A Familiar Site

by Jamin Greenbaum

You could call it part of a personal journy, a coincidence completing my life, and in doing so, attempt to give some kind of sense to the confusing but awesome events that make up a lifetime. To me, it was more: one of the most startling and groundbreaking discoveries in the history of our civilization, all seeming to follow the procession of the events in my life. As if on that incredible day, when, as humans, the picture of our world and of our amazing presence radically grew and expanded, I was supposed to be present. I would be the messenger.

AD 2008

In the deceiving quiet of the plains, I sat peering out over the horizon. Thinking as usual; wondering, my mind drifting into the stillness of the moment. I had just been to Nairobi with my father, scouting for corporate contacts, meeting with CEO's, lunching with political allies, but now we were home; where I wanted to be. Business trips with him typically were little more for me than hotel room interiors and boring stories about the latest bill to go through back in the US that would somehow help or hurt my father's company. As much as I hated "helping" with his lobbying, it was important to the family that I travel as much as possible and I, all else aside, loved seeing the countryside along the way.

My parents decided five years earlier, when my sister and I were 7 and 8 years old, respectively, to relocate from our birthplaces in Wichita, Kansas, to where it would be easier for my father to coordinate with his American textile corporation based in Dar Es Salaam, the Capital of Tanzania. Settled on a large plot of land in Tabora, well away of the bustle and confusion of the capital, my parents also wanted to give us the opportunity to grow, expand, and experience like their parents could never have dreamed for them. Here we could play in wide open spaces and entertain dreams as big as the open skies above.

Earlier in the day I had been helping my father install the inner lining rotary cup in a Pratt and Whitney R-2800 engine for his antique F4U-2 Corsair Navy warplane he bought at a US Air Force aircraft auction two years earlier in Cape Town, South Africa. With it, his dream of a plane since childhood, he promised to show me more of the land at which I gazed this particular evening in late October. As the plane was inching closer and closer to completion every evening we worked on it, I was getting closer and closer to having my own personal tour of some of the most ancient and interesting sites in the land. For, besides staring up at the stars and into the intriguing depths of the writings of Arthur C. Clark and Carl Sagan of interplanetary colonization and extraterrestrial presence, I also occupied myself with the works of now famous african anthropologists of two decades before and with the countless new magazines, journals, and novels of the present concerning this once ignored part of our world's history. For, with a surge of interest in universities throughout the world in the late 1990's and early in the new millennium, research surfaced in fields of all kinds, all testing various and sometimes odd hypotheses of some relics of a time long passed. Once obscured by the naiveté of biased thought concerning "the dark continent," the words of Robertshaw, Snedegar, Sutton, Robbins, Lynch, Wheeler, and Soper now line Anthropology textbooks as reference to the budding discovery of an ignored dimension of ancient african thought. I wanted to see more.

Since the release of an article by a team of researchers surveying the monuments of Sub-Saharan Africa, an archaeologist from the University of Nairobi, Dr. William Bonderet, and a Russian neuroscientist, Dr. Dmitiri Valednezdovnikov, in April, 2002, the world of anthropology has been in an uncontrollable and unquenchable uproar. Originally alone in his research, Dr. Bonderet was attempting to find a reliable cultural root tied in with the erection of the now famous Kenyan monuments at Namoratung'a I and II. He was following up on a hypothesis set forth by Robert Soper twenty years prior concerning a possible connection, through Nderit pottery, to some ancient Southern Cushites. Not Eastern, as was proposed by Dr. Lynch, the father of Namoratung'a research and one of the major reasons interest in the area was begun. Also, and, in the long run, more importantly, Dr. Bonderet was looking into a connection, through discovered Turkwel ware, to Eastern Nilotic speakers, not Cushites at all, for distinct plausible reasons. First, as Soper stated in one of my long time favorite essays challenging earlier theories: "the economy is consistent with that probably practiced by early Nilotes, and that it could not could not have been made by the Cushites since the latter do not eat fish [the pottery was discovered around the local Lake Turkana]," (Soper, 155). It was the investigation of this latter culture that led Bonderet to seek the help of Dr. Valednezdovnikov, a specialist in the electromagnetic wave propagation of neural cells in the human brain.

When Dr. Bonderet studied the Borunga tribe located 63 miles outside Kitui on the Yatta Plateau, he was struck theodd, unanticipated events took place. In his account, Bonderet describes Borungan settlers accounting for very vague tales of ancient astronomical methods practiced further east by their ancestors possibly near the Turkana District, the area housing the two Namoratung'a monument sites. Although being relatively big news in and of itself and causing somewhat of a stir throughout the world of anthropology, it was something completely unexpected that would be the real surprising discovery.

