Pyramids and "Ancient Astronauts"

Pyramids and "Ancient Astronauts"
By Scott Corrales

“Ancient astronauts” – a term that conjures up the covers of dozens of paperbacks in the mid-Seventies, juxtaposing advanced technical machinery, humanoids, primitive humans and some of the impressive stone monuments that have survived to the present, confounding experts and laymen, thrilling visitors who make pilgrimages to see them, and of course, representing a dynamic market for filmmakers and writers alike.

Impressionable audiences, fresh from the discoveries and adventure of the Apollo Project, had no trouble accepting the possibility that if humanity could now leave the confines of Earth, it was likely hat others had left their worlds, and perhaps visited our own in ages past. Science fiction authors of the calibre of Arthur C. Clarke had put the thought of ancient astronauts in the mind of Dr. Heywood Floyd, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, as he considers that possibility of a terrestrial civilization in the Pleistocene – albeit non-human – being responsible for the “monolith” that drives the entire story. Collectors of ancient figurines now pored over their dusty curios to see if charming native antiques suggested helmeted space visitors rather than priests in ceremonial garb. A documentary inspired by Erik Von Daniken’s “Chariot of the Gods” had a theatrical release in many countries, and its intriguing soundtrack found its way into many musical collections in the golden age of LP records.

The public was also exposed to a reinterpretation of many documents – even major religious texts – during this interest in ancient non-human visitors. The prophet Ezekiel’s vision of strange entities was reinterpreted as spacesuited, moonbooted vistors piloting an atmospheric craft; Elijah was now swept away by a low-flying spaceship rather than a “chariot of fire”. Alien big brothers had led primitive humans by the hand, leaving behind their wisdom in ways that our species could only begin to understand in the 20th century....

A Pyramid Like No Other





“The ruins of the sanctuary of the god of fire were destroyed by fire.” With these words, Jorge Luis Borges, one of South America's most distinguished authors and a pillar of modern literature, ends his story The Circular Ruins, which describes a timeless circular pyramid surmounted by a temple to the fire god in his short story. As if dealing with an onyric experience, Borges leads the reader through a surreal, metaphysical adventure. Does this well-known story describe the mysterious Mexican ruins known as the Cuicuilco pyramid?

Cuicuilco has been considered a bit of a embarassment to archaeologists: the massive, circular pyramid complex that straddles an ancient lava bed to the south of Mexico City is "a blow to the face of history," as one Mexican investigator called it. Even now, many scholars are silent accomplices to its destruction-- shopping malls, multi-family dwellings and industrial parks encroach upon the ancient ruins. The city's formidable pollution problem, coupled with the threat of acid rain, will surely take care of this archaeological embarrassment if no action is taken. “Sad to say, the current status of the pyramid is very bad and shows a state of near-abandonment. Grass grows everywhere and the museum, while having been expanded, is not in operation. The main access ramp is damaged by thoughtless human traffic and the lack of proper draining,” wrote urban archaeologist Daniel Schávelzon in his La Pirámide de Cuicuilco (Fondo de Cultura del Estado, 1983) which remains one of the few comprehensive works on the circular pyramid, compiling the orginal photographs and articles on the excavations performed at the "Mexican Pompeii". He has characterized the studies performed at Cuicuilco as “some of the most detailed work ever performed within Mexican archaeology.”

All experts agree that the Cuicuilco pyramid is the oldest structure in the Anahuac Valley, which houses modern Mexico, and the very first monumental construction in the Americas. Disagreements as to its antiquity and the people who built it continue to this very day. Official records state that the Cuicuilco structures can be no older than 600 B.C., but revisionist figures claim the structure was built between 8000 to 10,000 years ago, thus making it almost as old as the "Tepexpan Man" -- the earliest prehistoric dweller found in Mesoamerica (human remains along with those of a wooly mammoth were found at this site).

American audiences were first introduced to the mesmerizing enigma through a feature in National Geographic Magazine (Vol 94) bearing the title: “Ruins of Cuicuilco May Revolutionize Our History of Ancient America: Lofty Mound Sealed and Preserved by Great Lava Flow for Perhaps 70 Centuries.” The Society had financed a considerable part of the excavations at the site.

Cuicuilco measures some 17 meters in height and has a diameter of 115 meters. A series of ramps provided access to its uppermost tier, which housed a temple with a statue of Huehueteótl -- the "Old God of Fire", the very first deity worshipped in this continent. The mighty circular pyramid is surrounded by smaller structures and rectangular buildings with well-finished floors which must may been homes. When viewed from the roadside, or from the slight vantage point provided by the Perisur shopping mall, the visitor may well think he or she is looking upon a colossal Celtic hill-fort.

The Cuicuilco site has yielded clay figurines depicting a series of dancers, acrobats and entertainers; ceremonial masks probably employed by shamans and actors engaged in recreating ritual ceremonies. There is reason to believe that this lost culture was highly specialized and had its full complement of bricklayers, masons, administrators, priests and bureaucrats. “One generation succeded the next,” wrote Dr. Cummings in his article on the ruins, “and the cone of the old temple rose its head toward the endless blue, making its best effort to allow its builder’s children to grow close to the deity and closer to a true understanding of natrual phenomena...some powerful ruler decided to repair the damage to the pyrmaid and calm the rage of the gods by expanding the temple.”

The contented lives of the prosperous, unwarlike Cuicuilcans came to an end when the Ajusco, a 4000-foot tall peak located on the same mountain range as the Popocatepetl volcano, began to exhibit volcanic activity. The earthquakes which rocked Anahuac Valley caused an enormous hole to open in the ground -- a smaller volcano called Xitle, which poured a torrent of lava that destroyed nearby Copilco before engulfing Cuicuilco itself. The Cuicuilcans fled before the destruction, and all that was left behind was an eighty square mile lava field known today as El Pedregal.

Debate has raged on and off regarding the date of the Xitle's eruption. Scholars of the "Pre-Classic" period of Mexican history believe that the eruption took place between 500 and 200 A.D., while geologists have placed the volcanic event as far back as 7000 B.C. -- clearly a wildly divergent figure.

Efforts at "restoring" Cuicuilco in 1906-1910 led to the removal of a considerable number of huge adobe blocks from the upper tiers. Serious archaeological work, however, was not undertaken until April 1922, when anthropologist Manuel Gamio – the father of the “indigenismo” movement – appealed to Dr. Byron Cummings of the University of Arizona, asking him to bring a team of his students to Mexico to dig test pit aimed at ascertaining whether Cuicuilco was natural or manmade formation. The professor and his students, plus a brigade of laborers, worked diligently from 1924 to mid-1925 on what could well be the oldest pyramid on Earth. In 1933, Cummins wrote Cuicuilco and the Archaic Cultures in Mexico, a booklet on his findings, presenting a number of interesting photographs.

The site was apparently visited one night by an unidentified flying light which hovered over the ruins before speeding off into the distance; while this UFO event did not put a halt to the excavation of the Cuicuilco pyramid, the expense of digging through solid lava eventually did. Even though a considerable number of archaeologists have worked on the Cuicuilco site, the amount of literature on the area is very limited. The pyramid remains only partially uncovered, and the bulk of the Cuicuilco site is covered by a thirty square mile lava field with an average thickness of some twenty feet. The rapid growth of Mexico City now makes further excavations impossible, and we will never know what other artifacts might have given us a better clue as to the origin of the circular pyramid, its purpose and its builders. Scientists insist that its one-of-a-kind shape is a representation of the volcano beside it, but a reconstruction of the pyramid -- found in Mexico's National Anthropology Museum -- would cause even the most disinterested party to wonder: why was it shaped like a flying saucer?

According to historian Stuart J. Fiedel, between 5,000 and 10,000 people lived in Cuicuilco duirng the First Intermediate Period II (650-300 B.C.) and that the neighboring region was home to some 75,000 people. Population increased greatly duirng the First Intermediate Period III (300-100 B.C.), rising to 145,000 souls--twenty thousand of them at Cuicuilco and the remainder at Teotihuacan.

Today, centuries after its original destruction, a new cataclysm looms over Cuicuilco.

In June 1997, the Imbursa Financial Group received approval from Mexico's Instuto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) to undertake the construction of a modern office complex right beside the pyramid. The project includes a 22-storey tower and parking for 1.500 vehicles. The project's architects insist that their project's design takes the area's archaeological significance into consideration, but a committee of local residents remarked in the July 3, 1997 issue of the La Jornada newspaper: "The terrible and dark history of the premises in ths zone has been the product of currying favor with private industry and the constant surrender of our cultural heritage by bureaucrats serving corrupt businessmen." As of 2009, an office building belonging to the Mexican telephone company has encroached upon the circular pyramid’s fragile surroundings.

A City of the Gods

Trudging through fields of maguey and scrub vegetation toward the pyramid complex of Teotihuacán is the closest that the casual tourist can come to being on another planet. Even on a fine sunny day, there is a certain alienness to the landscape which makes the enormous pyramids of the Sun and Moon seem a trifle frightening. On a cloudy day, the entire region and its surrounding mountains appear to have been designed according to the descriptions of the terrifying otherworldly realms imagined by H.P. Lovecraft.








Thousands of tourists visit Teotihuacán every year; tens of thousands of postcards and books depicting the complex are sold throughout the country and overseas, but we still do not know who built the stone metropolis. The Aztecs treated the site with awe and reverence, naming it "the city of the gods" when they could not imagine who else but gods could have built such a place. Superstition kept the Aztecs from ever occupying Teotihuacán, and when the conquering Spaniards first reached the location, it was covered by dense layers of alluvial mud. Historians tell us that the monumental complex was built around 200 A.D. and was sacked by the Toltecs in 856 A.D.There is evidence that the Mexican pyramids are far older than the ultraconservative figures given by scholars. According to British archaeologist H.S. Bellamy, the excavations at Teotihuacán required the removal of layers of earth measuring up to one meter in thickness. Bellamy himself reckoned the pyramid to have been built around 5000 B.C..

