Giant structures of multi-ton stone blocks - megaliths - are scattered all over the Earth. These include complex structures - for example, the Egyptian pyramids, the temple in Baalbek (Lebanon), the dead city of Tiahuanaco (Bolivia) - as well as hundreds of variations on the theme of menhirs (roughly cut upright stones), cromlechs ("fences" of oblong menhirs, forming a circle), dolmens (structures resembling huge birdhouses or pillboxes). And only in one place on the planet were completely unique megaliths found, similar to petrified jugs.
Welcome to Xieng Khouang Province
From the capital of Laos, Vientiane, fly here - an hour and a half. The jungle, rice paddies and fields covered with countless crater pockmarks float under the plane's wing. The province has a notorious reputation as a territory that fell in the XX century, during the "Secret War" (1960-1973), massive bombing.
And now - the landing. Old airfield, huge craters. The bamboo houses of the Miao (or Hmong) people are huts on chicken legs, but instead of legs, they are hulls from American bombs. From the same material - fences around houses. Women in national costumes and turbans are engaged in the household; flocks of bare-legged children pay almost no attention to us - there are a lot of visitors here, because the Valley of Jugs stretches near the village. Or rather. Site # 1 is the largest of the available clusters of stone stupas. Nearby there are also sites # 2 and # 3, there are about 90 such clusters in total.
… Huge vessels rise above the plateau, in the fields and among the jungle: one to three meters high, from 600 kilograms to six tons in weight. The material is diverse - rocks, granite, sandstone and calcined coral. Different preservation, different quality. Some of the pieces seem to have been carved on a gigantic lathe. In some places, there are "covers" with concentric patterns.
What these "jugs" really are, when and by whom they were made - is still unknown. There are several versions though.
Folk-historical version
On the way to Site 1, volunteer guides tell tourists that many years ago a great victory was celebrated here. The Hmong people have always strived for freedom, and now, according to legend, in the VI century AD. local hero Khum Yuam led an uprising against the brutal Chinese ruler Chao Angka and, having defeated him in a bloody battle, drove him from the throne. Celebrating the victory, Khum commanded to prepare a lot of lao-lao rice wine. To store it, people mixed river sand, sugar, bovine giblets and skins and made many jugs from this mixture. After the holiday, they began to store rainwater, rice and, again, rice wine.
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The guides also show the tourists the entrance to a huge cave with partially collapsed (direct hit by an aerial bomb) arches: they say, here Khum's warriors burned jugs. However, maybe they were made by ancient kings.
The small neighbors of the Miao - people of the Puok people - claim that they once descended from Tibet and came here Khatuongs, the ancestors of the ancient rulers of Laos. All along their journey, the aliens erected vessels in which rainwater accumulated. Now people who followed in the footsteps of the Khatuongs did not have to worry - they were not threatened with death from thirst.
It sounds plausible, but only the amount of work done casts doubt on whether the Khatuongs belong to the human race. Although, they say, in ancient times, Tibet was inhabited by giants.
UFO version
Local guides are not great connoisseurs of the mythology of the Puok people, therefore, smiling affably, they only point to the low mountains and do not inform in too much detail that once upon a time, giants descended from these slopes. They slowly moved south, to the sea, and along the way they made temporary dwellings in caves. From the rocks, the giants hollowed out dishes that turned out to be timeless. Perhaps they also made wine, because in those days, rice grains were as big as a good pumpkin, and people chopped off pieces of the right size with axes. True, then, as the legend of the Puok people says, the lowland Laotians (whom the Hmongs do not respect very much) offended their goddess Nang Khasop (her name is translated as "Soul of Rice"), and the grain became small, but so that it somehow grew, it was necessary to perform complex rituals. Then the giants got angry and left altogether.
Who were these gigantic travelers? Let's remind: the weight of the mysterious vessels reaches several tons. How to cut a similar product from a stone block? How to transfer over the mountains? Even modern technology will be powerless! And here it is quite logical, as it seems to us, a version of paleocontacts arises. After all, the possibility of visiting Earth by aliens is now being discussed not only by science fiction writers. Some scientists also joined them. If we assume that we are talking about aliens, a lot becomes clear. They undoubtedly possessed unique technologies that made it possible to process any materials without problems (by the way, the Khatuongs are described not only as giants, but also as sorcerers with magic swords).
So it happened before the Flood - over ten thousand years ago. It was not difficult for the newcomers to saw or drill out a stone block, and install it in the right place. True, in the veins of the aliens blue blood (based on copper, not iron, like ours) flowed: it bound oxygen weaker, and it was difficult for them to breathe. And therefore, the guests from space had to constantly expand their vessels, drinking alcohol. For the production and storage of alcohol, the Valley of the Pitchers was created.
When the aliens left the Earth, people created a necropolis on the territory consecrated by their presence - so that the ancestors were closer to the "gods" and could, at the request of their descendants, shout to heaven.
Scientific realistic version
The Western world first heard of stone jugs in 1909. And in 1923, the famous French archaeologist Henri Parmentier described the types of vessels and, having studied their contents - beads, bronze bells, pieces of iron needles, fragments of bones, suggested that the jugs are a kind of sarcophagi of the Bronze Age.
The baton from Parmentier was taken by his compatriots Madeleine Colani (who proved that man appeared in the territory of Indochina 18 thousand years ago) and her sister Eleanor. Women archaeologists have carried out a series of excavations at 60 sites. The sisters managed to find bronze and iron tools (supposedly used to make jugs), clay beads with bright geometric patterns, shards, cowrie shells, bronze bracelets under the vessels, as well as everything that Parmentier had already discovered. Sisters Kolani confirmed and supplemented the conclusions of their predecessor. Madeleine, relying on the results of the work of the British Mills and Hutton in northern India in 1928 and on the research of colleagues in Vietnam, put forward a hypothesis: an unexplored people lived and roamed on this territory (the British called them cookies). Cookies cremated their dead in huge jugsand then buried the ashes next door. This happened about two thousand years ago.
Research continued in 1994. Japanese archaeologist Nitga and his Laotian colleague Tong-sa examined the stone covers lying on the ground and found traces of ancient burials with traces of cremation. The investigations near one of the urns brought quite unexpected results: images of people were found on its walls, and seven flat stones under the urn, eight to twelve centimeters below the soil surface. Under six rested someone's remains, and in the seventh there was a small, beautifully decorated jar with pieces of bones and teeth. As a result, it has been suggested that the Valley of the Pitchers is a huge city of the dead, serving a still undetected metropolis of the 4th century BC. These conclusions were partly confirmed by the materials of excavations in 1994-1996, as well as in 2004-2005 and 2007.
In short, scientists believe that now they already know how and why the giant jugs were installed. However, those who are far from science continue to ask questions. Well, for example: why were such large containers made and in such quantities? Did millions of people live in the ancient city, and epidemics raged, literally mowing down the population? No less doubtful are the officially put forward versions of the manufacture of urns: it is believed that they were carved out of stone using bronze and iron plates. Sandstone and limestone really lend themselves to such processing. But granite? …
In general, if the version of paleocontacts was considered the most probable, it would be worth considering that it was the aliens who created the most unusual megaliths on the planet. And the next time aliens visit Earth, they could be asked why they needed it.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №8. Author: Zhanna Veykina