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"Treasures of the Aquarians"

by Richard Davis and Jeff Stone


A startling and important archaeological discovery was recently made in the
area of our planet once known as California, when a cache of artifacts dating
from the 1960s was unearthed, relatively intact, during the building of the
t***sglobal tunnel. The best scholars from a score of disciplines --
including archaeology, history, languages and anthropology -- have studied
and interpreted these artifacts and have mounted an exhibition that will open
at the Metroplex Museum of Art next year. Never has so great a body of
information been available about a time and culture of which we have
previously known so little.

The artifacts were uncovered by a construction crew in the ruins of a
postindustrial town known as Berkeley ("zip code" coordinate 94704). The
primary dig site comprised an area approximately 105 yards long by 44 yards
wide. Additional objects were discovered as much as one quarter of a mile
away, in an area believed to have been the location of the University of
California at Berkeley. Unfortunately, practically nothing of the great
institution remains, but its grandeur is legendary. The campus alone was the
size of a small city, with its classrooms, laboratories, stadia and great
public squares, all of which played an essential role on the dramatic events
of the time.

Berkeley was the crossroads of cataclysmic but only dimly understood social,
political and cultural changes that rocked the civilization of the Western
Hemisphere to its very foundations. Home to thousands of "street people,"
Berkeley was the magnet city of its time. Consequently, the artifacts of the
late 1960s and early 1970s discovered there are unmatched in richness and
variety and as a source for our understanding of that distant time.

Little is known of the societies that neighbored the Berkeley civilization.
Evidently, a people called the Amerikans, whose values were in may ways
antithetical to those of the Berkeleyites, shared the midsection of the North
Amerikan continent with them. The boundaries between the two groups
apparently were not clearly defined, resulting in numerous border skirmishes
and several major battles.

The Berkeley artifacts were not without hazards, particularly the ones later
determined to be primitive drugs and explosive weapons. Yet many of the
researchers developed a genuine fondness and respect for the Berkeleyites,
whom they refer to as "Aquarians." The name is derived from a song recorded
on a grooved plastic disk discovered at the dig site. (Several such objects
were found and were eventually identified by specialists as "phonograph
records.") A favorite of the dig personnel, this song heralded the beginning
of the "Age of Aquarius."

I invite you to journey with us now many thousands of years back into the
deep recesses of time. It is my hope that you too will come to think of the
Aquarians in more familiar terms, perhaps as rather peculiar but valued
friends. It is all too easy, in our age of wide-ranging space exploration and
colonization, to focus on their idiosyncrasies, and so lose sight of the
common humanity they so clearly share with ourselves.

- THOMAS HEAVING DIGGERHALTER
Curator, North Amerikan Antiquities
Metroplex Museum of Art
April, 7069 A.D.

Some "finds" from the dig:

1. Item MJ303
THE SACRED SYMBOL
Silver, inlaid turquoise
Dimensions: 1" x 1 1/2"

Imprinted on many of the Berkeley artifacts is the sacred symbol of the
Aquarians, the hemp leaf. All good was thought to stem from the hemp plant,
and indeed economics, recreation and spirituality were all directly affected
by it. The leaf was so important to the Aquarians that it was
anthropomorphized in a tale and song as Mary Jane, in much the same way as
the British had centuries before personified John Barleycorn.

Buttons, poetry, patches on clothing and even one of the Aquarian
confederation f**gs were found bearing the three-pronged leaf. Apparently,
displaying the leaf symbol in virtually any context was considered "NORML."


2. Items 17, 18, 19
"ROACH" CLIPS
Various metals, beads
Dimensions: Easily concealed

An early interpretation of these small metallic devices supposed that during
the great cockroach epidemics of the twentieth century, in which billions of
the insects infected the cities of North Amerika, the clips were somehow used
to pin the creatures down in order to exterminate them. However, this
interpretation has since fallen into discredit.

A more plausible hypothesis is that the Aquarians used the clips to fasten a
live "roach" (or facsimile) to a piece of clothing to signify that the wearer
was in spiritual harmony with the cosmos. The Aquarians, like other ancient
human cultures, particularly the Egyptians, believed the cockroach to be a
sacred beast that had found favor with the gods and would be granted
immortality.

3. Item 69
LOVE BEADS
Leather, ceramic beads
Dimensions: Expandable

If an Aquarian could own just one piece of jewelry, it would almost certainly
be LOVE BEADS. Love Beads could be made from practically any durable
material, from plastic to paper-mache to macaroni, and were generally
brilliantly colored.

A strand might hold anywhere from a single bead to dozens, leading
anthropologists to conclude that Love Beads were not purely decorative in
function. It is now believed that they also offer important clues to sexual
behavior, with the number of beads corresponding to the number of an
Aquarian's lovers. It is significant that the strands were simply strung and
easily expandable. The color and design of the beads are thought to have been
carefully coded to indicate how good a lover had been.

Two of the most popular materials for stringing beads were cotton string and
leather cord. It is not known whether there was any significance in the
choice of material, although perhaps it had something to do with the sexual
preferences of the wearer.


4. Item 65
STEAM ENGINE
Glass, rubber, water
Scale: 1:1000
Inscription: "Bong-zai"

This was apparently a scale model for a giant engine that would have captured
heat from deep inside the Earth and used it to generate electricity. A long
tube would be inserted into one of the many faults in the Berkeley area. The
heat rising through the tube would convert the water in the engine's central
chamber into steam. The steam would be released through another tube and used
to drive a turbine that would generate electricity.

Evidently, large-scale testing of the device was conducted using heat
produced by burning hemp. This made excellent sense, considering the plant's
widespread availability.



Get the book and read it. It's not expensive.

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