Dropa Stones

I as well saw the UFO Files show about The Dropa Stones on the History channel last night. Some of you guys that saw it are forgetting some important details that were covered on the show. Firstly, that particular UFO Files show with the Dropa Stones was concluded to either be a hoax OR a cover-up by the Chinese government. Could be a hoax because of the lack of evidence, but it could also be a cover up because these particular stones WERE actually found although every piece of the stones just dissapeared around the time of the Chinese revolution in the 1960's-70's when a lot of Chinese artifacts from their culture were destroyed in attempt to move forward as a civilization. All that was supposedly left of the Dropa Stones is the story and the kodak pictures of the stones that are posted in this thread, and of course the stones cannot be dated from that. Also the show mentioned that the story about the tribe of Chinese "Dropa" people that were alleged to be part alien decendents was admitted to be a hoax by the author (i cant remember his name) that wrote that book "Sungods in exile".

What i find to be most interesting about the Dropa Stones story though, is that they look strikingly similar to the the recent UFO sightings captured on video during the NASA STS-75 mission (the tether incident) and sightings seen by multiple Derbyshire/Bonsall, UK residents.

Here's some links (that i'm sure most of you have already seen):
www.ufonasa.com...
www.rense.com...
news.bbc.co.uk...

It was funny to watch the guy in the show trying to explain this particular UFO on the NASA mission video footage, because he was trying to say it was a camera glitch from zooming but the same exact UFO was seen and captured on film by residents in the UK and the camera was tested for the zoom glitch and passed. Also, from my own eyes i cant see how it could be a camera glitch...especially given the fact that it passed behind the tether floating miles and miles away in space. Anyways very interesting, check it out and make of it what you will.





[edit on 14/12/04 by Meteor_of_War]

The bottom line is still that it's very possible that:

1. Space travelers have visited Earth many times in the past.
2. Many species, that no longer exist, lived here thousands of years before we occupied the planet.
3. Humans came from someplace other than Earth.
4. The earth was seeded with life.
5. Life on Earth is just a 6th grade alien science experiment.
6. We are not the most advanced species to ever inhabit the earth.

I could think of many more, but you get the idea. Our recorded history can't even accurately cover 2000 years, much less 10,000. It's very conceivable that Earth has alot more history of life than we'll ever know. In fact, I tend to believe this is the case. We've been here for less than a mere chronon (smallest recognized unit of time) in the general timeline of Earth's history.

[edit on 14-12-2004 by Damned]

if andvanced aliens crashed why were they making things out of stones, and were did there ship go. These stones also bear a stricking resemblence to something that was owned by royals of china.

Yes, it is very true and was noted in the UFO Files show that similar disc shaped stones are always found in caves all over China, and that these could just be ancient stones like those. And yeah it definitely seems odd that aliens would write encrypted messages on stones but we shouldnt try to make sense out of something an ancient alien race possibly did. It would be arrogant to assume we could do so.

Damned says:

"What makes you such an expert on Chinese departments and language?"

I'm certainly not an expert on anything Chinese, including Chinese checkers. However, I do know how to do Boolean searches to find out stuff; I assume you do too, being someone who's into denying ignorance and all.

But since I grew up in Micronesia and lived in Japan for six months in 2001 and can bull my way through both hiragana and katakana (but not kanji), and because I took several linguistics courses at the University of Maryland, I do know enough to figure out that "back-formation" (which is a linguistic term for one language's phonemes being used by another language) simply don't work that way.

"BTW, since you're an engineer who deals with fact and real physics, what it your opinion on the Pentagon crash? Do you feel that the wings could have broken the laws of physics so completely?"

No, wings can't break laws of physics, and yes, the Pentagon crash was caused by one of my company's aircraft, and no, I'm not going to waste my time providing anyone in here with physics 101 and doing any more debunking over something which has been proven to be another myth. If you want to "Hunt the Boeing", knock yourself out.

I found it.

"I've also done my share of engineering, and also inventing. When dealing with beings of advanced technology, from another world, you'd be wise to keep an open mind."

Perhaps we should examine the difference between an "open mind" and a "hole in the head".

