EDITORIAL

SOME  PAGES  FROM  THE  HISTORY
OF  THE  PALEOVISIT  IDEA

History of the problem of paleovisit is long and really fascinating. During the past decades and even centuries, brilliant conjectures have been made on the subject of paleovisits by scholars, engineers, and SF writers. There is as yet no comprehensive study of historic side of this problem; that's why we are going to publish the most important materials of this sort (or their summaries, if too lengthy) in special paleovisitological issues of RIAP Bulletin. In any case, it is evident that the idea of paleovisit is by no means a "modern myth" (as many enthusiastic debunkers proclaim with much noise and little evidence). In fact, it is neither modern, nor a myth. Many deep thinkers on this planet accepted this idea at least as a possibility and looked for evidence in its favor. The list of such works is not too short.

One of interesting—and half-forgotten—publications from this list is the interview with the outstanding Russian pioneers of cosmonautics N.A.Rynin, K.E.Tsiolkovsky, and Y.I.Perelman, published in the journal Vestnik Znaniya (Herald of Knowledge), Leningrad, 1930, No. 4. The general contents of this interview was partly exposed in some books and papers,¹ but its complete translation into English was never published. Therefore, we believe it will be of interest to RB readers.

It must be also noted that subscriber No. 41912, whose letter provoked the discussion in Vestnik Znaniya, has in fact formulated the main idea of the so-called Fermi paradox—quite clearly and more than ten years before it was advanced at the famous (even if a little apocryphal) lunch in Los Alamos. As is known, initially it was just a question: "Where is everybody?" Later (in the works by V.Lvov, M.Hart, F.Tipler, I.S.Shklovsky) this paradox acquired a more definite logical structure: 1) the Earth has never been visited by extraterrestrials; 2) interstellar flights are technically feasible; 3) therefore, extraterrestrial civilizations do not exist.

Obviously the letter of the anonymous subscriber contains just another form of the same construction. Simple justice demands that it be renamed as the "paradox of subscriber No. 41912", as it was recently proposed by Dr.Yuriy Morozov! Or at least we should admit that there is nothing new under the sun even in the SETI field!

Another half-forgotten PV subject is the problem of the astronomical lore of the Dogon, an African people living mainly in the Republic of Mali, that attracted much attention some twenty years ago (due to the books of Robert Temple and Eric Guerrier²). The interest aroused was, however, rather short-lived. The "silent majority" of the learned community accepted—with few grounds but with great alacrity—the "missionary hypothesis", according to which the astronomical concepts of the Dogon had been borrowed by them from the Western world.³ Proponents of the Ancient Astronaut theory scoffed at this viewpoint unanimously, but could not add anything substantial to arguments of Temple and Guerrier. Each side remained unconvinced, and the discussion has gradually come to a standstill. Even an attempt to accuse the famous French ethnologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen of forging the source material⁴ did not much affect the situation. In this respect paleovisitology resembles ufology: both of them are very non-cumulative.⁵ One may argue that scientific paleovisitology is still in its infancy, and non-cumulativeness is typical for prescientific fields of cognitive interest. This is certainly so, but the fact remains: practically any supposed trace of paleovisit, worthy (or even not so much worthy) of attention, causes a brief flicker of interest and then falls into oblivion (at least as a possible PV trace, if not completely).

To open a new direction of discussing the Dogon problem, we are publishing a paper by Mrs Ida P. Moffett of the Continuum Foundation (Chino Valley, Arizona, USA) who offers an explaination of the Dogon astronomy on purely mythological (or, rather, culturological) grounds. I have my doubts about such an approach to this problem, but the author's arguments are non-trivial, and her entire conception is far richer than the "missionary hypothesis". After all, the mythological context of a past interstellar contact would necessarily influence its results, and therefore any serious paleovisitological study must take it into consideration.

Notes and references

¹ See: Rubtsov V.V. On the trail of ancient epics and legends. — In: Na Sushe i na More, Moscow: Mysl, 1969; Morozov Y.N. Traces of Ancient Astronauts? Moscow: Znaniye, 1991; Tomas A. Pioneers of the Ancient Astronaut thesis in Russia. — Ancient Skies, 1992, Vol. 19, No. 1.

² Temple R.K.G. The Sirius Mystery. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1976; Guerrier E. Essai sur la cosmogonie des Dogons: L'Arche du Nommo. Paris: Laffont, 1975.

³ See: Roxburgh I.W., Williams I.P. The Dogon Tribe and Sirius. — The Observatory, 1975, Vol. 95, No. 1008.

⁴ See: van Beck W.E.A. Dogon Restudied. — Current Anthropology, 1991, Vol. 32, No. 2. See also: Heusch L. On Griaule on Trial. — Current Anthropology, 1991, Vol. 32, No. 4. Incidentally, I remember well a prophetic remark of the late Dr. Evgeniy T. Faddeyev, a well-known Soviet philosopher who took a serious interest in the paleovisit problem, that the only effective "solution" of the Dogon problem on a "non-paleovisit" basis would be a complete denial of the Dogon astronomy as such. Dr. Faddeyev thought the "anti-paleovisit complex" of the modern pseudoscientific (yes, pseudoscientific) mentality was strong enough to look just for such a solution. Then (in 1980) I was, let's say, naive enough not to believe him...

⁵ Cf.: Rubtsov V.V. Something in the Making. — RIAP Bulletin, 1995, Vol. 2, No. 2-3.

— Vladimir V. Rubtsov 

To download RB, Vol. 3, No. 3-4, containing this paper, please click here:
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