In the mid-1930's, General Langlois, a French researcher, looked into the evidence of a strange unknown civilization predating the arrival of the Olmecs and the Toltecs on the Mesoamerican scene. This enigmatic culture was one of formidable mathematicians and engineers who may have been imitating older monuments still. The memory of their existence and the magnitude of their undertakings may have led successive cultures to regard them as giants who were swept away by floods, earthquakes and other disasters. Langlois believed that certain Egyptian pyramids were copies of the earlier Mexican ones.

Pyramids with a Purpose?

Pedro Ferriz and his French colleague Christian Siruget went on to discover a hitherto unknown property of the Mexican pyramids -- their ability to store electrical energy like batteries. Experiments conducted at a number of separate pyramids throughout the country led researchers to believe that these structures were designed to collect energy for later distribution. Ferriz and Siruget expressed a belief that ancient builders expressly painted red and blue sides on the pyramids to indicate the positive and negative poles of the battery. Ferriz notes in his book Los OVNI y la arqueología de México (Diana, 1976) that the pyramid of Cholula is a perfect example of this phenomenon. The Cholula pyramid, which is buried under a hillside and is surmounted by a church from the colonial period, was the single largest structure in the world until the building of the Boulder Dam in the U.S. Ferriz and Siruget suggest that the alignment of an artificial hill known as the Teotón with the extinct Tecajete volcano and the Cholula pyramid itself is repeated in other pyramid sites throughout the country. This concept is not quite as far-fetched as it may seem: radioactive pyramids are discussed in French author Robert Charroux's The Gods Unknown. The hundred-foot tall pyramid found in Couhard, Brittany was built with radioactive phyllite rock. Charroux writes that the Couhard Pyramid is well oriented horizontally and aligned to a shaft which led to a deep geological rift which apparently served to provide negative Coulombian waves. The structure emits K41 gamma radiation -- a fact which leads the French writer to speculate that the pyramids were employed as beacons for guiding spacecraft to safe harbor within Earth's atmosphere. He goes even farther out on a limb to speculate that the radioactive energy was used to recharge the propulsion systems of his hypothetical spaceships.


But what leads a researcher to conclude that something – a building, a statue, an unknown device – is the handiwork of putative extraterrestrials? Pedro Ferriz summed it up rather succinctly in his own investigations throughout Mexico. To invoke the presence of ancient astronauts, he said, was an admission on the part of the writer or researcher that “he or she was unable to understand the nature of the object in question.” Consultation with experts on the subject, whether architecture, anthropology or metallurgy, would be the first step to take. If these experts considered themselves stumped by the question, or unable to offer a satisfactory answer, the mystery could then be classified as the product of a higher civilization (ancient human or alien) until the contrary was established.

This was the approach taken when Ferriz and Siruget visited the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to look into the possibility that an unknown civilization had built artificial islands in those waters at a given point in antiquity. The location in question was Jaina, in the state of Campeche, surrounded by unhealthy, malarial swamps extending fifty miles from north to south. According to their estimates, four million tons of caliche and dirt had been conveyed to the swamp in ages past to fill a hole surrounded by dense, black mud. Had the operation been performed using modern machinery, two hundred thousand trips – involving large dump trucks – would have been necessary, and no roads exist in the tropical mangrove swamp.

Unwilling to grasp a convenient explanation involving extraterrestrials, spacecraft and “tractor beams”, Ferriz and Siruget wrestled with the logistics of a human culture undertaking such a project. Materials would have had to be conveyed from the mainland, two nautical miles distant, in barges capable of carrying ten to twenty tons of material. These barges would have been pulled by hemp ropes and a primitive pulley system of round stone poles. The laborious process of stone extraction, haulage and dumping would have involved a staggering forty million man hours: ten thousand workers working day in and day out for a year, or a thousand workers over ten years. So far, so good. What causes this rational answer to topple to the ground like an unsound pyramid, however, is the fact that the these workers would have required food and water in excess of what the land was able to offer: twenty million liters of water and at least seven million calories of food. Or more succinctly “two million kilos of tortilla flour and the meat of twenty-five thousand deer,” to quote the authors. The Mayan figurines found on the artificial island would correspond to subsequent occupancy at a later age, when Jaina became a ceremonial and burial site.

Teopanzolco, the block-like pyramid whose name means “old or abandoned temple” (indicating it was abandoned by the time the Nahuatl-speaking peoples reached the area known as modern Cuernavaca) has also been seen as a potential power source. One of the structures in the complex is built within a narrow moat. Theorists suggested that if the moat were to be flooded with salt water or acid, the structure would become an impressive “battery”. Scaled down versions of Teopanzolco successfully produced limited amounts of electricity.

But why would such a structure become known as the “old or abandoned temple”? When Geiger counters are employed at some of these sites, their needles often make an initial reading and then go silent. Sometimes the needles oscilate wildly, like tree branches in a storm wind. Could some of these electrical pyramids have become overloaded, “short-circuited” and burned out? Signs of fire-blackened walls, having nothing to do with the rapine of the colonial conquest, are often reported in some structures.


The King of Chacaltzingo

The Summer 1995 issue of Terra Incognita, the newsletter of Mexico's CEFP (Centro de Estudios de Fenomenos Paranormales) featured an article by noted investigator Gustavo Nelin, a chemical engineer devoted to unravelling the ancient mysteries of his country along with the more recent enigma posed by the UFO phenomenon.

Chalcaltzingo, in the state of Morelos, boasts a four thousand year old rock carving known officially as the "The King" but whose description matches more closely that of a nearly-horizontal figure giving the appearance of floating in space while holding a torch-like object in an outstreched arm. A "space vehicle" appears suspended above the figure, who is clearly meant to be flying in mid-air as the artist has surrounded him with birds. "To me his helmet looks like a real modern helmet, like the ones used by modern fliers," Nelín observes in his article. "He is dressed in a one-piece jumpsuit with thick belts and is also wearing boots on his feet."

The "Olmec Astronaut" is not unique: two other depictions, found on a jade object and on a stelae in La Venta, Veracruz, respectively, show flying humans in the same pose as the one in Chalcatzingo. The author has observed that there are sufficient elements present in all three to safely state that the art of flight had been known to the sculptors depicting the images.

Nelín has also investigated other archaeological sites overlooked by contemporary visitors, such as Cacaxtla in the state of Tlaxcala (N.E. of Mexico City). Flanked by the towering peaks of Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, Cacaxtla is a citadel 2 1/2 miles wide by 1 mile wide, boasting the ruins of palaces, dwelling places, religious structures and other edifices. The site features vivid murals depicting half-animal, half-human males and females.

While much attention has been lavished upon the enigmatic petroglyphs found at the Canyonlands site in Utah, a possibly more significant one has been completely overlooked at Mexico's Tlatilco site. This particular petroglyph clearly represents a being whose circular head is depicted as being contained within a square helmet and its feet give the impression of being covered by boots. An ancient astronaut, or an ancient tribesman wearing a box over his head? Archaeology leans toward the latter option, although the ancients had not yet manufactured the box.

Conclusion

Dozens of books about ancient astronauts -- or paleoufology -- have filled bookshelves since the 1970's and their conclusions leave the reader none the wiser for the experience. The archaeological world is crawling with anomalies that hint at advanced civilizations which existed centuries earlier than modern scholarship is prepared to accept. To invoke the participation of aliens from another planet in the achievements of these forgotten peoples is premature and unnecessary: human beings of past millennia were certainly as resourceful as they are today, and were perfectly equipped to make the best use of the materials at their disposal. It is another matter entirely to say that these cultures represented the visits of interplanetary/interdimensional creatures in their artwork, architecture and even in their language: Quetzalcoatl, the "Venusian" deity worshipped as the embodiment of the force of spirituality and good in ancient Mexico, was the son of Chimalma, the "mirrored shield". Could this mean that the deity emerged from a brilliant disk that landed on the ground, a shield-shaped vehicle? Who can say?

The mystery is as disturbing to us today as it was to the Aztecs five hundred years ago; disturbing enough to prompt Netzahualcoyotl, the Poet-King, to write the following line of verse: "There is above us a bursting of rays, spying upon us and always watching..."

Antediluviana: Chronicles of Worlds Before This One

Antediluviana: Chronicles of Worlds Before This One
By Scott Corrales © 2013

Pride comes before a fall. This seems to hold true, at least, for the explanations given in human myth and fiction for the collapse of all the civilizations that came before us: The urge to build a tower to reach heaven ended in the linguistic sundering and scattering of humankind; in some traditions, the gods became fearful of human prowess and initiative, and took pre-emptive measure to keep or species at bay, destroying their own creation by fire and flood. What more poignant ending than the destruction of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Númenor – his own version of Atlantis – as it is plunged into the sea by the Creator, who refashions the world in order to keep mortals from ever setting foot on the Undying Lands?

There was a time when students of history freely discussed “antediluvian” civilizations, or even “Pre-Adamic” ones. A Mexican textbook from the 1960s (Historia de Mexico: Etapas Precortesiana y Colonial) speaks freely of “Atlantis” as one of the serious theories concerning the arrival of humans to the Americas, stating the following on page 14: “ATLANTIS – Lovely and ancient in literature is the belief that men in the New World came from the Old One across a continent that stretched out in the Atlantic Ocean, and which was called Atlantis, according to the vague reports given to us by the philosopher Plato in the dialogues “Critias” and “Timaeus”. Atlantis served as a footbridge between both worlds, until it was destroyed by a cataclysm. Its remnants can be seen in the Azores, Madeira and Cape Verde, as well as the Antilles.”

