UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

History holds many oddities that we may never fully understand, either through incomplete documentation, disinterest at the time, or simply a big question mark that hangs over all. Among these are mysterious tribes of people that have been encountered and confronted in all corners of the globe, often vanishing before we really understand them and leaving us perplexed at just who they were or where their origins lie. One such tribe was a mysterious group of Native Americans who appeared to explorers as something quite European in nature, although their ways and beginnings have always been cloaked in shadows. Known mostly from historical accounts, their origins remain murky, their lineage uncertain, and they are a historical curiosity we may never fully understand.

During the era of early European contact, the native peoples of North America held many curiosities for explorers and settlers coming to this new, wild land. These tribes were numerous, and displayed rich variety between different cultures, as well as myriad languages, customs, and traditions that inspired awe, wonder, curiosity, bafflement, and even fear in the European adventurers who bravely delved into this uncharted new world and tried to tame it. Yet as fascinating as these new peoples were, perhaps the most interesting was an alleged tribe of natives who were said to look decidedly Caucasian in nature.

The first reports of what would come to be known as the Mandan tribe began to trickle out from French explorers in the region of the Missouri River in present-day North and South Dakota in the early 1700s. These natives were said to have rather fair skin and to have red or blonde hair and blue or grey eyes, and indeed especially the women were purportedly so Nordic in appearance that if it were not for their clothing they were said to be nearly indistinguishable from whites. In 1738, the French Canadian trader Sieur de la Verendrye made the first official outside contact with the Mandan and described them as living in 9 villages at a tributary of the Missouri river called the Heart River, and noted that they also exhibited customs that were decidedly more European than the neighboring tribes.

A Mandan chief’s lodge

By 1784 the word had gotten out on this mysterious tribe of blue-eyed Indians, and they were featured in the media, with the August 24, 1784 edition of the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser proclaiming that a new tribe of white people had been discovered and that they were “acquainted with the principles of the Christian religion” and “extremely courteous and civilized.” Perhaps one of the more famous of the explorers to come across the Mandan was none other than Lewis and Clark, who visited the tribe in 1804 and described them as “half-white,” as well as peaceful, civilized, courteous, and polite. They also noted that the tribe’s numbers had dwindled significantly due to the frequent small pox epidemics that terrorized them, as well as attacks against them by neighboring tribes, namely the Assiniboine, Lakota, Arikara and the Sioux.

Of course this all led to intense speculation as to what the origins were of this bizarre tribe, and one of the earliest ideas put forward was that they were the descendants of pre-Columbian explorers to the New World. For instance there were many legends from various regions of the present day United States of Welsh speaking natives, perhaps descended from Welsh settlers coming to these shore in the 12th century, in particular a Prince Madoc, who along with his followers was said to have emigrated to America from Wales in about 1170.

One Welsh explorer by the name of John Evans became so convinced that this was the case with the Mandan that he launched an expedition up the Missouri river in 1796 to search for them and prove that their language was derived from Welsh and contained Welsh vocabulary. Evans would trek up the river in the winter of 1796 and he could find no evidence whatsoever of the Welsh influence he had been so sure he would find, forcing him to concede that this was not where the Mandan origins lay. Indeed, he became extremely skeptical that there were any of these legendary “Welsh Indians” at all, saying in a letter to a Dr. Samuel Jones:

Thus having explored and charted the Missurie for 1,800 miles and by my Communications with the Indians this side of the Pacific Ocean from 35 to 49 degrees of Latitude, I am able to inform you that there is no such People as the Welsh Indians.

Mandan tribespeople

Another explorer who believed that the Mandan had European roots, perhaps even Welsh, was the frontiersman and pictorial historian George Catlin, who spent several months with the tribe in North Dakota, living amongst and drawing and painting them in 1832. One of the things that first struck him about these mysterious people was just how European they looked, describing that many of them were nearly white and had light hair and blue eyes, and he also noticed that they had more advanced techniques for manufacturing goods and dwellings, customs, traditions, town layouts, and language vastly different from neighboring tribes. Caitlin would say of the Mandan:

They are a very interesting and pleasing people in their personal appearance and manners, differing in many respects, both in looks and customs, from all the other tribes I have seen. So forcibly have I been struck with the peculiar ease and elegance of these people, together with their diversity of complexions, the various colours of their hair and eyes; the singularity of their language, and their peculiar and unaccountable customs, that I am fully convinced that they have sprung from some other origin than that of the other North American Tribes, or that they are an amalgam of natives with some civilized race.

