The Palenque Astronaut

Deep in the jungles of Mexico is a curious stone carving. Does this work of art represent evidence of ancient alien contact, or something else?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Welcome to Mexico Unexplained, where we will explore the magic,
the mysteries, and the miracles of Mexico. This series presents
information based partly on theory and conjecture. The podcaster's purpose
is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily the
only ones to the subjects we will examine. Here is
your host, Robert T. Bitto.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Welcome and movie VIANDNI. Those to episode number six of
Mexico Unexplained, where we explore the magic, the mysteries, and
the miracles of Mexico. I'm Robert Biddo. Today We're going
to take a trip to another time and another place.
The place is the steamy Mexican Jungle, and the time
is six eighty three a d. Near the end of

(01:21):
Classic Maya civilization. In the middle of the jungle, we
find a great city ruled by a great king, a
man named Pocal who lived to the ripe old age
of eighty. Under his rule, Pacaal's kingdom flourished and great
monuments were built. One of these monuments was a pyramid
structure called the Temple of The Inscriptions inside the temple

(01:44):
would be Pacall's final resting place, archaeologists penetrated the building
for the very first time in the nineteen fifties. What
they found would astound the professional and the armchair archaeologist,
alike a gigantic stone slam weighing over a ton placed
on top of Pacall's tomb. On the surface of this

(02:06):
lab we find a curious illustration a man in a
seated position with lots of activity below him, above him,
and on either side of him. We're on the internet here,
the land of false dichotomies, but this carved work of
art represents a true dichotomy in that it has been
interpreted in two very distinct ways. One camp believes that

(02:30):
this carved relief is proof of alien visitation because it
shows a man in a spacecraft. The other group believes
that this is an ordinary funerary illustration and there is
nothing to see here besides the beauty of such a
marvelously handcrafted work of art from so many centuries ago.
If you are able, I encourage you to go to

(02:52):
my website, Mexico Unexplained dot com or go to the
Mexico Unexplained Facebook page to see the photo of this carving.
Before we get into the arguments, let's talk a little
bit about context here. Palanke, whose Maya name was baach
lach Amhra, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in

(03:16):
the eastern part of the Mexican state of Chiappas, near
the present day border with Guatemala. The city was part
of the Maya Civilization, which is not to be confused
with the Maya Empire, which never existed. Maya Civilization was
a loosely connected group of city states sharing the same
cultural elements, much like the ancient Greeks. So Poleenke was

(03:39):
an independent city kingdom ruled by a powerful dynasty. To
this day, the city is somewhat shrouded in mystery. No
one knows how old Polanke really is. Its first recorded
ruler is supposed to have reigned in twenty three twenty
five BC, but many archaeologists regard this as a mythological king.

(04:01):
During its heyday between about four hundred a d and
its mysterious collapse around eight hundred eight, Polankee was home
to tens of thousands of people and a powerful aristocracy.
A great deal of work still needs to be done
on this lost city. Is only less than ten percent
of Polanke has been excavated. There are still well over

(04:23):
one thousand buildings that have been identified but have not
been cleared of the dense jungle overgrowth. Some may argue
that Pacol's tomb is the first of many depictions of
astronauts yet to be uncovered. For those of you who
think that the age of Indiana Jones has long passed,
maybe you should think about volunteering to do some work
at Polanke. I have some personal experience at a Maya

(04:46):
excavation just a little over two hundred miles from our
famous astronaut. I once volunteered as an archaeologist at the
classic Maya site near the town of Blue Creek in
northwestern Belize. I learned how to use a trial and
I got some jungle field work under my belt. It
was a brief adventure, but not one off limits to amateurs.

(05:08):
Well back to our astronaut. Now that we have some context,
let's get into the two sides. We're going to start
off with the ancient astronaut theory. This theory became popular
in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies with books like
Chariots of the Gods and Gods of Outer Space by
the famous Eric von Donigan and The Outer Space Connection

(05:30):
by Alan Landsberg. Those were the main ones. There was
a lot in the tabloid press at the time and
in movies. There was also the occasional, long awaited TV
documentary on the subject with profound sounding foreign narration, let
us explore the Secret Forces of the Pyramids, you know

(05:50):
like that. In recent times the ancient astronaut theories have
been revived by TV shows like Ancient Aliens. I think
Ancient even did a segment once on this very carving.
And we're talking about as a child in the seventies
with a fascination for this stuff, I bought the pulp
paperbacks for twenty five cents apiece when I went to

(06:12):
garage sales with my mom on Saturday mornings. I have
my original charots of the Gods right here, and I
will read you the exact words of the author, Eric Vondanikin,
translated from the German. The German name of the book,
by the way, is er Enrungen and Dainzunkunft. If you

