We’ve watched the world evolve from the simple to the complex, from stone tools to the technology of today. Yet dozens of stories from native cultures seem to complicate this narrative that we’ve come to believe as truth. Tales of enormous megaliths and ancient outer space visitors have come from every corner of the planet.According to tribal leaders, the strange man came forth from the Pukato-Ti mountain range, at first arousing fear but rapidly developing a messianic status among the natives. According to ancient tribal legend, the people of the village gradually became swept up in an attraction toward the foreigner, due both to his beauty—the white resplendence of his skin—and his benevolence toward all. They recount that this mysterious visitor was more intelligent than any among them, and in time he taught them valuable skills.
The legend describes one day when Bep-Kororoti exploded in an attack of madness, screaming and forbidding members of the tribe to approach him. It was then that the tribe witnessed, at the foot of a mountain, how the stranger was said to escape toward the heavens in a tremendous explosion that shook everything around. The story recounts Bep-Kororoti disappearing into clouds of flame, smoke, and thunder. With the explosion, the earth moved to such a degree that even plants were uprooted. The jungle was destroyed, the animals disappeared, and the tribe experienced a great hunger.
Ethnologist Joao Americo Peret, who had interviewed the elders of the aboriginal community in 1952, affirmed that the story of Bep-Kororoti stretched far into the distant past. If the cargo cult came forth around an actual being, modern investigators wondered what kind of person would visit the jungle of Mato Grosso in such a remote period, with a space suit and a variety of magic capable, as the Kayapo say, of knocking down an animal with a mere touch.
Certainly, Bep-Kororoti did not fit the type of humanitarian-minded North American soldier that the Tanna of Vanuatu continued to adore. Perhaps even more bizarre, when the history of the Kayapos was first spread, the space-suit design that had become part of the memorial ceremony for Bep-Kororoti did not yet exist in any space agency in the world.
Furthermore, the detail of the astronaut’s departure “among clouds of smoke, light, and thunder” brings to mind the behavior of a modern jet engine. The mechanism of propulsion, according to legend, was commanded by what the aborigines took to be branches, and the ship, camouflaged in a tree. The legend recalls that the man from the cosmos went back to sit down in that special tree and moved the branches until it touched the ground. And another time, he produced an explosion and the tree disappeared into the air.... read more ...