Even some of the legends of the Mandan people themselves expressly mentioned that they had been descended from a strange white man who had appeared to them aboard a canoe in ancient times after an enormous flood had wiped out everything in sight. They claimed that this stranger had taught them about medicine and had influenced their religion, which oddly featured many of the same beats as Christianity, such as a great flood, a virgin birth, and a child born who could work magical miracles, among others. This was noticed by other later expeditions as well, such as an 1833-34 expedition led by German naturalist A.P. Maximilian, who felt that the similarities between Christianity and the Mandan religion were too close to be mere coincidence. Caitlin would write of this:

It would seem that these people must have had some proximity to some part of the civilized world; or that missionaries or others have been formerly among them, inculcating the Christian religion and the Mosaic account of the Flood.

A drawing of a Mandan tribeswoman by George Catlin

Another idea on the Mandan origins is that they came from pre-Columbian visitations by Viking explorers. The first official European to ever officially make contact with the Mandan tribe, Sieur de la Verendrye, claimed that at the time he had found a strange runestone with Nordic inscriptions on a riverside near the village. The stone was allegedly sent to France to be studied but it is unclear what happened to the “Verendrye Runestone” after that, and indeed it is uncertain if it ever really existed at all. Unless the stone ever turns up again it remains just as mysterious as the Mandan.

The idea of Vikings in the New World before the days of Columbus has been talked about for some time, with one prevalent and somewhat controversial theory having to do with Eric Thorwaldsson, also more famously known as “The Red,” who established two colonies on the coast of Greenland in 986. The story goes that Eric The Red then abandoned these outposts when the wild, rugged land proved to be too cold and forbidding, and made his way to North America along with the colonists. The theory then claims that the King of Norway is then said to have sent an expedition to the New World to find out what had happened to them, and that this expedition made their way up the rivers to end up in the Dakotas and other areas, after which they became stranded and then assimilated into the native tribes, giving them their Nordic genes.

However, there is very little evidence to prove that Vikings ever actually reached North America. The Verendrye Runestone vanished without a trace and then there is the hotly debated Kensington Runestone, which was a giant slab covered in runes allegedly found by Swedish immigrant Olof Ohman in Minnesota in 1898. In this case the inscriptions claimed that the runes had been created by 14th century Scandinavian explorers, and although the authenticity of the runestone is still debated it has mostly been classified as a hoax by the scientific community.

Mandan tribeswoman

Regardless of where the Mandan really came from the fact is that we will probably never know for sure. In 1838 the tribe was hit by a devastating smallpox epidemic, and although this was a specter they had been haunted by for centuries, this time it was absolutely catastrophic, wiping them out at such a rate that after only a few months there were only an estimated 30 to 140 of them left. With the Mandan teetering on the edge of extinction, enemy tribes swept in and took them as slaves, after which they were assimilated and absorbed.

Consequent intermarriage and interbreeding meant that any unique genetic heritage they may have had was quickly erased, and the last known full-blooded Mandan was a Mattie Grinnell, who died in 1971. Since there are no more full-blooded Mandan left and only an estimated 8 speakers of its language left today, it is difficult to get a grip on their heritage, even with our advanced DNA testing techniques, and their origins and history will likely forever remain shrouded in mystery, leaving us to merely speculate and debate on it.

It is somewhat sad that this tribe disappeared before we were ever able to really comprehend who they were. All we are left with is the tales and accounts from explorers, but other than that their legacy has evaporated into the tides of history. They are a vanished people who sowed bafflement and wonder, but ultimately left numerous questions swirling about them, doomed to a limbo of superstition, speculation, and rumor. Who were these people? Why did they look and act so differently, and what was the meaning behind their strange ways? To the alien explorers just starting to penetrate this wilderness at the time they may have seemed to be baffling anomalies, and interestingly they still are.

Classification

Asteroids lie within three regions of the solar system. Most asteroids lie in a vast ring between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This main asteroid belt holds more than 200 asteroids larger than 60 miles (100 km) in diameter. Scientists estimate the asteroid belt also contains between 1.1 million and 1.9 millionasteroids larger than 1 km (3,281 feet) in diameter and millions of smaller ones.