When investigating the people of Borunga, carrying out interviews with a translator, viewing their ritual practices, and, in all, observing the daily lives of the people, Bonderet began noticing a very interesting aspect to the way in which the people communicated. In typical social interaction, he accounts for very recognizable gaps in normal verbal discourse, a practice popularly thought to take place among close siblings and, even more pronounced, between twins. Bonderet, however, recorded such conversations taking place consistently throughout the 57 member tribal unit, not reserved strictly to close familial ties. Intrigued, the doctor solicited the advice and help of Dr. Valednezdovnikov, known among his peers to be the foremost in knowledge concerning such brain science.

Educated in Rome by some of the original minds involved in the field of electromagnetic neuroscience, Valednezdovnikov caught Bonderet's eye because of his history with seemingly supernatural issues with the brain. Under professor Gislero Flesch, Valednezdovnikov studied his advisor's theory on "the basis of life." In this theory, Flesch postulates that there is a filament within each cell of the brain that is activated by some cosmic action or form of electromagnetic radiation that bombarded the earth continually from outer space and resonated against a constant refresh of electrical activity from the brain," (Corso, 211). Further, he studied Flesch's theory that such electromagnetic forces account for much activity that is generated throughout the brain. To test these postulates, he participated in experiments with a colleague of Flesch, Professor Casmiro Franck in the late 1970's, studying the electromagnetic wave signatures attuned to various muscle groups, or, in other words, how the actions of certain muscles correspond to a specific "neuro-wavelength."

Together, using equipment developed at the Mantecca biological laboratories in San Marino, Italy and a few trusting volunteers, Bonderet and Valednezdovnikov found a startling level of Hephton bio-trans-fixed energy levels present in the small population. Hephton energy levels, named after Alexander Hephton, a chemist with a background in subatomic particle physics from the University of Geneva, are, as proven by their namesake, an absolute indicator of electromagnetic wave signatures. This approach to locate such signatures in a human population turned out very successful. Since such energy level indicators had, prior to the Borunga experiment, primarily been used to measure the amount of radiation penetrating our atmosphere, it inadvertently proved that properties of brain waves are likely identical to those bombarding the earth from the solar system. To Valednezdovnikov, this was more scientific support for mental telepathy and his earlier research into Flesch's theory of the "basis of life." Now on the table as well, for Bonderet and the rest of the scientific community, was why such telepathy exists for this relatively small group of Africans in south-eastern Kenya.

On evenings such as the calm lazy one which I was enjoying this October during my Freshman year in High School, I would sit and dream about that telepathic tribe only four hundred miles northeast of my home and how, someday, I might be able to contribute something to its incredible discover. For now, though, my mother was yelling at me from the house and my dreams would have to wait for further entertainment; it was time to eat.

My father figured that at the rate we were working the plane would be up and soaring by mid-December. Until then, however, I and the rest of the world had plenty to occupy me. For, as it appeared, a few weeks before our first expedition in December, the Earth would be celebrating its first manned Martian landing, a feat propped up by decades of hope, dreams, and work done by hundreds of thousands of wide-eyed and anxious individuals ready to witness a fantasy become reality. For the six months it was taking for the MMLV (Manned Martian Landing Vehicle) and its eight person crew to reach its destination, I had been patiently waiting every evening by the radio and television for status reports, no matter how listless and repetitive. To me, the knowledge of even our astronautís daily lives excited my curiosity and enabled me to follow them along their journey through the absolutely beautiful and striking abyss seen by so few. Dreams of the red planet; dreams of the wonderful nothingness of space; dreams of an ancient african society. Here I was, grown in a time with maturing space programs and a location in the middle of some of the oldest artifacts in the world. I was in heaven...

AD 2023

Large, crescent, and beautiful. Occupied, yet in complete and utter solitude. Stationary, yet in a mad dash around a 230,000 mile circle. The moon hangs, remaining the same, yet always eliciting more than its fair share of excitement from me, a flutter in my heart and a whisper within my soul. But the lunar heaven I was peering at would not be my destination. I and seven others were pushing mankind's frontier past the glowing surface of the moon. My sights were set ahead, as they were fifteen years ago when I followed our astronaut's first landing on the red surface of Mars. I dreamt then as I dream now of where is was traveling and how I was getting there. The expanse around me freckled with bright and dim dots of light had tickled my very being for years and now I found my self contained, finally, within its lovely grasp.

I was on the Earth's fifty seventh mission to Mars. A mission not markedly different from its predecessors and no more special beyond the significance of maintaining a moderately consistent schedule of events 49 million miles away from home. The fifteen year program had been largely successful and without major setbacks until February of 2018, when Russia was sent into a menacing and disheartening economic plunge reversing a tremendously encouraging two decades of rehabilitation and sound economic and political agendas on the part of its leaders. For eight months this cornerstone of the International Space Alliance (ISA) was forced out of a few of its planned missions and operations agendas on Earth as well as on Mars, thus postponing two primarily Russian-funded Martian missions and two of three routine Earth orbiting research and development projects. This was a minor setback and perhaps a well-deserved break for the growing alliance of space exploration, however. Soon after the world realized the economic down-turn was a very surmountable obstacle and nothing to remain troubled about, business resumed as normal; and there I was, dangling on a path between two spheres separated by what seemed an eternity.

