Previous Part: Flying Monsters
Some peoples still do not consider themselves to be a community of people.
The most ancient inhabitants of the shores of Lake Titicaca, the Uru Indians, who lived in its vicinity back in the 8th millennium BC. e., for some reason left the land and moved to man-made reed islands that float on the surface of the lake. Until now, their descendants continue to live on floating islands, enduring frequent storms and feeding mainly on fish, and are not going to return to the fertile shores. The French ethnographer Jean Velard, who has studied this strange tribe for a long time, gives the story of the aborigines about their origins:
We are different, we are the inhabitants of the lake, we are cat-sun, we are not people. We began to live here even before the sun began to illuminate the earth. Even at the time when the earth was submerged in twilight, and when it was illuminated only by the moon and stars. When Lake Titicaca was much bigger than it is now. Even then our fathers lived. No, we are not human. Our blood is black, so we don't feel the cold of the lake nights. We do not speak in the language of people, and people do not understand what we are talking about. Our heads are of a different shape than the rest of the Indians. We are very ancient, the most ancient … We are not people!
On the coast of the Gulf of Mexico from the 3rd millennium to the 4th century BC e. the mysterious Olmec tribe lived. They had a developed mythology with an extensive pantheon of gods, erected massive stone structures, were skillful stone carvers and magnificent potters.
According to the oldest legend, the Olmecs ("people from the land of rubber trees") arrived by sea on the territory of modern Tabasco about 5 thousand years ago, the sages sailed away, and the remaining people settled these lands and began to call themselves after their great leader Olmek Wimtoni. According to another legend, the Olmecs appeared as a result of the union of a divine jaguar and a mortal woman.
The first and most ancient city of the Olmecs is considered to be San Lorenzo (1400-900 BC), in which, according to archaeologists, up to 5 thousand inhabitants lived. Here is the oldest known pyramid in America today, built in the form of a cone with a base diameter of about 130 meters. Two earthen mounds stretch from the pyramid, between which there is a stone mosaic platform in the form of a jaguar's face. In San Lorenzo, a ball court, drainage systems and stone sculptures were built.
La Venta has monumental earthen structures over 30 meters high. Their construction began in the 10th century BC. e. According to archaeologists, the volume of the pyramid in La Venta was 4,700 thousand cubic meters, and it took 800 thousand man-days to build it. On the territory of the Tres-Zapotes settlement with an area of three square kilometers, archaeologists have discovered about 50 pyramidal hills.
Promotional video:
The land of the Olmecs was decorated with giant stone heads ranging in height from 1.5 to 3 meters and weighing from 5 to 40 tons. They were first discovered by the American archaeologist Matthew Stirling in the 1930s. He wrote about the first find then in his report:
The head was carved from a separate massive basalt block. She rested on a foundation of rough boulders. When cleared from the ground, the head had a rather frightening appearance. Despite its considerable size, it is crafted very carefully and confidently, its proportions are perfect.
Thick lips, wide noses and elongated earlobes indicate that the Olmecs in their anthropological characteristics correspond more to the Negroid race than to the indigenous population of Central America.
The basalt deposits, from which huge heads are carved, are located several tens of kilometers from San Lourenso. Moving boulders weighing up to 40 tons over such distances over rough terrain is not an easy task. The famous traveler and scientist Miroslav Stingle writes in The Secrets of the Indian Pyramids:
Often talked about the difficulties of transporting the famous stone sculptures on Easter Island. But when, during my expedition to Easter Island, I compared the conditions for moving the moai there with the transport of stone blocks to La Venta - a transport that the "Jaguar Indians" organized 2500 years earlier than the Polynesians from Rapa Nui - I had to bow my head respectfully before a great deed …
To carry out such a titanic work, of course, required a certain organization and planning. The civilization of the Olmecs was distinguished by hierarchy and narrow professionalization: specially trained people were engaged in religious, administrative and economic issues.
In addition to the heads, the ancient Olmecs left other examples of monumental sculpture - stone steles with carvings, sarcophagi with reliefs. They are all carved from basalt monoliths or other durable stone. The hands of the "Jaguar Indians" also created various wearable ornaments, jewelry - mainly from obsidian, jasper and jade.
