Erich von Daniken - Return To The Stars-pages

Page 100 of 138

Page 100 of 138
Erich von Daniken - Return To The Stars-pages

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hillsides covered with rectangles partly filled in ornamentally. All the way along the map line steep rock faces exhibit circles with rays directed inwards and ovals filled in with a chessboard pattern, while on the inaccessible hillside in the desert of Tarapacar there is a gigantic 'robot'. On 26 August, 1968, the Chilean newspaper el Mercurio wrote about its discovery (a little less than 500 miles south of Nazca) under the headline 'New Archaeological Discoveries by Aerial Photography’: 'A group of experts have succeeded in making a new archaeological discovery from the air. When they were flying over the desert of Tarapacar, which lies in the extreme north of Chile, they discovered the stylised figure of a man drawn in the sand. This figure is about 330 ft high, and its outline is marked with stones of volcanic origin. It is on a solitary hill about 650 ft high ... Scientific circles are of the opinion that aerial searches of this kind are of great importance for the investigation According to the members of the expedition the 'robot' is about 330 ft high. His body is rectangular, like a chest, his legs are straight and on the thin neck sits a square head from which twelve straight antennae of equal length stick up. From hip to thigh triangular fins like the stubby wings of supersonic fighters are attached to the body on both sides. We owe this discovery to Lautaro Nunez of the University of the North in Chile, General Eduardo Jensen and the American Delbert Trou, who observed the ground formations closely during a flight over the desert. This genuinely sensational find was fully confirmed during a second reconnaissance flight by the Director of the Archaeological Museum of Antofagasta. Mrs Guacolda Boisset. On the heights of Pintados, she discovered and confirmed with aerial photographs a series of other stylised figures over a distance of three miles. In the summer of 1968, the government newspaper El Arauco, Santiago, Chile, wrote: 'Chile needs the help of someone to satisfy our chronic curiosity, for neither Gey nor Domeyko (archaeologists) has ever said anything about the platform of El Enladrillado, of which some people say that it was laid out artificially and others that it is the work of beings from another planet.' Details about the discoveries on the plateau of El Enladrillado were made known in August, 1968. The rock-strewn plateau is about 2 miles long and at the place undestroyed by the passage of time about 870 yards wide. This terrain looks rather like an amphitheatre. If its builders were men, they must have possessed the legendary ‘superhuman strength’. The stone blocks that have been moved here are rectangular, 12 to 16 ft high and 20 to 30 ft long. If giants lived here, they must still have been exceptionally big. Judging by the stone chairs, their shinbones must have been 13 ft long. No fantasy is rich enough to imagine what kind of mortals could have assembled these blocks to form an amphitheatre. The newspaper La Mariana of Talca, Chile, for 11.8.68 asks: 'Could this place have been a landing ground (for gods). Undoubtedly it could.’ What more can one want? The plateau of El Enladrillado can only be reached on horseback. You ride for three hours from the little village of Orto Alto de Viches to the rewarding goal at a height of 1,378 ft. The volcanic blocks that are found there in large numbers have such a smooth surface that they could only have resulted from very careful dressing. A partially interrupted landing strip, about 1,000 yards long and 65 yards wide, is also clearly recognisable on this plateau. In the neighbourhood scholars have found and still of prehistory ...'