We may well think the authors of the textbook irresponsible for placing the seed of pseudoscience into the minds of impressionable young students, but…might they have been closer to the mark that we care to admit? In May 2001, a series of underwater probes of the Caribbean Sea revealed to an astonished world the existence of what many considered to be the ruins of a sunken civilization at a depth of six hundred meters off Cuba’s Cape San Antonio. Covering an area of nearly twenty square kilometers of seabed, the city – dubbed “Mega” due to its size –consists of cube-shaped and pyramidal structures. Cuban geologist Manuel Iturralde believes that the ruins indeed belong to an antediluvian civilization, dating back to the 10th millennium B.C.E.

The extensive Cuban cave systems are also a source of wonder, such as Cave Number 1 on Youth Island (formerly Island of Pines). The cave dome, measuring some 25 meters in diameter (81 feet), has skylights that allow for illumination from the blazing Caribbean sun during the day and the moon by night. The complexity of its pictograms places them at the very apex of cave art, leading some to think of wiring diagrams. “Seen as a whole, the Central Motif (the main pictogram) suggests to the viewer the image of a star map, a representation of constellations, but it could also mean something completely different,” according to the antrhopologist Núñez Jiménez, writing in 1986. A possible star map on the domed ceiling of an ancient cave is enough to fuel more speculative television broadcasts about ancient astronauts…
Youth Island is relatively close to Cuba’s Guanacahibibes area, where sunken, dreaming Mega awaits further exploration. Could there be any connection between one and the other? Videotaped images of the undersea ruins were analyzed by the Centro de Arqueología Marina y Antropología de la Academia Cubana de Ciencias (Center for Marine Archaeology and Anthropology of the Cuban Academy of Sciences), which officially stated that “there was no simple and straightforward explanation for these structures,” yet unequivocally ascertaining they were man-made, rather than a natural phenomenon.

The Resurgence of Paleoufology

The branch of UFO research which could rightly deserve the appellation of "paleoufology" constituted a controversial field of investigation during the 1970's, when authors like Otto Binder (Unsolved Mysteries of the Past), Richard E. Mooney (Gods of Air and Darkness), and Erich Von Daniken (Chariots of the Gods?) wrote extensively on human/alien interaction at the dawn of recorded history and even earlier. Proof of the existence of "gods" or "ancient astronauts" could be found everywhere, and to judge by the conclusions found in the books of the time, it seemed that every major engineering project in antiquity had been "farmed out" to alien contractors! Paleoufology lost its appeal and languished in obscurity until the works of Zechariah Sitchin thrust it once again into prominence in the early 1990s, gaining further momentum with the Ancient Aliens television program on the History Channel in the ‘00s. Clearly, there is still a great deal to learn about this aspect of the phenomenon.

Guatemalan researcher Oscar Rafael Padilla, an attorney and Ph.D who has dedicated 30 of his 51 years to the research of the UFO phenomenon is also the compiler of an extraordinary taxonomy of extraterrestrial creatures, composed by taking into consideration such characteristics as the existence--or lack of--hair, eye type, body shape and similarities to the human body, among others. One of the species portrayed in Clasificación Exobiológica de Entidades Extraterrestres (Exobiological Classification of Extraterrestrial Entities), is characterized by its large head and eyes in relation to the thinness of its body. The being has been classified as belonging to the family Homidia (due to its resemblance to humans), order Primates (due to its walking on two extremities), subclass Euteria (since they are allegedly placental mammals). Padilla also believes that this particular variety of non-human entity played a significant role in ancient times.

Dr. Padilla recalls a very curious stele that was on display in Guatemala's Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology until its removal in 1990, when it was transferred to Japan for scientific study, according to his own research. The stele portrayed the figure of a being with enormous ears, three-fingered hands, elongated legs, no feet, and two strange filaments on its head which, in Padilla's opinion, constitute "antennae".

Scientists have dismissed Dr. Padilla's allegedly alien as a colorful primitive depiction of an imaginary monster--very much like our own science-fiction beasts--and left the matter at that. But there is growing evidence throughout South America that ancient artisans depicted certain things we now know to be fact much too clearly.
Brazilian UFO researcher Jean Alencar has noted that the mythology of this country is replete with descriptions and statuettes of beings endowed with the power of flight. The legends of Brazilian natives, like those of other countries, detail experiences of gods or travelers from the sky who descended to earth when humans were little more that animals to instruct them in the arts of agriculture, astronomy, medicine, and other disciplines. Alencar points out one figure in particular, Bep-Kororoti, a space warrior worshipped by the tribes of the upper reaches of the Xingú River. Not unlike the heroes of India's Mahabharata, Bep-Kororoti possessed a flying vehicle capable of destroying anything in its path. His aspect terrified the primitive natives, until he stepped out of his "raiment" and revealed himself to be fair-skinned, handsome, and kind. He amused the natives with his "magic" until he grew restless for his land in the sky and returned there.

Pre-Humans and Non-Humans

The Sahara, a warm subtropical desert, occupies almost 3 million square miles. Its relative humidity can go as low as twenty percent and strong dry winds like the harmattan contribute to the evaporation. Such inhospitable conditions make survival an almost insuperable barrier for animals such as gazelles, antelope, jackals and the varieties of reptiles and insects that can be found there.

Yet humans have tenaciously clung to life in this environment, and appear to have done so far back in history when the climate wasn't so harsh. These human cultures, now lost to us, nonetheless left behind a number of beautiful and disturbing drawings that have created controversy since their discovery.

Almost nine thousand years ago, one of these cultures flourished on Djebel Zenkekra in the Tassili-n-Ajjer Massif, a natural, fortress-shaped mountain formation that provided relief from the unforgiving desert sun during the day and shelter against the animals that roamed the Neolithic swamps which would later turn to desert.

The Tassili Culture, for want of a better name, bequeathed to posterity a collection of 4000 images, painted in a variety of colors unavailable to their counterparts in the Altamira and Lascaux Caves: using flints for brushes, dark reds, yellows, and even shades of green supplemented the basic reds and whites available to the prehistoric cave artists. Everyday life was their subject matter--the endless cycle of hunting, battle, and domestic life was captured in stone, along with a gallery of figures which stand out in stark contrast to humans in their workaday poses. While there are many such examples of cave art in other rock shelters and ledges throughout the upper reaches of the Sahara, the ones on Djebel Zenkekra hold a special fascination.

Discovered by the 19th century French explorer Henri Lhote, these figures were so unusual he dubbed them "Martians," explaining "their contour is simple, inartistic, and with rounded heads; their only detail is the double oval at the figure's centre, which evokes the image we currently have of Martians."

Lhote's round-headed denizens of the Red Planet were depicted by the primitive cave artists as wearing suits strongly reminiscent of those worn by our own astronauts on the Moon, down to the detail of the boots. Several hundred such drawings exist, scattered over many miles of desert: strange helmeted and antennaed figures, often floating in weightlessness as if the artist had been able to witness one of our modern spacewalks. Other images are of a technological bent, showing what could be taken as solar panels, space stations, floating spheres containing humanoid figures.
Unwilling to be caught up in the ancient astronaut craze, anthropologists have suggested that the Tassili "roundheads" are merely ceremonial dancers or priests wearing empty gourds over their heads. The problem with this rational approach is that the agricultural know-how and resources to grow pumpkins were nonexistent in North Africa at the time the Tassili drawings were created, and would probably not have been available for another thousand years.

Could extraterrestrial visitors included the then-lush Tassili region among their forays in ancient human history? Dozens of books in an equal number of languages have provided circumstantial evidence of non-human intervention in earthly affairs. Biblical texts speak of the "sons of God" attracted by the "daughters of Men," Mayan bas-reliefs depict what could be a space traveler, and so forth. But it is this forsaken complex of African drawings that provides a graphic illustration a similar nature.

In 1976, Spanish researchers Jorge Blaschke, Rafael Brancas and Julio Martínez reached the Tassili Massif to conduct a systematic study of the enigmatic cave drawings. In the course of their research, they were stunned to find a clear depiction of a helmeted and suited figure, linked by a tether to the interior of a large, spherical object, leading three human females toward it. Dr. Martínez noticed that the artist had taken great care in showing the women: one of them an adolescent, the other a mother carrying a child, and the third a visibly pregnant woman. Could this be representative of the genetic experiments which are allegedly still being conducted in our days by large-headed Greys.

The examples of cave art found in the Spanish caverns of Ojo Guareña and Altamira, and the French ones at Lascaux and Font de Gaume, have proven that our distant ancestors were able to represent what they saw with a clarity and simplicity that is stunning to twentieth century eyes. This skill extends to depictions of things that anthropologists and archaeologists often find troublesome: equally faithful representations of domed objects, some of them in threes, others with legs or antennae.

The small French village of Le Cabrerets lies next to the impressive Pech Merle Cavern--a colossal labyrinthine complex almost a mile long. Using a red pigment, Cro-Magnon artists depicted on one of its walls a being that would fall perfectly into Dr. Padilla's taxonomy: it has an enormous bald head, an unusually pointed chin, no ears, and its eyes are represented as elongated slits which taper toward its temples. The straight lines crossing the figure appear to indicate that it was wounded or slain by caveman spears, while a drawing of a hat-shaped object appears floating over the creature's head. Nor is Pech Merle an oddity: Twenty miles away, another cave, Cougnac, contains a similar representation of a wounded or slain creature. Lest we think that Cro-Magnon artists lacked a flair for depicting the human form, it should be noted that other French caves, such as Rouffignac, contain clearly recognizable human figures, including what seem to be mask-wearing humans. The Pech Merle and Cougnac "dead men" are clearly something else. Archaeologists tell us that these ancient images were drawn at the beginning of the Magdalenian Period--some twenty thousand years ago.

