BOOK REVIEW

INTRODUCTION TO PALEOVISITOLOGY

Vladimir Rubtsov

Y. N. Morozov. Traces of Ancient Astronauts? Moscow: Znanie Publishers, 1991. Paperback, 48 pages, 30 kopeks, ISBN 5-07-001602-4, in Russian.

This small book, or rather even a booklet, was published almost ten years ago. Despite its print run (about three million, or, more exactly, 2,819,868), it passed practically unnoticed by specialists. There were virtually no references to it in specialist publications, neither any reviews. Is there any point of writing and publishing such a review—especially in RIAP Bulletin, a periodical mainly aiming at the foreign reader? Just to get the book out of oblivion? But is it worth the effort?

It certainly is. First, this work still remains the only Russian-language publication in book form in which the problem of paleovisits—hypothetical ancient ET visits to the Earth—is analyzed at a really professional level. Before it there were only papers in popular science (and sometimes scholarly) periodicals; after it one can find on the Russian book market only translations of foreign Ancient Astronaut books and, delicately speaking, "compilations" of a sort (plagiarized from the same foreign books and old journal papers of Soviet times). Second, even today, ten years after its publication, the book by Yuriy Morozov does not look outdated. One could say: regretfully enough—since it means that none of the research tasks set in it has been yet solved.

To understand the place occupied by Morozov's book in the existing system of paleovisitological publications, let me briefly outline the situation in which the problem of paleovisits found itself in the early 1990's. By that time it was existing in two forms: 1) as a fairly mature parascientific field of cognitive interest, namely the Ancient Astronaut theory, or "preastronautics"; 2) as an embryonic interdisciplinary field of scientific investigation—paleovisitology.

On the other hand, the CSICOP-like "scientific inquisition" (which in itself is a part of the "immune system" of science, meant to defend the latter from "loosened" forms of thinking, but going in fact far beyond the scope of true rationality) gave birth to another sort of parascience — "anti-preastronautics". For adherents of the latter there existed no paleovisit question: it simply made no sense. As a result, the anti-paleovisit bias was still prevailing in the scientific community, especially in its establishment.

Dr. Yuriy Morozov, being a professional folklorist (he had graduated from the philological faculty of Moscow University, where he also defended his Ph.D. thesis on the historicism of folklore) has been engaged in paleovisitological studies since the late 1960's. He was probably the first researcher who came to realize the fruitlessness of the controversy between "adherents" and "opponents" of paleovisits and proposed the only possible way out from this endless debate: building paleovisitology as a research direction aimed at studying this problem, not defending an a priori accepted solution. Yuriy Morozov's works had been published in scholarly periodicals, but only after perestroika was he able to express his opinion on the paleovisit problem in book form.

This is a popular work written in simple language—but with a high "density of thought" per word. Yuriy Morozov has managed to find on 48 pages (six chapters, about 17,000 words) space enough to discuss all the main paleovisitological topics. In a short introductory chapter "To the Reader" (p. 3), he clearly states: the usual question "Was the Earth visited by extraterrestrials in its past?" at present has no definite answer—either positive, or negative. This problem is unresolved. Still worse, it has not been attacked in practice using the scientific method. Why did the problem of paleovisits prove to be so difficult for science, and why was science unable to "assimilate" it for so long? Dr. Morozov's book partly answers this question.

Chapter 1—"Genealogy of an Idea" (pp. 4-7)—deals with the prehistory of the paleovisit idea. As Morozov shows, even before the start of the 20th century various authors formulated all three conceivable answers to the "main question" of this problem:

1) there are no traces of paleovisits and therefore there were no paleovisits; 2) no paleovisit traces are known at present, but they may be discovered in the future; 3) paleovisits did happen, but to find their traces, we must look at known historical material from a new viewpoint.

