The Ancient Alien Question

by Philip Coppens

  After two years of what must have been utter frustration, the professor and four of his colleagues were finally allowed to publish the conclusions of their research. They decided to call it “The cartelled script relating to the spaceship that, as is written on the discs, descended on Earth 12,000 years ago.” The discs told the story of inhabitants of another world stuck in the mountains of Baian-Kara-Ula. The peaceful intentions of these people had not been comprehended by the local population, and many extraterrestrials had been chased and killed by members of the Han tribe who lived in nearby caves.

  Professor Tsum Um Nui offered a few lines of his translation: “The Dropa came out of the clouds in their aeroplanes. Before sunrise, our men, women and children hid in the caves ten times. When they finally understood the sign language of the Dropa, they realized the newcomers had peaceful intentions.”17 Another part of the text stated the Han tribe regretted that the Dropa had crashed in this remote area, and that they were unable to build a new spaceship so the Dropa could return to their home planet.

  Since the discs’ discovery more than 25 years before, other archaeologists had learned more about the history of the area. That newly acquired knowledge indicated that the story, as it appeared in Tsum Um Nui’s translation, could be correct. Legends circulating even at that time spoke of short, skinny, yellow men that “had come out of the clouds a very long time ago.”18 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 bodies Professor Chi Pu Tei had recovered in 1938.

  Mural paintings were also found inside the cave. They depicted sunrise, the moon, unidentified stars, and the Earth—all connected with dotted lines. The discs and the cave’s contents were dated to about 10000 BC. In the 20th century, some of the caves were still inhabited by two tribes, calling themselves the Han and the Dropa—the latter people of strange expression. Barely 4 feet tall, they were neither Chinese nor Tibetan. Even the experts of Professor Tsum’s team could not indicate their racial background.

  Next, enquiries came from the Soviet Union, with scientists requesting some of the discs to be sent to them for study, which the Chinese did. The Soviets removed pieces of “dirt” and made various 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 that was somewhat like a gramophone. When turned on, the discs “vibrated” or “hummed” as if some kind of special electric charge had been pushed through the discs in a particular rhythm; or, as one scientist stated, “as if they formed a part of an electric circuit.”19 Somehow, at one time they had been exposed to high electric charges.

  Such findings, however, had little to do with the other discs that stayed behind in China. Shortly after Tsum Um Nui’s decoding, the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s swept over China, and there was no public concern for the discs’ fate or their message. In 1974, an Austrian engineer, Ernst Wegerer, stumbled upon two discs in the Banpo Museum at Xian and photographed them. Erich von Däniken learned of the discs and Wegerer’s photographs, and wrote about the discs in one of his books. But in March 1994, Hausdorf and Peter Krassa, a friend of von Däniken, left for China and visited Xian and the Banpo Museum, searching for the discs that Wegerer had photographed two decades earlier. Nowhere could they find any trace of the discs. Had Wegerer made up the entire story? That seemed unlikely. They asked their guides and Professor Wang Zhijun, the director of the museum. At first, they denied the discs even existed! Within an hour of having been shown the photographs, Zhijun stated that one of his predecessors had indeed given Wegerer permission to photograph the discs, and that the discs did indeed exist or had at least existed. Shortly after having given Wegerer permission to photograph the discs, that director was asked to resign.

  Director Zhijun showed Hausdorf and Krassa a book on archaeology in which photographs of the discs could be seen. Afterward, he took them to the location where the museum’s artifacts were cleaned and catalogued. On one chair stood an enlarged copy of a stone disc. Zhijun hinted that, a few years ago, word had come down from above—from his superiors—that all traces of the discs had to be wiped out, and that he was to go on record as saying everything was one big lie. Had Hausdorf and Krassa been less obstinate, they might have classed Wegerer as a hoaxer.

