Another once-fried sensation of Chinese archeology is the "space discs" made of jasper (another name for this stone is jade), found in Tibet. In 1978, a certain David Agamon published the book "The Sun Gods in Exile", referring to the notes of his recently deceased Oxford boss, Professor Caryl Robin-Evans, who spoke of the 1947 expedition to Tibet, where he traveled through the Bayan Khar mountains and came across a mysterious people called a drop (or boor). He allegedly came from aliens who crashed on Earth, as evidenced by photographs of these tiny people, their "king" and "queen" and sacred stone discs with images of planets and extraterrestrial messages.
Let's find out what it really is …
It turned out that a certain alien spaceship named dropa (or dzopa) crashed in the Tibetan plateau 12 thousand years ago. The local inhabitants with the unexpectedly biblical name "ham" did not begin to fix a plate for the aliens, and they, having nothing to do, somehow adapted to life on Earth and took some boorish women as wives. Meanwhile, the shorty boors, dissatisfied with this turn of events, killed most of the aliens and buried them in caves, where the described disks were allegedly found at the feet of the skeletons. The stones really looked intriguing: planets, orbits and hieroglyphs interspersed in them, telling about the stellar homeland of the Dropa tribe. However, the sensation, which has not yet been completely discounted by ufologists, faded by itself 17 years after the release of "The Sun Gods": Briton David Gamon admitted,that he wrote a book under the pseudonym Aga-mon, having envied the worldwide fame of Erich von Daniken's creations about ancient astronauts - "Return to the Stars" and "Gold of the Gods". The source for the fantasy was an article from 1960 in the Western magazine "Russian Digest" and … the French popular science novel "Disks of Bem-Kara" by Daniel Piret; Professor Caryl Robin-Evans Gamon, of course, also invented.
But the most interesting thing is that the disks as such are not fiction. In Neolithic China, bi jasper discs were common and are well known to archaeologists. The earliest belong to the Liangzhu culture (3400-2250 BC), the later belong to the dynastic period - Shang, Zhou and Han, and they were also made of glass. Bi is a flat jasper disc with a round hole in the middle, they were not decorated in any way in the Stone Age, but, say, in the Zhou period (1046-256 BC), they were decorated with a pattern of octahedral notches. The sense of the decor is indeed cosmological: the disc stated the presence of four directions in space, bestowed the favor of heaven on the owner, etc. The high quality of the artifacts testifies to their exceptional value and, accordingly, to the outstanding social status of the owner (the discs were indeed placed in burials). Bi symbolized heaven, while there were ritual objects for the earth, tsun - jasper hollow cylinders, ornamented with recesses. Everything is taking shape: historians know that the cosmological concept of bi and tsun was preserved in Ancient China for quite a long time: the "covering the sky", gaityan (his model is just bi) revolved around the central axis of the world (his model is tsun), hence the need for a hole in disk and its general similarity with the iconography of a flying saucer. “Lids” (bi) and “vessels” (tsun) were used by the then shamans - key figures in the Liangzhu culture and keepers of real cosmological ideas of the ancients. In the Zhou era, the head of the conquered possessions gave his disc to the winner as a sign of submission, and at the burial of the ruler, the discs were placed in the tomb on the chest or stomach of the deceased, as if connecting him to heaven.while ritual objects for the earth also existed, tsun are hollow jasper cylinders ornamented with recesses. Everything is taking shape: historians know that the cosmological concept of bi and tsun was preserved in Ancient China for quite a long time: the "covering the sky", gaityan (his model is just bi) revolved around the central axis of the world (his model is tsun), hence the need for a hole in disk and its general similarity with the iconography of a flying saucer. “Lids” (bi) and “vessels” (tsun) were used by the then shamans - key figures of the Liangzhu culture and keepers of the real cosmological ideas of the ancients. In the Zhou era, the head of the conquered possessions gave his disc to the winner as a sign of submission, and at the burial of the ruler, the discs were placed in the tomb on the chest or stomach of the deceased, as if connecting him to heaven.while ritual objects for the earth also existed, tsun are hollow jasper cylinders ornamented with depressions. Everything is taking shape: historians know that the cosmological concept of bi and tsun was preserved in Ancient China for quite a long time: the "covering the sky", gaityan (his model is just bi) revolved around the central axis of the world (his model is tsun), hence the need for a hole in disk and its general similarity with the iconography of a flying saucer. “Lids” (bi) and “vessels” (tsun) were used by the then shamans - key figures in the Liangzhu culture and keepers of the real cosmological ideas of the ancients. In the Zhou era, the head of the conquered possessions gave his disc to the winner as a sign of submission, and at the burial of the ruler, the discs were placed in the tomb on the chest or stomach of the deceased, as if connecting him to heaven.tsun - jasper hollow cylinders, decorated with depressions. Everything is taking shape: historians know that the cosmological concept of bi and tsun was preserved in Ancient China for quite a long time: the "covering the sky", gaityan (his model is just bi) revolved around the central axis of the world (his model is tsun), hence the need for a hole in disk and its general similarity with the iconography of a flying saucer. “Lids” (bi) and “vessels” (tsun) were used by the then shamans - key figures in the Liangzhu culture and keepers of real cosmological ideas of the ancients. In the Zhou era, the head of the conquered possessions gave his disc to the winner as a sign of submission, and when the ruler was buried, the discs were placed in the tomb on the chest or stomach of the deceased, as if connecting him with heaven.tsun - jasper hollow cylinders, decorated with depressions. Everything is taking shape: historians know that the cosmological concept of bi and tsun was preserved in Ancient China for quite a long time: the "covering the sky", gaityan (his model is just bi) revolved around the central axis of the world (his model is tsun), hence the need for a hole in disk and its general