Matej's Journey to America: The Driving Forces of Our Immigrant Ancestors

By DONALD F. CHMELKA

Matej's Journey to America is a creative-nonfiction chronicle exploring the forces that drove our immigrant ancestors to new lands. After Adam and Eve's eviction from Eden, man slowly scattered with a great dispersion occurring about 2700 BC as the Lord confounded the tongues of presumptuous Babylonians building a tower to heaven. Among the afflicted was an Aryan slave named Chmelka who was growing hops (chmel in the new Slavic language) to flavor beer for his Semitic masters.

As the Slavs fled northward toward unknown Czech lands, other tribes migrated in all directions. According to The Book of Mormon, the righteous Jared took a Semitic clan from Babel across the mountains, deserts and oceans to a New World . . . later named America. Another Semitic clan that passed through Babylon 850 years later included a young Abraham, destined to be the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He introduced the concept of a single God revered by all his religious descendants, but despite their many commonalties, each of these three great religions seem convinced it has the only correct formula for salvation, justifying incredible atrocities with God always on its side.

The descendants of the first Chmelka struggled as great civilizations developed and fell through the turmoil and bloodshed of the Dark Ages. Marco Polo awakened Europe in the late 13th century to the riches of the Far East, giving rise to explorers like Christopher Columbus who stumbled onto the North American Continent in 1492. The Protestant Reformation began to divide the Holy Roman Empire at the time, adding to the bloodshed as Austria, Prussia and France fought for domination in Europe. Meanwhile, Spain, England and France were colonizing and competing for control in the New World that was becoming home to an increasing number of European emigrants looking for a better life.

The American Colonies fought for independence and then began to absorb all lands from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Thomas Jefferson purchased the immense Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803, after which mountain men opened the West to homesteaders, miners and ranchers. My great-great-grandfather Matej was born as the Rocky Mountain fur trade boomed in 1825, and grew up on a 13-acre farm in Moravia where the Chmelkas had been serfs since Charlemagne was crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor a millennium earlier. Matej became a Dragoon in the Austrian Imperial Army and helped put down a revolution in Prague in 1848 the year gold was discovered in California but war spread and life worsened for European peasants.

Gold, homesteads and wild Texas longhorns free for the taking lured thousands of oppressed Europeans to America on steamships and railroads now making long-distance travel feasible. After Prussia defeated the Austrian Empire including Bohemia and Moravia and then France, Matej's family escaped its misery and immigrated to Nebraska in 1871. They found a difficult life with grasshoppers, drought, hail and fires destroying crops . . . spurring Matej's fourteen-year-old son to join a Texas cattle drive and then dodge Indians and gunfighters for fourteen years in the Wild West.

New technologies in farm equipment, transportation and communications made America the envy of the world in 1902 when Matej died and was buried near the prairie church he helped build. Matej's Journey to America honors him and his fellow immigrants ordinary men and women generally lost in history for the legacies and opportunities they gave us in our great land of freedom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 19, 2002
• ISBN: 9781403339294

DONALD F. CHMELKA

Donald F. Chmelka lived the American dream, beginning life on a primitive Nebraska farm and retiring 55 years later as a corporate president.  He grew up without the luxuries of electricity, telephone or indoor plumbing and began his education in a one-room country school. Like his immigrant great-great-grandfather Matej, Don was determined to find a better life and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Nebraska in 1963. Don's professional career began as a reliability engineer in the automotive industry and then with Martin Marietta on America's first anti-ballistic-missile program.  He joined the Sundstrand Corporation in 1967, and for the next 25 years he traveled the world working on numerous commercial and military aircraft, missiles, torpedoes and spacecraft. The Space Shuttle program brought him to Los Angeles where he and his wife, Vikki, and their Catholic parish sponsored a Buddhist family from Vietnam. Don was impressed by the efforts of these refugees and began thinking of writing a book concerning the motivations of American immigrants and the technologies that made their journeys possible. A hectic career and continued education—including obtaining an MBA from Pepperdine University—kept him from that task until 1997 when he retired as president of a high-tech manufacturing company in Wichita, Kansas.  After 34 years of bouncing around the country while rearing three children, Don and his wife settled in Escondido, California and he began writing Matej's Journey to America.  That book, which follows the Chmelka journey through the notable events of history from biblical times to Matej's death in 1902, was published by 1st Books Library late 2002. Don then completed the story of his family's journey through the past 100 years of world history in Matej's Legacy.

Book preview

MATEJ’S JOURNEY TO

AMERICA

By

Donald F. Chmelka

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The Driving Forces of Our Immigrant Ancestors

© 2002 by Donald F. Chmelka. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 1-4033-3929-5 (e-book)

ISBN: 1-4033-3930-9 (Paperback)

ISBN: 1-4033-3931-7 (Dustjacket)

ISBN13: 978-1-4033-3929-4 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2002094264

1stBooks—rev. 10/28/02

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I   PAPA’S TREASURE CHEST

CHAPTER II   IMMIGRANTS FROM EDEN AND BABYLON

CHAPTER III   GOD: SLAVEMASTER OR DIVINE MERCY?

CHAPTER IV   CHRISTIANITY ORGANIZES AS THE ROMAN EMPIRE FALLS

CHAPTER V   CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM BATTLE FOR SOULS

CHAPTER VI   CHARLEMAGNE’S HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

CHAPTER VII   MARCO POLO TO THE SPANISH INQUISITION

CHAPTER VIII   AMERICA DISCOVERED WHILE CHRISTIANITY REFORMS

CHAPTER IX   EUROPE BATTLES AND AMERICA REVOLTS

CHAPTER X   FRANCE CONQUERS EUROPE; JEFFERSON PURCHASES LOUISIANA

CHAPTER XI   WAR OF 1812 AND NAPOLEON’S WATERLOO

CHAPTER XII   MOUNTAIN MEN AND TRADERS ON THE SANTA FE TRAIL

CHAPTER XIII   FUR TRADE IN AMERICA; MATEJ’S LIFE IN MORAVIA

CHAPTER XIV   NEBRASKA—ROAD TO THE WEST

CHAPTER XV   PEASANTS REVOLT IN EUROPE; AMERICA EXPANDS TO THE PACIFIC

CHAPTER XVI   ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE CIVIL WAR

CHAPTER XVII   AMERICA BUILDS A RAILROAD; PRUSSIA DOMINATES EUROPE

CHAPTER XVIII   MATEJ’S JOURNEY—1871

CHAPTER XIX   WILD WEST

CHAPTER XX   MATEJ’S NEW WORLD

EPILOGUE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Matej’s Journey to America Is a compilation of Information from many sources, all listed in the Bibliography section. I thank the authors and hope my use of your data will further honor your efforts. A number of individuals gave me the encouragement to create this book, or made particularly significant contributions to it, and I extend my heart-felt appreciation to each of you.

