cave paintings of Fergana

[One-23 Profile]

In an article of the of French ufology magazine "Lumières dans la Nuit" ("Lights in the Night") issue 335 of February 2000, Didier Leroux tried to find the source of this image, successfully.

He found out that image was painted by a contemporary Russian artist to illustrate the cover of a 1967 issue of the "Sputnik" Russian magazine, in which there was an article devoted to the topic of visits of ancient astronauts 12.000 years ago, which had been inspired among other stuff by the prehistoric paintings in the caves of Fergana in Uzbekistan in which certain characteristics were considered as possibly some ancient close encounter of the third kind. These paintings seem to exist, but they are sometimes dated back to 2000 BC, sometimes 7000 BC, rather than 10.000 BC.

The cover illustration of the Sputnik magazine was cropped out and included in Erich Von Daniken's book "Chariots of the Gods," and thus instead of the true cave paintings of Fergana, the fictitious illustration spread as the real thing.

Sputnik magazine, published in Reader's Digest format, was published in several languages in the Sixties and was one of the rare publications where Russian scientists, as well as laymen and fantasy-prone authors were allowed to pass some texts to the West, amongst other things, texts related to the UFO phenomenon.


Notice the original artists signature in the bottom right corner


There is a second painting that is believed to be the original inspiration to the one used for the 1967 Sputnik magazine. This is almost identical but with slight variations and is thought to be older and the original


Fergana is a valley in Uzbekistan, famous because the road to the silk passed through it.
It seems that there are really prehistoric caves there, showing these "ancient astronauts" paintings which inspired the Sputnik Magazine article and illustration


Source and further reading http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_uzbekistan.htm