I believe that many things are possible and I will gladly entertain anyone's assertions. If you can come up with some evidence for some of your claims, I will be glad to say that you are right. I like to consider that to be an open mind. However, I am not going to accept some story without anything to back it up. I don't consider that "open-mindedness"; I consider it simple na�vet�.

"I don't see that in you. I see the same denial in you as I see in HowardRoark about the flight 77 crash, and the pseudophysics behind his theory."

I don't know much about Howard Roark, because he has not chosen to share his education, experience, and background with me.

Neither, come to think of it, have you.

But most of what Howard Roark says seems to make a lot more sense to me than what you say, so if there's a disagreement between the two of you, chances are I'd be going with him.

By the way, I am not a physicist. My first undergrad degree was a BA in English, and my second ug deg was a BS in Logistics Engineering, which means I took only three physics courses and math only through diffie-Q's.

But that does enable me to spot, I think, what I consider fake physics and math from some of the more excitable people here, and spending 40 years in the job market has given me some insights into what kind of things, including ideas, make sense and what things don't.

"You seem to go out of your way to try not to think of all the possibilities."

I can think of a lot of "possibilities". But there's a difference between thinking of possibilities as possibilities -- and assuming that possibilities as fact, when the only reason to do so is because you want them to be.

�Either that, or you just don't have much imagination, as I've already mentioned.�

If believing something just because you want it to be true is your definition of �imagination�, then I suppose that makes me unimaginative. So be it.

[edit on 14-12-2004 by Off_The_Street]

I never said I consider anything fact. I just haven't yet concluded that it's not fact, because there isn't enough evidence to make that decision, yet. I'm merely sick and tired of people like you with your negative perspective and blind denial of certain subjects. It's obvious that you're the type of person who puts up a wall of ignorance as soon as you hear a few key words that activate your denial shell. You then twist every clue into something so ridiculous, it doesn't even seem to apply to the subject your in denial over. It's an automatic self defence mechanism, apparently. It's amazing that your logic makes sense to even you! I see many people like you around here. You walk around with horse blinders on saying, "Just put the beer in the bag." If you don't see it, it can't make you feel uncomfortable. Yeah, I think you should do more than stay "off the street." I think you should just stay home.

Where's that ignore feature? Oh yeah, there it is. Goodbye.

[edit on 14-12-2004 by Damned]

Play nice, now, or the Moderators will make us sit in the corner!

Yeah, let's not get too personal, or anything.

I agree with Byrd on the Dropa stones, I dont believe any single man could dechiper a Alien Language. The Rosetta stone which had the same text written in 3 different languages and it still took years to figure out.

Before we had the Rosetta stone many people worked on deciphering hieroglyphs over several hundred years and nobody could figure it out. I doubt even with the best computers and huge teams could we figure out a Alien language without something like the Rosetta stone.

So unless this guy found a dropa version of the Rosetta stone with the same thing written in Chinese and Alien it would be impossible for a single man to do in his lifetime.

this is one of those 99%-sure hoaxes i can't figure out precisely because it's not clear who's making money off of the hoax...but to make sure our debunking's solid, here goes:

a) there is a dialect of chinese that tsum um nui could be from: Taiwanese. Many of my profs. from taiwan have the "-um" sound in there names, which to my knowledge is nonexistant in mandarin and -- i think -- cantonese also. i can try to find this out, b/c i know a few students of taiwanese, but if the name's legitimate it's at this point probably taiwanese.

b) it in fact could be a taiwanese "translation" of a japanese name. phonetically this wouldn't work -- i know enough japanese to assure you of that -- but if the "translation" is coming from the name's kanji (and if this is actually in taiwanese) then this isn't out of the question. what'd be rare is that this appears to be a 3-character name (as is standard in most dialects of chinese) (unless the nui is nu + i) but 3-character names are rare in japanese; although they're not unheard of -- my roommate, for example, had a 3-character (2 for the family name, one for the given) name, they're still pretty uncommon -- the usual pattern is 4 (2 for the family name, two for the given).