The descent was rough. We almost missed our target by sixty kilometers because of a faulty hydraulic jetline in engine four and had to reboost our systems to bring us back up to orbital status long enough for one emergency orbit. The second time around, with a few corrections in trajectory to account for our wounded landing mechanism, our performance was nominal and our landing successful. After soaking in the desert atmosphere and appreciating the dramatic topography of the land, I and the rest of the crew reported back to base in Houston and to Mechanics and Trajectory analysts in Hamburg, Germany for updates and to calm the nerves of everyone about the landing. Before hanging up our suits and helmets for the night we planned the next day of our stay on our temporary home; unearthing plans from the cargo bay of the lander for our long roving mission to start early in the morning and assigning responsibilities for driving shifts, maintenance at base, and communications with home. As I was stepping back into our lander to get to my sleeping quarters with a mind racing through images of the land and the view I was getting of an alien planet, I stopped to get a picture of the sky and try to recognize any of the shapes in the sky I used to try to memorize out on my porch as a child. Little did I know I was teetering on the brink of destiny. Closer than ever to what would help define our civilization and send us into an exciting period of reevaluation and redefinition.

Early the next day, at least as far as Earth was concerned, we were up and loading into the three lightweight, multi-use survey vehicles (SV's) powered by their two seven foot solar arrays reaching up vertically into the dense, morning sky and two, large electric batteries in place until solar power could be used. The sun wouldn't be up for another three hours, so our floodlights were on and when lit up against the dreamy clouds of the early Martian ionized gas cycle filtrating through the air it made for a very mysterious and surreal setting around our camp. Today, my team of four, Kathy Sutherland, Mark Chainge, Feodor Yavgan, and I were to finally cross the Valley de Gaire, carrying out the ISA's search for mineral resources along the equator.

As we cut through the moisture of the acidic atmosphere twenty nine miles away from camp, I looked to the east as the sun began to introduce itself to us; aliens on a new planet. It sliced through the clouds, causing a stir throughout the muggy air, the familiar sun made a spectacular show of pale green and red to purple colors streaming by our faces and stimulating our senses. It was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever witnessed. Nothing that had ever been reported by the 392 people to have explored similar areas of Mars before us could ever have written a report to do the scene justice; it was spectacular. I was peering through the scouting binoculars on the SV as we passed under a ridge fifteen hundred feet above into the openness of the valley and I saw it. Tantalizing, teasing, unbelievable. I was struck with a false sense of awe at first; doubting my eyes, though at the same time feeling my heart and my mind race with more vigor than I had ever felt before. Wondering yet reluctant to recognize what I saw, for, if it was in fact what I took it to be, it was impossible.

"LEFT!...uh...go left over there to that elevated area! It can't be. Yes...yes...over there," I stammered, barely letting the sentences coming out of my mouth keep up with the thoughts streaming through my head. Of the possibilities, of the magnitude. We came upon the area, lifted thirty feet higher than the rest of the land, up there upon a pedestal, gleaming in the early Martian sun.

I will always remember back in high school when I soared over my homeland in my father's noisy airplane seeing, for the first time, the stunningly simple complexity of the monuments. The stones, strangely out of place in the area yet simply placed in the ground, had caused so much of a stir in its time that it was doubtful to many that it could make much more of a presence; however, there I was, standing millions of miles away from my father and that wonderful Corsair that carried us around the land I still dream about, looking dumb-foundedly at a collection of stones, larger in size yet in shape and feel more than identical.

After reporting back to base and to Central in Houston, we surveyed that elevated area in the middle of the Valley de Gaire for the rest of the day. We had discovered a link from the surface of Mars to the continent on which I was grown. The connection was without doubt. Purposefully carved stones planted well beneath the dusty surface at odd angles. Small, circular indentations, markedly similar to the cairns present throughout the better-known African sites. Sealing the fate of this Martian Valley and of our well-established belief system concerning the solitude and privacy we naively assumed Earth to have among the billions upon billions upon billions of shapes and figures making up our gigantic nest of a Universe, we came upon petroglyphs representing some ancient period of interplanetary transition, travel, and some kind of communication. This discovery rattled my very being. It opened my eyes even wider to the expanse and complexity of our incredible presence in this time and place. In the end it would expand our perception, as a culture and a species, beyond the limits and frontiers we have created for ourselves and form a new beginning.......

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