The most common relief patterns are anthropomorphic images of a jaguar and a baby jaguar. Perhaps the jaguar people played the same role as the Egyptian god Thoth in ancient Egypt, that is, they were mentors of people or overseers appointed by the gods. Such a "overseer" was supposed to inspire not only respect, but also fear.
Where did the Olmecs come from to South America and where did this amazing people disappear - scientists have yet to answer these questions. It seems that the Olmecs worked on a rotational basis in the alien mines and were returned to their homeland when the need for their work was no longer necessary. On the territory where the Olmecs lived, almost no burials of the dead were found. The six remains of bodies covered with half-rotted cloth, which archaeologists discovered in one of the buildings, may belong to the Olmecs who died as a result of industrial injuries, or to the Indians of other tribes who used the ancient Olmec buildings to bury their dead.
Something strange happened to the ancient peoples of South America. Chavin, Huari, Paracas, Nazca, who had reached the highest flowering of culture, suddenly disappeared into oblivion. Many assumptions have been put forward regarding the mysterious decline of ancient civilizations, but scientists have not yet come to a consensus.
In the XVIII-XVII centuries BC. e. in the steppe region of the Southern Urals, a Bronze Age civilization was formed with the code name "Country of Cities", a contemporary of Stonehenge, the famous palaces of the Cretan-Mycenaean culture and the Egyptian pyramids of the Middle Kingdom. On the territory stretching along the eastern slopes of the Urals (400 kilometers from north to south and 200 kilometers from east to west), more than two dozen ancient settlements, associated necropolises and hundreds of small unfortified settlements are currently known. The unique in its preservation and the most studied cultural complex Arkaim was discovered in 1987.
It is a fortified settlement, the largest metallurgical center for the production of bronze and an astronomical observatory. The city was surrounded by two rings of powerful defensive walls, their thickness at the base was 4–5 meters. The outer wall was erected from log stands filled with soil with added lime, and the outside was lined with mud blocks. A moat 1.5–2.5 meters deep was dug around it. Two circular streets of dwellings adjoined the walls from the inside. In the center there was a platform in the form of a slightly flattened circle with a diameter of 25-27 meters. Under the flooring of the circular street there was a stormwater drainage ditch with cesspools, from where the water purified by sand flowed into the river.
Numerous metallurgical furnaces for smelting bronze were found in the settlement. When analyzing production waste for arsenic content, it turned out that residents used both local metal and delivered from other, remote regions, possibly from the Kargalinsky steppes (Orenburg region). The charcoal necessary for smelting the metal was delivered to this steppe zone "from the outside", and the origin of the tin, which is part of the bronze, is still inexplicable.
Copper objects were practically not found during excavations, which is very strange for settlements where this metal was smelted in huge (for that time) quantities. Perhaps the inhabitants traded bronze with their neighbors, but then the neighboring tribes would have had an abundance of bronze products, which is not confirmed by archaeological excavations. Where the melted metal went is unknown.
The biggest mystery is the fate of this civilization. According to archaeological data, it turns out that in the 16th century BC. e. the inhabitants of all settlements of the "Country of cities" simultaneously collected their things, burned the cities and disappeared in an unknown direction. No traces of invasion by other tribes have been found.
Undoubtedly, in the distant past, some of the highly developed civilizations perished as a result of several disasters that occurred in 10,500 and 3,500 BC. e. The first cataclysm was caused by the passage of a massive object near our planet. The second is the Flood, which killed almost the entire population of the Earth. The descendants of people who miraculously survived these cataclysms still live in various regions of the world.
There are several nationalities on our planet, the mystery of whose origin remains unsolved.
For example, the Guanches are residents of the seven inhabited Canary Islands. Before the Spanish invasion of the islands in 1402, their population was more than 20 thousand people. Tall, fair-skinned, with light brown hair and blue eyes, they resembled the Cro-Magnons who lived in Europe during the Upper Paleolithic. The Guanches possessed a peculiar language and could, with the help of a whistle, talk to each other at a distance of up to 14-15 kilometers. The high level of development of this people in the past is evidenced by the preserved rock paintings with inscriptions that have not yet been deciphered: some elements resemble letters, others - geometric figures.
