In 1898 excavators working a tomb at Saqqara, the great burial ground south of Cairo, brought up a small carved object made of sycamore wood. It was about seven inches long and weighed less than an ounce. They catalogued it as a bird and put it in a box.
It is about 2,200 years old. And it does not look like any other bird the Egyptians carved.
Real Egyptian bird figures have legs, feathers and painted eyes. This one has none. Its wings are straight and set at a slight angle, like the wings of an aircraft. Its body is smooth and narrow. And its tail is not spread flat like a bird’s. It stands straight up, exactly like the vertical stabilizer on the tail of a plane.
In 1969 the Egyptian doctor and model maker Khalil Messiha pulled it from storage and made a claim that has never gone away. He said the Saqqara Bird was a model of a glider. Some who have built scale replicas say it flies. Others say it needs a tailplane the original never had. Egyptologists generally call it a toy, a weathervane, or a ceremonial object.
Here is what we know for certain. Someone two thousand years ago carved a shape that we would not see again until the Wright brothers.
I have studied this little piece of wood for years. Coincidence can only stretch so far.
Could it be that the knowledge of flight is far older than our textbooks allow.
A child’s toy that happens to look like an airplane, or a memory of something that flew?
What do you think about this? The Dropa Stones, 716 grooved stone discs said to be found in Chinese caves in 1938 beside small bodied skeletons, telling of a crash 12,000 years ago. The 1978 book that spread the story was admitted to be a hoax. Pure fiction, or a truth wrapped in lies?
What do you think about this? The Paiute of Nevada told of red haired giants they trapped in a cave and burned, written down in 1883. In 1911 miners near Lovelock opened a cave and found red haired mummies and a layer of ash. Legend that matched a cave, or memory of real enemies?
What do you think about this? In 1987 a Wisconsin family bought a used bunk bed. Within weeks their kids were sick, a radio changed stations by itself, and a chair rocked with no one in it. They fled in the night in 1988 and burned the bed. Old house, or something that came with it?
What do you think about this? In 1904 an American dredged the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá and pulled up gold disks, jade, wooden idols and the bones of more than 200 people, many of them children. The Maya called such wells doorways to the underworld. Prayers for rain, or an open door?
What do you think about this? Norse settlers lived in Greenland for nearly 500 years, with farms, a cathedral and a bishop. The last record is a wedding at Hvalsey church on Sept 16, 1408. Then nothing. The church still stands, roofless and empty. Starved out, or walked away?
What do you think about this? In 1615 a Spanish pearl ship is said to have sailed into an inland sea that then dried up. In 1870 a Los Angeles paper reported its hull found in the desert near the Salton Sea. Every searcher since has lost it to the sand. Mirage, or a galleon in the dunes?
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