So, for the moment, unfortunately, it looks like Taiwanese can't be ruled out -- the name sounds very taiwanese, but still not quite "right" to my ear, for what that's worth -- nor can the "japanese name translated into taiwanese" be ruled out, either, if the "translating" is by character, not sound. since taiwan was basically a colony of japan until the end of WWII, there's still a lot of cultural ties between modern day Taiwan and Japan -- much less of the anti-Japan attitude prevalent on the Chinese mainland -- and so the japan-taiwan connection isn't that outlandish.

fortunately, though, the story starts to look inconsistent here: given the tensions between taiwan and china, it's difficult to believe that they'd call in some taiwanese or japanese expert to handle something like this, especially within the timeframe this is supposed to have taken place -- china/japan/taiwan relations are "better" now, but I doubt on matters of major importance that any of those three trusts the other two. i think that historical implausibility is the best evidence against this story, at least until we get a verdict from a taiwanese speaker on the name.

some other things:

a) it's not "impossible" to decode an unknown language without a partial translation into a known language, but it's 99.5% impossible...if this Nui fellow pulled it off, he should be getting a nobel at the least. what you can do with a big corpus in an unknown language is something like this:
i) split it into a "working" and a "checking" text (probably 50/50)
ii) make guesses and try to get a consistent translation of your working text (it's easier if there are regular patterns)
iii) if you get a theory, check it against the "checking" text and see if it holds up -- if your translations of the checking text make no sense, you're probably wrong and need to start over
iv) repeat until you get a self-consistent translation of the whole text, or most of it

this approach is phenomenally difficult, and so far as I know no one's successfully decoded an unknown language this way, but it's a valid method for large texts, primarily because the odds of getting a self-consistent translation of a very large text that's also totally incorrect is pretty slim...the problem is getting there, and being honest about getting there. (as an example, there've been a few proposed "decodings" of the voynich manuscript, but none of them passed this test -- using the translations in other parts of the book produced gibberish). like i said, if this Nui fellow translated the books this way, he deserves a nobel or better.

b) it's not clear, though, that Nui had nothing to go with if the story is as described; there's a lot of ethnic minorities speaking weird languages out in China's boonies, and it wouldn't be out of the question that whatever was on those tablets would be in a similar language to one of those, especially if the translated "story" says the "aliens" bred into the surrounding population.

my summary, then, is that i'm pretty convinced this is a hoax, but it's harder to discredit than it appears at first:

a) we'd need to rule out taiwanese as a name
b) until we do a), we can't rule out the name's being brought into the taiwanese from japanese
c) it's not entirely impossiible (just mostly impossible) to translate something from scratch
d) it's not clear that the translator wouldn't have found the disks written in a language similar to one of the local languages near where the disks were found

and the only really convincing argument against them at this point is that taiwanese (maybe also Fukienese and some of the other minor chinese dialects, too, but the name sounds quite taiwanese) seems the best bet for this name to be legitimate, but then the odds of a taiwanese getting to work on such a project in china at the time period this was supposed to happen are so low as to be practically negative; it'd be not that different from Berlin-wall era western Germany inviting in some east germans to work on a top secret weapons program.

I found some photos about this

A drawing made by Chinese archaeologists


B&w photo of a disk, probably taken by an Austrian engineer, Mr. Wegerer.


A dropa couple (they don�t look enough alien to me)


A dropa skeleton?


[edit on 15-12-2004 by Peronemlin]

Excellent post, sisonek; I didn't know that about the Taiwanese.

I'd just assumed that their language was Mandarin or Cantonese, but then, I made the same mistake that too many people do -- equating Guomindang with the people of Taiwan.

One thing I found interesting about the History Channel show about the Dropa Stones was the village of dwarves. Even if not alien related in anyway I found it interesting. It also seemed the goverment stated this was true but due to toxic water they drank or something and that since they cleaned up the water no new cases of dwarfs were reported in the area.

A village of 3ft people man thats strange

please don't take me for an expert on taiwan, because i'm far from that. mandarin's the day-to-day and business language of taiwan even more than mandarin is on hong kong; from what I can gather taiwanese is a lot like welsh or gaelic, in that it's kept around more for sentimental reasons and cultural pride than it is for any sort of practical reason.

but yeah, there's lots of little regional dialects of chinese that are still around...my girlfriend's father uses mandarin 99% of the time, but when he gets angry he starts cursing in this other dialect from where he grew up (one of the northern provinces, not sure which). plus, out in the northwest (mostly the areas in and bordering the gobi desert) there's a lot of people who are part of china mostly by accident, and speak some really far-out languages.

this whole dropa thing is infuriating, though: it just screams "hoax", but most of the "evidence" that it's a hoax is pretty convincing but not really airtight; there's about a one-in-three chance i'll be taking a trip to china this summer (mostly depends on my employment situation and money) and if I do go I'll see if the stones are actually in that museum in beijing (an ATS overseas correspondant?), but for now i can't quite make as strong a case against the dropa stones as i'd like to be able to, given how hoaxy the whole story seems.

