The Mole People

Ladies and gentlemen,

it's amazing how much we know about the surface of our globe.

In the last 100 years, men have progressively studied this.

Explorations have reached the North, the South Pole.

There are really relatively only a few square miles left

of the surface of our globe that are not known.

During the same years, men have reached out into the stars,

three times further in your lifetime and mine,

three times further into space than men have ever been able to go before.

Amazing knowledge we have of that and of this.

What's inside this globe?

What is there beneath our feet as we stand on the Earth?

No one knows, of course.

And science ponders about it and all men are curious, but no one knows.

Primitive man, going into caves,

reaching back and back, and down and down,

wondered what lay beyond, and in terror he fled out.

And he remembered strange sighs and noises.

Now you go back to Mesopotamia and the beginning of Western civilization,

and you have the great hero Gilgamesh going down into the underworld.

And so, too, with the Greeks. All down through time.

Religions of the past have postulated the existence

of this inner habitable world.

All through the Middle Ages, people believed of

something under the surface.

Dante, the great Dante, saw great cone-like cavities

stretching down to the very center of the Earth.

There's nothing new about this.

It's as old as man, this belief that under the surface

there may be areas inhabitable by man.

And in our time and in the last 100 years,

there've been a number of theories, very curious and strange theories,

about what goes on in the center of our planet.

This is a very famous and interesting and odd one.

A soldier... Rather, a minor hero of the War of 1812

was a man named John Cleeves Symmes.

And he had a sudden idea that inside our world, like onion layers,

there were globes within globes, five of them,

some of them inhabited,

and that if you were to travel up through the icy wastes of our world,

the northwest edge of Siberia, you could go down through a hole,

and go successively to these various spheres.

Unfortunately, he was thoroughly obsessed with this,

went around lecturing, and in fatigue,

died before he could make this experiment.

Now, here's another theory much closer to us.

This is 1870, about.

A young American physician named Cyrus Reed Teed had a revelation.

We are not living on the outside of the globe, said Teed, but on the inside,

that when we think we're looking out at the Sun,

we're really looking in at the Sun.

Strange, strange.

Questing mind of man that tries to find answers

to things that he can't understand.

This was a theory by Karl Neupert, in Germany, in the 1920s.

He, again, imagined that we're living on the inside,

rather than the outside of the globe.

And here's a real Sun, and a real Moon,

and then a rather shadowy and formless

mass of electric potentiality with little bright sparks in it.

And they give us the sense of our stars.

So in this picture you're about to see,

you'll see the culmination of a long series of such desires to look into the Earth.

One might well believe, philosophically, that some ancient culture,

engulfed by a great and tremendous upheaval of nature might linger on

in some pocket of Earth.

This is science fiction, of course. It's a fiction.

It's a fable beyond fiction,

for l think if you'll study this picture and think about it,

when it's over, you'll realize that this is something more than just a story told.

It's a fable with a meaning and a significance for you and for me

in the 20th Century.

Thank you and goodbye.

Dr. Bentley! Dr. Stuart! Come quickly.

Bellamin! Lafarge! Come on!

Some sort of stone tablet.

What's it doing in this strata?

The cuneiform writing... But it is not possible in this part.

You mean it's not probable, Lafarge.

In archeology, all things are possible.

The fact is we found it below the Great Flood level,

so it must be at least 5,000 years old,

which would make it one of the oldest human records.

- What about the inscription? - Sumerian.

It's the dedication of a temple or a public building.

Stuart, every time I think of how many civilizations have crumbled,

fallen apart, rotted from the inside, or cracked from the outside,

I shudder when I pick up the front page of a newspaper.

- The translation, Bentley. - Sure.

The first part reads, "I, Sharu, King of Kings,

"son of Sharu Ad..." It breaks off there.

Sharu?

Well, that's a new one on me. Mean anything to you, Lafarge?

Dr. Bentley, do you remember the Gilgamesh tablets George Smith found?

Yeah. They told a legend about a dynasty

that suddenly disappeared from the face of the Earth.

Right. It also referred to a King of the dynasty,

one called Sharu or Charul.

