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<title>"But I Read it In a book"</title>
<meta name="author" content="Creighton, Gordon">
<meta name="copyright" content="FSR vol. 19, n° 1, pp. 24-27">
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<p>After racking their brains for two decades in attempts to decipher the mystery writing, the Chinese scientist Tsum Um
  Nui <span class="note">As it stands, this name is corrupt
and quite unidentifiable.  Neither <em>Tsum</em>, <em>Um</em>,
nor <em>Nui</em> are monosyllables used in the transliteration
of standard Chinese (Mandarin) of Peking, though they might
perhaps be understandable in one of the more outlandish minor
dialects</span> and four colleagues had finally been successful, but the results which they came up with were "so
  shattering that the Peking Academy of Prehistory banned publication.'' Later, however, the ban was relaxed and the
  story was finally published in <time>1963</time>...
</p>
<p> Since much of my work involves the part of the world in question and seeing that <a
    href="/science/crypto/archeo/astro/enquete/dossier/Dropas/index.html">the story</a> was one in which considerable
  linguistic investigation might be required... I decided that I would put some effort into following it up to its
  source, and see where it led me...
</p>
<p> My inquiries started with a letter in February, <time>1968</time>, to the Soviet engineer in Moscow who is my
  regular correspondent and who, being the unofficial secretary of the Russian group of UFO investigators, performs the
  function of serving as the link with some of us in the West. I asked him for any information that he could supply
  about this story. He replied in due course that, although the two English-language Soviet publications where I had
  seen it were not available to the Russian public, he had been able to ascertain that <a
      href="/people/z/ZaitsevVyacheslavK/index.html">Vyacheslav Zaitsev</a> had done no original investigation of his
  own and had simply taken the story <a href="../../../../6/2/07/DasVegetarischeUniversum/index.html">as it had appeared
    in the the German publication <em>Das Vegetarische Universum</em></a> (no date given) and <a
      href="../../../../6/4/07/UfoNachrichten/">in the German publication <em>UFO-Nachrichten</em>, Number 95</a> (of
  1964). He also said that he thought that it had appeared in a "French'' [sic] UFO journal described by him as "<a
      href="/org/eu/be/asso/BUFOI.html">BUFOI</a>'' journal Number 4, of March-April, <time>1965</time>). My Soviet
  correspondent confirmed that, according to the original German version, the discovery of the discs had been in <time>1938</time>,
  the finder being "the Chinese archaeologist Chi-Pu-Tei.'' <span class="note">As it stands, this name is also corrupt
  and unidentifiable.  <em>Tei</em> is not one of the standard
Chinese monosyllables.</span></p>
<p> The next step, in November, <a href="../../../../6/9/index.html">1969</a>, was to make inquiries in Germany about
  <em>Das Vegetarische Universum</em>, and in due course I was informed that it was an obscure vegetarian affair
  produced by a firm known as the Vegeta-Verlag (in English "Vegeta Press'') of 7291 Grünthal Freudenstadt. So,
  hopefully, I wrote off to them too, saying how anxious we were to learn more about the marvelous stone discs. The date
  of my letter was November 21, <a href="../../../../6/9/index.html">1969</a>, and the result was precisely <em>nil</em>.
  Evidently the Vegeta Press was unwilling to divulge its secrets.
</p>
<p> I wrote next to the Soviet Novosti News Agency's London office, and asked to be put in touch with the editor, in
  Moscow, of <em>Sputnik</em>. They replied that the editor was Mr. Oleg Feofanov and that his office was in the
  headquarters of the Novosti News Agency of Pushkin Square, Moscow.
</p>
<p> So I wrote off to Comrade Feofanov, asking for details as to the authenticity of the wonderful tale.</p>
<p> Result: again <em>nil</em>.</p>
<p>My next letters went to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Peking (Red China) and to the Chinese Academy of Sciences
  at T'ai-Pei, in T'aiwan (Free China). I also buttonholed several visiting Chinese professors and academic types, and
  received some more than usually astonished glances when I whispered the tale of the spindly-legged spacemen who had
  dropped in on China all that long time ago.