similarity with the iconography of a flying saucer. “Lids” (bi) and “vessels” (tsun) were used by the then shamans - key figures in the Liangzhu culture and keepers of real cosmological ideas of the ancients. In the Zhou era, the head of the conquered possessions gave his disc to the winner as a sign of submission, and at the burial of the ruler, the discs were placed in the tomb on the chest or stomach of the deceased, as if connecting him to heaven.that the cosmological concept of bi and tsun was preserved in Ancient China for a long time: the "covering the sky", gaityan (his model is just bi) revolved around the central axis of the world (his model is tsun), hence the need for a hole in the disk and its general similarity with flying saucer iconography. “Lids” (bi) and “vessels” (tsun) were used by the then shamans - key figures of the Liangzhu culture and keepers of the real cosmological ideas of the ancients. In the Zhou era, the head of the conquered possessions gave his disc to the winner as a sign of submission, and when the ruler was buried, the discs were placed in the tomb on the chest or stomach of the deceased, as if connecting him with heaven.that the cosmological concept of bi and tsun was preserved in Ancient China for a long time: the "covering the sky", gaityan (his model is just bi) revolved around the central axis of the world (his model is tsun), hence the need for a hole in the disk and its general similarity with flying saucer iconography. “Lids” (bi) and “vessels” (tsun) were used by the then shamans - key figures in the Liangzhu culture and keepers of the real cosmological ideas of the ancients. In the Zhou era, the head of the conquered possessions gave his disc to the winner as a sign of submission, and at the burial of the ruler, the discs were placed in the tomb on the chest or stomach of the deceased, as if connecting him to heaven.hence the need for a hole in the disc and its general resemblance to the iconography of a flying saucer. “Lids” (bi) and “vessels” (tsun) were used by the then shamans - key figures of the Liangzhu culture and keepers of the real cosmological ideas of the ancients. In the Zhou era, the head of the conquered possessions gave his disc to the winner as a sign of submission, and when the ruler was buried, the discs were placed in the tomb on the chest or stomach of the deceased, as if connecting him to heaven.hence the need for a hole in the disc and its general resemblance to the iconography of a flying saucer. “Lids” (bi) and “vessels” (tsun) were used by the then shamans - key figures in the Liangzhu culture and keepers of the real cosmological ideas of the ancients. In the Zhou era, the head of the conquered possessions gave his disc to the winner as a sign of submission, and at the burial of the ruler, the discs were placed in the tomb on the chest or stomach of the deceased, as if connecting him to heaven.as if connecting it to heaven.as if connecting it to heaven.
In ancient China, around 5000 BC, large stone discs made of jade were placed in the graves of the local nobility. Their purpose, as well as the method of manufacture, still remains a mystery to scientists, because jade is a very durable stone.
Jade is a precious silicate mineral that is often used to make vases, jewelry, and other jewelry. It is usually colorless, but the content of chromium or other impurities gives jade an emerald greenish tint. This is a very hard and difficult material to work with, so the choice of this particular stone for making discs by the inhabitants of Ancient China in the late Neolithic period causes bewilderment in scholars.
Promotional video:
Jade, or as they are also called - bi-discs are round flat rings with a hole in the center, which belonged to the Liangzhu culture. Apparently they had an important cult value, as they were found in tombs on the bodies of the deceased Chinese aristocrats during the flourishing of the Hongshan culture (3800-2700 BC), and then in the Liangzhu culture (3000-2000 BC) … The stones were placed on the dead near the stomach or chest as a symbol of heaven, intended to accompany them on a journey to the afterlife or "to heaven." The Chinese themselves called jade "yu", which means "precious", "noble", "pure".
Since no metal tools from this period have been found, archaeologists speculate that the discs were most likely made by soldering and polishing. Therefore, scientists have a reasonable question: why did our ancestors spend so much time and effort on processing such a rare and hard stone?
Some believe that the importance of bi discs is directly related to religion and gods in Chinese culture; others - that the discs symbolize the sun or the wheel, reflecting the cyclical nature of life and death. During the war, the loser had to hand over a jade disc as a sign of submission to the conqueror. This proves that the discs were not just a decoration, but had a special significance.
The mystics have hypothesized that the bi discs are related to the so-called "Drop Stones". These disc-shaped stones, supposedly 12,000 years old, were allegedly discovered in a cave in the Bayan-Khara-Ula mountains on the border between Tibet and China, at the burial site of an extraterrestrial humanoid race.
The Smithsonian Institution (USA) has always shown great interest in the origin of jade discs and made a significant contribution to their study. Currently, the collection of the institute has more than 150 bi-discs. Janet Douglas of the Art Galleries. Freer and Arthur Sackler of the Smithsonian Institution, having studied the discs under a microscope in detail, suggested that the ancient craftsmen grinded a piece of jade with "saws" from strips of leather (coarse sand served as an abrasive) and obtained a flat and thin "chunk". Then he was given a round shape. The center hole (also perfectly round) was cut by rotating the bi on a sharpened tool that resembled a modern drill.
Be that as it may, but many questions about the purpose and methods of creating such perfect forms of jade discs still remain unanswered.
The Neolithic is a non-written culture and cannot stand up for itself. The only disc of a drop with hieroglyphic inscriptions, named in the literature by the name of another professor (this time - Polish: Lolladoff plate - Loladof's plate), which was allegedly found in Nepal and bought in India, wanders from one ufological publication to another. But this is a vulgar duck of the same Gamon, who confessed that the drops were the best prank in his life.
But for the Chinese, the symbolism of jasper discs is so important that even the reverse sides of the 2008 Olympic medals were copied from bi. And no aliens!