Chapter 2—"The Ancient Astronaut Theory" (pp. 8-14)—discusses the history of the problem in this century that dates back to the late 1950's, when the mathematician and participant of the Soviet Nuclear Project Dr. Matest M. Agrest put forward the idea to begin a search for traces of extraterrestrials in the annals of history. Dr. Igor Kurchatov, an outstanding physicist and the Head of the Nuclear Project, was going to recommend Dr. Agrest's work for publication in the Reports of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, but, alas, his untimely death put an end to this plan. Pity indeed—since otherwise all the history of this problem might have followed a very different path. But actually, subsequent hot discussions around the Agrest's idea were carried out mainly on the pages of popular (sometimes popular science) press. True, it was none other than the young and then-daring Carl Sagan who in 1963 advocated the same line of inquiry in the pages of the scholarly journal Planetary and Space Science. Established science, however, remained deaf to these appeals and the problem of paleovisits was taken up by amateurs. The Swiss writer and traveller Erich von Daeniken has for more than 30 years been the leader of the Ancient Astronaut movement. Adherents of the AAT are confident that extraterrestrials did in fact visit the Earth, making it their aim to prove this thesis using "common sense" methods. Yuriy Morozov does justice to the "inexhaustible inventiveness" of Erich von Daeniken and his colleagues in the "incessant search for more and more traces of space visitors"—criticizing therewith their simplified methods of attacking the problem. He believes, at the same time, that the "emotionally negative" attitude of the scientific community to the Ancient Astronaut theory cannot be considered as productive either.

To find a correct line of attack on the paleovisit problem, one must first return to its roots and rebuild the whole logical sequence from the bottom up. That is why Y. Morozov begins Chapter 3—"Inside a Wide Range of Problems" (pp. 15-26)—with a "childish" question: what are we looking for, after all? By definition, "space visitors" are "just" intelligent beings who came to the Earth from space. They can be biologically different from us humans, as well as further advanced in respect of scientific knowledge and technological capabilities. If a character in folklore, or—better—a real historical figure bears even one of these characteristic features, this can make us assume his or her extraterrestrial origin.

Everything seems to be OK—but in fact it is very easy to find in history and folklore a number of figures well fitting this scheme—"from Baba Yaga to Jesus Christ". These examples are not fictitious: such hypotheses were really put forward as far back as the 1960's (by Y. V. Rostsius and V. K. Zaitsev respectively). "...It is the same characteristic features that must distinguish extraterrestrial visitors from earthly people that are in fact typical for countless mythological personalities created by human fantasy on the basis of purely terrestrial realities" (p. 16). Such are, in particular, the so-called "culture heroes". Even though we can be sure that genuine space visitors would have been described by our ancestors in a similar system of notions, and not in the objective language of a scientific report—how will it be possible to pick up a real "signal" on the background of so much all-embracing "noise"?

Perhaps legendary descriptions and pictures of "alien machinery" would give us a necessary "filter"? As a matter of fact, there exist numerous ancient images (particularly, rock paintings), in which one can make out, with a little effort of imagination, "rockets", "spacesuits", "descent modules" of spaceships, "lunokhods", etc., etc. But in all likelihood, these are just false analogies: hardly a civilization that built interstellar spacecraft, that is far surpassed our own one in its technological capabilities, would have used such primitive (for its level of development) devices.

Then, perhaps, some sophisticated knowledge and/or technology obtained by our forefathers from space visitors could become a convincing proof of a paleovisit? Actually, fragments of strange knowledge and "know-how" are from time to time discovered in the past by historians and archaeologists. But again, usually they are anomalous only against the background of their ancient counterparts, being rather "normal" by the standards of the 20th century science and technology.

All these difficulties are due to the very nature of the supposed indirect traces of paleovisits. As for the potential wealth of information they can contain, such traces should not, however, be underestimated—even if direct paleovisit traces considered in the following chapter (pp. 27-33) are more preferable as regards their conclusiveness.