• First, my mother and father.

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They provided me the incredible experience of growing up in a time and place without the modern conveniences of electricity, telephone or indoor plumbing to which few Americans today can relate. I may not have appreciated such a life at the time, but what a perspective it has given me. I also thank them for the standards of ethics and sense of morality they instilled in me—taught most effectively by example and faith in a loving God. My father was an avid reader with an eight-grade education who always encouraged my interest in reading. I thank God for his 88 years of life and for granting him time to read a draft of Matej’s Journey to America before he died on May 9, 2000 with me at his side. My mother joined him in eternity on September 7, 2002—the 65th anniversary of their wedding day.

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My wife and children.

Thanks for putting up with five years of my preoccupation while researching and writing this book and for listening to each newly discovered piece of trivia I uncovered.

• My aunt, Frances Kastl.

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My mother’s younger sister introduced me to the joy of reading before I attended the one-room school where she taught. She provided me books on Plasi, Prague, David City and the Kastl Family History containing data on her husband’s great-grandfather, Jacob Kastl, and his brother Peter—the first Czech immigrant-homesteader in Saunders and Butler Counties.

• My second cousin Rosalyn Chmelka, author of the Family History of Matej Chmelka.

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The daughter of Matej’s grandson August, Rosalyn was a teacher in Nebraska for over 40 years while compiling Chmelka genealogical data, much of it from Czech Archives in Brno. She provided me books on Bruno, Saunders County and A History of Czechs in Nebraska containing priceless data on who came when, from where, and why. It included information on Peter Kastl and his six brothers, Matej and Jan Chmelka, and hundreds of other Nebraska immigrants. Thank you Rosalyn, Matej’s Journey to America could not have been written without your efforts.

• My cousins Jens Chmelka in Germany and Milan Chmelka and his niece Sona Pelanova in Moravia.

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My wife and I met these European cousins during our 1999 trip to the Czech Republic. A highlight was visiting the farm home in Slavetice where Matej lived and the church in Dalesice where he worshipped. These Moravian farming villages had been home to the Chmelka family since at least the mid-1600s and appearminimally changed since Matej’s Journey to America in 1871. Thank you cousins for your information on the Chmelkas who stayed in Europe after Matej departed.

•   Sundstrand Executive, Bernie Kittle

Thank you for your support during my 25-year career with Sundstrand and for information on your immigrant ancestors as they progressed from the Revolutionary War to homesteads in Nebraska.

•   Mormon Elder Arthur Proctor, Jr. and my friend Bob Bolingbroke

Was it divine providence that drew me, a Catholic, to the Mormon Temple at St. George, Utah on 9/11/2001? Elder Proctor introduced me to The Book of Mormon, and then two months later, my golfing friend gave me Dr. Allen’s Exploring the Lands of the Book of Mormon just before I visited the Yucatan Peninsula. These books provide compelling evidence that three groups of Semites immigrated to America long before the Vikings or Christopher Columbus. Mormons later played a major role in settling the West, and I thank these two Mormons for opening my eyes to data overlooked by many historians.

• The Vietnamese family of Vo Thanh Vien.

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Vien’s family provided me the initial inspiration to write a book regarding immigration to America. Vo worked in support of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and was imprisoned after American troops left in 1975. He finally escaped with three generations of family hiding beneath a tarp on his homemade fishing boat, slowly motoring past Vietnamese patrol boats…never to return. After spending months in an Indonesian holding camp, Vo and his Buddhist family of eight were randomly linked to our Catholic parish and we became their hosts in 1978. Twenty years later I began to write Matej’s Journey to America.

INTRODUCTION

I have always been fascinated with history and the forces that brought about man’s evolution while populating our planet. About 20 years ago, my wife and I, with the generosity of our Roman Catholic parish, hosted a Buddhist family escaping the horrors of Vietnam and finding freedom in America. I was particularly impressed by their determination and began to realize that these simple, uneducated immigrants were not unlike many of our ancestors who somehow developed the courage to leave family roots for a better life. As years went by in my busy aerospace career, I kept thinking about Vo Thanh Vien’s journey and conceived the idea of writing a book to tell the story of America’s immigrant ancestors, particularly the common men and women whose stories are seldom published.

I retired five years ago, excitedly looking forward to a new career as a writer. I began by reading countless books and articles on the subjects of immigration and world history, while also collecting data on my family genealogy. The Chmelkas were ordinary at best, and their lands—the Czech Republic and the state of Nebraska—are certainly not prototypal of Hollywood blockbuster movie settings. Yet, I found my family and these relatively obscure regions deeply enmeshed in historical events that have incredibly shaped today’s world, so I pressed on. Reading led to travel, allowing me to walk in the shoes of my ancestors. and after five years, I generated a historical epic in the creative non-fiction genre of my mentor, James A. Michener.

Matej’s Journey to America weaves the Chmelka family of peasant hops farmers into a timeline of notable world events beginning with the Tower of Babel and ending after Matej’s death in 1902. Most scholars look at Bible stories as allegories rather than accurate history, so I supplemented the well-know biblical events with archaeological data from respected historians to create the probable genesis and early progression of the Chmelka family. The major forces of immigration—religious freedom, economic opportunity and weariness of war—come alive during this historical journey as immigrant dreams become reality, thanks particularly to technological miracles affecting transportation and communications.

The Chmelka family lived in the Slavetice area of Moravia from at least the mid-1600s and is depicted from that time according to known genealogical data…but some experiences presented are highly speculative. Matej Chmelka was my great-great-grandfather who immigrated and homesteaded in Nebraska with his family of nine in 1871, the circumstances of his journey generally accurate as presented. Matej is a common Czech name, Anglicized as Mathew, and the name Chmelka translates as hops man, historically associated with Czech beer. He had a sister named Frantiska, likely the great-great-grandmother of Jens Chmelka—the East German son of an Austrian prisoner-of-war in Russia during World War II. The orphanage home of Jens’ grandmother is presented according to known data, but some details are speculative. Ian Chmelka, believed to be Matej’s distant cousin, was the great-great-grandfather of Milan Chmelka Sr. who now lives in Hrotovice,

Moravia. I had the privilege of meeting the families of Milan and Jens while recently visiting Matej’s farm home only two miles from Hrotovice.

Peter Kastl, Anton Hajek, John Bratt, Joseph Francl, the Kittle family, Msgr. Klein and the many others appearing in this book were real-life pioneers, their stories accurate to the best of my knowledge. Vaclav Chmelka, Father Frantisek Chmelka, Soaring Eagle, Nez Jake and Jiri Chmelka are fictional, although men and women like them no doubt existed. Jakub Chmelka was Matej’s brother and Nebraska Tony my great uncle, but someone else likely experienced their Wild West adventures. I did find an old chest in my grandfather’s decaying house …unfortunately it was empty, making my writing of Matej’s Journey to America more challenging and creative.