North America has also provided its share of enigmatic prehistoric drawings. A particularly impressive one can be found at Canyonlands National Park, in Utah. There, a duo of unusual creatures (remarkably similar to those depicted at Tassili) is engaged in strange activity: one of them appears to be pointing an item at the ground--a flashlight? Farther south, an artist of Mexico's Tlatilco culture drew a perfect image of a little man who gives the impression of wearing boots and a square helmet.

When even steadfast UFO naysayers like Carl Sagan are willing to concede that alien visitations in the remote past cannot be dismissed out of hand, can we still believe that this evidence, which is there for anyone to see, is simply a misinterpretation of conventional events, seen from a primitive human perspective? Or can we lend credence to the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian stories of divine beings coming down to earth to teach humans the rudiments of civilization?

A Scattering of Survivors

H.S. (Hans Schindler) Bellamy, an Austrian researcher-writer, was inspired by the discredited theories of “world ice” put forth by Hans Horbiger, but nonetheless contributed some interesting thoughts of his own, as in his In The Beginning God (London: Faber & Faber, 1945). In discussing the cataclysm that brought the old global civilization to an end – a planet-spanning one, much like our own, rather than one located on a specific island or continent – Bellamy invokes the theory of lunar capture favored by Horbiger, adding that both the highly advanced societies on the planet (the “Sons of the Elohim”) as well as the less sophisticated ones (Adam and Eve and their offspring) were equally affected by the calamity:

“[…] The Sons of the Elohim, too, “fell”. The also left the chilly Paradise plateau and settled in the warmer valleys “on the face of the earth.” There they intermarried with the other survivors of the [lunar] capture cataclysm. They taught their superior culture to men: Azazel, says one of the Jewish myths, showed men how to gain metals and how to fashion them into objects; Armaros taught men how to cast spells and how to raise them; Barachel taught divination from the stars”, etc. In the Book of Enoch, vii and viii, the teaching of similar cultural accomplishments by “the angels, the children of heaven” to the “children of men” is mentioned…”

Bellamy writes elsewhere in the same volume:

“The cosmogonic myths of the Bible, and of all peoples, are, according to my opinion, the traditionally handed-down reports of eyewitnesses concerning actual happenings in the remote past. These happenings always centre round, and describe in more or less pictorial language, various phases or aspects of a great cataclysm which had once swept over the Earth…”

It is easy for us to conjure up such a scenario – front-loaded as we are with visions of apocalyptic science fiction – to adapt this situation to our own context. A planetary body (the asteroid Apophis, for instance) slams into the Earth with the attendant tribulations. Survivors from North America, Europe, Japan, etc. relocate to parts of the world less affected by the devastation of the world – the Amazon, the Congo Basin – and share their know-how and what technology they could carry with the locals. Over the course of generations, these “culture-bearers” would occupy the same role as the Mesopotamian figure of Oannes – whether an extraterrestrial or a castaway from the shipwreck of a higher civilization. Following this train of thought, can we suppose that the survivors of the lost city of Mega, covered by 600 meters of water, fled to nearby Mexico, kicking off the Olmec culture and perhaps even laying the foundations of enigmatic Cuicuilco, built 8000 years ago?

Lords of the Pyramids

With the recent discovery of possible mega-pyramids in the former Yugoslavia, the subject of these massive structures found worldwide – and usually among a narrow band along the Equator – has been rekindled. Tombs for ancient kings, granaries, places of worship for a forgotten planetary religion – all theories have been put forth, held up for scrutiny, and then set aside in favor of a newer, shinier toy.

The Mexican pyramids have proven to have extraordinary properties. As this author has written elsewhere, the research team of Pedro Ferriz Santamarina – the pioneering ufologist – and his French colleague Christian Siruget – discovered that the enigmatic structures acted as enormous batteries, storing unguessed-at amounts of energy. Ferriz and Siruget carried out their own program of investigation on the subject at a number of pyramidal structures, ranging from El Tajín in Veracruz right to the Yucatán. In their book Los OVNI y la Arqueología de México (Diana, 1976), they presented the conclusion that these structures had been created for the purpose of storing energy, having been painted in red and blue to display, in theory, the positive and negative sides of the structure.

Ferriz and Siruget went further: in their theory, the Cholula Pyramid in the state of Puebla represents the choicest example. Its alignment with two other structures – an artificial hill known as Teotón and the now-extinct Tecajete volcano – repeats itself the other Mexican pyramids.

“Within all the pyramids,” writes Ferriz in his book, “we find layers of different materials that are joined at one of its ends and separate from the base, where the heat of the sun propagates unevenly, producing a flow of electrons at certain levels. The second of the foreign elements I am referring to is one that consists of two layers of conductors insulated by another material: a sandwich made by a slice of ceramic between two slices of copper. This element captures – much like a sponge – the static electricity in the ambient air and is able to store fantastic amounts of energy, which it releases as necessary. They layers of brick encasing stone walls achieve the same effect. The ability to absorb as much power as is made available to them is quite notable, particularly with regard to beams. El Tajín and Cholula are two fine examples of this.” (p.326).

He goes on to add: “A good number of the Teotones (the artificial hills) are made of superimposed layers of various materials. They have the ability to deviate biological electricity (circulating in our body) in one or several unknown directions. The Tecajetes (small volcanoes) are similar in design and orientation to the transmission and reception antennae of radiotelescopes, since they are built like photodiodes: an enormous base of iron oxide (tezontle stone) surmounted by a layer of silex (sand) at its core. Any pyramid has any of these geological characteristics in the surrounding terrain: hills of tezontle stone and sand, mines of silver, gold, copper and other metals, or large limestone deposits acting as photocells, or else lagoons of water charged with electrolytic materials (Tequesquitengo, Alchichica, Texcoco) or the sea itself.” (p.327). The researchers also note the great care taken by the ancient engineers in providing these structures with proper drainage by means of polished clay pipes.

As to how energy is shared between the grid of aligned pyramids, the author posits the likelihood of a constant flow of microwaves between the structures, even possible undiscovered pyramids at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. This may seem outlandish, but it is worth remembering that as far back as 1978, there was talk of a super-pyramid in the waters of Louisiana’s Chandeleur Island, described by amateur archaeologist George Gelé as a structure “so monstrous, so awesomely big that it the Louisiana Superdome would fit inside its hollowed shell.” Gelé’s quest for the Louisiana pyramid remains fresh to this day (http://theadvocate.com/home/387689-79/the-truth-is-out-there.html), and the Louisiana Office of State Parks stresses the importance of the Poverty Point Archaeological Site, describing it as “a rare remnant of an exceptional culture. It has been estimated that it took at least five million hours of labor to build the massive earthworks… eight centuries after Egyptian laborers dragged huge stones across the desert to build the Great Pyramids, and before the great Mayan pyramids were constructed.”

Teopanzolco, a block-like pyramid whose name means “old or abandoned temple” (indicating it was abandoned by the time the Nahuatl-speaking peoples reached the area known as modern Cuernavaca) has also been seen as a potential power source. One of the structures in the complex is built within a narrow moat. Theorists suggested if the moat were to be flooded with salt water or acid, the structure would become an impressive “battery”. Scaled down versions of Teopanzolco successfully produced limited amounts of electricity. But why would such a structure become known as the “old or abandoned temple”? When Geiger counters are employed at some of these sites, their needles often make an initial reading and then go silent. Sometimes the needles oscillate wildly, like tree branches in a storm wind. Could some of these electrical pyramids have become overloaded, “short-circuited” and burned out? Signs of fire-blackened walls, having nothing to do with the rapine of the colonial conquest, are often reported in some structures.

Peter Tompkins, author of Secrets of the Mexican Pyramids, also has something to say about the enigmatic interiors of these mammoth structures that predated the arrival of the Aztecs. In the early 1970s, abnormally heavy rainfall over Teotihuacán – home to the Pyramids of the Sun– caused the soil and rock at base of the massive staircase to subside. Archaeologists soon learned that the hole in ground was in fact a series of steps heading downward into a natural cave, and given its perfect alignment with the rest of the structure, may have predated construction of the pyramid itself. Cautiously entering the forgotten tunnel, the archaeologists found themselves inside a lava tube at least a million years old, according to a geologist on the team. The walls had been carefully coated mud by ancient workmen, and the lava tube itself had been blocked off by a series of adobe walls – nearly twenty of them – which suggested having been built by retreating workmen, as if trying to wall up something within.

“One hundred twenty meters down the tunnel,” writes Tompkins, “ the archaeologists came upon an extraordinary sight: an arrangement of caves in the shape of an irregular four-leaf clover. Each chamber, which was 10 to 20 meters in circumference, appeared to be part of a natural formation, deliberately enlarged by the hand of man.”

The fortuitous discovery was beginning to resemble an Indiana Jones or Lara Croft adventure at this point of the telling. The explorers marveled at the statuary and pottery that had lain in darkness for centuries, including slate disks. Oddly enough, they found a polished obsidian mirror of the sort used by dark priests to contact Tezcatlipoca, the god of night, depicted by a “smoking mirror”. We well may wonder about the need to conceal this artifact by so many exterior walls…

Conclusion

In the end, and to the dissatisfaction of readers, we are left with more answers than questions: Was our world visited in eons past by beings from other worlds? Tutelary entities like the enigmatic “Preservers” of the original Star Trek series? Did they visit us in the Pleistocene, like Arthur C. Clarke has Heywood Floyd suggest in “2001: A Space Odyssey”? Or do we follow a different path altogether – the one that this author prefers to tread – leading us to the possibility of advanced civilizations in the remotest past, An antiquity so remote that would cause historians’ heads to swim? Would these have been human cultures much like our own, civilizations abreast of our own, perhaps in control of non-technological devices that allowed them to build the megaliths that are their legacy? Or, verging on the fanciful, can we think in terms of non-human, perhaps reptilian, tenants of our planet – evolved from a sentient branch of dinosaurs? Do we dare conjure up interdimensional kindred who returned to their own level of existence, and keep returning to check on what we might describe as “the old neighborhood”?

