Nexus - 0301 - New Times Magazine-pages

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come out of the clouds a very long time ago". These people had big, knobby heads and small bodies and were a terrible sight to see, according to the locals who had chased these people away on horseback. The description of these people is identical to the bod- ies Professor Chi Pu Tei had recovered in 1938. Mural paintings were found inside the cave. They depicted sun- tise, the Moon, unidentified stars and the Earth—all connected with dotted lines. The discs and the cave's contents were dated at about 10,000 BC. The caves were still inhabited by two tribes, calling themselves the Han and the Dropa, the latter people of strange expression. Barely 1.3 metres (4 feet) tall, they were neither Chinese nor Tibetan. Even an expert could not indicate their racial back- ground. The report on the translation of the discs, published in 1964, did not signal-the end of this mystery. Obviously other people and organisations were interested. Enquiries came from the Soviet Union, with scientists request- ing some of the discs to be sent to them for study, which the Chinese did. The Soviets removed pieces of ‘dirt’ and made vari- ous chemical analyses. The Soviet scientists were surprised to learn that the discs contained fairly high amounts of cobalt and other metals. Dr Viatcheslav Saizev reported in the Soviet magazine, Sputnik, that he had put the discs on a special machine which was some- bc amipst es tee ; what like a gramophone. When tumed on, the discs “vibrated” or tg . ew ifaw i “hummed" as if some kind of special electric charge had been LSEHTIG is RO ToMares, SEE pushed through the discs in a particular rhythm; or, as one scientist Tsum Um Nui's colleagues laughed: the good professor had _ stated, "as if they formed a part of an electric circuit". Somehow, clearly lost his marbles. How could such a thing be true? Their at one time they had been exposed to high electric charges. ungrateful reception made the professor decide to move to Japan, Such findings, however, had little to do with the other discs that where he died the following year. stayed behind in China. Shortly after Tsum Um Nui’s decoding, Since the discs' discovery more than 25 years before, other the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s swept over China, and archaeologists had learnt more about the history of the area. That there was no public concern over the discs’ fate or their message. newly acquired knowledge indicated that the story, as it appeared In 1974, an Austrian engineer, Emst Wegerer, stumbled upon in Tsum Um Nui's translation, could be correct. Legends circulat- two discs in the Banpo Museum at Xian and photographed them. ing even at that time spoke of short, skinny, yellow men that “had The Swiss “ancient astronauts" author, Erich von Diniken, learnt of the discs and Wegerer's photographs, and wrote about the discs in one of his books. Few believed von Daniken reported a true discovery; most felt he had made it up. It was German tour operator, Hartwig Hausdorf, who changed the situation. In March 1994, he and Peter Krassa, a friend of von Daniken, left for China. Hausdorf said later: In Xian we visited the Banpo Museum searching for the discs that Wegerer had photographed two decades earlier. But our optimism was not rewarded. Nowhere could we find any trace of the discs. Had Wegerer really made up the entire story? That seemed unlikely. We asked our guides and Professor Wang Zhijun, director of the museum. At first, they denied the discs even existed! Within an hour of our having shown them the pho- tographs, Zhijun stated that one of his pre- decessors had indeed given Wegerer per- mission to photograph the discs, that the discs did indeed exist or had at least existed. Shortly after having given Wegerer permis- sion to photograph the discs, that director was ‘asked' to resign. We learnt that, ever #8 60 ¢ NEXUS DECEMBER 1995 - JANUARY 1996