In Vienna/Austria June 22 – November 4, 2001

It is no exaggeration or overstatement to say that this exhibition belongs to the category of cultural events of the first order. Whoever doesn’t remain unaffected by fascinating objects and unexpected artistic manifestations, whoever cares about unsolved enigmas of prehistory, bewildering interconnections and affinities between the ancient civilisations, and generally about the dissolution of obsolete mental patterns and outmoded belief systems about mankind´s past: all of them, if they visited this exhibition, most probably will have found their visit most satisfying, rewarding, stimulating, and though provoking.

There has never been such an exhibition in the history of exhibitions! I would even dare to assert that every cultured individual positively should have visited (if it were at all possible) this exhibition. For all those who were unable to go to Vienna, or who didn’t receive word of the exhibition, the only remaining possibility to get at least an approximate impression of it will be study its excellent catalogue (1). Quite obviously, however, it will not be possible to convey, by means of a catalogue, the very special atmosphere of this exhibition, with its magical illumination effects, in the age-old subterranean vaults of the Schottenstift in downtown Vienna.

The exhibition has been organised, in a masterly manner, by renowned cultural manager Klaus Dona (of Hapsburg exhibition fame in Japan). There have been on display in Vienna about 460 “anomalistic” objects, respectively artefacts, among them many of which we know from “heretical” or “notorious” books. Almost nobody of us has, however, so far been able to inspect these objects or artefacts personally. By “anomalistic”, incidentally, are meant objects or artefacts which contradict, or are incompatible with, current Establishment dogmas, or mainstream “paradigms” (in the sense of the great Thomas Kuhn´s work THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS).

It has not been the object or aim of this exhibition to intensify the current controversy (reminiscent of the quarrel between Scholasticism and the “Nuova Scienza” about 1600 AD) between the academic guardians of our “correct” world-view on the one hand, on the other hand, those who crave for a general paradigm change, and a widening of horizons. Rather it should be seen as a first attempt world-wide to release a bit the “atmospheric” tension between both parties. The visitors of the exhibition, may they be from the interested general public or from academic institutions, were to be given the opportunity to inspect personally these controversial and sometimes even outright enigmatic artefacts, so that everybody could form her or his own judgement, and arrive at her or his own conclusions. Though there was the occasional hint in the direction of sunken continents or extraterrestrial visitors influencing ancient civilisations, or of as yet undiscovered advanced civilisations on our own planet (“Atlantic” etc.), it had been the organiser´s  express wish and intention not to prejudice the visitors verdict. This has, indeed, been a good idea in view of the well-known urge many Westerners cannot resist, to proselytise.

It is of course not possible to describe in any detail all those many objects or artefacts which one was able to inspect at that exhibition in Vienna. Interested readers should order the catalogue via the address given at the end of this article. Only some of the most controversial and possibly most “dangerous” (i. E. for current dogma) exhibition objects can be mentioned here. All artefacts exhibited in Vienna were on loan from official museums and institutions, and from private collections around the world.

Several of the most remarkable objects came from the United States. Many artefacts from “Burrows Cave “ were personally brought to Vienna by Russell Burrows (accompanied by Prof. James Scherz, and by ANCIENT AMERICAN editor in Chief Wayne May), often with inscriptions in an alphabetic script. This script has in the meantime been deciphered by Kurt Schildmann, a linguist from Bonn/Germany, as a variant of the Indus script (which we had deciphered in 1994), and the language of the inscriptions as a variant of the ancient sacred language of India, Sanskrit. This fact alone would already be “dynamite” enough to revolutionise current dogma with respect to the origins of pre-Columbian civilisations in the Americas.

The famous Kensington runestone of controversial repute has been lent, for the Vienna Schottenstift event, by the Kensington Runestone Museum in Minnesota. By now many European scholars will have been able to inspect the original personally. That cannot be a modern forgery, had already been shown in 1965 by Alf Mongé, who discovered that the inscription contained a hidden, extensive dated cryptogram (2).

On loan from the Creation Evidence Museum at Glen Rose, Texas, three most controversial artefacts could be inspected by visitors already in the very first section (THE EVOLUTIONARY TRAP) of the exhibition:

The famous steel hammer head, enclosed in limestone, from London, Texas; the iron cup found enclosed in coal from Oklahoma; and the prehistoric shoe sole print found in situ in natural rock by William Meister in Utah. This print cannot possibly be forgery, because a trilobite has been found crushed under the sole.

