He and Fernando shared a fascination with treasure hunting. So, I had a feeling it might have something to do with buried treasure, but I was not quite sure what.
I opened up the drawer, and in it was a box a bit larger than a cigar box. Inside were what looked to be carved and polished volcanic rock, something like the gangue one might find in Magdalena, Jalisco, in the opal mines. In addition, were dark polished volcanic rocks; I could not tell what they were, but they were quite heavy; if not ultra-mafic, definitely mafic.
The red-cream polished rocks (opal host rock, I believe) were carved into cylindrical beads.
The ultramafic dark gray stone was carved into disks and also into something that resembled a ceremonial knife. My mind immediately gravitated toward the cenotes of Yucatan where such items were found along with human bones and other incidentals.
Each item had carvings. In the center of each, where one might expect to see a human face was the unmistakable red ant-shaped head of the "Great Grey" variety of alien beings. Coincidence? I started to think so. But, I started look more closely, and to my surprise, I found little rounded mini-pyramid-like shapes which looked like the same vintage extraterrestrial equipage as the alien heads. Curious, I looked more closely at each of the beads, disks, and knife.
To my astonishment, little worm-like carvings were, upon closer inspection, easily recognizable as spacemen, or astronauts, as you'd see in the early NASA program (1960s Gemini). There was one that even looked a bit more advanced - something of a body double for Neil Armstrong making his "One Step / Giant Leap" footprint on the cultural consciousness of the world.
"Did you take a look at these?" I asked my dad.
"No," he said. "Your sister thinks they're fakes. She said she saw glue."
"Did she say anything else?" I asked. "Fakes, replicas, reproductions, sure. But of what?"
"Fernando says they are 10,000 years old, and that there are lot more where these came from."
I held the knife with the alien face and what looked to be a flying saucer. Then, I held up the ultramafic dark gray basaltic disk which had a prominent alien face in the center.
"Well. What we have is incontrovertible evidence of the visitation of alien beings, and the coexistence of aliens and ancient Mexican civilizations," I said, smiling. "Now we know how they obtained the technology needed to construct their amazing structures, and to create such detailed calendars."
I know it sounded as though I was mocking a bit, but I really was not. Of course, my first impulse is to be quite skeptical and to not believe it. I did not believe for a minute that what I held had actually been created 10,000 years ago. But, could they be replicas of something that really was that old? Again, I doubted it, but I wanted to believe.
... Forbidden Planet // Lost in Space //
The first thing I did was to do an online search on "Extraterrestrial UFO artifacts in Mexico." I came up with all kinds of references to discoveries in Chiapas in the ancient city of Palenque. There were carvings that had been widely interpreted to be a Mayan piloting a spaceship. The interpretation was a bit fanciful, in my opinion, and the depiction made me think of the astronauts piloting their craft in 2001: A Space Odyssey. They did not look much like the artifacts that Fernando had presented my dad, but it was enough to convince me that there were, at least, numerous cases of artifacts purporting to document UFO / extraterrestrial contact with ancient civilizations.
"You know, if these really are 10,000 years old, Fernando could go to jail," I said. "I don't want to be involved in that. I don't want to hang out in a Mexican jail."
"He did not say anything about jail," said my dad. He wanted you to take a look at them.
I doubted that my dad would pass on my thoughts. He did not want to alienate Fernando, who was one of the few non-family members who visited my dad at the assisted living center where my dad was consigned to live after a series of health crises and complete failure at two rehab centers. Now, he was better, but I know that it was very hard for him to think that he would never be able to go back home, and would spend entire days not leaving the room. Visits from the outside were tremendous bright spots.
I did not think much about them until the next week when I received a text message from Fernando. "Did you have a chance to take a look at the items I left with your dad?"
"They are interesting! I researched Mexican space alien artifacts. Are these from Palenque? Mayan?" I asked,
"Oh, no. They are from Jalisco. Ojuelos."
That surprised me. In looking at the map, I found that Ojuelos was located in the northeast tip of the state of Jalisco, far from Guadalajara, due east of Aguascalientes.