Not everything in the main belt is an asteroid — Ceres, once thought of only as an asteroid, is now also considered a dwarf planet. In the past decade, scientists have also identified a class of objects known as "main belt asteroids," small rocky objects with tails. While some of the tails form when objects crash into an asteroid, or by disintegrating asteroids, others may be comets in disguise.

Many asteroids lie outside the main belt. Trojan asteroids orbit a larger planet in two special places, known as Lagrange points, where the gravitational pull of the sun and the planet are balanced. Jupiter Trojans are the most numerous, boasting nearly as high a population as the main asteroid belt. Neptune, Mars and Earth also have Trojan asteroids.

Near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) circle closer to Earth than the sun. Amor asteroids have close orbits that approach but no not cross Earth's path, according to NASA. Apollo asteroids have Earth-crossing orbits but spend most of their time outside the planet's path. Aten asteroids also cross Earth's orbit but spend most of their time inside Earth's orbit. Atira asteroids are near-Earth asteroids whose orbits are contained within Earth's orbit. According to the European Space Agency, roughly 10,000 of the known asteroids are NEAs.

In addition to classifications of asteroids based on their orbits, most asteroids fall into three classes based on composition:

The C-type or carbonaceous asteroids are grayish in color and are the most common, including more than 75 percent of known asteroids. They probably consist of clay and stony silicate rocks, and inhabit the main belt's outer regions.

The S-type or silicaceous asteroids are greenish to reddish in color, account for about 17 percent of known asteroids, and dominate the inner asteroid belt. They appear to be made of silicate materials and nickel-iron.

The M-type or metallic asteroids are reddish in color, make up most of the rest of the asteroids, and dwell in the middle region of the main belt. They seem to be made up of nickle-iron.

There are many other rare types based on composition as well — for instance, V-type asteroids typified by Vesta have a basaltic, volcanic crust.

Earth impacts

Ever since Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, asteroids and comets have routinely slammed into the planet. The most dangerous asteroids are extremely rare, according to NASA.

An asteroid capable of global disaster would have to be more than a quarter-mile wide. Researchers have estimated that such an impact would raise enough dust into the atmosphere to effectively create a "nuclear winter," severely disrupting agriculture around the world. Asteroids that large strike Earth only once every 1,000 centuries on average, NASA officials say.

Smaller asteroids that are believed to strike Earth every 1,000 to 10,000 years could destroy a city or cause devastating tsunamis. According to NASA, space rocks smaller than 82 feet (25 m) will most likely burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, which means that even if 2015 TC25 hit Earth, it probably wouldn't make it to the ground.

On Feb. 15, 2013, an asteroid slammed into the atmosphere over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, creating a shock wave that injured 1,200 people. The space rock is thought to have measured about 65 feet (20 m) wide when it entered Earth's atmosphere.

When an asteroid, or a part of it, crashes into Earth, it's called a meteorite. Here are typical compositions:

Iron meteorites

Iron: 91 percent
Nickel: 8.5 percent
Cobalt: 0.6 percent

Stony meteorites

Oxygen: 6 percent
Iron: 26 percent
Silicon: 18 percent
Magnesium: 14 percent
Aluminum: 1.5 percent
Nickel: 1.4 percent
Calcium: 1.3 percent

Asteroid defense

Dozens of asteroids have been classified as "potentially hazardous" by the scientists who track them. Some of these, whose orbits come close enough to Earth, could potentially be perturbed in the distant future and sent on a collision course with our planet. Scientists point out that if an asteroid is found to be on a collision course with Earth 30 or 40 years down the road, there is time to react. Though the technology would have to be developed, possibilities include exploding the object or diverting it. [Image Gallery: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids]

For every known asteroid, however, there are many that have not been spotted, and shorter reaction times could prove more threatening.

When asteroids do close flybys of Earth, one of the most effective ways to observe them is by using radar, such as the system at NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California. In September 2017, the near-Earth asteroid 3122 Florence cruised by Earth at 4.4 million miles (7 million km), or 18 times the distance to the moon. The flyby confirmed its size (2.8 miles or 4.5 km) and rotation period (2.4 hours). Radar also revealed new information such as its shape, the presence of at least one big crater, and two moons.