This courageous tribe fought with the Spanish conquerors for its independence for almost 90 years, but as a result of the plague brought in by the Spaniards (a kind of bacteriological weapon), it almost completely died out. The modern inhabitants of the Canary Islands believe that the blood of an ancient people flows in their veins.
The tribes of Berbers and Tuaregs are no less mysterious. These fair-skinned people live in Algeria. They differ from the rest of the African population not only in skin color, but also in their customs and rituals. Since time immemorial, they have banned marriages with dark-skinned people. Tuareg women, unlike other Muslim women, enjoy complete freedom. The Tuareg have a legend about the origin of their people from the noble white woman Tin Khinan ("white lady"). French researcher Gaudio noted:
… Every time, meeting with Tuaregs, you imagine that they have just arrived from another planet or from an era unknown to us.
The Spanish Basques still consider themselves the last descendants of a free and proud people who disappeared into the depths of the ocean along with the island of Atlantis. They speak their own language "isolated" from others, which is considered the most ancient. In the vicinity of the city of Bilbao (Spain), a metal tablet with an Iberian inscription was found. The researcher Sh. Khvedelidze deciphered it on the basis of the ancient Georgian writing, drawing attention to the similarity of the Georgian language and the Basque language. The text contains information about the dates of two cataclysms that occurred:
We have got a bitter and difficult fate. During the time of the Sabio children in 4100 [modern chronology 3503 BC. e.] sua [untranslated word] suddenly the earth shook. Everything erupted around. shuddered with thunder …
Further, the leader of Rio convinces his fellow tribesmen to leave their ruined homeland and recalls the events of the distant past, when they literally lost their previous homeland:
Ryo asked, looking at the circumstances, recalling the story that long ago, in 8000, it happened that the Iberian homeland disappeared there, disappeared.
Where the ancestral home of the Iberians disappeared remains a mystery, but perhaps the leader of Rio, during a conversation with his fellow tribesmen, pointed to the sky. Considering that the Iberian tablet was written presumably in the XXV century BC. e., the time of the cataclysm that occurred can be attributed to approximately 10,500 BC. e.
Plato in his dialogue mentioned the city of Gadir (modern Cadiz in southern Spain), which he called the "province of the Atlanteans." In ancient times, the Etruscans lived in this area, who had a high culture and had a significant impact on the development of other tribes. Ancient Etruria by the first millennium BC occupied the northwestern territory of the Apennine Peninsula (modern Tuscany). The tribes that inhabited it were the most powerful people who created an advanced civilization that preceded the Romans. Etruria gave the world arched vaults and gladiator fights, chariot races and funeral customs. In the extraction and processing of iron and copper, the ancient Etruscans reached perfection and at that time were unmatched. They founded the first cities in Italy. Many Latin letters are borrowed from the Etruscan alphabet. Figures,which we consider to be Roman, were invented by the Etruscans. The Etruscan language is as "isolated" as the Basque language, it is not like other existing Western European languages.
This ancient people also disappeared without a trace in the foggy past. There are several hypotheses about the future fate of the Etruscan civilization. According to one of them, part of the Etruscans moved to the east and founded the future Slavic (Russian) civilization. This version is supported by the similarity of the Etruscan and Old Russian languages: the absence of articles, the same number of cases, similar systems of verb forms, similar syntax and many other features. Etruscan names are very similar to Russian ones: Aleksatr, Valeriy, Vera, Evgeenei, Olei, Russus, Julius, Anina, Julia, Anna, Larisa, Zina, Lena, Tana. Even the word "Etruscans" itself is translated by some scientists as "this is Ruski".
Our history has preserved a lot of information about peoples who appeared from nowhere and just as mysteriously disappeared, leaving no traces of their further stay on the planet. Scientists have yet to puzzle over the mysteries of these civilizations.
Next part: Ancient mines