To one degree or another, each era gives rise to its own everyday legends, usually based on rumors, scraps of information and speculation. This was the case at one time with witchcraft, vampires, voodoo and other similar phenomena.
The twentieth century was no exception. Despite the fact that over the past hundred years humanity has “grown wiser” (in the sense that the literacy level of the population of our planet has increased significantly), the number of “urban legends” and just all kinds of superstitions has also increased significantly.
Moreover, since superstitions bear the traces of the era in which they appeared, we have a lot of "horror stories" of a modern nature. One of the significant achievements of mankind in the 20th century was spacewalk, which, naturally, led to the emergence of a mass of stories in which aliens appear in one way or another. And the favorite theme of such stories was the plot in which aliens, if not abduct earthlings for some mysterious purposes, then at least take them with them into space for a while to tell something important.
The kidnapping myths themselves have existed for a long time. Whoever did not kidnap people: and demons in order to eat them; and gypsies to make soap out of them, and "black doctors" to disassemble them into organs and … and so on. Aliens are popular these days. Moreover, this popularity is so high that on the idea of "abduction by aliens" they not only make films or make computer games, but also write scientific works for themselves!
Someone Budd Hopkins generally put the case of coverage of alien abductions on stream. He wrote a bunch of books on this matter, compiled a database of all the cases reported by the victims, introduced a whole system of classifying abductions, and so on. Unfortunately for ufologists, all the cases described by him do not have reliable confirmation, moreover, to put it mildly, boring, uninteresting and full of many cliches, which already suggests thoughts about their artificial origin. His "colleagues" in the form of Stiber or Randles, left not far from him.
And one could not pay attention to these little things - well, you never know what is popular among scientific freaks who believe in "plates with green men", if not for one interesting circumstance. The fact is that in the history of mankind, such plots have already met more than once, however, their fullness, elaboration and possible reliability are much higher than the reading of Hopkins or Stiber.
One of the first officially recorded "space tourists" was the biblical Enoch, one of the sons of Cain. His adventures are described in the "Book of Enoch", an apocrypha that was not included in the Bible, however, written in the same style and recognized by canonical scripture in some churches of Christianity. And one could not pay attention to this source, because (may the believers forgive us) to use the Hebrew mythical texts, as the ultimate truth, would be unscientific. However, descriptions of space, flights in it and everything that Enoch saw are so well connected with the modern picture of the world that the question arises: where did such information come from mankind more than two thousand years ago?
What is it about this book? The main plot of the book describes the uprising of some group of beings, "the angels of God", against the existing state system "in heaven" at that time. The rebels did not achieve their goal and were landed on Earth as punishment, where they mixed with the local population.
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Along the way, Enoch describes the following facts, phenomena and achievements of the aliens he saw:
• classification of stars by spectrum and luminosity (discovered in the 20th century);
• space orbital stations;
• reusable spacecraft for landing on planets;
• spaceships for long-distance flights;
• power protective fields of spaceships;
• lock chambers;
• observatories built in space;
• weapons reminiscent of modern nuclear weapons;
• space suits.
Enoch describes all this, naturally, without using such terms. Everything is said, albeit allegorically, but the descriptions are more than specific and convey the essence of the phenomena more than enough. That is, speaking about spaceships, he calls them "chariots", however, from the descriptions of the characteristics of their movement, it immediately becomes clear that we are talking about vehicles flying into space.
The description of Enoch's journey includes boarding a spacecraft, approaching an orbital station, docking with it, passing through locks, and so on. The consistency of the presentation of the material is simply amazing. One gets the impression that we are reading the story of Dennis Tito, the first space tourist, but written in archaic language. And one would assume that the "Book of Enoch" is just someone's very original forgery, but alas. Its historicity has been proven, and many sources refer to it in a variety of historical eras. And, meanwhile, it was written more in the middle of the first century BC.
Enoch spent a lot of time in space: his children and grandchildren managed to get married and have many descendants while their ancestor was stuck in a spaceship. He does not describe the uprising in detail, however, he speaks unequivocally about its outcome: exile.
Returning to Earth with the unlucky conspirators, Enoch reunites with his family, but continues to write his book, where he tells about what the space exiles began to do on Earth. They, by marrying aboriginal women (that is, earthly women), gave rise to a new people.
But this is already especially interesting: it turns out that genetically humans and "God's angels" are one and the same species. That, albeit with a stretch, can be considered an indirect proof in the treasury of supporters of the theory of the arrival of mankind from space …
The Bible and its apocryphal parts, in general, quite often contain similar stories. For example, about the prophets Ezekiel and Elijah, it is almost plainly said that they flew into space. Obviously, the original says “ascended to heaven”. Elijah met, but Ezekiel later returned and also wrote short "adventures" in which he exactly repeated some descriptions of the technologies of that civilization after Enoch.
Another interesting fact of the travels of earthlings into space before Gagarin's flight was the travels of Etana, the hero of the Babylonian epic. The essence of the work is as follows: Etana met a magic eagle in the desert, who invited him to fly with him; further narration resembles, rather, the logbook of some spacecraft.
Etana describes in detail the features of the flight, flight out of the atmosphere, the subsequent journey somewhere very far … The description contains moments that make it clear that the eagle is not an eagle at all, but some kind of mechanism, the features of navigation in near-earth space and history are told Solar system. If a similar book appeared today, no one would be surprised, but the 7th century BC …
And scientists discovered a real sensation in Mexico in 1952. They discovered the tomb of the Mayan king Pakal the First, one of the most significant rulers of that time.
The image on the lid of Pakal's sarcophagus has left many archaeologists and historians in a stupor. It depicted a ruler (namely Pacal, with his characteristic facial features), controlling a spaceship. There was no doubt that the ship was a spaceship: it was surrounded by the Sun, the moon and the stars, and Pakal himself, not only holding the control knobs, was also connected to some kind of breathing apparatus!
Immediately skeptics appeared, claiming that this was all fantasy: on the lid, they say, an allegory is depicted showing the resurrection of Pakal from the world of the dead, and so on. This is all, of course, good, if not for one "but": the classical Mayan religion interprets the resurrection somewhat differently. And besides, Pakal's reign has several features that do not fit into the classical picture of the ordinary life of the ancient Maya.
His mother was from the royal Mayan family, but about his father only information has been preserved that he was a very significant person, but was not Maya. Where he came from is unknown, as well as where he went. Some sources say that he also “went to heaven”. Pacal himself was a legendary person: his reign gave the Mayan civilization a huge leap forward in all areas - from military to economic. Under him, new achievements of architecture and agriculture that were completely not characteristic of the Maya appeared. And outwardly, Pacal was significantly different from his fellow citizens: only his height was 1.73 m, which was, to put it mildly, uncharacteristic for the Mayans - they were all significantly lower than their ruler. It is quite possible that Pacal passed on to his people some knowledge he received through his father from some kind of cosmic civilization …
As you can see, in the history of the Earth there is a mass of indirect evidence of the connection between us and aliens from space. In the cultures of many nations, there are references to these events and, if we discard skepticism and look at the problem from a slightly non-standard angle, you can find answers to many questions that have worried us for more than a millennium.