Many scholars—even well-disposed to the paleovisit idea—believe, however, that only a direct paleovisit trace—that is, an "extraterrestrial artifact"—could constitute a really strong proof of an ancient ET visit to the Earth. Yuriy Morozov does admit the importance of direct traces, analyzing in sufficient detail one possible class of these: the so-called "unidentified fossil objects" ("UFOs", so to speak; in Russian these abbreviations are not identical: NIO and NLO respectively). At the same time, he is emphasizing that known "UFOs" look rather primitive as well.¹ Besides, a special search for extraterrestrial artifacts would hardly be effective; one can here count on chance discoveries only. It is the more regrettable that even known "suspicious" objects of this kind (however primitive at first sight, they are, nevertheless, anomalous) are very rarely examined in any detail. One may be quite sure that many "UFOs" went unnoticed. "It is awful to think how many extraordinary finds that could have revolutionized scientific concepts were indifferently thrown away, lost, or are still kept by somebody as curious trinkets" (p. 32).

Chapter 5—"The Dogon Miracle" (pp. 34-41)—as is clear from its title, deals with the astronomical lore of the Dogon, a West-African people whose astonishing knowledge about the Universe in general and the Sirius system in particular was actively discussed in the second half of the 1970's, both in the popular and scholarly press. Y. Morozov objectively describes both the contents of this lore and the controversy around it. Not ignoring existing problems, difficulties and doubts associated with the "Dogon astronomy", he arrives, nonetheless, at the conclusion that it is very close to the "ideal" (as a possible indirect trace of a paleovisit) and can therefore be a good basis for further scrutiny.

In the final chapter—"Task for Tomorrow" (pp. 42-47) — the author pays attention to other supposed paleovisit traces that he considers as worthy of examination. These are, in particular, the ancient wooden model of a glider found in Egypt in 1898, small gold "airplanes" from Colombia, ancient Indian texts about "sky chariots"—vimanas, and the motif in folklore of time dilatation. Neither of them has been studied in sufficient detail, making it impossible to come to any definite—and substantiated—conclusion about their true nature. To perform such a study, it is necessary to unite the efforts of specialists in various scientific disciplines under the cover of an interdisciplinary research direction—paleovisitology.

By the year 2000 the situation in the problem of paleovisits remains, however, basically the same as it was in the year 1991. Paleovisitology did not come out of its "embryonic" state and the Ancient Astronaut movement has a regrettable tendency to regress (the Ancient Astronaut Society has closed down, and the new AAS-RA organization has not as yet taken its place in this field). True, the German-speaking AAT community works actively, being centered around the journal Sagenhafte Zeiten, with Erich von Daeniken as its recognized leader. There have arisen, nevertheless, practically no new paleovisit-related ideas; instead of it, AAT proponents display greater interest in "parallel" fields of investigations—first of all, "historical ufology" (which may lead to erosion of the AAT as such). It is encouraging, however, to note that young enthusiasts of the paleovisit idea play an important part in Ancient Astronaut activity in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. In fact, were it not for the efforts of these enthusiasts (both young and not too young), one could have said that the problem of paleovisits was standing on the border between stagnation and disintegration. There is, however, a third way out—up to serious investigations.

In these conditions, the answer to the question of whether this—not very recent—book should be translated into foreign languages (first of all, into English and German) is rather obvious: it should, but there will hardly be a sufficient market for it. There are few little-known facts in Morozov's book; it is the author's view of the problem—equidistant both from ignorant debunking and from naive credulity—that is really new. Perhaps, the Internet would be a proper place for its translations: they would help the intelligent skeptic to understand that the paleovisit problem is really meaningful and serious, and the intelligent enthusiast that it is still far from having been solved.

Notes and references

¹ The more interesting seem to be the micro-objects discovered in the years 1991-1993, after the book had been published, on the Narada river, in Northern Urals, Russia. Conceivably they have been produced with the help of advanced "nanotechnology". But certainly, this still remains to be proved—as well as the objects' alien origin. (See: Hausdorf H. Sensationeller Fund in Russland. — Ancient Skies (Deutsche Ausgabe), 1997, 21. Jahrgang, Nr. 2.)

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