Evidence of the Gods (8 page)

The Maoris, the original inhabitants of New Zealand, call these boulders Te Kai-hinaki. The composite word consists of
kai
, meaning “food,” and
hinai
, meaning “basket.” An infinitely long time ago, the ship Arai-te-uru had been destroyed while searching for valuable gems. A hill not far from the beach showed the petrified hull of the vessel. The boulders that keep emerging from the rock contain the food (energy?), which fell out of the baskets when the ship was destroyed. Strange story.

Even stranger is the story of a spherical rock that was found on February 13, 1961, 6 miles north-east of Olancha at the edge of the Amargosa desert in California. At the time, Mike Mikesell, Wallace Lane, and Virginia Maxey were looking for minerals and were particularly on the lookout for geodes. The three owned a souvenir
shop in Olancha, and they knew very well that geodes could be sold for a lot of money. This is because there are magnificent crystals inside a geode. About 120 meters above Owens Lake, the three discovered an irregularly shaped geode and laboriously hauled their find home. The next day, Mike Mikesell wanted to saw the rock in half to get to the crystals on the inside. As always, he used a diamond saw. Suddenly the saw snapped. A new saw blade suffered the same fate. Now the hardworking finders suspected that there might be a particularly valuable mineral inside the geode, perhaps even a diamond. They finally succeeded in splitting the geode in half with a great deal of effort and the assistance of a hammer and chisel. Their surprise could not have been greater: The outer skin consisted of a layer of sea fossils. This was followed by a layer that reminded them of petrified wood. Finally, there were two rings of a porcelain-like material, which in turn contained a plain pin 2 millimeters in diameter and 17 millimeters in length. (
Images 64
and
65
) That is what had broken the diamond saw. Geologists, none of whom want to reveal their name, estimate the age of the geode at about 500,000 years.

What is it that does not fit about the earth’s past? It is completely impossible that the plain pin, whose composition has never been discovered, could have entered the geode from the outside. After all, the pin assumes a high level of knowledge of metallurgy of some kind—and of a workshop—500,000 years ago.

There was a time, and it lies in the far distant past, when our ancestors had not yet mastered writing. How were messages to be left for future generations? Where could people draw and paint—for their own pleasure—and proudly show the results of such new art to the members of their tribe? The people of the Stone Age across the world all had the same idea. They decided to chisel drawings and engravings into the rock and cave walls.

From a present perspective, that represents an incredible research field. At first, this field may seem, perhaps, just as boring as collecting stamps…until the collector suddenly sees the light. There is something fascinating about this millennia-old art form, celebrated by peoples who knew nothing about one another and were incapable of knowing anything about one another. Why? What is so interesting about boring rock drawings? They exist in Yemen, in the Mato Grosso rainforest of Brazil, and on the coast of southern Chile. From Hawaii to central China, from Siberia to South Africa, we find these pictorial greetings from the people of the Stone Age, postcards from a far-distant past. In very few instances do we know the tribes which scribbled on their rocks, and thus many a Stone Age people posthumously obtained their name—christened by contemporary science.

How many rock drawings might there be worldwide? There must be millions of them. Even small islands and the highest mountains can yield petroglyphs—the technical term for these rock engravings. They exist in Ice-Age Alaska as much as on the blisteringly hot rock walls of the Kimberley range in Australia, in California, on Easter Island, or in the Indus Valley in Pakistan. And the incredible thing about them is the motifs.

Now, it is not surprising that Stone Age people kept depicting hunting scenes. The sun, moon, circles, matchstick figures, and handprints are also part of everyday life. I could show several thousand examples of this kind of rock drawing. My archive is full of them. There are many photographic volumes with such pictures; I only refer to the most important ones in the References (Numbers 1–11 under “Saluting the Gods”). What is the difference between other photographic books with rock drawings and this one? Other researchers always concentrated on one specific geographic area. But it only becomes interesting once specific forms are given the same attributes everywhere, as if talking drums had carried the message across all continents: the gods are the ones with the rays! My purpose is the intercontinental comparison of these amazing figures.

Australia lies a long way from the other continents, and in prehistoric times, the original inhabitants of Australia, the Aborigines, doubtlessly had no contact with the rest of the world. Yet, whole picture galleries by the indigenous inhabitants were created, primarily in the Kimberley range in the northwest of the continent. The motifs keep repeating themselves: gods with gleaming faces, with radiating auras around their heads—indeed, with suits enclosing their bodies. In 1981, I took hundreds of photographs, some of them in magnificent color, and kept asking myself the same question: what did the indigenous inhabitants use as a model? There is an elongated figure with two “antennae.” (
Image 66
) Then there are gods and goddesses with large eyes and goggles. The Aborigines call them
wondinas
, mother goddesses. One large figure is lying horizontally (
Image 67
); she seems to be wearing some kind of coat. The angel-like head in
Image 68
has lines on both sides, as if they were messages. Although the wondina figures all appear in the same colors and with the same faces, they are nevertheless different depictions. Take a look at the accompanying drawings in
Images 69
and
70
. At a brief glance, one might think the figure with the outstretched arms and legs (
Images 71
and
72
) is the same. Not so. The “garland” around the radiant head, the different widths of the tongue, and the boomerang-like object at the bottom right prove it. It is missing in the one picture. The two beings with rays around their heads in
Images 73
and 74 are not identical either. The large figure on
Image 75
has a second, much larger radiating aura over its “halo.” The subject of special veneration? When the German flyer Hans Bertram had to make an emergency landing in the Kimberley mountains in October 1940, he was only spared by the Aborigines because he was wearing flying goggles with a wide leather rim. The indigenous inhabitants saw him as a messenger of wondina.