried their

discoveries in every field much further than we today suspect,

judging from what remains of their writings. More ancient

writings have been lost than have been preserved, and perhaps our

new discoveries are of less value than those that we have lost."


     Andrade continued, quoting Newton, "'Because the way by

which mercury may be impregnated, it has been thought fit to be

concealed by others that have known it, and therefore may

possibly be an inlet to something more noble, not to be

communicated without immense danger to the world.'"


     What it is about mercury that could be of "immense danger"

to the world we do not know. Yet it seems apparent that the

ancients were well aware of the practical application of mercury.


     Recently Soviet explorers excavating a cave near Tashkent in

the Uzbek S.S.R. discovered a number of conical ceramic pots,

each carefully sealed and each containing a single drop of

mercury. A description and illustrations of the mysterious pots

were published in the Soviet periodical "The Modern

Technologist." There is no clue to what these mercury containers

were used for, but they must have been highly treasured and used

for something that is beyond our present understanding and

technology. It was a secret that was found, used and preserved by

a select few - only to be lost again, perhaps forever.


                           ....................



To be continued


No comments:

Post a Comment