“How to distinguish an alien who has assumed our appearance and lives among us from an ordinary person? And here's how: if you see a bald man in front of you, on whose head a fly is crawling, but he does not react to it in any way, you should know - in front of you is definitely an alien, and the skin on his head is solid silicone!"
Why do points of view change?
And I took this nonsense from … my own lecture on the wonders and mysteries of ancient civilizations, which in 1975 as a lecturer of the OK Komsomol read in summer field camps to students and collective farmers and, I must say, not without success. Yes, yes, at that time they were also fond of this, although not in such volumes as now. But, as I got older, I began to take hypotheses more seriously, both my own and, first of all, those of others, and most importantly, I began to try first to find out all the available information on a particular issue, and only then express my opinion. Moreover, to recognize not only what corresponds to my point of view, but also what is opposite to it. Arguments for and against!
Temple of the Inscriptions in the city of Palenque. Pyramid.
Today we are experiencing a departure from totalitarian, that is, universal and verified by the party points of view and a rejection of like-mindedness, and this is good. But as always, in any process there is good, and there are “side effects”. One of them was the spread of all kinds of delusional theories, popular among people with a low level of knowledge and intelligence (and there are, alas, many of them), who, however, with a tenacity worthy of better application, promote them everywhere and everyone. And all the troubles, as you know, come from incomplete knowledge and more … from poverty. I saw what Deniken showed you or Muldashev there and … believed. And there is not enough money to go and see everything myself. Working with old maps in the archives of the Maritime Museum in Barcelona? Languages, like Chapaev, is not taught. So it turns out - incomplete knowledge that makes a person with an unstable psyche vulnerable. Well, and the examples of how the information is presented by the adherents of "secret knowledge", darkness, darkness. But today we will touch on only one thing: the famous slab from the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque, about which sometimes the most amazing things are still said.
Temple of the Inscriptions. Actually, the temple.
Scene
And it so happened that back in 1948, the Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz found in the jungle of the Mexican state of Chiapas the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Palenque (Spanish - Fortress), and in it a high pyramid with a temple at the top, called the Temple of the Inscriptions. And it was named so because its walls were once decorated with huge slabs with numerous bas-reliefs and 620 hieroglyphic inscriptions, some of which have survived to this day. What they are talking about has not been fully clarified, because the combination of picture words and phonetic symbols has not yet been fully deciphered. However, it is obvious that they belong to eras that are thousands of years away from us, and contain narratives about people and gods - participants in the events of Mayan history. By the way, the city was abandoned during the years of the Spanish conquest. Cortez and other Spanish conquistadors do not write anything about him and clearly did not know about this city. Europeans did not know anything about the existence of this city hidden in the jungle until 1746.
Main square of the city of Palenque. Temple of the Inscriptions on the left.
The temple itself is built on a nine-step 20-meter pyramid, with its back side resting on a steep mountainside. When Roose discovered it, the pyramid with the Temple of the Inscriptions looked like a vegetated hill, so a huge mass of earth had to be moved before it appeared completely before the eyes of archaeologists.
Temple inside. Now it is clear why it was called that?
Amazing burial
The floor of the Temple of the Inscriptions is covered with large and well-polished stone slabs. Archaeologists immediately noticed one of them, since it had two rows of holes closed with stone plugs. Moreover, the massive walls of the temple lay on the floor, and went somewhere deep. This led them to think that there might be some other structure under this stone flooring. Alberto Ruz immediately began to dig and found an underground passage going deep into the pyramid, and when he reached the bottom in 1952, he realized that there was a crypt with a burial there.
Underground passage inside the pyramid.
It was about 9 meters long and 4 meters wide, and its high, vaulted ceiling went up almost 7 meters. The construction of this underground room was so perfect that its preservation was almost perfect even after a thousand years. The stones of the walls and vaults were carved with such skill that none of them fell from their place. The walls of the crypt were decorated with plaster bas-reliefs: nine richly dressed figures, apparently, symbolized the Lords of the Night (in Mayan theology - deities from the underworld). They wore lush costumes that were remarkably similar to each other: headdresses of long quetzal feathers, fancy masks, cloaks of feathers and jade plates, skirts or loincloths with a belt, sandals made of leather straps. The neck, chest, hands and feet of these figures were literally decorated with various precious ornaments. Sceptres with hilts in the form of a snake's head, masks of the rain god and round shields with the image of the sun god spoke of the high position of these characters.
"They were all aliens!" Bas-reliefs of the Temple of the Inscriptions.
The floor of the crypt was almost entirely covered by a rectangular slab measuring 3.8x2.2 m and 0.25 m thick, completely covered with fine carvings. The edges of the stone slab were bordered by a ribbon of hieroglyphs. Later, Rus deciphered two calendar dates. They corresponded to 603 and 633. n. NS. As for the slab itself, it is rightly recognized as one of the most outstanding works of Mayan art. According to the highest technique of execution, it is compared with the works of European masters of the Renaissance.
Here she is a stove! But it’s wrong to look at her like that. (National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City)
Under the slab, archaeologists found the burial of a man of about forty or fifty years old, abundantly furnished with jewelry made of precious jade. Who was that? The ruler of the city? A great priest, and so great that they decided to bury him first and only then build a pyramid and a temple over him? Who knows…
It's right to look at her like this!
What do historians think?