We’re only an accidental discovery away from finding the truth.

Riddles of the Distant Past

Riddles of the Distant Past
By Scott Corrales

While many may find the concept of sunken lands a trifle disturbing (or as an old college instructor of mine would say, when questioned about Atlantis, "continents made of granite don't sink into tectonic plates made of basalt"), the need to explain many of the ancient features of the American continent almost inevitably leads to the realization that older, advanced civilizations may have flourished on both landmasses earlier than anthropologists and ethnographers are willing to accept, or that such features could be the remains of more advanced visitors from the Old World...or a world that no longer exists.

Abel Hernández Muñoz, a member of the Sociedad Epigráfica Cubana (Cuban Epigraphic Society) has drawn attention throughout Latin America and Spain to the highly curious "Taguasco Dolmen", located near the village of the same name in the Cuban province of Sancti Spiritus, close to the island's geographic center.

The Taguasco Dolmen is, in fact, a tower made of superimposed megaliths containing a small chamber running in an east-west direction. According to Hernández, the eastern opening of the chamber points toward a tiny circle of stones or Cromlech, consisting of one central stone and two menhirs standing some 10 feet tall. The overall style and composition of this monument is disturbingly similar to the megalithic alignments of the Balearic Islands (off Spain's eastern coast), giving rise to all manner of speculations by its very appearance.

But as if the mysterious structure's aspect weren't controversial enough, the Taguasco Dolmen bears on its surface some very curious inscriptions which Cuban epigraphers have associated with Phoenician script employed in their Mediterranean posessions around the 8th and 7th centuries B.C., respectively. Other inscriptions appear to correspond to the Irish Ogham script which according to experts, was not in use prior to the 10th century of the Christian Era.

Regardless of the obvious descriptions, the Ogham inscription reads "B-L", which has been interpreted as "BEL" or "Bel", the name of the solar deity of the sea-faring Phoenicians. If correct, this identification would match similar instances of "B-L" found in North America. The other inscription is rendered as "Q-B" and vocalized as the word coba, an old Arabic word describing a turret or small watchtower. Could this, Hernández speculates, be the source of the word Cuba, which identifies the largest of the Greater Antilles?

The epigraphical findings can be corroborated by archaeological ones, such as the discovery of a clearly female European skeleton in a Taino/Siboney burial yard, and the existence of a Celtiberic-Phoenician sanctuary near Cuba's world-famous Varadero Beach.

Traces of Phoenician involvement in the Caribbean go beyond Cuba, appearing in the the strange "bearded" petroglyphs of the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. These images show strange figures of bearded men, often wearing turbans or thoroughly non-Taino Indian headgear. Revisionist historians have often used the existence of these stone carvings to launch theories of Phoenician visits in antiquity to these islands; In a paper presented to the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y El Caribe, scholar Roberto Marínez Torres points out the existence of 17th century historical references to unusual divinities visiting the islands that form part of the oral traditions of the Carib indians of the isle of Tortuga: these white divinities taught the Caribs the building of huts, agricultural techniques and the manipulation of poisonous yucca to make cassava bread. This last indication proves both troubling and interesting, given the absence of yucca and similar tubers in the Eastern Mediterranean. However, might we not assume that Phoenician traders frequenting West Africa (as demonstrated by Hanno's expedition to the Senegal region) would have encounters similar roots and learned how to use them? Curiously enough, the Spanish conquistadores learned the making of cassava bread quickly enough, turning it into a regular staple on their maritime explorations in the New World.

A Mystery of Painted Stone

Brazil, best known in occult circles for its UFO cases, high strangness events and candomblé rituals, also holds it own when it comes to strange landmarks which point uncomfortably to origins that perhaps are at odds with scientific dogma.
The best known of these is Pedra Pintada ("Painted Rock") a series of blocks and rock walls protruding from the ground and overlooking grassy plains of the Brazilian state of Roraima (on the border with Venezuela). The rock compled presents an array of rhomboidal shapes, triangles, what appear to be suns, and crudely drawn figures. In 1838, German explorer Richard Schomburgk ventured up to the Amazon headwaters and was among the very first Europeans to ever gaze upon Pedra Pintada. His native retainers informed him that Pedra Pintada was considered by their folk to house the spirit of Macunaima, one of the heroes of the Carib tribes dwelling in the northern end of the South American landmass.Archaeologists have ascribed the Pedra Pintada petroglyphs to the "Rupununi phase" of the Guayanas and dated them between 2000 and 1000 BCE. Contemporary native tribes often express a certain amount of fear about these carvings and claim not to know their significance.

The belief that these manifestations could be far older has always been expressed, much to the consternation of academia. While Chilean anthrolpologist Juan Schobinger assures us that the question of "ancient vanished civilizations" being the responsible for this work has been put to rest, others insist that the question remains quite open and valid.

The best-known challenge to academic auctoritas came from Marcel Homet, a French explorer and scholar whose expedition to discover the remains of lost civilizations in 1949 is chronicled in the book The Children of the Sun. Homet's Amazonian guides regaled him with stories of ruins far up the course of the Uraricoera River, and the researcher himself faced a number of perils (carnivorous plants, etc.). Homet's work has been largely discredited, but his observations on Pedra Pintada deserve to be commented upon. He considered the odd, egg-shaped stone to be an enormous book containing samples of all of the ancient languages of mankind -- old Egyptian hieroglyphs and samples of Mesopotamian symbols. Homet couldn't emphasize enough the rock's importance as a "glyptolithic library" on humanity's past.

Chile's Bewildering Past

The living have always had a morbid fascination with the process of mummification. Surely ancient hunter/gatherers in the world's deserts were quite used to the prospect of natural mummification due to exposure in extremely dry and stable climates. Mummies have become an indispensable fixture in literary horror stories about Ancient Egypt and in not-quite-so literary motion pictures such as 1999's The Mummy. Yet the fulsome and complicated techniques by means of which the Egyptians disposed of their dead have always seemed unique to that part of the world, although some adventurous souls have claimed that it was handed down from lost Atlantis. The sunken continent aside, what are we to make of the mummification practices which took place in the Americas, which were just as complex and far older than any Egyptian ones?

In 1917, when anthropologist and explorer Max Uhle discovered the burial sites of what he called "the Arica Aborigines", scholars believed that these non-Egyptian mummification dated to 3000 B.C.E or thereabouts, but contemporary researchers have discovered that it is at least two millenia older than the date first put forth (5000 B.C.E.). Mummification in Egypt can be dated back to 2400 B.C.E.

The ancient Aricans mummification techniques consisted in skinning and eviscerating the corpse, removing the muscles of the bones and legs, then setting the insides to dry by means of hot coals. All cavities were filled with substances ranging from dirt and wool to feathers and natural fiber. The face was generally painted white, black or red while a wig completed the ensemble.

Curious similarities to the mummification traditions of the Canary Islanders soon emerged. Paleopathologist Michael Allison notes that the Chilean mummies "...were collected in family groups of three to eight people, men, women and children, and kept upright through the use of the rods employed to reinforce them. These families were perhaps personages, healers or shamans, or great hunters, having special powers transmittable to the living even after death as long as their bodies remained present." The custom in the Canary Islands, roughly six thousand miles away, prescribed that the new tribal leader be "advised" by the mummified body of the deceased leader, who was kept at hand.

A Canarian historian, Héctor Gonzalez, believes in the possibility that "Atlantis" is source for the commonality of funeral practices. González has conducted a detailed analysis of the descriptions of mythical continent given by Plato in his writings and has checked them against existing maps and atlases. He suggests that there was never, in fact, a "lost continent", and that Atlantis is in South America--located in the still-unexplored Guyana Highlands.

The descriptions given by the Greek philosopher, says González, match the physical features of the Panama Isthmus, the Matto Grosso region and the bordering Andean range. As contradictory as this conclusion may seem, the Canarian historian has argued that at no point do any of the classical sources refer to Atlantis as "a continent", but rather a massive expanse of land surrounded by water.

The simultaneous creation of inventions and the discovery of new concepts in separate locations is nothing new, and certainly the primitive inhabitants of the salt flats of northerh Chile were bright enough to come up with their own mummification techniques, owing nothing to an improbable "mother civilization". But why engage in exceedingly and exceedingly complex and grisly task when their very environment would take care of the job for them? The dryness of the atmosphere was a key factor in preserving another set of very ancient and sensational burials which have become known as the "mummies of Urumchi" -- the remains of a tall, caucasian group of tribesmen dwelling in what is now Western China. The complex mummification practices of South America must be included, therefore, into our continent's gallery of mysteries.

A Forgotten Kingdom Speaks

An Aztec map would probably have portrayed the area currently known as Northern Mexico in the same terms used by Medieval cartographers for the vast uncharted lands on their portulans: terra incognita. Indeed, while the Aztecs were clearly aware of having come from a place called Aztlan somewhere in North America, their own idea of where it could be was quite sketchy. Spanish friar Diego Durán, writing in the late 1500's, notes that Aztec monarch Moctezuma Ihuilcamina ordered his wise men to engage in what we would call a "fact-finding" mission on the origins of their people. The scholar in charge, Coauhcoatl, informed his king that Aztlán meant "whiteness" and had been a land filled with all manner of waterfowl, fish and riverine vegetation, but that little else was known about it. The Spanish conquest of the region occupied by the state of Querétaro (just slightly to the north of Mexico City) were aided by other native tribes who had knowledge of what lay beyond, given the Aztecs' geographic shortcomings.

