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THE DROPA TRIBE AND THEIR STONE DISCS REVISITED measuring 1.2 metres in length and The Dropa came out of the clouds having an abnormally large skull. in their aeroplanes. Before Buried with the skeletons were unusual sunrise, our men, women and stone discs, 716 in all, about 30 children hid in the caves ten times. centimetres wide and 1.0 cm deep with When they finally understood the a hole in the centre, each bearing sign language of the Dropa, they strange hieroglyphs. Were these Stone realised the newcomers had Age long-playing records? peaceful intentions... The story goes that the Chinese __ As for the discs, it has been pointed Academy of Sciences tried to ban the out that stone discs are a known publication of these findings, but ingredient of Chinese culture and are eventually the story of the Dropa (or called "Bi" discs. Although their origin Dzopa) tribe and their stone discs was is unknown, these Bi discs have been released—though never confirmed. dated to as far back as 10,000 BCE— There are several aspects to this thus largely coinciding with the time- story: the strange skeletons; the frame of the alleged crash. discovery of a little-known tribe of Bi discs were normally made from dwarf-like beings; the nature and jade or other precious materials and whereabouts of the discs; and the were regarded as status symbols. In the decipherment of the inscriptions. aftermath of war, the losers were The script was apparently only required to hand over their discs as a deciphered and the passages translated sign of submission. Furthermore, it is in the early 1960s by a team led by known that the discs were used in Professor Tsum Um Nui of the Peking _ burials. In aristocratic burials, the discs Academy of Prehistory. He claimed were normally placed above the head, that they describe the crash of an below the feet and on the chest of the extraterrestrial spacecraft 12,000 years deceased. Interestingly, Bi discs were ago. Here are a few lines from the often considered to be "the Ear of translation: Heaven", and sometimes the hole in the and tour guide Hartwig Hausdorf reignited the debate as to whether aliens had crash-landed in their craft in the remote mountainous region of Baian-Kara-Ula, in China's Qinhai Province. Over the past decade or so, several elements of the story have been confirmed. The alleged crash-landing at Baian- Kara-Ula has become known as "the Chinese Roswell" —though the crash, if there was one, occurred not in 1947 or thereabouts but thousands of years ago. At the core of the story is that in 1937-38, an expedition led by Chi Pu Tei, an archaeologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Peking (Beijing), was trying to find shelter in the Kunlun-Kette mountain chain. The team members entered a cave and found inscriptions on the walls. At the back of the cave they found several tombs, aligned in a row, containing strange-looking skeletons, each [: the mid-1990s, German author NEXUS ¢ 65 by Philip Coppens © 2008 OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2008 www.nexusmagazine.com