One of the first descriptions of the tombstone found in the pyramid was given by the Soviet historian V. Gulyaev. And what he saw on it is this: “In the lower part, a terrible mask is drawn, which by its very appearance reminds of death: jaws and nose devoid of soft tissues, huge empty eye sockets and bared fangs. The top of this mask is crowned with four images, two of which symbolize death, and the other two, on the contrary, suggest birth and life (a grain of corn and something that resembles an ear of it or some kind of flower). On the crown of this monster sits, leaning back, a handsome young man in a rich headdress adorned with jewels. He stares intently in the direction of the odd, cross-shaped object, which is probably a stylized image of a Mayan corn sprout. Finally, at the top of this corn-cross sits the sacred quetzal bird, whose long feathers were considered the privilege of the Mayan rulers and priests. And below are the symbols of water and two disks, which depict the masks of the sun god. However, he did not notice that the character depicted on the slab is very similar to the reconstruction of the jade mask that covered the face of the deceased. But later it was noticed by others.
The slab inside the tomb. Original.
Bad examples are always contagious
And it was this fact that prompted two scientists - the Italian Pinotti and the Japanese Matsumura (independently of each other), to the same idea, and the delusional thought that if a real person is depicted on the slab, then he is also surrounded by real objects, not some mystical symbols. After that, the "development" of this idea automatically led them to the conclusion that the drawing on the slab is a detailed … drawing of a certain spaceship! "Bad examples", they say, are very contagious and soon the Russian scientist V. Zaitsev joined their company, and the American aircraft designer J. Sanderson even put a reproduction of a drawing from a plate into a computer and gave him a "command" to convert a flat image into a three-dimensional one. This is how the cockpit of the spacecraft with the control panel and the engine spewing out flames turned out. At the same time, Sanderson also supplemented his computer printouts with several strokes, depicting, in addition, the outer skin of the launch vehicle, which was absent in the image on the plate!
A slab, and under it is a sarcophagus. Reconstruction. (Palenque Museum)
As always, it was not without Daniken …
But this idea was best known in the interpretation of the famous Swiss writer Erich von Daniken. In his book Chariots of the Gods, he stated that the mysterious figure in the center of the lid is an astronaut sitting in the cockpit of a starship, and the book has become a real bestseller. Moreover, without further ado from the evil one, he placed the drawing not vertically, but horizontally, and he immediately "spoke" exactly the way he wanted it!
Volumetric rendering of the image on the plate.
“In the middle of the drawing,” Daniken writes, “there is a seated man leaning forward. He wears a helmet on his head, from which the reins or hoses go back. A device resembling an oxygen apparatus is located in front of the face. His hands manipulate the control devices. With his right hand, he presses a button or key, and with his left hand, he squeezes the lever (this is confirmed by the fact that the thumb is not visible in the figure). The heel of the left foot rests on the pedals. Attention is drawn to the fact that the "Indian" is dressed very modern. He has a sweater collar around his neck. The sleeves end with knitted elastic cuffs. Buckled safety belt at the waist. The trousers fit the legs like leggings. But this is how modern cosmonauts dress when they are not in spacesuits."
Facts versus hypotheses
However, even earlier, namely in 1968, the Soviet science fiction writer A. Kazantsev set forth this same hypothesis in detail on the pages of the journal Technics for Youth. But if we turn to real facts, then they will not be in favor of the supporters of all these cosmic hypotheses. To begin with, both in Daniken's book and in A. Kazantsev's article, the images on the stone slab - the sarcophagus lid from the Temple of the Inscriptions - are given in a highly distorted form. The vast spaces of its carved surface were specially filled with black paint, many characteristic details were smeared, and individual parts of the painting (in fact, never connected with each other!) Were connected by a solid line. But the most important thing is the angle in which they depicted the lid of the sarcophagus: in order to give their "astronaut" a more natural posture (leaning forward, etc.), both authors deliberately placed the image in the wrong, transverse position, while the slab must be looked at, standing at its bottom, that is, the end part.
Judging by the sculptures and bas-reliefs, the Mayans were very fond of depicting symbols of death … She, one might say, was just a "dear mother" to them.
As a result of such a distortion, many details of the sculptural composition - the quetzal bird, the mask of the deity of the earth, etc. - appear before the viewer in a completely unnatural form: upside down or sideways. If we look at the relief of the sarcophagus correctly, we will see that the young man depicted there sits, leaning back noticeably, on his back and gazing intently upwards - at a cruciform object. The young man is not dressed in "plaid trousers", as Daniken writes, - the Maya did not know them, but only in a loincloth. The body, arms and legs of the young man are naked, although they are adorned with bracelets and beads made of jade plates. Finally, all the main elements of the image from the lid of the sarcophagus from the Temple of the Inscriptions - the cross ("tree of life") with the bird at the top, the mask of the earth monster, etc., are presented in different variations and in a number of other temples in Palenque.
The arrangement of the tomb inside the pyramid of the Temple of the Inscriptions.
But the most important argument in favor of the fact that an alien is not depicted on the slab is connected with simple logic, which we do not like. Well, please tell me, who, if he were at least three times an alien from outer space, would need to show the savage Indians the blueprint of his spaceship, and most importantly, while still explaining it to them so that they understand it? Well, isn't it stupid to assume such a thing? "Do not throw pearls in front of pigs, and do not trample it under your feet!" - it is written in the Bible and that is exactly what, in my opinion, everything is said once and for all!
