As soon as the available authorities, powers and intellects are devoted to space research, the results will make the absurdity of terrestrial wars abundantly clear. When men of all races, peoples and nations unite in the supranational task of making journeys to distant planets technically feasible, the earth with all its mini-problem will fall back into its right relation with the cosmic processes.

Occultists can put out their lamps, alchemists destroy their crucibles, secret brotherhoods take off their cowls. It will no longer be possible to offer man the nonsense that has been purveyed to him so brilliantly for thousands of years. Once the universe opens its doors, we shall attain to a better future.

I base the reasons for my scepticism about the interpretation of our remote past on the knowledge that is available today. If I admit to being a sceptic, I mean it in the sense in which Thomas Mann used it in a lecture in the twenties:

'The positive thing about the sceptic is that he considers everything possible!'

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Chapter Nine - Mysteries Of South America And Other Oddities

Although I emphasised that it is not my intention to call in question the history of mankind during the last 2,000 years, I believe that the Greek and Roman gods and also most of the figures in sagas and legends are surrounded by the breath of a very remote past. Since mankind has existed, age-old traditions have lived on among the various peoples. More recent cultures, too, provide us with indications pointing to the remote, unknown past.

Ruins in the jungles of Guatemala and Yucatan can bear comparison with the colossal edifices of Egypt. The ground area of the pyramid of Cholula, 60 miles south of the Mexican capital, is bigger than that of the pyramid of Cheops. The pyramid field of Teotihuacan, 30 miles north of Mexico City, covers an area of almost 8 square miles and all the edifices are aligned according to the stars. The oldest text about Teotihuacan tells us that the gods assembled here and took council about man, even before homo sapiens existed!

The calendar of the Mayas, the most accurate in the world, has already been mentioned, and so has the Venusian formula. Today it is proved that all the edifices at Chichen Itza, Tikal, Copan and Palenque were built according to the fabulous Mayan calendar. The Mayas did not build pyramids because they needed them; they did not build temples because they needed them; they built temples and pyramids because the calendar decreed that a fixed number of steps of a building had to be completed every fifty-two years. Every stone has its relation to the calendar, every completed building conforms exactly to certain astronomical requirements.

But an absolutely incredible thing happened about A.D. 600! Suddenly and for no apparent reason a whole people left its laboriously and solidly built cities, with their rich temples, artistic pyramids, squares lined with statues and grandiose stadiums. The jungle ate its way through buildings and streets, broke up the masonry and turned everything into a vast landscape of ruins. No inhabitant ever returned there.

Let us pretend that this event, this enormous national migration, happened in ancient Egypt. For generations the people built temples, pyramids, cities, water conduits and streets according to calendar dates; wonderful sculptures were laboriously carved out of stone with primitive tools and installed in the magnificent buildings; when this work lasting more than a millennium was finished, they left their homes and moved to the barren north. Such a procedure, brought a little closer to the course of historical events that we are familiar with, seems incredible because it is ridiculous. The more incomprehensible a procedure, the more numerous the vague explanations and attempts at interpretation. The first version put forward was that the Mayas might have been driven out by foreign invaders. But who could have overcome the Mayas, who were at the peak of their civilisation and culture? No traces that could be connected with a military confrontation have ever been found.

The idea that the migration could have been caused by a marked change in climate is well worth considering. But there are no signs to support this view either. How could there be, when the distance covered by the Mayas from the territory of the old to the borders of the new kingdom measures only 220 miles as the crow flies—a distance that would have been inadequate to escape a catastrophical change in climate. The explanation that a devastating epidemic set the Mayas on the move also deserves serious examination. Apart from the fact that this explanation is offered as one of many, there is not the slightest proof of it. Was there a battle between the generations? Did the young revolt against the old? Was there a civil war, a revolution? If we opt for one of these possibilities, it is obvious that only a part of the population, namely the defeated, would have left the country and that the victors would have remained in their old settlements. Investigations of archaeological sites have not produced one proof that even a single Maya remained behind. The whole people suddenly emigrated, leaving their holy places unguarded in the jungle.

I should like to introduce a new note into the concert of opinions, a theory that is not proved any more than the other interpretations are. But regardless of the probability of the other explanations, I venture to make my contribution boldly and with conviction.

At some point in a very early period the Mayas' ancestors were paid a visit by the 'gods' (in whom I suspect space travellers). As a number of factors support the assumption, the ancestors of the American cultural peoples may perhaps have immigrated from the ancient Orient. But in the world of the Mayas there were strictly guarded sacred traditions about astronomy, mathematics and the calendar! The priests guarded the traditional knowledge because the 'gods' had given their word to return one day. They created a grandiose new religion, the religion of Kukulkan, the 'Feathered Serpent'.

According to priestly tradition, the 'gods' would come back from heaven when the vast buildings were completed according to the laws of the calendar cycle. So the people hastened to complete temples and pyramids according to this holy rhythm, because the year of completion was supposed to be a year of rejoicing. Then the god Kukulkan would come from the stars, take possession of the buildings and from then on live among mankind.

The work was finished, the year of the god's return came round—but nothing happened. The people sang, prayed and waited for a whole year. Slaves and jewellery, corn and oil were offered up in vain. But heaven remained dumb and without a sign. No heavenly chariot appeared; they could hear no rushing or distant thunder. Nothing, absolutely nothing happened.

If we give this hypothesis a chance, the disappointment of priests and people must have been tremendous. The work of centuries had been done in vain. Doubts arose. Was there a mistake in the calculation of the calendar? Had the 'gods' landed somewhere else? Had they all made a terrible mistake?

I should mention that the mystical year of the Mayas, in which the calendar began, goes back to 311 B.C. Proofs of this exist in Mayan writings. If we accept this date as proved, then there was only a gap of a few hundred years between it and the beginning of the Egyptian culture. This legendary age seems to be genuine, because the hyper-accurate Mayan calendar says so over and over again. If this is so, the calendar and the national migration are not the only things that make me sceptical. For a comparatively new find starts off nagging doubts, too.

In 1935 a stone relief that very probably represents the god Kukumatz (in Yucatan, Kukulkan) was found in Palenque (Old Kingdom). A genuinely unprejudiced look at this picture would make even the most die-hard sceptic stop and think.