Talk:Dropa stones/draft

Dropa stones, otherwise known as Dzopa, Dropas, or Drop-ka stones, are said to be a series of 716 circular stone discs dated to be 12000 years old. Allegedly, these discs measure up to 1 foot in diameter,and are inscribed with two grooves originating from the discs center hole and move out to the rim and back creating a double spiral.

Background
Dropa stones were said to be found in a cave near the Himalayan mountains close to the Chinese-Tibetan border in January 1938 by archaeology professor Chi Pu Tei from Beijing University and a group of his students who were out on an exhibition. The cave in which they were said to be found had been enlarged and crafted to include a series of tunnels and storerooms. The "walls were squared and glazed using an unknown, but massive heat producing process". Additionally, the walls were supposedly decorated with depictions of the moon, sun, stars, small dots connecting the Earth and sky, and of people with elongated heads.

The discs are said to have been found bruried in the ground as grave markers overtop of small, 3 to 4 feet long skeletons which had abnormally large heads and thin, fragile bodies. The skeletons are of people known as the Dropa, who supposedly arrived on earth in a saucer that crashed after coming from the Sirius constelation.

Tsum Um Nui
For 20 years the Dropa stones were said to have sat in storage before they were given Tsum Um Nui for study in 1958. It is said the he came to the conclusion that the grooves on the discs were actually very tiny hierolgyphs of "unknown pattern and origin" which can only be seen with the use of a magnifying galss. By 1962 he had allegedly decpihered them into a story that told of a spacecraft that crashed landed in the area of the cave, the Bayan Har Shan region and that the ship contained the Dropa people who could not fix it and therefore had to adapt to earth. Further, his research claims that the Dropa people were hunted down and killed by the local Ham tribesmen for a period of time. Tsum Um Nui noted specifically that one glyph apparently said "The Dropa cam down from the coluds in their aircraft. Our men, women and children hid in the caves ten times before sunrise. When at last they understood the sign language of the Dropas, they realized that the newcomers had peaceful intentions".

Tsum Um Nui is said to have published his findings 1962 in a professional journal, and was subsequently ridiculed and met with disbelief. The Academy of Sicence banned his publication and findings. Shortly afterwards he is said to have gone to Japan in a self-imposed exile where died not long after he completed the manuscript of his work.

Russian
Russian researchers requested the discs for studying, and allegedly several were shipped to Moscow. Once there, it is said that they were scraped for loose particles and put through a chemical analysis which revealed that they contained large amounts of cobalt and other metallic substances. As recorded in the Soviet magazine Sputnik, Dr. Vyatcheslav Saizev describes an expriment where the discs were supposedly placed on a special turntable whereby they were shown to "vibrate or "hum" in an unusual rhythm as though an electric charge is passing through them.

Wegerer
Supposably, Ernst Wegerer (Wegener) was an Australian engineer who in 1974 visited the Banpo Museum in Xi'an, Shaanix Province, and located 2 of the Dropa stones. It is said that when he inquired about the discs the manager could tell him nothing, but permitted him to take one in his hand and photograph them. He claims that in his photos the heiroglyphs can not be seen as they have been hidden by the flash from the camera and have also deteriorated. By 1994 the discs and the manager had dissapeared from the museum.

Publications
The earliest recorded refrence to the Dropa and Dropa stones is found in the July 1962 edition of the German magaizine "Das vegetarische Universum".

In 1980 they are mentioned in "Sungods in Exile" edited by David Agamon. This book is written as a documentary of a 1947 expidition with the scientist Dr. Kayral Robin-Evans. It follows his supposed travels into the secluded region of the Bayan-Kara-Ula mountain range where he finds dwarfish like people called the Dropa. According to his book the Dropa population conissted of few hundrend members all of which were approximately 4 feet tall. Robin-Evans allegedly lived among the Dropa for half year and in that time learned their language and history. He was told that they had crashed there long ago and that their ancestor had come from a planet in the Sirius constellation.

In Japan they are mentioned in 1996 when a translated version of Hartwig Hausdor and Peter Krass's "Satelliten der Gotter (Satellites of the Gods) is released.

Controversies
It has been claimed that Tsum Um Nui is not a real Chinese name. There is no mention of him in China outside of his connection to Dropa stones. However, Tsum Um Nui is a "former Japanese name, but adapted to Chinese language". Nor is there any mention in any records about Chi Pu Tei's expidition in 1938.

"Sungods in Exile", with its account of Dr. Kayral Robin-Evans in all apearances gave credibility to Dropa stones until 1988, when Agamon told Fortean Times magazine that the book was fiction and Dr. Kayral Robin-Evans imaginary.

The stone discs were stored in various museums across China. However, none of these museums have any records or traces of Dropa stone every being there.

According to the Gould-Parkinson system if tansliteration, Drop-ka is Tibetan for 'solitude' or 'inhabitant of pasture lands'. It is said to be the name of a tribe of Tibetian nomadic herders on the eastern Tibetan plateau.

With Wegerer's photos lacking concrete evidence of the heiroglyphs, they display similarity to Bi discs. Bi discs are round discs with a hole in the centre. They are made of jade and when buried in the earth the minerals change them to be multi-colored. The earliest Bi discs have been dated to 3000 B.C.E. and were common in the Shaanix Province. Some Bi discs are decorated with parallel groves and other markings.