  In their efforts to find the truth about the Dropa saga, Krassa and Hausdorf also came across the story of an Englishman, Dr. Karyl Robin-Evans, who had traveled to China in 1947. Before his arrival, a Professor Lolladorff had shown him a stone disc that he believed to have been found in northern India. The object appeared to have belonged to a tribe, the “Dzopa,” who had used the discs during religious ceremonies. Dr. Robin-Evans stated the discs had a radius of about 5 inches and were about 2 inches thick.

  The professor put the disc on a balance and connected the balance to a typewriter. He illustrated how the disc, throughout a period of three and a half hours, apparently gained and lost weight. After one day, this change in weight created a printed line on the paper in the typewriter. The change in weight had allowed the typewriter to print, leaving characters on the paper. The discs could (sort of) type! Though it was easy to explain what had happened, how it had occurred was basically impossible. How could a stone disc change weight? (Apparently Dr. Robin-Evans was unwilling to lose face over the stunning weight experiment: Though his report had been written in 1947, it was not published until 1978, four years after his death.)

  After his meeting with Professor Lolladorff, Dr. Robin-Evans set course for the Chinese mountains in search of the Dzopa tribe. First, he passed through Lhasa, Tibet, where he was welcomed by the 14th Dalai Lama, who was 12 years old at the time. In 1947, Tibet was still independent. Only in 1950, when the Dalai Lama fled to northern India, did the Chinese take possession of the country. Once in the high mountains, Robin-Evans’s Tibetan carriers decided to stay behind. They were afraid. Dr. Robin-Evans managed to reach his destination and gain the confidence of the Dzopa people. He was provided with a language instructor who taught him the basics of the Dzopa language. Then, Lurgan-La, the religious leader of the Dzopa, told him the history of the tribe. He stated that their home planet was in the Sirius system. Lurgan-La explained that two expeditions had been sent to our Earth: the first, more than 20,000 years ago; the second in AD 1014. During the AD 1014 visit, a few spaceships had crashed; the survivors were unable to leave Earth. The Dzopa were the direct descendants of those people.

  Among the estate of Robin-Evans was a most remarkable photograph: the royal couple Hueypah-La and Veez-La. They measured 47 and 42 inches! Not only was their height small; their entire appearance could only be described as strange.

  The important question was whether the “Dropa” and the “Dzopa” tribes were one and the same. But Robin-Evans had apparently been aware of some controversy regarding that subject. Though “Dropa” was the correct spelling, “Dzopa,” or, rather, “Tsopa,” was closer to the correct pronunciation of the word. He felt it would be better to write “Dzopa,” as that was closer to the correct pronunciation.

  There were only two remaining problems: The date on the stone discs, 12,000 years ago, did not coincide with the statements of the religious leader (20,000 years ago and AD 1014). Furthermore, the discs appeared to contain statements by non-Dropa tribesmen describing the Dropa, but were supposedly written by the Dropa. Did some locals intermingle with the Dropa? Or was the information somewhat garbled?

  Were there still descendents of the Dropa? Hausdorf looked into the latest, 1982 list of recognized national minorities in China and learned that the Dzopa are not recognized as a minority in their home province, Qinghai. Might they therefore no longer exist? The list does specify that 880,000 people making up 25 tribes are not recognized as ethnic minorities. So, the Dzopa might not be rec
ognized, or they might be listed under a different name, as the Hanyu-Pinyin transcription “translated” certain names completely differently from what they were before.

  Another mystery with which Hausdorf battled was the name of Tsum Um Nei, a name that wasn’t Chinese. This fact had led to rumors that the man had never existed and was a figment of someone’s imagination. But an Asian friend of Hausdorf told him that “Tsum Um Nei” was a mixture of Chinese and Japanese; the Japanese pronunciation of the name had been written down in Chinese, the way a German named “Schmidt” would be named “Smith” in America. “Obviously the guy was Japanese,” Hausdorf realized, which also explained why the professor decided to move to Japan after the stone disc controversy—he returned home to retire.20

  There are several aspects to this story: the strange skeletons; the discovery of a little-known tribe of dwarf-like beings; the nature and whereabouts of the discs; and the decipherment of the inscriptions. What is the truth?

