excessively large, he guessed some
nine feet (!) in length. Brewer made a sketch of the tomb, in
which he claimed to have carefully catalogued the position of
each plate and box. In removing the coffin lids, he noticed that
the mummies were covered with a straw "like cloth."
He removed the straw only from the the heads of the mummies to
reveal their crown and breastplates. Shields and a sword were
among other artifacts scattered about the tomb.
As proof, he showed us about sixty metal plates of various sizes
and shapes. They all featured characters of a written language
unknown to anyone present. At least a few of the plates, preserved
by Brewer under a glass picture frame, appeared to be made of
gold. Another set, possibly bronze, was encircled by a metal
band some five inches square. They were bound by a small metal
ring opposite the band.
The next month our meeting with Brewer took place in early March,
so he agreed to take Dr. Cheesman and a team from Brigham Young
University to the tomb in the near future, as soon as the snow
melted. Later, Mr. Peterson said he thought Brewer "was
telling the truth and most likely did not have the capacity to
perpetuate such an elaborate hoax." Indeed, that was our
general impression of the man, but we still wondered if Brewer
would actually make good his offer to take Dr. Cheesman to the
tomb. Spring and summer came and went in the Sanpete Valley,
and Brewer made no effort to contact Dr. Cheesman.
ut word of the inscribed tablets had already become controversial,
as gossip about his mysterious discovery spread throughout Manti.
Respected BYU professors Dr. Hugh Nibley and Dr. Ray Matheny
met Elder Peterson, Dr. Cheesman and Brewer, who was unaware
of the two scholars' high academic credentials. They were not
favorably impressed with Brewer and condemned his "find"
as a hoax. Following their unsupportive reaction, an article
entitled "John Brewer has a cave but he's not giving tours,"
appeared in the November 26, 1975 issue of Salt Lake City's Deseret
News, in which Dr. Jesse Jennings of the University of Utah's
Archaeology Department was quoted as saying that the sandstone
tablet obtained from Brewer was a "ridiculous hoax."
Jennings referred to Dr. Ray Matheny, who said he "wasted
his time exposing the man's works...It is a clumsy attempt to
perpetrate a fraudulent claim of antiquity. Only Dr. Cheesman
had mixed feelings: "They could be real." But Dr. Robert
Heinerman, a Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of Indonesia,
recalled that he had formerly lived in Manti around 1975, when
he learned of the alleged artifacts. He visited Brewer at his
home, in Moroni, |
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and heard the story of finding the cave with its bizarre contents.
Unlike the BYU professors, Heinerman was more favorably impressed,
and the two became close friends.
Late one night, two years later, Brewer unexpectedly appeared
at Heinerman's home, and suggested they go off on a midnight
hike. They drove to a quarry behind Temple Hill, in Manti, then
walked south from the quarry, up the hill to its top, finally
across to the mountain in the east. Suddenly Brewer stopped and
told John to take off his shirt and pants, so he could squeeze
into a tunnel and see the chamber they had so often discussed.
Dr. Heinerman did as suggested and followed John into a tunnel
that had been dug on a downward track, barely squeezing and squirming
like a worm through the narrow passage. After what seemed an
eternity, struggling through some thirty feet of utter darkness,
they came to an opening. Reaching down with his hands, Heinerman
felt the edge of stairs. These led into a chamber about twenty
feet long and fourteen feet wide. The air was stifling and breathing
difficult.
Several inches of fine dust covered the floor and puffed up with
each step. Perhaps three dozen stone boxes were stacked against
one wall and another twenty or so on the other. All of them were
"wrapped with a cover of Juniper bark with pine pitch smeared
all around, so as to make them literally water proof." In
a smaller anti-chamber were two entombed mummies. They seemed
an incredible eight or nine feet in length. Each had been placed
in a cement sepulcher with removable lid. They were a male-female
pair. The texture of their skin was almost moist, like tanned
leather. Littering the cave was an abundance of weapons, swords,
tools, copper and metal tablets of various sizes. Some of the
plates lay shattered like glass into fibrous pieces, not unlike
the broken windshield of a car.
Brewer said the steps led into the chamber when he first discovered
them. But the overhanging rock had since collapsed over the entrance,
so he had to spend some two years digging a tunnel parallel to
the stairs, in order to regain entrance into the chamber. This
work was accomplished at night to conceal his activity. Heinerman
visited the cave several times thereafter with Brewer, always
under cover of darkness, save only on one daylight occasion.
The chamber, he says, was very warm during this daytime entry.
Its interior is cool in winter, suggesting that the cave is not
deep under ground, with temperatures regulated by outside weather
conditions. Heinerman says that a wall inside the chamber features
an illustration showing the location of several other caves in
the Manti valley. It was from this map that Brewer discovered
another cache on the west side of the valley. Brewer eventually
showed Heinerman
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his discoveries in another related
site on the western side of the Manti Valley. After an extremely
arduous journey west of Wales, Heinerman stood before the entrance
to a natural cave. It lies under an overhanging ledge with a
small crawl space underneath. The cave comprised several tunnels
and chambers. Here too they found stone boxes containing plates
covered with strange writing, together with metal weapons and
tools, but no mummies. A wall mural depicted a hunting scene.
Some of the boxes featured Mayan-type glyphs or illustrations,
and weighed from sixty to ninety pounds each. In Heinerman's
words, "the cemented stone boxes were highly decorated with
ingenious art work." With great effort, a few of these containers
were brought off the mountain. Heinerman still has several in
his possession. He also owns a large number of the metal plates.
o far, Brewer and Heinerman are the only persons who claim to
have visited the cave sites. No photographs of their interiors,
with their giant, fair-haired mummies and metal weapons or tools,
have been released. Nor are the precise whereabouts of these
sites known to any but the two visitors. Until such time as professional
investigators are allowed inside his alleged chambers, the authenticity
of Brewer's finds cannot be established. But mitigating against
allegations of his involvement in a hoax are the items he presents
on behalf of the cave's legitimacy. Their sheer number and level
of craftsmanship (beyond the abilities of Mr. Brewer to duplicate)
should at least give critics pause for reconsideration. The really
troubling aspect of his claims is less his personal account and
description than the supposed artifacts themselves. They appear
to be exceptionally well made and very old, but belonging to
no known culture, ancient or modern. If authentic, they were
the possessions of a thoroughly enigmatic people of which modern
archaeologists are absolutely unaware.
Perhaps most unsettling, some of the "script" more
resembles modern computer schematics than any form of writing.
Other red-haired mummies were said to have been found in the
West, most notably at Nevada's Lovelock Cave. Some may see in
these questionable finds and unaccountable material evidence
for Lemurians in ancient America. They were supposed to have
been natives of a long-vanished civilization that dominated the
Pacific with an advanced technology, until their islands were
eventually engulfed by the sea, and a few of their wealth-laden
leaders fled to the American West. Whatever the real identity
of the Manti items, condemning them out of hand risks losing
what may be our continent's most valuable cultural heritage.
If ever validated and deciphered, they could release a prehistoric
legacy far more valuable than the gold plates on which it was
written.  |