CHAPTER I 

PAPA’S TREASURE CHEST

Tell me your story Papa was the haunting plea I whispered pushing open the tilted door to my grandfather’s house. As I carefully made my way across the rotted wooden floor in his old washroom, I could almost hear his gruff command, Pojd’te sem, chlapec! I remember him, I had earlier told my mother. But you were only two, she scoffed. Yet his craggy voice echoes in my memory, calling me to his deathbed 56 years before. "You did speak Bohemian before English, my mom reflected, maybe you do remember? Setting the record straight, my dad added, We’re Moravian, not Bohemian, not sure of the difference. A lifetime flashed across my mind: my first day at a one-room farm school a mile away…a moment later at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln…and then an engineering career that took me around the world. In the process, Czech became barely understood, but I still knew Papa’s words, Come here, boy!" and I ached to hear more.

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Now in Papa’s kitchen, I felt sudden warmth: there was the familiar iron stove with aromas of Czech foods and vapors from steaming kettles no longer here. Memories and spirits were everywhere as I reflected on my boyhood and my recent visit to Bohemia and Moravia—the Chmelka homeland my grandfather had never seen. Baby John was born only months after his Papa Matej brought the Chmelka family to Nebraska in 1871. My tour of Matej’s 200-year-old Moravian farmhouse was particularly emotional and I could feel him watching me as I walked through his barn and garden. The Chmelkas always enjoyed music, and I could almost hear Matej playing his violin in the background as my wife and I danced to polka music in his old Moravian kitchen. Matej passed his violin and love for music to his grandson John…and then to me, this treasured instrument forming a unique five-generation bond among us.

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A long, painful groan awoke me from my nostalgic trance. Just the wind shivering the rafters, I convinced myself. Papa’s house was without life for 20 years since my father found his brother resting for eternity in the room where my grandfather told me his last story. But it seemed time had stopped as I walked into Papa’s bedroom: there was his bed amidst clothing and household items long forgotten.

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I could plainly hear him talking to me, his little chlapec, and with tears streaming down my cheeks, I looked out the window to the back garden where I played so many years before. To my surprise, a four-prong whitetail buck was watching me, majestically unafraid. I asked half aloud, Are you the ghost of Papa watching his garden of cabbages, cucumbers and corn? But I expect Papa didn’t believe in reincarnation, in fact, to my recollection he was non-religious. His father and grandfather were founding members of the first Catholic parish in the area, and I once asked my father, Why didn’t Papa and Grandma go to church? Children didn’t discuss such things with their parents, he replied, annoyed with my parental disrespect. So why did you? I persisted. My aunt encouraged us.

We had always been serious churchgoers, but not Papa and Grandma. Why? I still wondered. Almost every day after school, my brother and I walked to Grandma’s three-room house in Brainard, just across the street from where my dad and mom later built their retirement home. And on Sundays, we often stopped and ate with her after Mass, Papa now long gone. Strange, we went to the Catholic school and Mass almost every day, yet she would not go to church? Then she died when I was eight…and now the little house I remember was also gone.

I snapped back to the living as the whitetail moved slowly through a forgotten orchard to a prairie meadow restored by a government-funded soil-conservation program. I could imagine a young Papa with a similar view from his father’s Soddy four miles to the northeast. I thought back a year when my father and I went to see that first Chmelka homestead, and also our visits to the lonely graves of our pioneer ancestors. The homesite had almost returned to nature with no trace of the Soddy, and the homestead was no longer in Chmelka hands. But Papa’s land and adjoining farm where I was born were still in the family—perhaps little to show for six generations of hard times, yet more than the lonely plots awaiting us all.

Another loud groan awakened me from these morbid thoughts and drew me to investigate its source. I walked slowly up narrow, dark stairs to the three bedrooms where my father slept as a boy. As I reached the top step, my eyes were drawn to movement of tattered curtains, blown by a warm May wind through broken glass. Like downstairs, there were beds, furnishings and items of clothing left by Chmelka cousins departing for college 30 years before. Another groan drew my eyes upward, and I recoiled in surprise: a dazzling celestial light hung like a halo surrounding a trap door to the attic.

I drug a half-empty hutch beneath the door, and from it reached the ceiling. Pushing up the water-stained wooden door, I was blinded by sunrays beaming through a jagged hole in the rotted, collapsing roof. then startled by soft, quick footsteps. Shaking sunspots from my vision, I saw two beady eyes watching me from the far dark corner of the attic. Don’t go there, an inner voice warned. Undeterred, I acrobatically pulled myself up and cautiously crawled through boxes of heirlooms stored for future use.. …but forgotten. As the sagging roof slanted closer and closer, I again heard the familiar groan, and yes, I was being watched! Only feet ahead was a masked bandit, a large, furry raccoon defiantly protecting her babies nestled in Papa’s old shirts. Don’t go there, my inner voice repeated. This time I listened and turned non-aggressively to make my escape, and there it was—Papa’s treasure chest!

My chest thumping, I pulled the small trunk toward me, then lifted its hinged lid: Papers… Papa’s story? Too dark to read, and deciding this was not a safe place, I crawled back to the trap door, carefully lowered myself to the hutch, and reached up to bring down Papa’s chest. Now I could see clearly, a scarred leather strongbox with dull-gray metal corners, and it was nearly full. Ancient letters, official-looking documents and journals, many in German and Czech that I could not understand; not only Papa’s, but there were the names Matej and Jan and others I did not know. Feeling I discovered the Chmelka’s lost Ark of the Covenant, I cradled the treasure in my arms and walked to my father’s bedroom window overlooking Papa’s garden. The whitetail deer was still there, keeping his lonely vigil and looking up at me, seemingly saying, "Well done, chlapec, now write my story."

As I left the house and walked through the front garden to my rental car and my patiently waiting mother, I saw a lone red rose, somehow surviving but nearly smothered by weeds without Papa’s and Grandma’s care. I could almost see my father as a boy romping through this garden and was overwhelmed with emotion…we buried him earlier that week and I had returned to his birthplace to bid him farewell. What did you find? my mother absently asked when seeing the chest. Lifetimes of memories, I tearfully replied, knowing I was now the Papa tasked to tell my children and grandchildren, and others still unborn, the story of Matej’s Journey to America.

CHAPTER II 

IMMIGRANTS FROM EDEN AND BABYLON

I returned to my home in Escondido, California with Papa’s treasure chest and set out to write his story .but where to begin? Loving James A. Michener’s approach to historical novels, I decided to turn the clock back to Eden and then try to develop a credible story on how the Czechs and the Chmelkas found their way to Bohemia and Moravia. I pulled my dust-covered Bible off the shelf and began with Genesis:

"In the beginning, the earth was a formless wasteland and darkness covered the abyss while a mighty wind swept over the waters. In the first day, God created light and separated the light from the darkness. He called the light, day, and the darkness, night.

