Since time immemorial, people have dreamed of hand-made assistants, similar in appearance to themselves, possessing intelligence and capable of performing some operations, saving the owners from the routine of daily work. Such "mechanical people" appear in ancient legends and myths.
But all these myths and legends could not be born from scratch! Maybe in ancient times there were powerful civilizations with high technologies, and it cost them nothing to create mechanical servants with electronic stuffing? Echoes of their memory have survived in the epics of many peoples.
Skull Chi Yu
Ancient Chinese chronicles tell of the amazing Emperor Huang Di, who ruled around 2600 BC. According to legend, once a bright star fell into the valley of the Yellow River. Its fall was accompanied by the radiance of great lightning and terrible thunder. Then the star turned into a white egg, and people like gods emerged from it.
Among them were quite strange creatures, which had four eyes and six arms, copper heads with iron foreheads, and instead of ears - tridents. All this is very similar to robots equipped with various manipulators, antennas, and observation devices.
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One of these creatures was named Chi Yu. He is depicted in ancient Chinese frescoes and talismans. He has a very exotic look: on his head there are either horns, or antennas, six arms, and each has weapons: swords, axes, crossbows, and even something resembling an automatic machine. Chi Yu was the leader of a squad of 60 Iron Men. All of them could fly without wings or other devices.
But these creatures were not immortal. Once Chi Yu also died. History is silent about how it happened. It is only known that the "sons of heaven" - the companions of the emperor Huang-di - separated the head of the leader of the robots from the body and buried it in a deep grave, strictly forbidding the local residents to approach it closer than six li (that is, three kilometers).
The burial place was surrounded by a high wall. The daredevils who dared to look behind her told that sometimes a thick reddish-white steam rose from the grave.
These precautions suggest that Chi Yu's metal head is a radioactive power supply. After the expiration of its service life, it should have been disposed of by placing it in a repository of radioactive waste, which was done.
Time erases the traces of previous civilizations. The new people who settled on the banks of the Yellow River did not hear anything about the Huang Di emperor or his loyal servant Chi Yu. On the site of the burial ground in the city district of Jijou, a village surrounded by rice fields appeared.
Once a peasant family decided to dig a well - and came across a metal skull. This incident is described in the Chinese chronicles of the 6th century. Scientists, who became aware of the amazing find, came to the conclusion that the peasants had discovered the remains of the legendary Chi Yu.
It is not known whether the skull was still radioactive, whether the people who held it in their hands were still alive, and finally, where did this dangerous find go. But it is possible that the radioactive remains of other robots from Chi Yu's detachment were buried in the same burial ground.
Victim of the Cultural Revolution
In the fall of 2006, the Yelsk-Regional Studies group, a member of the Belarus-Cosmopoisk association, tried to explore this area. In this case, the pathfinders faced considerable difficulties. The fact is that all the land in the district is plowed up, rice and other agricultural crops are grown on it, and the owners of the fields were not at all eager to allow excavations here.
Nevertheless, the Belarusians managed to obtain permission to pass through the fields with a metal detector. But they were in for the strongest disappointment: there was practically no iron in this land. The conductor - the owner of the metal detector - suggested that the metal was still there, but it was found and used during the "Cultural Revolution".
Then, throughout China, the construction of small blast furnaces was practiced, the owners of which did their best to fulfill the plan for smelting iron descended from above. Everything metal that could be found flew into the blast furnaces.
It even got to the point that they drove sleeping household members from iron beds. All the rusty pieces of iron in the area were collected. It is possible that self-made metallurgists managed to get to the remains of ancient robots. So the only metal find of the search engines was a spoon made by some kind of cous-tar.
Flaming Tail Dragon
Where did the "sons of heaven" come from on Earth, led by Huang Di? An ancient manuscript says that their arrival was accompanied by "the shining of a great lightning that encircled the star Cei in the constellation Bucket." The bucket is the constellation Ursa Major.
Which of the stars was called Cei is not known for certain. But it is possible that it is one of the planets of this star system that is the heavenly homeland of aliens. According to another version, they came from the star Hsien-yuan (Regulus in the constellation Leo).
The Sons of Heaven brought with them many magical objects that amazed the imagination of the aborigines: flying machines, self-propelled carts, translucent mirrors …
But they were even more bewildered by the fact that Huangdi, who ruled for a whole century, did not behave as an emperor should: he did not demand universal worship, strict observance of the court ceremonial, did not reorganize the state apparatus.
Instead, he and his team watched the starry sky using 12 metal plates, polished to a mirror shine, did some kind of mathematical calculations, drew astronomical maps.
The Sons of Heaven did a lot for the Chinese: they taught them how to make boats, dig wells, build defenses, make musical instruments, and use the calendar. Even acupuncture came from them.
Ancient texts say that Huang Di had a tall magic tripod: "Hundreds of spirits, monsters and animals filled him inside." Like a dragon, he flew in the sky, only he belched flame not from his mouth, but from his tail.
On this dragon, the emperor and his team from time to time flew to their star. At the same time, they were dressed in "fish suits for flights", which, as it is said in the ancient Chinese "Book of Mountains and Seas", "protect from weapons and allow not to be afraid of thunder."
This dragon, as the chronicles say, had amazing properties: "in one day it covered myriads of miles, and a person who sat on it reached the age of two thousand years." That is, the ancient Chinese had an idea about the theory of relativity, about the metamorphoses of time in objects moving at speeds close to light.
In addition, the dragon “knew the past and the present” (that is, there were devices inside it - information storage devices); he could correctly assess the situation; “Become light and heavy” (that is, to control the gravitational field).
An interesting hieroglyph, which depicts the aircraft of the emperor in Chinese manuscripts: four circles connected in a cross-like manner; each of them is also crossed out with a cross. Isn't it the sight of the nozzles of the spaceship rushing upward ?!
Perfect toastmaster
Another ancient Chinese document tells of an inspection trip that Emperor Mu-wan (976-922 BC) made across the western part of his state. On this journey, he was entertained by a robot made by master Yang Shi. This artificial creature had bones, muscles, joints, skin and hair just like humans. He knew how to sing, dance, tell entertaining stories.
And in the 8th century, the Taoist monk Ma Deifeng made an apparatus for pouring wine in the form of a mountain ridge, mounted on a disk, under which was a large turtle, in which the entire mechanism was hidden. Inside the ridge, there were about 10 liters of wine. On the southern slope was a cave, from which a dragon's head peeped out.
When he opened his mouth, wine poured from it into a glass located below, in a lotus flower. When the glass was full, the wine stopped flowing. If someone took a glass, the flower moved aside, giving way to another flower with an empty vessel. And if the glass was not taken for a long time, a door opened on the top of the mountain, a well-dressed mechanical man in a hat came out of it and reminded the guests that it was time to drink.
The most notorious teetotaler could not resist such a "toastmaster", and at the end of the feast all the wine in the apparatus was invariably drunk.
The above examples prove that the ancient Chinese possessed quite advanced technologies that made it possible to create quite perfect robots. They received these technologies, probably from representatives of a more advanced civilization who came from other worlds.