I spoke to a friend of mine who grew up on a ranch near San Miguel Los Altos that had no running water, no indoor plumbing. He and his 13 brothers and sisters dispersed to Mexico City, Guadalajara, and other cities in order obtain education and work.
"Ojuelos is a part of Jalisco that is totally desert and the main products are tunas."
"Tuna?"
"Prickly pear fruit," he responded.
I could not imagine surviving on the proceeds of prickly pear fruit. They must of have been quite poor. My friend seemed to read my mind.
"My father used to say that he could not imagine a more hard-scrabble place. He used to hire people from Ojuelos because they so desperately needed work, but he said it was tough. They had no equipment. No tools. Just their bodies."
I was filled with admiration for the enterprising ones who decided to manufacture an alien encounter back in deep caves.
Further contemplation of the artifacts led to a few observations:
1. Encounters with aliens, gods, or mystical beings often take place in the poorest of poor places, where the people have suffered. The examples are almost countless: medieval mystics (Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, St. John of the Cross); the various Virgin Mary sightings (Virgen of Guadelupe, Virgen of Caacupe, Virgen of the Apocalypse in Quito, Ecuador, etc.).
2. Inexplicable building techniques are most easily explained by means of space aliens, extraterrestrials, etc., and the uses of the different buildings are assumed to correspond to current customs. This is particularly the case of the Egyptian pyramids. In terms of interpreting the uses of the buildings, I'm reminded of the Anglo-Saxon work, The Ruin, which describes Roman ruins. They were bath houses which even had plumbing (of lead, unfortunately) and systems of heating and cooling the water. The rooms, now empty, were said by the Anglo-Saxon author to be "mead halls" where people joined together in "beorshipe" (literally, "beership" which meant fellowship and friendship). Well, they were partially right -- friendship, but by maintaining cleanliness, not huddling in skins and furs, eating roasted meat off the pointed tips of knives in smoky rooms illuminated by open fires.
3. When there are human events of great destructive force, it's perhaps not surprising to see a sudden flurry of sightings of angels and space aliens who purport to be emissaries from a different dimension with a message of hope, support, (but generally apocalypse) for a powerful rallying cry.
4. According to the Mexicans who have had contact with the artifacts, they are real. In fact, there are a few prominent (at least on YouTube) Mexicans who assert that there is something really remarkable about the Ojuelos artifacts. Supposedly, the transmit energy.
And that fact brings me to my next observation, which is that people are always eagerly seeking transforming energy.
The more I research this topic, the more I find and it's hard to imagine that all of it is of post-Forbidden Planet sci-fi provenance.
On some level the space alien carvings are real. All these artifacts are authentic. That is to say that they were carved by hand. But, are they really depicting space aliens? Were they really carved 10,000 years ago? They resemble 1950s pop culture representations of alien encounters. But, just because they resemble a phenomenon in our world, does that mean our interpretation is correct?
Again Anglo Saxons in early England come to mind. Long-abandoned Roman baths were"mead halls." They thought "beor shipe" when the Romans thought "spa day." Kant's synthetic a priori comes into play here. We can't transcend the cognitive or conceptual frame we've created for ourselves. So, what do we do?
I read an article where a supposed 10,000 year-old human skull-size carving which looked all the world to be the pinched head of a space alien was sold for $4 million.
Perhaps that's what Fernando had in mind.
Unfortunately, I don't think his alien-head skull carving would fetch a million dollars. I found a place on Amazon.com where you could buy 1 - 2 inch long "space alien skulls" from Mexico for $10.99, shipping and handling included for Amazon Prime members.
Actually, they looked like they could do double-duty and be skulls (Calaveras) for Día de los Muertos as well as alien skulls.
Oh, and let's not forget how everything has been turned into fodder for a tourist spectacle; the most desirable are the ones that maintain themselves aloofly Post- PoMo, tongue in cheek, as they assert their position at the top of a boho-chic hierarchy.
And, I guess that's what it all boils down to. Some are hard and Machiavellian. Others are simply the dreamers who might have had benign dreams if they had not become infected with the twin fevers of quick profits and quick "mesalliances" with "outsiders" whom they think deserving of a good pecuniary scalping.
I'm a dreamer and I'd like the artifacts to be real.
