The caves ten times before the sunrise. They they understood the sign language of the Dropas, they realized that the newcomers had peaceful int- entions . . ." Another Ham hieroglyph expresses regret over the loss of the tribe's own spaceships during a danger- ous landing in high mountains, and the failure to build new ones. In the opinion of Chinese archaeologists, the Bayan-Kara-Ula hieroglyphs are so mysterious that their interpretation and use for scientific research require the utmost care. To obtain further information, the scientists scraped free of adhering rock particles and sent to Moscow for study. Scientists there made two import- ant discoveries. The discs were found to contain a large amount of cobalt and other metals, a shaking discovery. Further investigation revealed that the discs vibrate in an unusual rhythm, as if they carried an electric charge or were part of an electric circuit: The 12,000 year-old discs remain a challenge to science. Legends of ancient China say that small, gaunt, yellow-faced men came down from the clouds. But earthly tribesmen felt a revulsion for the visitors whose enormous heads and extremely thin, weak

Reality seems to confirm the legends. In some of the Bayan-Kara-Ula caves archaeologists and spel- eologists have found 12,000 year-old graves and

beings with huge craniums and underdeveloped skele- tons. The Chinese expeditions which discovered the grounds reported they had found "a new species of ape." But so far as is known apes do not bury each other in graves or write hieroglyphic sym- bols on stone discs. What makes the issue doubly involved is that the inner walls of the caves are covered in many places with pictures of the rising sun, the moon, and the stars, spaced by a multitude of pea-sized dots (poss- ibly tiny pictures) which seem to be approaching the earth in a mountain area.

CELESTIAL EGGS. Peruvian legend has it that the ancient inhabitants of Peru were born from bronze, gold and silver eggs which had fallen from heaven. The tale is cited but without comment in Jean Elisse Reclus' famous "La Terre." A variant of the egg legend is featured in the famous Tassili frescoes, which were found in the art of the Sahara by a French lieutenant named

a French expedition led by Henri Lotte, who later wrote "The Search for the Frescoes." The expedi-

The frescoes depict strange figures dressed in what look like spacesuits and spherical helmets. The helmets are definitely attached to the suits, which have no associations with ritual headdresses or hunt- 127

shells for helmets. Lotte called the enigmatic figures Martians. Describing the ancient drawings on the cave walls the French explorer says that one of them depicts "a man appearing from an egg-shaped object cov- ered with concentric circles. The object resembles an egg, or possibly a snail." So the Peruvian legend and the Tassili frescoes seem to have much in common. But the parallel does not end there. At a later date, in yet another part of the world, the same subject was treated by ancient Greek sculptors, certain of whom portrayed Castor and Pollux of Dioscuria, as well as Helen and Nemes- is, with remnants of egg-shells on their heads, for according to Greek mythology they arose from celestial eggs. How did the odd idea of man's birth from an egg take shape? Perhaps by analogy with birds or fish? But why falling from the sky? One Latin American legend says that eggs dropped down from the sky on dandelions! The absence of any existing inter- pretation of this art leaves the door open for what must seem a fantastic assumption: that the legend of the celestial eggs, like any other myth or legend, could have originated from bonafide impressions of an actual event. An ancient man may once have seen a container with a human being in it descend from the sky, and imagined that the visitor was emerging from a celestial egg.

"VISITING CARDS" OF SPACE TRAVELLERS. During excavations at different times in Japan archaeologists found figurines (dogu) depicting a kind of human or anthropoid in odd-looking "space suits" and with helmets wholly covering their heads. On the helmets were visible marks of some slit-type

aids and even night-sight devices. Reviewing the latest Soviet space achievements, the German magazine Freie Welt in issue No. 12, 1966, printed a selection of rock drawings and phot- ographs of dogu under the humorous title, "Visiting Cards?", declaring that such drawings and figurines might be construed as proof that the Earth was visited by space beings. Many similar rock pictures have been discovered throughout the world. There are pictures of space- men on cave walls in the Val Comonique, in the Alps, in Australia, close to Fergana and in the city of Navoi, in Soviet Central Asia. Puzzles that may have started with a space visit are contained in legends and myths. Legends of Aus- tralia, the Near East, South and Central America and the Far East all tell of the descent of gods from the sky. They offer food for thought.

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. The phrase "Star of Bethlehem" is twenty cent- uries old. Some regard it as a product of sheer