</p>
<p> Results: <em>nil</em> again all round. No reply from either Peking or T'aiwan.</p>
<p>It did not look as though the story enjoyed too much credit anywhere.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the years were passing, and we have been favored with a fantastic spate of books by Messrs. <a
    href="/people/v/VonDanikenErich/index.html">von Däniken</a>, Peter Kolosimo, and a shoal of imitators...
</p>
<p>One of the most enthusiastic propagators of the New Evangelium is of course Herr <a
    href="/people/v/VonDanikenErich/index.html">von Däniken</a>, who tells us in one of his books that in May, <time>1968</time>,
  he went to Moscow specially to hear all about the stone discs and the <em>Hams</em> and <em>Dropas</em> from another
  Russian popular-science and space-science writer, <a
      href="/people/k/KazantsevAlexandrN/index.html">Aleksandr Kazantsev</a>.
</p>
<p><a href="/people/k/KazantsevAlexandrN/index.html"> Kazantsev</a> told <a href="/people/v/VonDanikenErich/index.html">von
  Däniken</a> that the plates and all the documentation about the whole story were "preserved'' in the Peking Academy
  and the historical archives of Taipeh in Formosa.'' (<a href="/people/z/ZaitsevVyacheslavK/index.html">Vyacheslav
    Zaitsev</a>, in his original article, had said, however, that the discs "had been sent to Moscow for study.'')
</p>
<p> It seems improbable that Comrade Kazantsev knows any more about the matter than does his colleague <a
    href="/people/z/ZaitsevVyacheslavK/index.html">Zaitsev</a>.
</p>
<p> Let us now return to our granite discs and, since we can find nobody anywhere who will vouch for them or show us a
  photograph or drawing of one of them or of one of the famous spacemen's skeletons, let us examine some of the features
  of the well-loved, well-parroted tale.
</p>
<p> According to Vyacheslav Zaitsev, there was even in existence an age-old Chinese legend to the effect that, thousands
  of years ago, a horde of "small, gaunt, yellow-faced men came down from the clouds.'' The locals (presumably the
  ancestors of the Chinese or of the Tibetans or of the Mongols in the area) took a dislike to the ugly gentry with
  their huge heads and thin, weak bodies and spindly legs, and there was soon conflict. Evidently the struggle did not
  end in the total liquidation of the aliens, for, while the graves in the Bayan-Khara Uula contain their skeletons,
  Zaitsev goes on to tell us that the present inhabitants of precisely that very area of China, who are known as the
  <em>Ham</em> or <em>Dropa</em> peoples, evidently contain much of the alien blood still, for they are "<em>frail,
    stunted men, averaging four feet, two inches in height</em>,', who <em>"so far have defied ethnic
    classification.''</em> Well, of course, it is undeniably a humdinger of a story, and how lovely it would be if it
  were true. Because my own work involves this precise area of Central Asia, I have, most of the time, on my desk in the
  House of the Royal Geographical Society in London, the maps showing the journey of all the foreign travellers
  (including Russians) who have ever been in any part of Tibet or Ch'ing-Hai in general or near the Bayan-Khara Uula in
  particular, and I am familiar with, and have read, the official accounts of most of them. Not one of them, and not a
  single Chinese writer of whom I have heard, had a word about any "small, stunted, big-headed, spindly-legged''' race
  or people or tribe known as either <em>Hams</em> or <em>Dropas</em> and who "defy ethnic classification.''
