“I and my tribe are by the plane…” - we sit well
Almost everyone knows what a "cargo cult" is. This is the religion of the so-called "airplane worshipers" or the cult of the "gifts of heaven" - the term used for a group of religious movements in Melanesia. Cargo cults have been recorded since the 19th century, but they became especially widespread after World War II.
The Americans, who fought the Japanese, set up their military bases on the Pacific Islands. They built runways there for aircraft to land on. Sometimes the planes did not land, but simply dropped their cargo and flew back. In general, a load came or fell from the sky.
The islanders had never seen white people before, so they watched them with interest. Moreover, they had so many interesting things: lighters, flashlights, beautiful tin cans of jam, steel knives, clothes with shiny buttons, shoes, tents, beautiful pictures with white women, bottles of fire water and so on. The natives saw that all these items were delivered as cargo from the sky.
Aboriginal people also found that Americans did not work to obtain all these fabulous benefits. Instead, they marked mysterious stripes on the ground, put on headphones and shouted incomprehensible words. Then they shone fires or searchlights into the sky, waved flags - and iron birds flew in from the sky and brought them cargo - all these wonderful things that the Americans gave to the islanders in exchange for coconuts, shells and the favor of young natives.
Then the war ended, the Americans turned down their tents, said goodbye in a friendly way and flew away on their "birds". And there was nowhere else to take lanterns, jam, pictures and especially fire water. The natives were not lazy. But no matter how hard they worked, they did not get either canvas tents, or beautiful clothes with a pattern, or cans of stew, or a flask with a wonderful drink. And it was insulting and unfair.
And then they asked the question: why did good things fall from the sky for the pale-faced, but not for them? What are they doing wrong? Probably, to get all these wondrous things, you have to do the same as the pale-faced. Namely, put on headphones and shout the words, and then lay lanes, light bonfires and wait. Probably all this is magic rituals and magic that the pale-faced have mastered!..
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Cargo cults flourish in some places to this day …
When anthropologists reached the island a few years later, they discovered that a completely unprecedented religious cult had arisen there. Pillars were stuck everywhere, connected by hemp ropes. Some natives laid glades in the jungle, built wicker towers with antennas, waved flags made of painted mats, others in headphones made of coconut halves shouted something into bamboo microphones …
Thatched planes were parked on the laid glades. The swarthy bodies of the aborigines were painted to resemble military uniforms with the letters USA and orders. They marched diligently, holding wicker and wooden rifles.
The planes did not arrive, but the natives believed that they probably did not pray enough, and continued to shout into bamboo microphones, light the landing lights and wait for the gods who would finally bring them the coveted cargo. Priests appeared who knew better than others how to march correctly and furiously reviled those who avoided performing all the rituals. During these occupations, they already had no time to pound grain, dig sweet potatoes and fish.
Scientists have sounded the alarm: the tribes could die of hunger! They began to receive humanitarian aid, which finally convinced the natives of the correctness of their views, because the wonderful load finally began to fall from the sky again! True, many cargo cults have disappeared now, but some still exist today. For example, the cult of the messiah John Froome on the island of Tanna.
Something similar could have happened in ancient times, when the population of the earth faced aliens, whose technologies were as unheard of for people as American planes were for the savages of Melanesia …
Why, for example, after the death of a deceased pharaoh, the Egyptians traditionally subjected to such a complex procedure of burial as mummification? Internal organs were removed from the body of the deceased, and he himself was impregnated with embalming compounds and carefully bandaged. But in everyday life, no one fiddled with the corpses of ordinary Egyptians like that …
“The explanation for the above customs can be quite logical if we assume that the ancient Egyptians simply imitated someone, blindly copying what they saw!”, Says the scientist Oliver Tyver from England.
When one of us gets sick, what is done to him? That's right, in serious cases, they put it on the operating table. They give anesthesia, and surgeons begin to delve into the internal organs, sometimes even cutting off some affected parts … Then the person is bandaged and sent to the intensive care unit or intensive care unit, where they are placed in a special box. And all this, naturally, does not take place at home, but in a special clinical complex.
Now let us imagine that something similar happens in front of the ancients. The "gods" of the Egyptians not only operate on their sick or wounded comrades, but some of them - especially the severe ones - may even be subjected to suspended animation (which is led by the main "god" in medicine - Anubis), in the hope that this patient can be healed at home. Where and send him in a spaceship - at the first opportunity.
As a result, our ancestors see organs pulled out, bandages, and placing the patient in special capsules. And copy all this as far as possible. And the fact that their plastic capsules turned into stone sarcophagi is the cost of the technologies existing then … The form remains, the original meaning is lost. As, for example, with the vajra - they managed to convey the form perfectly accurately by the contemporary, but no one knows what the functional is. Almost, let's make a reservation.
Meanwhile, the imitation of the "gods" was complex, as in the case of cargo cults. Let's remember the elongated shape of the skull, the false beards of the pharaohs and much, much more …
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