On the second day, God created a dome above the earth called the sky. God then separated the water into a single basin, called the sea, and dry land appeared as the earth. Seeing his creation to be good, He then created every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree that bears fruit, ending the third day.

God then created two great lights in the dome of the sky: the sun to govern the day and the moon to govern the night. He fixed their movement to set the sequence of days and years, and made the stars as luminaries in the sky—ending the fourth day. On the fifth day, God created great sea monsters and all kinds of swimming creatures and winged birds, ordering them to multiply to fill the sea and the sky.

Then God said: ‘Let the earth bring forth all kinds of living creatures: cattle, creeping things and wild animals of all kinds.’ Seeing this was good, God said, ‘Let us make man in our image after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.’ He created male and female, blessed them, saying, ‘Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.’ God looked at everything He had made and found it very good—ending the sixth day. The heavens and the earth and their entire array were thus completed; so God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. resting from all the work He had done in creation."

Moses is credited with this version of creation written in about 1200 BC, and man ever since has been trying to figure out when and how it really all began. I explored all the data sources I could find, including ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, Indian and Greek Creation Myths, and learned that man has always struggled to understand his beginning, although consistently attributing it to a divine creator.

The ancient myths all involved multiple gods existing in a hierarchical pantheon often headed by a triad of chief gods surprisingly akin to Christianity’s Holy Trinity. I was particularly drawn to the Sumerian Epic of Atrahasis wherein three primary gods had divided control of the universe: Anu taking the heavens, Enki the ocean and Enlil the earth. All the work required to support the universe in this epic was performed by a cadre of junior gods who soon wearied of their thankless jobs and went on strike. After lengthy negotiations, the pantheon of deities decided a less divine form of life was needed to do the dirty work, so they mixed clay with the flesh and blood of an expendable god and created man. The divine ingredients formed a spirit that would survive eternally after man’s deceased body returned to clay…but before then, he would be slave to the gods.

I was intrigued in re-reading the words in Genesis, "Let us make man in our image after our likeness." Despite Moses’ obsession with a singular God, he twice used the word our relating to God, leading me to check the definition of pantheism in Webster’s Dictionary: The doctrine or belief that God is not a personality, but that all laws, forces, manifestations, etc. of the self-existing universe are God. So perhaps the multiplicity or singularity of God is not that black or white, I thought to myself, deciding to open my mind beyond my Christian upbringing.

I began looking at the stories in Genesis in concert with other data sources and decided that the widely held theory of man’s beginning in Mesopotamia (meaning, land between the rivers) would be a good kick-off point for Matej’s Journey to America. The events in the Hebrew Bible generally took place in a band of arable land that extended from the Nile Valley of Egypt through a Fertile Crescent along the Mediterranean East Coast (the Levant), east around the great Syrian Desert and southeast through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf. If one accepts Moses’ version of creation, sometime during the second or third day God likely created the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, well designed to overflow and irrigate a verdant garden called Eden in present-day Iraq. God stocked the garden with fish, birds, insects and a variety of four-legged beasts, and finally created a man named Adam who was differentiated from other life forms by above average intelligence and a soul. God then made Adam a playmate, a woman named Eve, and gave the honeymooners the Garden of Eden as their love nest.

God was exhausted from all this creative work and wished to rest on the seventh day. Fortunately, He had equipped his creatures with erotic accouterments that provided great pleasure, thus encouraging all species to multiply happily without additional divine effort. But God had also given Adam and Eve a freedom to choose between good and evil…and evil already existed in paradise. According to Genesis, the devil in the form of a serpent tempted Eve to eat of a single forbidden tree. God was not the only eternal being? I asked myself. How did the devil come to be? Although perplexing, the ancient myths I had been reading referred to an assortment of divine beings, some good, others evil…and after thinking about the Christian doctrines regarding angels, saints, devils and the Holy Trinity, there seemed to be less contradiction between paganism and Christianity than I always believed.

According to Genesis, Eve weakly succumbed to the devil’s temptation and committed the original sin thinking she would gain the wisdom of God. Eve now understood her sexual powers over Adam, and like a lovesick puppy, he joined in her indiscretion. With choice came consequence, and because of their choice of disobedience, our first parents were banished from paradise. Their bodies were doomed to the ground from which they were taken, but their souls, God promised, would have eternal life reunited with their divine Creator.

God created Eve fully equal to Adam, but as a consequence of her first sin, God sentenced her and all women to lives of suffering and subordination to their mates. According to Genesis 3:16, God told Eve, I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master. Adam at first thought this was only fair, but man didn’t get off free as God also admonished him, Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life .by the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat.

Man and woman thus began life destined to lifetimes of hard work and with strong sex drives set up by God to promote procreation, knowing great pain would result in childbirth followed by countless sacrifices rearing the offspring. Adam and Eve, excitedly aware of their delightful nakedness, began populating the earth while living in the plain of Babylon to the east of Eden. Their son Abel became a keeper of flocks and son Cain a tiller of the soil…but soon a jealousy arose and Cain killed his younger brother, establishing a behavior pattern the world would always follow. Fortunately, Adam and Eve had more children, including Seth and at least two daughters, and these incestuous unions supposedly gave birth to the billions of humans alive today. Cain, his sister-wife and their children were sentenced to become restless nomads, wandering into Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa where they lived in tents and tended cattle and sheep. Meanwhile Seth and his descendants led a richer life as food gatherers and farmers in the region that became known as Mesopotamia.

The stories from Genesis and other ancient sources were interesting myths, but I wondered when and how it all really began. Based on pre-Columbian Mexican paintings and hieroglyphics, Catholic priest Fernando de Alva Ixtilxochitl concluded in the 16th century that the Earth was created in 5232 BC. A century later, Irish Bishop James Ussher studied the genealogies recorded by Moses and calculated that God’s handiwork began precisely at 9 a.m. Monday October 23, 4004 BC. The scientific elite of today scoff at the naivete of these early genealogists and have a different theory on man’s beginning: a Big Bang forming the universe from a super-hot explosion 14 billion years ago. Astronomer Harlow Shapley has estimated there are 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars within the range of our telescopes with many of them having planetary systems like the one including planet Earth orbiting the sun. The Milky Way alone is estimated to include 100 billion stars, likely supporting over a billion planetary systems, so focusing on Earth as the unique or initial home to God’s intelligent creatures may be a bit shortsighted.