</p>
<p> The sad facts of the matter are rather more prosaic and here they are...</p>
<p> Let us take first the word <em>Ham</em>. This is obviously a garbled rendering of a perfectly ordinary Tibetan word
  which the Tibetans write <em>Khams</em> and pronounce <em>Kham</em>. <em>And this word is in fact nothing more than
    the normal, indeed the only, Tibetan name for the eastern portion of their country</em>. <em>So everybody</em>
  living there is a <em>Khams-Pa</em> (pronounced <em>Khamba</em>), meaning "a man of Khams.''
</p>
<p> The Bayan-Khara Uula (Mountains) lie in what is today the Chinese province of Ch'ing-Hai, or, if one prefers its
  Mongolian name, Kokonor. Both names mean "blue lake'' and derive from a large lake there. The population of the area
  in past centuries included a few Chinese (it is today being flooded with them), and sparse tribes of Tibetans and
  Mongols. The region is not nowadays counted as part of Khams or of Tibet at all, since Tibetan influence is now in
  retreat there. But the region does lie on the the immediate northern side of Khams, and in past times was usually
  considered by the Tibetans to be part of their country. The whole area is a melting-pot of Chinese, Mongols and
  Tibetans, plus a few tiny minority peoples like the Muslim Salars. Since the region adjoins Khams on the north, it is
  not surprising that many of the ordinary Tibetans found today in Ch'ing-Hai are identical with those of Khams. They
  are all <em>Khams-Pas (Khambas)</em>.
</p>
<p> Then what about the <em>Ham</em> and <em>Dropa</em> runts, frail, stunted creatures averaging four feet two inches
  in height, who so far have defied ethnic classification? (To quote <a href="/people/z/ZaitsevVyacheslavK/index.html">Zaitsev</a>.)
</p>
<p> The people of eastern Tibet, Khams, far from being miserable spindly-legged little folk, are great strapping robust
  fellows, who make marvelous soldiers. They have long been dreaded by all their neighbours, Chinese, Mongols, and
  western Tibetans alike, for their martial prowess, particularly displayed as marauding bandits, robbers, and
  highwaymen lying in ambush on the mountain passes...
</p>
<p> There remain now the <em>Dropas</em>. "Well, at least <em>they</em> must have been spacemen!'' someone will perhaps
  hopefully argue.
</p>
<p> I am sorry to have to be a wet blanket again, or to disappoint anybody, but, once more, the sad fact is that, just
  as the word <em>Ham</em> or <em>Kham</em> does not signify any species or tribe or <em>kind</em> of men but simply a
  whole vast area of Central Asia, so the Tibetan word <em>Dropa</em> (correctly rendered into English under the
  Gould-Parkinson system of transliteration for Tibetan as <em>Drok-Pa</em> means simply <em>an inhabitant of the high
    pasture lands or high solitudes of Tibet. In other words, what we might call, in Scotland, a "highland herdsman,''
    or a crofter.</em> The primary meaning of the word is <em>solitude</em>.
</p>
<p> Again, should anyone suffer from the misapprehension that perhaps these <em>Drok-Pas</em> may be more promising
  candidates than the <em>Khambas</em> for the description of "stunted,'' "frail,'' "spindly-legged'' and so on, I
  hasten to add that not one of the European travellers (often terrified) who have encountered these upland nomads, in
  their black tents, guarded by their fierce and positively gigantic mastiffs, has ever described them, so far as I
  know, in such terms. They are, in fact, like their southeastern neighbours the <em>Khambas</em>, some of the most
  impressive and robust-looking ruffians and robbers on our planet...
</p>
<p> It looks, alas, as though our spindly-legged 'Ham' and 'Dropa. "spacemen'' of the Bayan-Khara Uula are beginning to
  recede into the murky realms of speculation and fantasy where they were now doubt begotten. It has been undeniably
  most enjoyable to hear all about them and their cobalt discs inscribed in a language from out of this world, and I
  have no doubt that their saga will go on being repeated parrot-fashion, without checking, and without the least
  comprehension, by "ufologist'' after "ufologist'' for many years to come, and will feature in book after book...
</p>
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