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account? As a crucial test of my audacious claims, my readers should make the experiment of reading 'robots', as we understand the term today, for dragons whenever they are mentioned in ancient texts. It is astonishing how intelligible the unintelligible suddenly becomes. I accept the fact that the theories I have expounded will be savagely attacked. Unknown intelligences are supposed to have put an end to bestiality and unnatural sexual practices? A new species of man are supposed to have received the first instructions for a civilised communal life from intelligences? Unknown intelligences, after carrying out their task, are supposed to have vanished into the universe again, but to have left behind overseers of the new men? And these overseers are supposed to have been robots or automatons? I try to recognise a reality that once existed behind myths, legends and traditions. Here are some incontrovertible facts. The Indians believe that they descend from Indra, Ghurka or Bhima—all three of whom drove through the heavens in 'fireships’. The South Sea Islanders say they descend from the god of heaven, Tangalao, who came down from heaven in an enormous gleaming egg. One core is common to these genealogical stories: 'gods' came, chose a group whom they fertilised and separated from the unclean. They imparted all kinds of modern knowledge to them and then Tibetans and Hindus called the universe the 'mother' of the terrestrial race. The natives of Malekula (New Hebrides) state that the first race of men consisted of descendants of the 'sons of heaven’. The Red Indians say that they are the descendants of the 'thunderbird’. The Incas believed they descended from the 'sons of the Sun’. The Rapanui trace their origin back to the birdmen. The Mayas are supposed to be 'children of the Pleiades’. The Teutons claim that their forefathers came with the ‘flying Wanen'. Enoch and Elijah disappeared for ever in a ‘chariot of fire’. disappeared for a period or for ever. Karl F. Kohlenberg described what we are now left with in his book Volkerkunde (Ethnology):