But what was the source of energy for this Big Bang? I questioned, and continued my research. I found that scientists now generally agree our planet was created in some fashion about 4.6 billion years ago, and fossil analysis indicates the first forms of life—simple bacteria with no nuclei—have existed for over 3.5 billion years. According to the Theory of Evolution, scientists believe these bacteria evolved 2.7 billion years ago into eukaryotes—the first known cells to have nuclei and internal structures specialized for processing energy—and eventually into the more complex life forms of plants and animals.

According to this theory, man finally evolved some 4.5 million years ago, supposedly from African apes. His intelligence slowly increased, creating and using stone tools as he migrated into Asia before the Quaternary Ice Age began 1.8 million years ago. Primitive human activity in Bohemia and Moravia seemingly goes back over 250,000 years and the oldest identifiable European culture of the Old Stone Age began about 100000 BC. Neanderthal humans left paintings on the walls of their cave homes indicating they were nomadic hunters and gatherers-of-food who evolved through survival of the fittest into Homo sapiens with bodies and brains anatomically similar to man today. Archaeologists discovered the remains of such men who lived 100,000 years ago at the tip of South Africa and displayed capability to engrave artifacts with symbolic marks and to turn animal bones into tools and weapon points. Based on similar findings in European caves, historians feel that Homo sapiens slowly migrated northward and arrived in present-day Czech Republic 33,000 years ago.

One scientific report I read described how modern forensic techniques were used in examining piles of bones in the well-preserved Moula-Guercy cave on the Rhone River. It concluded that our evolutionary cousins butchered deer and fellow-humans and ate their bone marrow and soft tissues, like brains. Survival was difficult through the cold European winters, so cannibalism was looked upon as a necessity since humans were easier to catch than deer. We now shudder at such disregard for human life, but have we really become more civilized? In stories of American Indians, the fittest sought to enhance their bravery by consuming the still-throbbing hearts of weaker victims; and as a matter of survival, the Donner Party desperately ate the flesh of frozen fellow-immigrants en route to California. Through the ages, stories abound of man committing incredible atrocities against fellow-humans with all sorts of rationalizations. Newspaper headlines today shout of ethnic or religious cleansing through wholesale murder with the strong dominating the weak. And perhaps even worse, our politically correct society now argues vehemently for the rights of a would-be mother to terminate the heartbeat of her totally helpless fetus.

From the beginning of time, children brought great joy to conscientious parents, but some selfishly enjoyed sexual pleasures with little regard for God’s plan to procreate humanity. Writings on ancient civilizations indicate sexual perversions were common, and if pregnancy resulted, young sons and daughters were often abandoned or destroyed. Of course, man’s view of his creator also became perverted.but eventually, God’s singularity became the norm in the

Jewish/Christian/Islam world with murder and barbaric treatment of children outlawed. Sexual promiscuity, however, continued, and instead of men and women taking responsibility for behavior that most religions deem immoral, modern civilizations developed abortive procedures and civil laws rationalizing a woman’s freedom of choice above any rights of the unborn.

Scientific evidence supporting man’s early existence is irrefutable, causing modern realists to view the Torah and other ancient religious writings as man’s simplistic attempts to explain his origin and not as accurate accounts of history. Unfortunately, this lack of historical credibility is dragging down the perceived relevancy of basic morality taught by early religious leaders, and even of God’s existence. The Theory of Evolution made sense to me, but not to the exclusion of a divine creator as it all had to start somewhere—the First-Cause argument for God’s existence. I accept the Big Bang as a plausible scientific explanation of God’s handiwork on the first day, and the six-day creation chronology in the Genesis story could represent a huge span of time consistent with the Theory of Evolution. Man may have evolved from apes, but somewhere, I felt, a step-function must have occurred—the insertion of a soul that elevated man spiritually and intellectually to a unique level.

Over 30 years ago, I read Erich Von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods that provided an intriguing theory on how that may have happened. Considering the billions of planets in the universe, how can we be so egotistical to believe that Earth alone is able to support life, or that our form of life is the most advanced? Von Daniken theorized that our planet has been visited many times by beings from distant civilizations far superior to any on Earth. Based on a variety of ancient writings, including the Bible, these celestial immigrants were physical giants traveling in huge spaceships, likely investigating potential new homelands. Their motivation may have been a concern that their home planets were in danger of destruction so they setup colonies on Earth among the primitive natives. These semi-savages no doubt looked upon the immigrants as gods from the heavens with the ability to perform miracles relative to the limited capabilities of the earthlings. These gods likely had sexual relations with the fairest of the natives, producing a race of Homo sapiens that skipped several stages in natural evolution.

Von Daniken suggests that during their numerous visits these celestial immigrants laid the foundations of many of the Earth’s advanced civilizations. They likely returned to their own planets after indoctrinating and inseminating the natives, but returned occasionally to check progress of their experiments. and perhaps destroyed civilizations not up to expected standards. They also may have transported earthlings to landmasses about the planet, thus setting up advanced colonies almost simultaneously in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Mesoamerica.

There are, of course, a number of theories on how man found his way to the New World; however, the most widely accepted relates to the Pleistocene Ice Age. It is thought that during this time an ice cap two miles thick covered a large part of North America south to the Ohio and Missouri River Valleys, making living conditions impossible. These glaciers bulldozed the earth as they crept southward and the ice packs locked up huge quantities of water, dropping sea levels hundreds of feet. Land bridges thus opened between Siberia and North America, and as the weather began to warm about 20,000 years ago, successive bands of Mongolian nomads pursued wooly mammoths across the 60-mile-wide Bering Strait from Siberia to the Seward Peninsula of present-day Alaska.

Glacial melt and increased rainfall created floodplains and stimulated prolific plant growth, and pressure from savage beasts and new waves of immigrants, along with scarcity of food, eventually drove the early Americans to the southeast. They migrated through the relatively warm Yukon and Fraser River Valleys to present-day Vancouver and down the Pacific Coast to California while others trekked along the Mackenzie River to the Great Plains east of the Rocky Mountains and on to present-day New Mexico and Arizona where they became Cliff Dwellers. Some continued south into Mexico, Central and South America while others built dugout canoes that took them to the Caribbean Islands. Based on carbon tests on artifacts found in caves in Peru, Argentina and Chile, it seems that man completed this journey to the southern tip of South America by 10000 BC.

Another theory has America’s first inhabitants crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Europe’s Iberian Peninsula about the same time Mongolians were supposedly migrating through North America. These Caucasian explorers, like their South Pacific Islander brothers, are thought to have sailed across open waters in skin boats, possibly completing their journey with favorable weather in three weeks. Based on archaeological findings, they seemingly landed on the eastern seaboard of North America from where they spread across the continent and established a number of settlements, including at least one in Nebraska in 16000 BC.

