Evidence for Precolumbian Flight—The Golden “Jets” from the Americas
Report Topics:
- Story of a jeweler’s gift—a replica of one of the golden “zoomorphs” from Colombia is given to a biologist-zoologist
- An aerodynamics analysis reveals the ancient “jet” does not represent any known flying creature, but corresponds instead to a tail-engine craft
- The un-bird-like tail and its Hebrew letter beth
- Seventeen other gold artifacts found throughout South and Central America—their variations and similarities in design
- A larger-size composite model of the gold “jets” makes a successful flight
Full Report:
In 1954, the government of Colombia sent part of their collection of ancient gold artifacts on a tour to six museums in the United States. During the tour Emmanuel Staubs—one of the leading jewelers in America—was commissioned to make a cast reproduction of six of the gold objects. Fifteen years later one of the casts was given to biologist-zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson for an analysis as to what it could possibly represent. After making a thorough examination of the artifact himself, and after consulting a number of aerodynamics experts, Sanderson’s conclusion was mind-boggling to say the least. The gold artifact in his opinion is a model of a high-speed aircraft a thousand years old, or older.
The gold object is approximately 2 inches long and was worn as a pendant on a chain around the neck. Discovered in northern Colombia, the art form has been variously classified as Sinu, Chimu or Mochica, a pre-Inca culture that flourished between A.D. 500 to 800.
Both Sanderson and Dr. Arthur Poyslee of the Aeronautical Institute of New York concluded that the object does not represent any known type of winged animal—bird, bat, insect, flying fish or ray. In fact, the little Colombian artifact has features that are more mechanical than biological.
For example, the front wings of the gold model are delta-winged and rigidly straight edge-wise, which is very unanimal-like.
Further, as expert designer Arthur Young—the creator of the Bell helicopter—noted, if the gold trinket does represent a flying animal, then these front wings are located on the wrong place on the body. They are too far back to coincide with the animal’s center of gravity. The front wings are in the right place aerodynamically, however, for a tail-engine high-speed jet.
What is more, the wings are also counter-dihedral, which means they tilt slightly downward, as do such hypersonic craft as the Concorde. Designer Jack A. Ulrich pointed out:
“The configuration is only valid for certain types of flight. The type of wing is suitable for atmospheres up to fifty and sixty thousand feet. The sweep is to prevent vibrations when passing the sound barrier. The wing structure indicates supersonic abilities.”
The rudder is perhaps the most unanimal but airplane-like item on the gold model. It is right-triangle in shape, flat-surfaced, and is rigidly perpendicular to the delta wings and elevators. No bird or insect has a tail like this. Only fish have upright tail fins, but none have exclusively an upright flange without a counter-balancing lower one. Adding to the mystery, an insignia appears on the left face of the rudder—precisely where identification marks appear on many airplanes today. The insignia is perhaps as out-of-place as the gold model itself, for it has been identified as the Aramaic or early Hebrew letter “beth” or B. This may indicate that the original plane did not come from Colombia, but was the product of a very early people inhabiting the Middle East who knew the secret of flying.
Six similar gold objects—each complete with aerodynamic fuselage, wings and right-triangle rudders—are on display in the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. Two others are on exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., and the Museum of Primitive Art in New York City. They originated from among two other Precolumbian Andean cultures, the Tolima and Calima of southwestern Columbia, dating to roughly the same time period, circa 200 B.C.E. to A.D. 800.
These along with the models kept in Bogota, Columbia, number eighteen in all. They are all over a thousand years old, but the area from which they come is extensive. These other plane models were discovered in Costa Rica, Venezuela and Peru.
In 1996, a composite reproduction of these gold jets, which combined all their advanced aerodynamic attributes, was built at a scale of 16:1, and successfully flown by a team of three German engineers—Algund Eenboom, Peter Belting, and Conrad Lubbers. What they found was that the original crafts most closely resembled the design and shape of America’s space shuttles.
As Ivan T. Sanderson concluded:
“The concrete evidence that the ancients knew of flight was forced upon us only a few years ago. Now we have to explain it. And when we do we will have to rearrange a great many of our concepts of ancient history.”
Skeptics have tried to argue that because none of these artifacts were found in situ among the ancient cultures in which they were claimed to originate, where they came from and how old they really are should be highly suspect. However, this argument “flies” in the face of the scholastic historical authority of several museum directors, both in Latin America and the United States, who have authenticated for themselves the objects as being genuine, and were confident enough in the genuineness of the artifacts to have them identified, labeled and put on public exhibit in their respective institutions.
Besides, the majority of the gold “jets” were acquired, classified and placed within museum catalogues in the last century long before today’s actual jet aircraft came into existence. So the artifacts’ inherent aerodynamic design features were by no means “copied models” from any kind of modern aircraft, as some critics have tried to insinuate.
Other skeptics point out that no two of the ancient objet d’arts are alike, that there are too many variations seen among all of them, and that a design analysis of just one of the artifacts proves nothing. As critic Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews stated on his website, “Taking one object out of context, as Ivan Sanderson did, is disingenuous and borders on dishonesty.”
In my travels throughout the Western Hemisphere, I have been fortunate to have had several opportunities to see in person many of the gold “jets” on display, and spend time examining them up close. Every indication I observed is that none of these were meant to be actual models, but were artistic expressions of something seen, perhaps as the actual full-scale crafts were passing overhead in flight. Each artisan embellished their goldwork with their own individual selective impressions, as certain features stood out over others in their minds, as they tried to duplicate their experience of what they encountered. The key here is not in the variations, but rather in the kinds of similarities they altogether sculpted and successfully managed to preserve.
Artistic license put aside, very specific features, and every one a reflection of the original crafts’ aerodynamics—the nose, “cockpit,” tapered body, tail and back-wings—can be seen repeated again and again throughout all the gold figurines. Sanderson’s analysis of just one “jet” adequately covers the greater majority of all the “jets,” because they are basically the same craft design, only seen at different times and places, under different circumstances, and portrayed under many different conditions.
[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]