  As for the discs, it has been pointed out that stone discs are a known ingredient of Chinese culture and are called “Bi” discs. Although their origin is unknown, these Bi discs have been dated to as far back as 10000 BC—thus largely coinciding with the time-frame of the alleged crash. Bi discs were normally made from jade or other precious materials and were regarded as status symbols: In the aftermath of war, the losers were required to hand over their discs as a sign of submission. Furthermore, it is known that the discs were used in burials: In aristocratic burials, the discs were normally placed above the head, below the feet, and on the chest of the deceased. Interestingly, Bi discs were often called “the Ear of Heaven,” and sometimes the hole in the disc was placed in front of the mouth so that the dead could speak to their ancestors.

  The story that stone discs with hieroglyphs were found in a tomb is therefore not only plausible but likely—considering, too, that Bi discs often carried inscriptions.

  This begs the question of whether the discs that Wegerer photographed in 1974 and the disks seen by Hausdorf, which are similar in description to those reportedly discovered in BaianKara-Ula, were just Bi discs or actual examples of the ones found in the mountain cave during the 1937–38 expedition.

  Many people incorrectly believe that the story of the Dropa tribe was first aired in a 1978 book titled Sungods in Exile, edited by David Agamon. This book details the 1947 expedition of the English scientist Dr. Karyl Robin-Evans. It is now known that the book was largely science fiction dressed up as nonfiction, but many people had already decided that the Dropa story was bogus—especially those who erroneously argue that the book was the first to mention the “ridiculous” story. It would seem that Sungods in Exile either was meant to cash in on stories about the Dropa that were in circulation for a few years before it was published, or—if you like a conspiratorial explanation—was meant to discredit the story. Why? Perhaps it was merely because China was a Communist nation and any interest in things Chinese was officially discouraged at the time by Western governments.

  However, it was definitely not a hoax—at least not one executed in 1978. The Berlin-based historian Dr. Jörg Dendl has been able to trace the first mention of the Dropa story to 1962, when a monthly magazine for vegetarians, Das vegetarische Universum (The Vegetarian Universe), published an article titled “UFOs in Prehistory?” in its July edition. Dr. Dendl has so far not been able to find the original Chinese or Japanese source, but it is clear that the story is much older than 1978, as skeptics claim.

  Furthermore, the story reported in Sungods in Exile of an expedition coming across dwarfish people in the Baian-Kara-Ula region has nonfictional counterparts. Dr. Dendl found a 1933 clipping about a Chinese confrontation with dwarflike beings. Though some might argue that the location was in Tibet, at that time Baian-Kara-Ula was indeed mistakenly labeled as being part of Tibet. The article relates how a woman, only 4 feet tall, was seen being escorted by Chinese soldiers and that she and her group were being held as slaves. There was also a statement that they were cannibals, but this might merely have been an excuse to cover for their inhumane treatment.

  Most importantly, the existence of the Dropa—or a tribe like them—has been confirmed. In November 1995, the Associated Press (AP) stated that some 120 “dwarfish beings” had been discovered in Sichuan Province, in a so-called Village of the Dwarfs. Some skeptics cast doubt on the AP account, though it is easily verifiable. In fact, on November 9, 1995, the German publication Bild ran a report titled “Das Dorf der Zwerge—Umweltgifte schuld?” (“The Village of the Dwarfs—Environmental pollution to blame?”) about the discovery. The tallest adult in this village was 3 feet 10 inches tall; the smallest was 2 feet 1 inch.

  The location of the village is only a few hundred miles from the Baian-Kara-Ula mountain range. However, despite China’s becoming more open, this entire area, including the village, remains off-limits to foreigners. Hartwig Hausdorf ponders whether in recent years the Dropa’s descendants might have abandoned the mountains and settled in the nearby lowlands—where they were “discovered” in 1995.