In a NASA broadcast from earlier in 2017, Marina Brozovic, a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said radar can reveal details such as its size, its shape, and whether the asteroid is actually two objects (a binary system, where a smaller object orbits a larger object.) "Radar is a little bit like a Swiss army knife," she said. "It reveals so much about asteroids all at once."

In the unlikely event that the asteroid is deemed a threat, NASA has a Planetary Defense Coordination Office that has scenarios for defusing the situation. In the same broadcast, PDCO planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson said the agency has two technologies at the least that could be used: a kinetic impactor (meaning, a spacecraft that slams into the asteroid to move its orbit) or a gravity tractor (meaning, a spacecraft that remains near an asteroid for a long period of time, using its own gravity to gradually alter the asteroid's path.) PDCO would also consult with the White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and likely other space agencies, to determine what to do. However, there is no known asteroid (or comet) threat to Earth and NASA carefully tracks all known objects through a network of partner telescopes.

Water delivery?

Ironically, the collisions that could mean death for humans may be the reason we are alive today. When Earth formed, it was dry and barren. Asteroid and comet collisions may have delivered the water-ice and other carbon-based molecules to the planet that allowed life to evolve. At the same time, the frequent collisions kept life from surviving until the solar system calmed down. Later collisions shaped which species evolved and which were wiped out.

According to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies CNEOS), "It seems possible that the origin of life on the Earth's surface could have been first prevented by an enormous flux of impacting comets and asteroids, then a much less intense rain of comets may have deposited the very materials that allowed life to form some 3.5 - 3.8 billion years ago."

Discovery & naming

In 1801, while making a star map, Italian priest and astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi accidentally discovered the first and largest asteroid, Ceres, orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. Although Ceres is classified today as a dwarf planet, it accounts for a quarter of all the mass of all the known asteroids in or near the main asteroid belt.

Over the first half of the 19th century, several asteroids were discovered and classified as planets. William Herschel coined the phrase "asteroid" in 1802, but other scientists referred to the newfound objects as minor planets. By 1851, there were 15 new asteroids, and the naming process shifted to include numbers, with Ceres being designated as (1) Ceres. Today, Ceres shares dual designation as both an asteroid and a dwarf planet, while the rest remain asteroids.

Since the International Astronomical Union is less strict on how asteroids are named when compared to other bodies, there are asteroids named after Mr. Spock of "Star Trek" and rock musician Frank Zappa, as well as more solemn tributes, such as the seven asteroids named for the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia killed in 2003. Naming asteroids after pets is no longer allowed.

Asteroids are also given numbers — for example, 99942 Apophis.

Exploration

The first spacecraft to take close-up images of asteroids was NASA's Galileoin 1991, which also discovered the first moon to orbit an asteroid in 1994.

In 2001, after NASA's NEAR spacecraft intensely studied the near-earth asteroid Eros for more than a year from orbit, mission controllers decided to try and land the spacecraft. Although it wasn't designed for landing, NEAR successfully touched down, setting the record as the first to successfully land on an asteroid.

In 2006, Japan's Hayabusa became the first spacecraft to land on and take off from an asteroid. It returned to Earth in June 2010, and the samples it recovered are currently under study.

NASA's Dawn mission, launched in 2007, began exploring Vesta in 2011. After a year, it left the asteroid for a trip to Ceres, arriving in 2015. Dawn was the first spacecraft to visit Vesta and Ceres. As of 2017, the spacecraft still orbits the extraordinary asteroid.

In September 2016, NASA launched the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx), which will explore the asteroid Bennu before grabbing a sample to return to Earth.

"Sample return is really at the forefront of scientific exploration," OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta said at a press conference.

In January 2017, NASA selected two projects, Lucy and Psyche, via its Discovery Program. Planned to launch in October 2021, Lucy will visit an object in the asteroid belt before going on to study six Trojan asteroids. Psyche will travel to 16 Psyche, an enormous metallic asteroid that may be the core of an ancient Mars-size planet, stripped of its crust through violent collisions.

In 2012, a company called Planetary Resources, Inc. announced plans to eventually send a mission to a space rock to extract water and mine the asteroid for precious metals. Since then, NASA has begun to work on plans for its own asteroid-capture mission.

According to CNEOS, "It has been estimated that the mineral wealth resident in the belt of asteroids between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter would be equivalent to about 100 billion dollars for every person on Earth today."