Other recent archaeological findings indicate the existence of Negroes in Brazil some 11,500 years ago—again inconsistent with the prevalent theory that Mongoloids from Asia were the first inhabitants of the Americas. Some scientists feel Africa and South America may have been connected at one time, perhaps explaining the huge Olmec stone heads found in Central America with Negro features. If anything, each new finding made me realize our ancestors are likely a hybrid of all races (perhaps even celestial gods) and that we have much to learn in understanding how humanity developed on our planet.

My studies continued as I read of continental ice sheets that receded from North America and Europe about 10000 BC after the world’s climate warmed for many centuries. As the ice melted, humans continued to rely on hunting and collecting food to sustain life, but populations increased and food sources became depleted. As a result, man migrated to new lands where food supplies were more plentiful, and at the same time, began the cultivation of cereal crops and the domestication of animals.

Although archaeological findings are limited from this period, I read accounts of historians speculating that civilizations in the Indus River Valley of present-day Pakistan, in the Nile River Valley of Egypt, and in northeastern Iran engaged in agricultural cultivation and domestication of wild animals as early as 10000 BC. Similar activities began a short time later in China, not long after their Mongoloid cousins supposedly wandered off to America. The ancient Iranian farmers lived in a mountainous region rich in timber and minerals and were among the first to grind stones and flints. Now as the ice receded, they found metal-bearing rocks, malachite (copper ore) and native copper that they beat and ground into ornaments and amulets as protection from evil spirits, giving rise to the Copper Age. Von Daniken, of course, theorizes that celestial immigrants had much to do with introducing technology in metalworking. These gods likely demanded offerings from the natives, including objects made of precious metals that they wished to take back to their home planets. To produce these objects, the celestial immigrants built ultramodern smelting furnaces and taught the natives how to cast copper and other alloys.

About this same time, historians suggest wheat and barley were first cultivated in the fertile valleys along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia where these cereals still grow wild. Early Mesopotamians, beginning with Seth after his parent’s expulsion from Eden, harvested wild grains and offered the best of their crops at shrines to tribal gods. Cain and Seth had told and retold the story of their parent’s encounter with God in the paradise garden, and their descendants developed a respectful fear of the Almighty. But Adam and Eve’s knowledge of one God gave way to a variety of gods and fearful demons as man saw himself surrounded by supernatural forces that controlled his existence. Offering sacrifices, such as grain, was one way of appeasing the gods, while wearing amulets and reciting prayerful incantations hopefully provided magical protection from the demons.

Seeing grain germinating on broken ground at holy sites, the Mesopotamians learned to supplement dwindling supplies of wild grains by becoming cultivators rather than mere gatherers. The Mesopotamians also followed their Iranian neighbors in domesticating dogs, goats, sheep and pigs, cousins to wild critters roaming the region. Cattle, however, were supposedly first domesticated in Eastern Europe, and the ass, in North Africa. I was fascinated by this agricultural history as I reflected on my farm-boy roots, growing wheat and corn and feeding cattle and pigs, but not sheep: Nebraska was cattle country!

The early Mesopotamians looked at Ea as god of wisdom and a constant friend of mankind. He was considered the supreme authority on magic, and had imparted his knowledge to his son Marduk who became revered as the god of magic. The usual procedure for a Mesopotamian man in distress was to appeal to Marduk through a priestly exorcist to intercede with his father Ea. A variety of gods were felt to have power over some aspect of nature or human activity, so food gatherers invoked gods for fertility of soil, availability of water and favorable weather, while their nomadic cousins venerated the sun, moon, stars and planets to guide them safely across barren deserts. On the opposite end of the divine spectrum were demons, ghosts and witches, requiring all sorts of incantations and exorcisms to rid man of these horrors. I was amazed how these ancient mumbo-jumbo superstitions carried over to our modern-day religions. while yet insisting in the existence of only one God.

Experts on the earth’s weather believe another cold and arid period began in 6200 BC and continued for 400 years. Archaeologists have found that a group of humans referred to as Hassuna migrated to the Assyrian plains in the northern part of present-day Iraq in about 6000 BC. They likely immigrated from the east, bringing with them the Iranian knowledge of working copper, and here gave birth to the technology of making pottery with the invention of the potter’s wheel. Other tribes from less temperate locations also migrated to Mesopotamia thereafter, including Sumerians, Semites, and possibly my Slavic ancestors.

Although I could find no data on Matej’s prehistoric ancestors, I expect they were nomads living as hunters and gatherers in Asia or Eastern Europe—likely descendants of Adam’s murderous son Cain. The Czechs are Slavic Caucasians bound to a variety of nationalities in Europe and Asia today through a common heritage of Indo-European languages. This giant family of languages originated with tribes known as Aryans, nomads from Central Asia who migrated westward and became farmers in the region north of the Caspian Sea and south of the Ural Mountains—border lands between the continents of Europe and Asia. As the Earth’s climate worsened, northern tribes including Aryans began migrating south toward the more inviting lands of their first parent’s home in Eden. This migration led to population growth along the Caspian and Black Seas, and to the south in present-day Afghanistan and Iran, but particularly along the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers through present-day Turkey, Syria and Iraq to the Persian Gulf.

In the 6th millennium BC, the Black Sea was a fresh-water lake, fed from the north by a number of rivers including the Dnieper and the Danube. The Black Sea drained to the south through the Bosphorus River to the Sea of Marmara, then through the Dardanelles Strait to the Aegean Sea, and finally to the Mediterranean. Water flowing into the Black Sea was minimal during the 400-year arid period when an earthquake centered at the Anatolian fault may have blocked the Bosphorus River. As a result, the water level of the Black Sea dropped slowly but dramatically while immigrants flocked to this newly exposed seashore oasis. The world’s climate began to warm in 5800 BC, causing ice-age glaciers to melt and ocean levels to rise…but the Black Sea continued to recede due to limited rainfall to the north, and immigrants kept filling the beaches. By 5600 BC, the water level of the Black Sea was considerably below that of the Sea of Marmara, held back by 20 miles of Bosphorus plain—a disaster waiting to happen.

I had been reading a book entitled The Babylonians and was becoming particularly enthralled by the contributions made by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia after supposedly emigrating from Iranian lands in 5500 BC. They brought knowledge of working copper, and within 500 years had developed a process of hammering copper nuggets into tools and ornaments. Ordinary wood fires produced sufficient heat to bring copper to a full red color, but to prevent it from becoming hard and brittle, the metal was exposed to a staged reheat, called annealing, between hammering cycles. Thus the Mesopotamians became proficient at producing a wide variety of copper items, adding to the lifestyle and growth in the region.

Von Daniken theorizes that the Sumerians may be among the first hybrid race spawned by celestial immigrants. The oldest Sumerian cuneiform tablets still in existence tell of gods who came from the stars in spaceships. These immigrants likely infused knowledge of new technologies that created a superior culture in a semi-barbarian world, including an incredible capability in astronomy.