Despite the fact that the Mexican highlands had sustained commercial relations with the mysterious city of Paquimé (part of the Casas Grandes culture of the desert), northern Mexico beckoned as a place of great mystery and even high strangeness. It's allure caused even the most ruthless of all the conquistadores, Nuño de Guzmán, to push his bedraggled band of soldiers ever northward into modern Sinaloa, hoping to find "the country of the Amazons".

Had his desert-weary troops not rebelled against him, Guzmán may have reached the mountainous dwelling places of the Tarahumara Indians, which some believe to have direct ties to forgotten Atlantis.

It would fall to an artist, not a warrior, to share this significant experience. In 1936, the surrealist French poet and playwright Antonin Artaud visited northern Mexico consumed by a burning desire to see the Tarahumara peoples and, in his own words, to "seek the roots of a magical tradition which can still be found in their native soil" (Voyage Au Pays des Tarahumaras, Parisot, 1944) Artaud's quest took him through the bottom of Copper Canyon and some of the most perilous landscapes on the continent, always on horseback and led by a native guide. He eventually reached the heart of the Tarahumara mountains in the state of Chihuahua only to witness a native ceremony that amazed him beyond words--the ritual slaying of a bull which was identical to a similar ceremony described in Plato's Critias.

The first of Plato's two dialogues on Atlantis describes how the Atlantean rulers would gather together at sunset before a freshly-killed bull while their servants butchered the animal and collected its blood in goblets, chanting dirges well into the next day. They would subsequently cover their heads in ashes and the dirge would change pitch as the circle around the sacrificed animal grew closer. Artaud would later write: "The Tarahumaras, whom I consider to be direct descendants of the Atlanteans, still pursue this magical ritual." The poet goes on to describe the rictus of indescribable pain on the animal's mouth, the natives gathering its blood in pitchers, and dancers in mirror-studded kings' crowns, wearing triangular aprons similar to those worn in Freemasonry, encircled the bull. Musicians engaged in repetitive, hypnotic strains on fiddles and an assortment of percussion instruments. "They then sang a mournful chant, a secret call from some unimaginable dark force, an unknown presence from the hereafter..." writes Artaud, who would for the rest of his life be troubled by nightmarish images of his experiences among the Tarahumaras, particularly due to his use of the sacred hallucinogen known as peyote.

Many cultures have rituals in common which originated separately. For example, adherents of the Mithraic cult of late Roman times practiced the taurobolia--a veritable baptism in the blood of a freshly-slain bull. Was Artaud's experience pure coincidence coupled to the artistic genius's volatile temperament, or one of the most astonishing discoveries of our time?

The Quest for Lost Kingdoms

The Quest for Lost Kingdoms
By Scott Corrales (c) 2001

A visit to the fantasy aisle of any secondhand bookstore in the country will almost surely yield a treasure trove of yellowing pulps with lurid color covers from the 1930's and 1940's. These aging flights of fancy usually pit sinewy heroes against demons or fell beasts, usually in exotic, eldritch settings. Edgar Rice Burroughs sent his famous "Tarzan" character to Opar, a legendary African kingdom while H. Rider Haggard exposed his adventuresome character, Allan Quartermain, to the tender mercies of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed in the shifting sands of Egypt. A generation grew up reading about the daring escapes and close calls of a number of fantastic characters as they made their way through an Africa of the mind, filled with lost cities and the remnants of ancient civilizations.

But after we've replaced the well-thumbed paperbacks on their dusty shelves and banished all thoughts of escapism from our minds, we are left to ponder the question of "lost kingdoms". Were there ever any, and if so, what became of them? Do the remains of great kings, proud queens and mighty heroes lay forgotten under the sands of the vast Sahara, or else in the hearts of nigh-impenetrable rainforests?

Garama, The City Under the Sands

"Men dwell there called Garamantes, an exceeding great nation who sow on earth which they have laid on the slat...these Garamantes go in their four-horse chariots chasing the Ethiopians". Herodotus, The Histories, IV.183

In its heyday, Imperial Rome controlled all of Europe to the east and the south of the Rhine and the Danube (with the addition of Trans-Danubian Dacia later on), Asia Minor and the Levant, and North Africa from modern Morocco to Egypt. Beyond these borders lay roaming barbarian tribes, petty client kingdoms (the Bosporians) and hostile Empires (the Parthians). Roman Africa, the Empire's granary and the birthplace of poets, philosophers and emperors, stretched far deeper into the Sahara than is commonly shown in history book maps, bringing it into contact with desert tribespeople and the kingdom of the Garamantes, who shall be referred to as Garamantians for purposes of this work.

It would seem as though the unquiet ghosts of the Garamantians struggled to make themselves felt by modern man for a very long time indeed: In 1914,italian archaeologist Salvatore Aurigemma stumbled across a fascinating Roman mosaic in the modern Libyan village of Zliten, to the south of the ancient port of Leptis Magna. The mosaic showed a young woman being devoured by a leopard as two other victims await a similar fate. These sacrificial victims are depicted as having acquiline noses, straight hair and beards which identified them as Garamantians. Almost 20 years later in 1933, French archaeologist Pierre Belair discovered the mind-bending number of 100,000 tombs in the vicinty of Garama.

Known by its modern appellation--Germa--the ancient Garamantian capital city of Garama is located in the region of modern Libya dubbed the Fezzan, an arabiscised rendering of "Phazania", the ancient world's name for the region. The Garamantian realm, according to the historian Herodotus, was "a kingdom larger than Europe" defended by warriors "who chased the Ethiopian troglodytes" for sport in their battle chariots. Images of these vehicles have survived the passing of centuries on the stone walls of canyons and desert massifs, particularly Djebel Zenkekra. Images stretching even farther back into the historical record can be found at this location: 7000 years of it, even as the Sahara became less and less hospitable, with grass growing too scarce to support horses and cattle. The Garamantians and their four-hourse chariots belong to the period marked between 1250 and 1000 B.C.E., and have been identified by some as "Peoples of the Sea" who assaulted Pharaonic Egypt from the Eastern Mediterranean. When their plans were thwarted, this warlike culture may have settled in Phazania, west of Egypt.

The Garamantians also receive a curious mention in a 16th century book called Reloj de Principes and written by Spanish chronicler Antonio de Guevara (1480-1545). Chapter 22 of said work bears the title "Of how the Great Alexander, after defeating King Darius in Asia, went on to conquer Great India and of what happened with the Garamantes..." Guevara places the Garamantians in the "Ripaean Mountains" of India, saying that "these barbarian peoples known as the Garamantes" had never been conquered by Persians, Medes or Romans (sic) because of their poverty and the lack of material rewards to be gained by a military adventure. But Alexander the Great, renowed among all conquerors for his innate curiosity, sent an embassy to exact tribute.

Citing Lucius Boscus's De antiguitatibus grecorum, Guevara adds that the Garamantians "had houses that looked the same, that all the men wore the same type of clothing, and that no man had greater wealth than his fellows."

Was the Garamantian kingdom as large as Herodotus suggested? The indefatigable Henri Lhote, famous for his work with the Tassili pictograms, managed to find depictions of war chariots in the Hoggar Mountains nearly a thousand miles away from Phazania. In the summer of 2000, a multidisciplinary archaeological team from the British universities of Reading, Newcastle and Leicester confirmed a three thousand mile long natural irrigation network connected to underground water supplies had been positively identified, confirming the fact that the Garamantians had controlled an empire of over 70,000 square miles which featured three major cities (modern Germa, Zinchecra and Saniat Gebril) and nearly two dozen lesser settlements. The irrigation network allowed for expanded food production and the maintenance of a sedentary population of some 50,000 souls. The new discoveries have also spurred a revision of the historical tables: the first towns would have appeared around 500 B.C.E, and the Garamantians would have become a significant political entity around 100 B.C.E., eventually disappearing around 750 C.E. with the onslaught of Islamic conquerors into the area. British newspaper The Independent quotes the team's leader, University of Leicester archaeologist Prof. David Mattingly, thus: "Our research is revealing that, with human ingenuity and against all the odds, the people of the world's largest desert were able to create a prosperous and successful civilization in one of the dryest and hottest wildernesses on Earth. The Romans liked to think of the Garamantes as simple barbarians. The new archaeological evidence is now putting teh record straight and showing they were brilliant farmers, resourceful engineers and enterprising merchants who produced a remarkable civilization." Mattingly was perhaps referring to the citadel at Aghram Nadarif ("city of salt" in the Berber language), measuring 460 feet by 160 feet, which featured imrpessive walls and watch towers. It has been suggested that this outpost was the transshipment point for salt coming from the Mediterranean and on its way into tropical Africa in exchange for gold, ivory and exotic animals to be slain by the gladiators of Rome.

A Real Queen of the Desert

In the oasis of Abelessa, not far from Tamanrasset, one of the Sahara's best known spots, thanks to the Paris-Dakar Rally, holds another of the desert's mysteries: the ruined fortress of Tin Hinan, whose architecture does not resemble the crude structures raised by the desert dwellers. Archaeologists are still at a loss to identify the builders of this city, but in 1926, a Franco-American archaeological team managed to discover a rectangular chamber filled covered with soil, which in turn concealed six slabs of considerable size. Beneath these stone behemoths lay the remains of Tin Hinan, the legendary queen considered by the Tuareg to be the founder of their people.

The legendary queen's mummy was covered in the tattered remains of a leather outfit. Tin Hinan wore seven sivler bracelets on one arm and eight on her left arm; a ring and a leaf-shaped dagger covered her chest area. Her right foot was surrounded by spheres of antimony and the rest of her body was surrounded with pearls of various colors.