Well, what does the rest of it say?

"He who with malice destroys, effaces,

or removes from its place this, my signed attestation,

may he be denounced by Ishtar."

"May his name, his seed in the land,

"be destroyed."

Earthquake!

We'll have to open new trenches tomorrow

along the north line, Jud.

Most of the old ones caved in.

That earthquake put us behind at least a month.

You know, Bellamin, we shouldn't complain about the work.

I think we were fortunate.

The epicenter of the earthquake was only 25 miles from here.

Do you think the goddess of Ishtar is punishing us

for removing the tablets, Lafarge?

The inscription said "He who removes it with malice."

But we aren't malicious, are we?

We want to rescue the Sharu dynasty from oblivion.

That's what archaeologists are for, no?

Archaeologists are underpaid publicity agents for deceased royalty.

This shepherd boy found something.

What, another one?

This boy came a long way, Dr. Bellamin.

You buys your ticket and you takes your chance.

I believe in grabbing for the gold ring every time.

Hey! Where'd you find this?

Kuhitara. High, high.

Kuhitara, the epicenter of the earthquake.

It's a kind of moss that is native to this region.

It grows only on the rocks of Kuhitara,

but not where the boy found it. Much, much higher.

The earthquake must've dislodged it and rolled it down to the plateau.

But how did it get up on Kuhitara to begin with?

Maybe Bentley has the answer. How's it coming, Roger?

It's an oil lamp all right, shaped like a boat.

The engraved figures are of a man, a woman and different animals in pairs.

The Sumerian version of Noah's Ark?

Exactly.

The Flood's been proven to be a historical fact.

Why not a Sumerian version?

According to the inscription they got wet, too. Listen.

"I, Sharu, King of Kings, son of Sharu Ad."

"From water I emerged. I caused to embark within the vessel

"all my family, my relations,

"my craftsmen and my slaves, and the beasts of the field,

"and made my home in the ark. We floated on the waves

"until we found the land of the snow near the goddess of Ishtar."

The top of the mountain.

The Sharu dynasty was saved from the Flood on Kuhitara.

But was never heard of again.

Of course not. No one would look for human beings on top of Kuhitara.

We're going to.

Oh, it's impossible.

The summit is less than 20,000 feet.

It's treacherous. Always wind and snow. Nothing's there, nothing.

Then we shouldn't be afraid of nothing.

Gentlemen, Kuhitara is a treacherous mountain to climb.

Do you think we can make it?

l think so.

We shall establish three camps.

The porters will carry enough supplies to establish a base camp

here at the foot of the snow level.

We will then climb to here,

which is 2,000 feet from the plateau on Kuhitara, and establish a second camp.

The next day we shall attempt the final climb.

All this risk and money because of a vague poetic inscription

on an ancient oil lamp.

Don't you trust poets, old man?

No, l don't.

Schliemann did.

He found the ruins of Troy by trusting Homer,

the biggest blabbermouth of all.

When can we start, Nazar?

My men are ready, sir.

Tomorrow morning, then.

Kuhitara.

BELLAMlN: That's a lot of mountain.

We're only going to the plateau.

ls that it on the right face, Nazar?

No, Dr. Stuart.

Tomorrow we may be able to see it, if we keep to our schedule.

Then let's keep to the schedule.

We'll make camp here.

Peaceful-looking, isn't she?

The thing that impresses me the most is the complete and utter silence.

You can almost hear it.

Don't let her fool you, Mr. Bentley.

When she wants to, she can scream so loud as to make you deaf.

And you will hear her and quite soon.

l think perhaps even tonight.

Tremendous invention, gasoline.

Yeah, l'm well-done in front and my back teeth are chattering.

Cheer up, Jud. If this storm clears,

we'll be on the plateau of Kuhitara by tomorrow night.

Tomorrow night

is 24 hours and 3,000 feet of thin air away.

Avalanche.

This mountain's hundreds of square miles in area.

You're only occupying one square foot.

Sitting here is a lot safer than crossing Times Square.

There's an avalanche. Come on!