For thousands of years, the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers had been flooding, depositing silt and changing course to form a swampy but fertile jungle. The earliest residents settled in northern Mesopotamia, known as Assyria, where rainfall was generally adequate for growth of wild cereals like barley and wheat. To the south, agriculture was impossible without some form of irrigation. The Sumerians first developed this region, known as Sumer, where some lands along riverbanks (like the Garden of Eden) were naturally irrigated and adequately drained to grow cereals. But as the population grew, more productive land was needed so ditches were dug to drain swamps and to irrigate dry, fertile lands within a five-mile strip of the rivers. As a result, a prosperous agricultural economy developed throughout Mesopotamia with farm products including grapes, wheat, barley and hops, leading to the world’s first alcoholic beverages: wine and beer.

I was intrigued to learn beer was first brewed in Mesopotamia, wondering if the Chmelka genealogy could be traced back to this era. During my recent visit to Moravia, I learned that hops is translated as chmel in the Slavic Czech language with the ka ending of a Czech name signifying the male gender. Chmelka is a hops man, a beer stud! I gleefully told my two sons. A number of Czech names are based on chmel including a kova ending that signifies the female gender…but the name is clearly associated with beer. What is your name? a friendly bartender asked me in Brno. Chmelka, I responded. O’Chmelka, he laughed, a drunken man!

Sensing I had stumbled upon the key to my roots, I began to research the development of food and alcoholic drink. I found that man’s earliest manufactured food was produced by crushing grain such as wheat, adding water to make dough and then heat…after it was learned that fire had an appetizing effect. I could almost smell the tantalizing aroma of my mother’s baking, the same scent that attracted hungry tribesmen to Mesopotamian campfires as the dough rose to a soft and tasty delicacy: unleavened bread. Somewhere along the way—likely by accidental exposure to impurities—the bread rose to a fluffier and more delightful consistency. The impurities were single-cell fungi that fermented the carbohydrates in the dough and released carbon dioxide. These fungi, common in the soil and on plants, became known as yeast that soon found other uses: fermentation of grapes to make wine and of barley to brew beer.

As food gatherers, men from earliest times enjoyed grapes and their natural juices…and then wine evolved, likely through an accidental process. I could imagine tribesmen sitting around a campfire, eating bread and a nice roasted leg of mammoth while sipping their grape juice. That day, the juice had an unusual but enticing taste, and after numerous refilling of their cups they became lightheaded. Before long, these normally serious brutes broke into song and dance, ending in a free-for-all. with splitting headaches the next morning. As they later figured out, the grape juice had become contaminated by fungi impurities, and as this yeast attacked the sugars in the grapes, alcohol and carbon dioxide were generated creating an intoxicating beverage. The alcohol not only created an enjoyable sensation but also kept the juices from spoiling, resulting in a drink more healthful than water that often was contaminated.

The process of brewing beer likely developed along the same line, I speculated. The basic approach today begins with barley soaked in water, creating malt that is heated and exposed to yeast fungi. Like in producing wine, the yeast attacks sugars in the malt and generates alcohol and carbon dioxide. Only one additional ingredient is needed: hops. A wild vine grew in Mesopotamia that developed a tassel-like spike of closely clustered, unisexual flowers. This cone-like flower was covered with fine yellow powder (hops flour) that somehow found its way into a brewer’s vat, resulting in a beer with a surprisingly pleasant, bitter flavor and enticing aroma. Word soon spread through the Sumerian wine lounges, and beer became the rage of Mesopotamia; hops vines have been carefully nurtured as the brewer’s key ingredient ever since.

While Mesopotamia was being settled after the Ice Age, archaeologists envision Egypt was a savanna where elephants and gazelles grazed and man hunted and gathered food. The grasslands of Egypt turned into a great desert around 5000 BC, causing Egyptians to crowd along the Nile River and begin irrigating farms soon stretching 350 miles to the south from the Mediterranean Sea. Von Daniken again suggests that the advanced Egyptian culture was the result of celestial insemination. While much of the world struggled with famine, the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt became prosperous, but still largely consisting of peasants living in small villages. Trade became important as their growing populations were in need of stone, metal ores and large timber lacking in their desert lands, thus other civilizations developed in locations where these materials were available.

As the earth’s climate warmed, various Neolithic tribes, many of Aryan origin, migrated with cattle and horses into Europe and began developing agricultural economies that soon replaced native tribes of hunters. Some historians theorize that horses were first domesticated around 4500 BC by tribes of Aryan Botai who lived north of the Caspian Sea in present-day Kazakhstan. The Botai not only rode horses, but also drank their milk, ate their meat, and used them as beasts of burden to transport large quartzite rocks from which they made stone scrapers. From Kazakhstan, Aryan tribes migrated to the valleys along the Danube River and to the plains of the Balkans known as Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace. These fertile lowlands produced an abundance of grain and became home to large herds of cattle and horses while the mountainous Balkan lands of present-day Albania and Bulgaria became sources of timber, gold, copper and iron for the advanced civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Trade routes were established in all directions to transport these various commodities, thus spreading humanity and culture throughout Europe and Asia.

I read a newspaper article of the recent discovery of one such Asian civilization that developed thanks to trading activity. The ruins of fortress-like buildings the size of Egyptian pyramids were excavated near the Iranian-Afghan border, finding elaborate works in alabaster and marble that date back to 4500 BC. This industrious civilization, I learned, was on a trade route between Mesopotamia and China, which generally evolved in parallel to Mesopotamia—no doubt thanks to celestial immigrants. Chinese villagers at the time were growing millet and rice, raising domesticated pigs, dogs and cattle, and also produced pottery and jade ornaments that they traded with the Mesopotamians.

The Sumerians and the Egyptians continued to be world leaders as the New Stone Age began in 4000 BC when Semitic-speaking tribes began immigrating into Mesopotamia and Indo-European speaking Aryan tribes continued moving in all directions from their homes north of the Caspian Sea. Some of these Aryan tribes migrated northwest to the heavily wooded, marshy region near the Baltic Coast of present-day Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—a source of translucent fossil resin known as amber. Trade routes were extended from the Black Sea to the Baltic to obtain this brownish-yellow resin that was polished to make jewelry, highly desired by the advanced civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Adeptness in hunting and war improved thanks to the development of technologies in working flint, bone and copper…and then came a major step as the Sumerians moved from the spear to the more lethal bow and arrow. The Aryan Botai likely were the first to shoot arrows while bouncing atop their galloping steeds, providing a significant advantage in warfare. Another technology credited to the Sumerians around 4000 BC was the two-chamber pottery kiln that produced far greater heat than open fires used in earlier kilns. This invention increased availability of copper products and led the world into the Bronze Age.