(06:32):
have a copy of the English version, the nineteen sixty
eight Bantam paperback, you can follow along with me on
the bottom of page one hundred and This is Vondonikin's words.
In nineteen thirty five, a stone relief that probably represents
the god kukumns in the Yukatan Kukol Khan was found

(06:54):
in Poleenke. A genuinely unprejudiced look at this picture would
make even the most die hard skeptics stop and think,
there sits a human being with the upper part of
his body bend forward like a racing motorcyclist. Today, any
child would identify his vehicle as a rocket. It is
pointed at the front, then changes to strangely grooved indentations

(07:18):
like inlet ports, widens out and terminates at the tail
in a darting flame. The crouching being himself is manipulating
a number of indefinable controls and has the heel of
his left foot on a kind of pedal. His clothing
is appropriate short trousers with a broad belt, a jacket

(07:40):
with a modern Japanese opening at the neck, and closely
fitting bands at arms and legs. With our knowledge of
similar pictures, we should be surprised if the complicated headgear
were missing. And there it is, with the usual indentations
and tubes and something like antennae on the top our

(08:00):
space traveler. He is clearly depicted as one is not
only bent forward tensely, he is also looking intently at
an apparatus hanging in front of his face. The astronaut's
front seat is separated by struts from the rear portion
of the vehicle, in which symmetrically arrange boxes, circles, points,

(08:22):
and spirals can be seen. What does this relief have
to tell us? Nothing? Is everything that anyone links up
with space travel a stupid figment of the imagination. If
the stone relief from Polenka is also rejected from the
chain of proofs, one must doubt the integrity which scholars

(08:43):
bring to the investigation of outstanding fines. After all, one
is not seeing ghosts when one is analyzing actual objects.
Very interesting, the opposing side bases its conclusions on years
of academic research and field work. To the mayanist or

(09:04):
professional archaeologist, we have to take the Polanke astronaut in context.
The carved slab was found on a tomb, and many
of the symbols and motifs are found in other parts
of the Maya world in other forms of art. Yes,
the scene depicts a long journey, but not to Alpha
centaure or the Andromeda galaxy. It depicts King Pakaal at

(09:28):
the moment of his death and his transition to the underworld,
the land of the dead. This would be appropriate for coffinwood.
The overpowering element of this work of art is the
world tree, found throughout Mesoamerica and the rest of the
Maya world. It's in the shape of a cross and
symbolizes the bridge between the underworld, the heavens, and the Earth.

(09:52):
The tree's roots plunge into the underworld, giving the appearance
of flames from rocket exhaust. We see a double head
vision serpent on the sides of the cross, which is
also common in other works of art. On the top
of the tree is a celestial bird, which represents the heavens.
The king is seated, that's clear, but to the archaeologist,

(10:15):
it's not in the seat of some spacecraft. He's seated
on the Sun. To the ancient Maya, the Sun made
its journey across the sky, taking the dead with it
to the underworld, so Pacall is riding the Sun to
his new resting place. The Sun here is also depicted
as being half skull. This indicates the transition to death,

(10:38):
and again it is seen in other funerary related carvings
in Maya Land. The astronaut theorists claim that Pacall's foot
is on a pedal to somehow maneuver the spacecraft. The
archaeologists claim that this is just a foot rest. According
to the academic side of the dichotomy, Pacall's hand are

(11:00):
in delicate positions and not on controls. Delicate hand gestures
are seen in my art throughout the region. It's a
stylistic thing and may have some sort of fashionable significance.
This phenomenon harkens back to Madonna's nineteen ninety song and
video vogue Don't worry, I'm not going to start singing.

(11:21):
The final thing to look at on this slab is
the astronaut's breathing apparatus. Mayanists will argue that this is
a nose plug, a form of adornment, and if you
really look at it, it isn't attached to anything, so
there are no tubes. Well, there you have the two sides.

(11:42):
Some people may say that the academics are too bogged
down in what's perceived as practical explanations and may miss things.
Careers may be on the line if you propose too
wacky a theory. Some say that academia suffers from confirmation
bias and peer pressure, so that anything outside the accepted
norm is discarded as rubbish and the status quo is preserved.

(12:07):
The mainstream archaeologists have been working on the Maya for
years and it is a fascinating civilization to study, and
a clearer picture emerges almost on a daily basis of
this ancient people. The academics, however, have not been able
to figure out what happened to the Maya. The last
dated carving at Polenka was seven ninety nine a d.

(12:31):
And soon after the city was abandoned. So where did
they go? Perhaps they all hitched rides on rockets and
the ancient astronaut people are onto something here, or maybe
they're not.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Thank you, but listening to another episode of Mexico Unexplained
with host Robert Bitto. For show summary, relevant links, and commentary,
Please check out our website at XCO Unexplained dot com,
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