By all accounts you wont find the Dropa Stones in any museum.

They're supposedly gone, hidden in an elaborate cover-up by the Chinese government or destroyed in the revolution along with thousands of other priceless Chinese artifacts back in the 60's. All that's left of them is the pictures. The fact that they're no where to be found is the reason why many people scream "hoax".

oh great...i was remembering some account i'd read that said they were currently held in some museum in beijing, but i guess that's no longer in any of the accounts floating around, eh? sigh...

also, if they're claiming dr. tsum um nui is singaporean (first page in the thread) that's another possibility -- the language picture in singapore is really very complicated (Singapore) but if there's a regional variation in pronunciation that could be enough to explain it, unfortunately.

rereading on this i found this link (Dropas) which is a pretty good summary of the dropa "mythology" and the various claims that have been made. and, according to it, you're right: the disks have supposedly vanished from museums.

like i said earlier, this is one of those infuriating stories precisely because it's almost certainly a total hoax, but the evidence against it isn't airtight, just very good.

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
I agree with Byrd on the Dropa stones, I dont believe any single man could dechiper a Alien Language. The Rosetta stone which had the same text written in 3 different languages and it still took years to figure out.

What you fail to realize is that it's very possible that they have/had some knowledge of our culture. If they wanted us to decipher it, they'd leave clues that would allow us to figure it out. For example, we've sent capsules into space with all kinds of information about Earth and our cultures. We've also tried to include things that would allow an alien species to figure out what the hell we're trying to tell them...clues, if you will. If they were meant for us, chances are an advanced species would provide some means to decipher it, somewhere within the code. They say that math is a universal language.

I don't see why the guy's name is even of any importance. There are millions of unique names derived from original names. There's no way in hell that you can identify a hoax by the origin of anyone's name. People have been known to change or vary their names for as long as humans have existed. To me, that's a very weak analogy.

[edit on 16-12-2004 by Damned]

Still WAY too much pointing to a textbook hoax on these... While thankful to one who dug up this fossil of a thread of mine, hehe...I posted it when I had originally heard of them. Everything I've learned of these since then, has led repeatedly to evidence of it being a hoax...and a rather classic one at that.

It's similar to the myth of Chupacabra, IMO. Is it myth? We just don't know, and probably never will. The mere fact that there are so many old stories about strange things like this is very interesting, IMO. Apparently, the stones are/were real, but the story is what's in question.

Originally posted by Damned
I just heard of this too. There was a show on the History Channel on this last night. Very interesting! I'd like to know more. And where are the alien bodies they found? Who has them now?
I'm not convinced that it's impossible to decipher the code. That all depends on what they left in the code. They may have even left some sort of key index that's meant to help decipher it. How would you know?
Does the History Channel regularly cover hoaxes as if they're real history? I can't say I've seen them being outright misleading like that before. The show didn't seem to imply that it's a hoax at all.

[edit on 14-12-2004 by Damned]

Hi there,

You are correct, theywere on the history channel and the history channel does not air hoaxes. The stones actually do exist, and they really do have heiroglyphics written on them, the only part that they are not sure of is what the heiroglyphics actually say. The story someone says they translated may not be completely true, but the stones actually do exist with microscopic writing on them. Whether the story is true or not, you have to wonder how ancient people thousands of years ago were able to carve out perfectly rounded smooth stones and then put MICROSCOPIC words or heiroglyphics on it. Whatever the stones say, I don't think humans that far back in time were capable of creating such things. Plus it really was interesting how they had actual film of UFO's in the exact shape of the dropa stones with the same triangle notch on the side and the small spiral grooves like the dropa stones. Of course some tried to explain it away, as it is easy to take anything and sit back and make up reasons as why it cant be true. They had the actual film of the UFO yet some still refused to believe what was right before their eyes. LOL! But the story was very interesting.