Some historians theorize Sumerian tribesmen accidentally discovered this new alloy while sitting around a campfire rung with rocks rich in copper and tin. As the stones were heated, the metals melted and mixed, forming a hard alloy found to be very strong, easy to cast and corrosion resistant. Von Daniken, of course, has a different theory. In any case, the Sumerians soon learned to use their two-chamber kilns to smelt bronze and became accomplished metalworkers molding elegant statues, ornaments, tools, weapons and chariot fittings. Their main problem was a shortage of tin, so explorers began traveling great distances in search for sources of this precious mineral.

Although I could find no credible data on their origin, archeological findings indicate the first tribe of farmers in today’s Czech lands arrived shortly after 4000 BC from the southeast—likely an Aryan tribe. They worked the soil with wooden and stone implements, and bartered for copper trinkets and shells with other tribes in the region. They also practiced religious fertility rites, leaving behind Neolithic idols with large breasts and heavy buttocks, providing some insight to Czech sexuality. Settlements grew thereafter along trade routes from the Black Sea to the Baltic and the North Seas, particularly at the crossing point of these routes near the junction of the Labe and Vltava Rivers. Then about 3500 BC, traders discovered large deposits of copper and tin in the Erzgebirge Mountains along the Labe River northwest of present-day Prague, and the Bronze Age took a huge step forward.

I read in Genesis that the sons of heaven saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose. They had intercourse with them, and their male offspring became the heroes of old, the men of renown. Ancient Sumerian myths I read depicted the earliest Mesopotamian political organization as a primitive democracy with gods being the leading citizens and men their slaves. All deities would assemble to make consensus decisions, but after centuries of inter-breeding, the distinction between gods and men became less clear. As Mesopotamia became more settled by humans, the gods drifted into mythology and city-states were formed. So maybe Von Daniken is right, I thought.

When disputes broke out between the city-states, an assembly of settlers chose human rulers with forceful personalities, but after their election, these rulers often claimed divine attributes, and then amassed large land holdings and wealth by assessing taxes on landowners and by controlling trade. Religious institutions also grew in power and wealth as Sumerians looked to their gods to ensure the fertility of fields, flocks and herds, or to avert disasters such as flood, crop failure, epidemic disease and attacks by wild animals. Each settlement had a temple that received a share of the best land and a staff of workers, both growing thanks to priestly demands to appease the gods. Thus the practice of tithing began.

By 3500 BC, Mesopotamian settlements had advanced in quality of life with streets cobbled, houses equipped with efficient bread ovens, copper goblets available to all, and artful amulets skillfully cut from stone. And giving incredible velocity to man’s progress, the wheel was invented, seen for the first time in paintings of chariots on pottery recovered from this era. Earlier cave paintings showed vehicles looking like spaceships, often configured as giant wheels. So the wheel is likely another gift from the celestial immigrants, I concluded.

Rainfall was inadequate in southern Mesopotamia, so irrigation systems were expanded and those that controlled the best land became prosperous, beginning a social stratification based on wealth. All citizens initially owned some land in Mesopotamia, but ancient myths passed down by religious leaders convinced Mesopotamians that man was created to work for the gods, and eventually the temples, rulers and powerful families controlled most of the land. The majority of citizens became skilled craftsmen such as carpenters, bricklayers, bakers, brewers and jewelers, or more common laborers such as plowmen, shepherds, gardeners and fishermen. They received rations in return for supporting the needs of temple estates and city-state rulers, but all were not happy. High taxes drove many into debt, requiring them to sell the little land they had, or to sell themselves and their children into slavery. Many of these unfortunates fled to the eastern mountains of present-day Iran where they joined nomads migrating from northern lands and formed tribes to prey on their more affluent flatland neighbors. This led to annual expeditions by Mesopotamian rulers who led punitive or deterrent raids against these pesky mountain mongrels.

This was the economic situation in southern Mesopotamia when my Aryan ancestors may have migrated south from lands north of the Caspian Sea to the Zagros Mountains separating Iran from the rich farming valleys around the Tigris and Euphrates. The Aryans were nomadic and migrated in all directions, herding sheep and cattle on horseback, and generally dominating the agricultural inhabitants in their new lands. Some of these Aryan tribes settled in the mountainous region between the Caspian and Black Seas known as Caucasia, which today is home to 50 ethnic peoples and dozens of distinct languages. The white Caucasoid group of humans was named after this region, spawning many great empires in Europe, Asia Minor, Persia and India. Empire leaders like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler professed the superiority of their white Aryan ancestry and somehow justified the enslavement or extermination of non-Aryan inhabitants in lands they ruled. But many Aryans also became slaves throughout history, possibly including my ancestors in Mesopotamia.

After the harvest was completed in late July about 3500 BC, Mesopotamian leaders organized their annual campaign into the mountains and returned with cartloads of timber, stone and several hundred prisoners. Many spoke an incomprehensible language and were light complexioned with blue eyes and blond hair. The darker-complexioned Sumerians named this subhuman rabble Slavs, signifying their new state of life: slaves put to work on rich estates as spinners and weavers in temple mills and workshops, and concubines of the elite. One of these Slavs became particularly adept in the care of a field of hops—the first Chmelka.

I continued to read of religious practices in Mesopotamia and Egypt and learned that in the late fourth millennium BC, religious institutions became powerful in both regions. Egyptian pharaohs began looking upon themselves as the divine sons of Amun-Ra: Amun the father of gods, and Ra the sun god. Meanwhile the dominant deities in Mesopotamia were the fertility goddess Inanna and her male counterpart Dumuzi. Their main function was to ensure the welfare and fertility of flocks and plant life, accomplished through a ritual known as the Sacred Marriage. Human rulers physically enacted the sexual intercourse of the deities upon which fertility was supposed to depend, and before long, volunteers stood in line to participate in the holy ritual, no doubt less inhibited by large quantities of Sumerian wine and beer.

Although Mesopotamian marriage was generally monogamous, slave-girl concubines were common, as were temple prostitutes and all forms of sexual perversions celebrated in modern-day pornography. Women had less freedom, but it was considered proper hospitality for a husband to offer the guest bedroom along with his wife to a visiting male. Society was male-oriented as it is today in many Middle East cultures, and unwanted newborn infants were exposed to death with the same indifference as the unborn are to abortion in our civilized world.

In 3114 BC, God decided He could take no more of man’s perversions and decided to punish him for his wickedness. As dutifully recorded by Moses in Genesis, God commanded the righteous Noah—a descendant of Adam’s son Seth—to build a huge Ark, 440-feet long, 73-feet wide and 44-feet high. In the genealogy of Genesis, Lamech is listed as Noah’s father, and in Mesopotamian legend, Lamech accused his wife of having sexual relations with a son of heaven because Noah "looked much more like a son of heaven