The sensational underwater ruins, reminiscent of South American step pyramids, discovered near Taiwan in Japanese waters (in the vicinity of the island of Yonaguni), were present in form of large, poster-like colour  photographs, and of a small-scale model of the entire structure (3).

Prof. Masaaki Kimura of the University of the Ryukyu’s, Okinawa, who came to Vienna for this occasion, in a lecture on the first day of the exhibition, declared that from geological considerations this unknown civilisation would have to be dated to 12.000 or at least 10.000 years ago. Is it a remnant of James Churchward´s lost Pacific continent and civilisation “MU”, which has up to now been regarded by the Establishment as purely fictious? Anyhow it is a rather unexpected discovery and seems to constitute evidence that advanced civilisations have already existed on our planet as far back as the alleged “end of the Ice Age”. It is no great miracle why our Establishment remains strangely reticent about this revolutionising discovery. Hapgood´s work about very ancient maps with the subtitle EVIDENCE OF ADVANCED CIVILISATION IN THE ICE AGE (4) seems to have been vindicated! 

Many strange and though provoking artefacts had been lent by private collections. Humanoid “Nomoli” stone figurines from Sierra Leone, West Africa, found by diamond diggers in up to 12 meters depth in geological strata dated to as much as 17.000 years ago. Controversial Acambaro figurines from Mexico. Artefacts from Glozel /near Vichy, southern France), which so far defy categorisation, where we find inscriptions like those at “Burrows Cave” mentioned above. Some objects from the famous Crespi collection from Cuenca, Ecuador. A stone with a “world map” (including “Atlantis”, and something like “Mu” in the Pacific (located from North of Japan until South of Taiwan) ((it would confirm the research of Prof. Masaaki Kimura and the stone must be than very old – but the question is, how could they know thousands of years ago how the world including the different continents are located?)).

From the same place (La Mana, Ecuador) a strange, pyramid-like stone with a “divine eye” in the uppermost part, which phosphoresces in the dark under ultraviolet light. A whole special section of the exhibition (CHAMBER OF LIGHTS) showed more objects from La Mana with this characteristic attribute.

Neil Steede brought several of the highly controversial Ica stones from Peru to Vienna.

Several rock crystal skulls, and others made from precious and semiprecious stone, reminded one of Mitchell-Hedges famous rock crystal skull from Lubaantun (Belize).

It is true, most artefacts in the Schottenstift came from private collections, official museums were mostly too reluctant to get involved with such an unorthodox event. But this has not necessarily to remain so. “Repeat performances” are planned in other countries, by then official museums may perhaps be more inclined, in view of the success of the Vienna exhibition, to make available, on loan, artefacts from their hidden treasures.

In Vienna there has even been a certain degree of participation by official Austrian institutions. To the advisory council of the exhibition  belonged the director-general of the Vienna Naturhistorisches Museum (National Museum for

Natural History), Dr. Bernd Lötsch, as well as director Rudolf Distelberger of the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum. The function of scientific advisor or counsellor of the exhibition was most ably fulfilled by the director of the NORDICO museum of Linz, Austria, Dr. Willibald Katzinger, who wrote in the introduction to the exhibition catalogue: “The responsibility of the scientific mentor has been restricted to the task of a Cerberus, who had to pull the emergency brake in case of too excessive fantasy of the exhibition organisers. He has learned immensely by this”.

In these introductory remarks, Dr. Katzinger makes yet other interesting observations, e. g. that, in spite of all modern means of travel and communication, the West or Occident mentally “has not yet even moved beyond the horizon of our “Weltbild”. In the field of astronomy, “we would not at all have needed Galileo to eliminate the geocentric “Weltbild”. All of this was known long before him, but not accepted in the Christian Occident”. “The supremacy of science has replaced that of the Church and religion, at least in the West. Still, however, it cannot really explain all phenomena of our or other worlds. In a free world nothing hinders people to ask questions. When they get no answers, they are looking for them themselves”. This is, indeed and quite obviously, the reason why in our time we see ever more Establishment nonconformists, “heretics” of all kind, and self-made, non-Establishment scholars writing articles and books, and editing alternative, non-Establishment journals. Yet one last, outspoken remark by Dr. Katzinger: “Another accusation culminates in the statement that Establishment science suppresses, conceals, or hides from view evidence or discoveries which are incompatible with current doctrine (Weltbild). This accusation, too, is not unfounded…”.