James Wellard, author of The Great Sahara, cites one Dr. Leblanc of the University of Algiers School of Medicine as having described the queen's mortal remains thus: "A woman of the white race...the formation of the skeleton strongly recalls the Egyptian type as seen on the pharaonic monuments, characterized by height and slimness, wideness of shoulder, smallness of pelvis and slenderness of leg." This forensic opinion launched speculation about Tin Hinan's origin. Were her remains, in fact, those of Antinea, the legendary last queen of Atlantis? Sober-minded historians prefer to believe that Tin Hinan's fortress could have been an advanced outpost of the Roman Army, perhaps even a customs entrepot or warehouse, guarding the trans-Saharan trade routes.

A Forgotten Alphabet

It is almost a matter of honor that any chronicle on the Sahara desert, regardless of the aspect being discussed, include at least a passing mention of the Tassili-N-Ajer petroglyphs. These remarkable images portray the ancient inhabitants of the Sahara engaged in actitivities crucial for their survival, such as hunting and agriculture, or in social and spiritual activity such as dancing and worship. These 10,000 year-old images were first made known to the world in 1956, when they were displayed in Paris's Musee de l'Homme. The Tassili images created a sensation when they were first displayed, and would later provide high-octane fuel for Erich Von Daniken's theories of extraterrestrial visitation in prehistoric times. This speculation was centered around a number of disturbing images which do not resemble the stylized hunter-gatherers of ten millenia ago: bipedal figures wearing what appear to be modern, single-piece outfits, their heads covered by one-eyed "helmets". Anthropologists have been quick to dismiss any suggestions that prehistoric artists were representing visitors from another world, suggesting instead that the images represent shamans wearing ceremonial outfits represeting certain gods or elemental forces.

The Tassili-N-Ajer saga began to unfold in 1933, when two officers of the French Foreign Legion--Lt.Col. Brenans and Col. Carbillet--became the first contemporary Europeans to set foot in the Tassili plateau, which had been considered off-limits by desert tribesmen. Setting out from Fort Polignac, the two officers entered the Ighargharen Gorge and discovered the seemingly endless succession of paintings. Their superiors in Paris informed the Musee de l'Homme and an old Sahara hand, Henri Lhote, was dispatched to investigate. Fighting his way through the brambles and thorny desert "vegetation", Lhote was startled by the profusion of white kaolin and iron oxide images showing giraffe, antelope and elephants--creatures that called the then-verdant Sahara home.

In the fullness of time, a team of artists, photographers and archaeologists would return to Tassili to fully document--on enormous rolls of canvas--the full extent of the desert fastness's holdings. But the world remembers only two features of the hard work of these French scientists: their discovery of the Great Horned God or God of Sefa (a flat-headed, horned figure that towers with outstretched arms over a multitude of animals, dancers and "floating" characters) and the disturbing "roundheads" in their modern clothes.

Perhaps one of the least-known aspects of the Tassili-N-Ajer petroglyphs has been the discovery of an "alphabet" that hails back to an age where writing was supposedly unknown. Pierre Colombel, who has followed the footsteps of Henri Lhote in analyzing the desert images, has worked on an image involving hunters surmounted by glyphs consisting of regular geometrical shapes and dots, which roughly resemble the "writing" found on the haloes of Australia's enigmatic Wondjina figures. According to Colombel, the message could be something as insignificant as a hunter bragging about his prowess with the lance or a significant legacy to our times which shall forever remain undecipherable.

Mystery of the Veiled Nomads

After the conquest of the Fezzan by the victorious armies of the Omayyad Caliphate, the Garamantians and their works vanished from history. Some historians have seen them as the progenitors of the mysterious veiled desert nomads known as the Tuaregs, who bear no physical resemblance to other Berber peoples, who appear to have arrived from the deep Sahara in the 5th century as the Roman Empire disintegrated. However, there exist other traditions pointing to a far older origin for these desert dwellers.

In her book The Ancient Atlantic (Amherst Press, 1969) L.Taylor Hansen's included a purely anecdotal account which linked the Sahara's Tuareg tribesmen to a secret tradition probably going back to the Garamantians and their lost realm. Citing a chance encounter with a man of Arab descent in Mexico City, Hansen details the existence of a tribe of Tuareg "warrior women" who allegedly still exist in the Sahara, sporting the arm-daggers adn short swords used in antiquity, as well as shields with a pitchfork-shaped device representing "the three high peaks of the Hoggar" under which there supposedly exist underground galleries filled with petroglyphs similar to those at Tassili, depicting aurochs and other prehistoric animals. Hansen's interlocutor advised her that the Tuaregs believed that their people had come from the ocean,and that the name they gave themselves meant "people of the sea".

Hansen pressed her anonymous source for more information on the subterranean galleries allegedly occupied by the modern Tuareg and was given the following information: A European explorer engaged in a survey of the Hoggar mountains was startled to come across a rough opening in the stone closed off with metal bars. Peering downward, the explorer realized that it was a ventilation shaft of some sort. Fear of alerting Tuareg raiders, however, kept him from casting a stone down the shaft in order to ascertain its depth.

The story becomes even more fantastic when the anonymous interlocutor tells Hansen that under the miles of underground torch-lit galleries can be found a "beautiful artificial lake" around which the ancient writings of the Tuaregs' forebears are preserved--allegedly extending as far back as the Flood.

We can feel free to accept or reject, Hansen's story about the Tuaregs and the mighty works of their forebears, but one detail in her conversation with the stranger is extremely intriguing: the man mentions that the Tuaregs trace their descent back to the ancient Greek hero Heracles, better known to us under the Latin designation of Hercules.

French author Louis Charpentier suggests in his Les Geants et les Mystéres de Sont Origines (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1968) that the character of Herakles does not refer to a single hero of superhuman strength, but is a name which has a similar meaning as "paladin" or "champion". The Herakles related to North Africa and the Sahara in particular would have been the one detailed to exterminate the giant Antaeus and bring the Golden Apples from the Hesperides. Mighty Antaeus, writes Charpentier, was wedded to Tingis, the daughter of Atlas--both of them North African place names--and ruled a kingdom surrounding the Triton--the inland sea which supposedly occupied the northern Sahara and whose name survived well into Roman times (it survives today as the salt desert known as Chott al-Djerid, the location where the first installment of Star Wars was filmed in 1976). To bolster his argument, Charpentier points to the burial place of the giant Antaeus at Charf, a mound to the south of modern Tangier, a place excavated by Roman legionaries whose efforts under the hot sun were apparently rewarded by a large find of ancient bones.

Could the Tuareg indeed be descended from this eldest of lost kingdoms, claiming one of the best-known mythical figures as a forebear?

Conclusion

The belief in long-lost kingdoms enshrouded in lianas and guarded by leopards and poisonous reptiles is sometimes too great to resist--even eminently rational scientists occasionally give in to its siren's call.

Italian geologist Angelo Pitoni, a consultant on the acclimation of tropical plants and vegetables to Mediterranean climates for the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), succumbed to "lost kingdom fever" after performing his duties in the African republic of Guinea. His interested was ignited in 1991 by the totally fortuitous discovery of some enigmatic statues in war-torn Sierra Leone, followed by a totally unexpected find: a giant statue in the mountains of Guinea, known to locals as "the lady of Mali". In an interview with journalist Carmen Machado, Pitoni explained that the statue is located to the north of the city of Conakry and close enough to the country's border with Mali. The geologist estimates the "lady of Mali" to be some twenty thousand years old, gauging this through the displacement of a rock fault. Pitoni also speaks of caves in the area which contain very old mummies that are zealously guarded by the locals and their possible "Atlantean" origin.

The geologist bolsters his belief by means of an extraordinary object: a strange crystal found in Sierra Leone diamond fields and which resembles a pure turquoise similar to some found on the pectorals of Egyptian priests. Analyses performed on this "Stone of Heaven", as he calls it, revealed that it is different from any other gemstone known to man: seventy-seven percent oxygen, twenty per cent carbon and limestone, with silica and trace elements. While a deep, sky blue in color, fragments of the stone are perfectly transparent.

A Slither of Reptoids

A Slither of Reptoids
By Scott Corrales

The concept of sentient reptilian creatures has been around for a very long time. Anyone who doubts this should consult the Book of Genesis to learn about a certain serpent endowed with very good powers of persuasion.
Humans feel both attracted and repulsed by reptiles: ancient tribes venerated them as totemic animals, the emblem of wisdom and hidden knowledge; The Greeks coiled snakes around the Caduceus, the sign of medicine; in Middle Eastern tradition, the hero Gilgamesh returned from his adventures with a flower of eternal life, only to lose it to a snake, guaranteeing serpentkind the gift of immortality.
The early authors of pulp fiction pitted their heroes against entire races of intelligent reptiles, usually lizard-men deep in an African or South American jungle, or else occupying vast underground domains. Some authors, like Robert E. Howard, creator of such memorable barbarian warriors as Conan and Kull, wove reptilians into the tapestry of his sword-and-sorcery account, usually as the species that preceded humans as the masters of this planet. Michael Moorcock's early hero Sojan fought against muscular lizard-men, and in science fiction, reptilians ranged from the Lizard Men of the Flash Gordon serials to Alan Dean Foster's warlike AaNN in his "Flinx of the Commonwealth" series, and what memory could be more indelible than that of the hideous reptilian aliens disguised as humans in the V television program of the mid-1980's?
But the world of the imagination and mythology do not have an exclusive claim on the belief that advanced non-human civilization of a reptilian nature once roamed the Earth before the first primate descended from the trees. The argument for lizard people living underground to "reptoids" emerging from spacecraft continues to this very day...