  According to a report in Bild on January 27, 1997, a Chinese ethnologist claimed that the tribe’s dwarfism was due to a high concentration of mercury in the soil, which had poisoned their drinking water for several generations. The claim did not go unchallenged. Dr. Norbert Felgenhauer of the Munich Institute for Toxicology argued that this theory is nonsense. He stated that such poisoning would result in immediate death, not stunted growth, and introduced as evidence the case of the Japanese town of Minamata, where in the 1960s many inhabitants died from mercury poisoning. He also noted that mercury was unable to change human DNA and hence could not be held responsible for causing a hereditary trait—which was clearly apparent in this tribe.

  So, we know that the existence of stone discs is possible, if not likely, and that, if the 1933 report is correct, there were dwarfish people living in that region. The question, then, is this: Is the decipherment of the script correct? If it is, then it does not necessarily prove that alien beings crash-landed in China, but at the very least it shows that these genetically bizarre beings believed they were descendants of aliens.

  There is no verification of the 1962 successful translation of the discs as such, though it should be pointed out that neither is there any evidence to suggest that the 1962 story and the translation are invented. So far, the best the detractors have been able to argue is that the story is improbable (of course!) and that no one has ever been able to decipher a stand-alone language, let alone an extraterrestrial language. That is true. But nowhere does the account say, and no one has ever argued, that this was a unique language. The only claim in this connection is that in 1937–38, when the discs were discovered, their inscriptions could not be read immediately. Only in 1962 did a team of specialists succeed in this task. For all we know, the language in which the script was written had not yet been deciphered in 1937, or no one had paid sufficient attention to the inscriptions, or only in 1962 was someone able to identify the language in which the inscriptions were written.

  But note the year: 1962. This is the year that the earliest known reference to the story appeared—found by Dr. Dendl in a German magazine—and it would suggest that something happened in 1962 that made a Chinese or Japanese source report on it. The translation of the discs might be precisely such an event: Professor Um Nui publishes his translation, and the media picks it up and creates a controversy; he decides to retire and return to Japan, while the media outside of China also reports on it, where it ends up in the German magazine The Vegetarian Universe. If the story was invented, it means that it was invented (or misreported) in 1962.

  The 1962 article also discusses some technical details of the discs, underlining the potential factual nature of the story. It notes that the discs were composed of cobalt, iron, and nickel—the only metals to produce a magnetic field. Nickel is found largely in Canada and Central Africa, but in recent years it has been found in China, in the general area where the discs were
located. For Hausdorf, this is a further indication that the story is factual, for this find post-dates the discovery of the discs—and the 1962 article. In short, what in 1962 was unlikely and improbable has now been confirmed.

  The story of the Dropa is the story of an accident—an alien accident; how an alien spacecraft crash-landed on planet Earth. Its survivors had to make the most of it, and their presence was recorded in legends, as well as showing up in the genetic makeup of their descendents. The story of the Dropa, however, also brings to the forefront another issue, which is how incredibly divided the world of science is. However much we can pretend that “scientific evidence” is easy to collect, the world is divided into political factions that have had great influence on scientific communities. The story of the Dropa for a long period of time was not deemed to be credible—because it originated in China. And then it was quickly labeled a hoax as scientists had “shown” that it all originated from a science-fiction novel.

  There is a general unwillingness from the scientific community to go out and find or analyze evidence of an alien presence on planet Earth, and the question as to whether there is any best evidence for the Ancient Alien Question should maybe be reworded, asking instead whether science is willing to explore and will ever accept any evidence in favor of the Ancient Alien Question.

  Scientists are likely to push what they deem to be credible proof for the Ancient Alien Question into the realm of the absurd. There might never be a satisfactory answer, for the only thing we have to show are mute archaeological objects. It might indeed take an extraterrestrial being to land on the lawn of the White House before we accept the presence of a non-human intelligence. But even that will not prove the Ancient Alien Question. For that, after having landed on the White House lawn, ET needs to tell us whether his people ever visited us in the past, or whether he knows of other races that have come here in the past. It is quite likely that ET does not know the answer to that question!