Michael Hesemann’s recent findings about Soviet UFO research have emerged because these secrets are no longer closely guarded by a paranoid totalitarian culture (1). The collapse of the Soviet system has allowed the Generals to freely discuss their work on the UFO question, and the remarkable data the Russians collected about this enigma. There is a consensus of opinion among those Russian officers interviewed by Hesemann and his colleagues that UFOs are real, and not of this Earth.

The Russians are far more candid about this than we would have expected. In fact, their stark message about UFO reality can sometimes read like a sensationalist tabloid headline. Only, they’re serious people with a serious message. Is it our Western cultural bias that causes us to struggle with the image of 3-star Russian generals openly and seriously discussing the extra-terrestrial origins of UFOs? On 19th November 2002, Pravda, that old bastion of communist propaganda, published an article about Stalin’s deep interest in flying saucers, and the many military and scientific bodies set up by the Soviets to secretly investigate the phenomenon. Incredibly, Pravda also described an alleged retrieval of an alien artefact during archeological digs in Kiev, near the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. After all, this is the word of Pravda, the voice of Russia. I first read about this in ‘The Editor’, a weekly global news summary published by The Guardian newspaper. Entitled ‘Stalin was a UFO Obsessive’, it covered the Pravda story thus:

“The US government might have spent more than half a century trying to convince suspicious conspiracy theorists that no UFO ever crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, but one man never believed the story. That man, according to Pravda (Nov 19), was Joseph Stalin. The Soviet dictator apparently thought the US was covering up with its story of a weather balloon crashing, so he ordered senior scientists to investigate. "In order to assess the situation, the scientists recommended that Stalin organise special investigations of similar phenomena. As a result, a number of programmes to study UFOs were launched in the USSR…Until the end of the 90s, there were seven research institutes and about 10 secret military departments of the [former] Soviet defence ministry that studies UFO phenomena.” In fact, suggests Pravda, one UFO-related discovery – the remains of an ancient alien rocket – provided vital technical knowledge for the Soviet space programme. The paper, once home to endless accounts of Communist party congresses, did not offer any evidence to back this assertion." (2)...

In Japan one can find an ancient stone pyramid. It is a beautifully shaped monolith, about six and a half feet tall and twelve feet at the base, practically lost in the thick forest growth on the slope of a hill near the town of Ena, in central Honsu, largest of the Japanese islands. Cut from a single, massive block of gray granite, the object was a pyramidian, a smaller version of the Great Pyramid and its full-size cousins. This trignon, as they call it, might have passed for the missing capstone of its gigantic counterpart in Giza. People leave flowers at the base of the pyramid. Their veneration is more in keeping with Shinto practices, which predate Buddhism in Japan by unknown centuries. There are few folk lores about the pyramid. The only mythic element still current concerns a white serpent that dwells either within or underneath the trignon. It is a beneficent creature, which local people worship by laying out plates of small eggs for the snake to consume. Somehow, this practice is related to human and agricultural fertility.

But who cut the straight angles of the Japanese pyramid, when and for what purposes are utterly unknown. Nor is it the only such example. Perhaps 100 meters further up the same hill another trignon of approximately the same dimensions stands in an apparent alignment whose suspected celestial orientation has not yet been determined. At least one more pyramidian lies toward the north. Together, the monolithic trio forms a triangular relationship, the significance of which continues to escape investigators. Surprisingly, the immediate area features many other puzzling remnants of a culture or cultures which flourished around Ena long before the advent of recorded history. The area is uncommonly rich in petroglyphs. One site is extraordinary for the enormous, flat slab of stone, some 8 by 15 feet across its smooth surface. Reverently incorporated into the forecourt of a private home by a man sympathetic to archaeological values, it is incised with dozens of human and geometric figures, together with examples of a linear script that bears a striking resemblance to Ogam.

The petroglyph stone lies in a valley surrounded by hundreds of terraced farms where rice is cultivated in a manner preserved over the course of unguessed generations. So much so, they have been honored by the government as "national treasures." But anyone who has visited the Inka cities of Ollantaytambo or Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes would be struck by their similarity to the Ena agricultural terraces.

by Anna Maria Nicholson

Mahabalipuram, India () The destructive capacity of last year's tsunami wiped life from Earth in numbers that defy comprehension. Each one gone dramatically altering other lives - friends and families in a chain wrapped countless times around the world. Towns and villages and possessions obliterated. In many parts, the very presence of human beings simply erased, as if they were never there. The tsunamis took a great deal away, but in one tiny corner, they actually gave something back. And it has archaeologists and historians arguing about precisely what it is. It is evidence of a long-lost ancient community? Is there a mystical temple covered by time, or perhaps even an entire city buried beneath the sand and the sea around Mahabalipuram in southern India.

Anne Maria Nicholson travelled to India to piece together a picture from the fleeting glimpses snatched between the tsunamis and the more structured exploration now under way.

ANNE MARIA NICHOLSON: The sea's running high off Mahabalipuram on the Bay of Bengal. 75-year-old Peti Chetia and his grandson Sekdavail are out looking for their daily catch aboard shiny new boats donated by sympathetic Europeans. The ocean is their life, but a year ago it took nearly everything they had. But as stricken communities like this counted their losses and began a massive clean-up, others were diverted by an intriguing revelation. The ocean that had been so destructive offered a sneak peep into the past. Beneath the waves just offshore was evidence of submerged temples, perhaps even a city belonging to a lost civilisation.

One of those to spot them was Kuppuswamy Magesh. He comes to the beach to practise his yoga. Unusually, when the first of three tsunami waves surged across this beach a year ago, he had slept in. The mistake saved his life....

By Paul Tudor Angel

Mystery Hill, the Upton Cave, Calendar I and Calendar II, Gungywamp and Druid’s Hill are just several of the names given some incredibly important historical sites of which many have never heard a whisper. But their existence—and their importance—is becoming harder and harder to hide as more are discovered and interested folk become exposed to their grandeur.