An Ancient Evil

Intelligent reptilian entities make their first appearance in the Testament of Amram (4QAmram), one of the texts which form part of the collective known as the Dead Sea scrolls, set in the context of the Book of Exodus but containing the admonitions of Amram,son of Kehat, to his children. Discussing a vision or dream in which he has just seen two of the Biblical "Watchers" engaged in a dispute over him, Amram raises his eyes "and saw one of them. His looks were frightening [like those of a viper] and his garments were multicolored and he was extremely dark...and afterwards I looked and behold, by his appearance and his face was like that of an adder, and he was covered with...together...and his eyes..."
Unfortunately, the gaps in the text keep Amram from describing the ominous watcher more fully, but the intent of his words is clear. (See "Angels and Aliens, Fate Magazine, December 2000). It is possible that this passage echoes even older Mesopotamian chronicles, which suggest that humanity's forebears were non-human.
Controversial researchers like Tal LeVesque suggested historical backdrops spanning twelve millenia into the Earth's past, when a battle shattered our world's surface as the Reptoids and the Elder Race (allusions to Richard Shaver's own extensive mythos) slugged it out for ultimate dominion. The fight ended in a draw as some Reptoids headed to deep space while others burrowed deep underground, become a source of worship for the human tribes left on the scarred surface. "The Reptoids are fellow members of humanity," LeVesque notes. "We are the hu-man and they are reptilian man. They became self-conscious first, before we appeared on the scene. They taught us."
British researcher Lord Clancarty (Brinsley Le Poer Trench) produced some remarkable thoughts along these lines in regard to sentient reptilians in his book The Sky People (1960). Much like Tal LeVesque, Lord Clancarty suggested that humankind was the product of a series of breeding experiments allegedly substantiated by his readings of numerous ancient texts. Behind this sweeping process would have been the highly intelligent "serpent people" who created humans as biological robots (a notion to be developed in later decades by Zechariah Sitchin) to carry out a variety of tasks. The "serpent people"'s experiment failed, theorizes the author, when the biological robots managed to reproduce. These concepts would be developed in later decades by Zechariah Sitchin's own work. But John Keel, in commenting on Lord Clancarty's work in his Our Haunted Planet (Fawcett, 1971) adds a further wrinkle: that the newly emancipated humans now faced the wrath of the "serpent people" and their survival would probably have not been possible without the intercession of a "superintelligence" that would later be worshipped as God."God worked out new means of communication and control," writes Keel, always in conflict with the serpent people." (p.139).
While these references hardly constitute proof by any standard, we are faced with even more tenuous--but nonetheless intriguing--suggestions regarding the existence of reptilian protohumans. In 1983, Science Digest featured an article by palaeontologist Dal Russell regarding a purely hypothetical creature representing the probable evolutionary path that reptilian life in the Cretaceous age would have followed toward intelligence. His model of a two-legged, two-armed sentient saurian, was developed after Stenoychosaurus Inequalus, a ten-foot tall dinosaur having a brain-body mass ratio simlar to that of early mammals. Russell's reptile humanoid caused a sensation among ufologists, who were quick to draw parallels between it and the Grey aliens. A model of the remarkable "dinosauroid" is on display in Ottawa's National Museum of Natural Sciences and has been featured in documentaries and magazines worldwide.


Neighbors Under Our Feet

The legends of the Hopi tribe concerning the nameless lizard people declares that around 4000 B.C. (a curiously precise date) a natural disaster destroyed the reptilian people's city, prompting them to go underground, where they built a network of well over a dozen cities safe against any cataclysms. Much like Turkey's underground Derinkuyu, the cities possessed dwelling units, armories, refectories and vast storerooms not only for food, but for the golden "tablets of knowledge" that chronicled the history of their people allegedly back to the world's creation.
California's Mount Shasta occupies a special place in Hopi lore precisely due to its reptilian connection One of the more notable cities was rumored to be under Mount Shasta -- a curious detail, since in 1972, a hiker claimed to have seen a half-human, half-reptile creature making its way along the slopes wearing human garb. Some have noted that this highly memorable detail suggests the reptilians--if they exist at all--may steal garments off clotheslines (a humorous notion at first, although this has been suggested as a possibility in cases involving "little people" wearing incongrous, ill-fitting human togs) or are somehow able to come into towns and villages "masquerading" as humans through some kind of mental projection, relaxing this ability as they return home to their lairs. More on this intriguing possibility later.
Possible substantiation for the Hopi myth came about in 1934, when engineer Warren Shufelt told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times that beneath the City of Angels lay one of the great cities reptilian cities built in ages past. Having allegedly spoken to a Hopi chief for background information, Shufelt drilled a four hundred foot test hole under Fort Moore Hill, with the blessing of the city authorities, to reach what he termed "a treasure vault". Unfortunately no treasure was ever found and Shufelt disappeared. This is not to say that the alleged "tunnels" did not exist: apparently, some of them can be found to this very day under the UCLA campus, and one of them is supposed to have played a critical role in the smuggling of Chinese immigrants in the 19th century.

The Reptilian Abode

Belief in presence of intelligent reptilian creatures reasserted itself in the late 80's and throughtout the 1990's in ufology and its related fields, creating firestorms of controversy and lengthy (and speculative) taxonomies of the "Reptoids" as they were now called and their place within the UFO alien pecking order. The first mention of "Reptoids" in this new context involved them in the operations allegedly occuring at a subterranean base in Dulce, New Mexico, in apparent collusion with the so-called Grey aliens. One of the more sensational claims involving the Reptoids had to do with a gunfight that allegedly took place in the depths of this facility between Delta Force elements and laser-toting snakemen. According to writer Alex Christopher, the elite forces managed to kill a number of them despite sustaining casualties of their own. "If you have the drop on them, they die just like everybody else. They consist of mass just like we do." (interview on KSEO radio, 4/26/96).
In his book "E.T. Friends and Foes", author George Andrews conveys a conversation between two unidentified sources regarding the nature of the Reptoids. One of the speakers unequivocally declares that the reptilian creatures want to make use of Earth as a "staging ground" in an operation that has been going on for thousands of years and which continues apace. Andrews has issued unequivocal warnings about the reptilian entities. "The first thing to do is to alert the people to the danger represented by the predatory reptilian ET's as a preliminary to ridding the planet of them." he writes in an issue of the Beyond Boundaries newsletter (July/August 1997).
The Mexican town of Tepoztlán, roughly an hour's drive from the urban sprawl of Mexico City, is probably better known than any other place in that country for its UFO visitations, which have been captured on video and still photographs by hundreds of witnesses and conveyed around the world through documentaries and live broadcasts. The town, which has become a "new age" mecca over the course of the last century due to its ancient ruins and reputation as a focal point for benign earth energies, also boasts stories of alien contact which are somewhat less known.
One of these is chronicled in Luis Ramírez Reyes's Contacto: México (Diana, 1995) concering the experiences of Concepción Navarrete, a poor woman who operated a food stand at the base of the majestic rock formation known as El Tepozteco, a favorite UFO haunt. One day, according to Mrs. Navarrete, she was startled by the presence of a very odd creature standing near a cross-like structure marking the site where the coronations of ancient Chichimec monarchs took place. "I was deeply shocked," said the witness, "because he was facing away from me and he looked like a giant lizard, upright, standing some two meters tall. His skin was green and covered in scales." She added that the lizard being's back had a leaden grey cast to it, and the whole creature seemed to have emerged from the mud.
What occured next was probably even more incredible. The reptilian entity made a sudden about-face, as if realizing that it was being spied upon. But at that very moment, its reptilian image was replaced by that of a "blond, cordial American tourist" who inquired-- telepathically and in a somewhat mocking tone--if she had been startled by his presence. Feeling her senses overwhelmed by the entity, Navarrete cried out for help as another tourist approached. The lizard man subsequently vanished as if he had never been there. The approaching tourist calmly told Navarrete, to her astonishment, that he was aware of the lizard beings and their penchant for adopting human guise to wander among us.
A story similar to Concepción Navarrete's appears in researcher Linda Moulton Howe's Glimpses of Other Realities II (Paper Chase,1998): abductee Jim Sparks was allegedly teleported to a nocturnal rendezvous with at least a dozen large, powerfully built reptilian creatures whose true appearance was concealed by superimposed, holographic human faces. When Sparks asked to see his interlocutor's real visage, he was cautioned that to do so could be a frightening experience for him, but his wish was granted. Sparks describes the entities' faces as resembling "a cross between a lizard and a snake."
Although his output has been the subject of heated debate, mention must be made of the comments issued by British author David Icke on the matter of reptilians. Icke claims to have traveled extensively around the United States in 1998 interviewing people who witnessed reptoid-to-human conversions and viceversa. One of the most remarkable cases, in view of the accounts mentioned above, has to do with a broadcast journalist who saw the face of the man he was interviewing momentarily assume reptilian feature and then resume normal human aspect. The TV newsman's female counterpart corroborated his astonishing, claiming to have witnessed the subject's hands acquire reptilian characteristics momentarily.
The Navarrete and Sparks cases suggest that the reptilian entities don these disguises to facilitate interaction with humans, whose aversion to reptiles might become manifest. Curiously enough, this was the reason given by the Overlords in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End for not revealing themselves upon their arrival on Earth--their batwinged, devilish appearance would been a source of global panic. But Icke's case involving the broadcast journalists hints at a near-perfect control of human guise for operating undetected in our midst.

Conclusion

It is interesting to note that in spite of their presence in ancient chronicles and native legends, sentient reptilian beings do not make an appearance in ufology until relatively recent times. A listing of alien creatures compiled by the late Otto Binder for SAGA UFO Report in 1975 under the ingenious heading "Unidentified Walking Objects" (UWO) reveals a motley array of saucer occupants worthy of the Star Wars Cantina: dwarves with hairy bodies, creatures with glowing orange eyes, ones with three-fingered hands, green skin and hair...but no reptilians. Could contemporary researchers be correct in their belief that the Reptoids are in fact a by-product of the abduction-filled late '80s and early '90s?