115. PHILIPPINE TEKTITES

Tektites being sold at World Treasures for as low as 100 pesos

TEKTITES are unclassifiable with earthly rocks, and so are thought to be of cosmic origin.

Philippine Magazine November 1935 issue called Philippine Tektites as Rizalites (perhaps since many specimens came from Rizal Province)

Mabuhay Magazine in an article entitled "ALIENS THAT CAME TO STAY" authored by Roland Hanewald have fully explained various theories about tektites.

No one as yet has put a claim on having discovered the origin of tektites and lip to now science has yet to make an official declaration as to the source of tektites. One theory if. that tektites came from the moon created by the impact of a meteor that slammed into the lunar surface and may have formed the crater Tycho - some 700,000 years ago which still is visible on earth until today.

Another theory is that tektites were flung into space, perhaps as high as earth orbit, when giant meteorites crashed into the surface of our planet. Tektites are however known to be only confined to few geographical areas on earth, such as Eastern United States, Moldavia in Czechoslovakia, Ivory Coast in Africa and Australia and almost all of Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines. Tektites (derived from the Greek word tektos, meaning "molten") must have had a very "hot" encounter with other extraterrestrial objects because tektites - based all their physical and chemical properties - do not fit into any geological "map" of the earth. The physical composition of tektites shows their resemblance to obsidian (hard volcanic glass), but their chemical content shows that they are, well, nothing but glass. Scientific evaluations are that tektites could only have been formed in temperatures higher than any of the recorded volcanic events all earth. These must have been "flying about under almost zero gravity conditions for at least short periods during their formative phase, because of gravitational force, materials formed on earth exhibit a definite crystalline direction. The ultimate proof of the absence of gravitational influence is the hardness and strength of an object - which is the unique characteristics of tektites.

Philippine tektites are know as RIZALITES

Tektites are out of this world so to speak and a mystical "aura" surrounds the existence of tektites. Primitive people believed that these are "messengers from the skies" and these were first mentioned in the writings of the Bohemian Society of Sciences in 1787. Some "moldavites", as they were originally called, were first unearthed in today 's Czechoslovakia. Their discovery "differed considerably from obsidian". The origin of modavites long remained a mystery but because or their bottle-glass color, they came to be popularly known as bou- teil-Ien-stein ("bottle-stone") . Jewelers in Central Europe later sold cut and polished moldavites under the label "pseudo-chrysolite" or "warer-chrysolite". 

Button-shaped objects of greenish-olive-brown glass were then discovered in Australia and Tasmania and the first such specimen to be mentioned in Western recorded history was described and illustrated by Charles Darwin in the middle of the 19th century wherein he referred to his specimen as an “obsidian-bomb" Today 's literature term tektites as "Darwin glass".

The Dutch thereafter reported some strange black nodules which they called glas-ko-gels, or "glassballs". Regarding their origin, the Dutch then believed that glass-ko-gels might have come "from the volcanoes of the moon".

Surface texture may have deep grooving and winding 

channeling into the surface.

In 1900, the international scientific community accepted the following description: "tektites are glass meteorites that have rained in from outer space".  In the Philippines, tektites are called taeng bituin, or taeng kulog, literally "refuse of the stars", or of thunder. In other cases, tektites have come to be associated with the sun, the moon and other celestial bodies, either as sunstones, moonballs, black diamonds, and the like. Here these are also known as bulalakaw, shooting stars, and meteorites and are believed to bring "goodluck" specially in business. 

 

"The Philippines is perhaps the only country in the world to have received the largest share of tektites that could have rained in Austral-Asia some 700,000 years ago. It is reported that more than one million pieces of tektites have been dug up so far during construction works, unearthed by farmers, or recovered by gold partners in the Philippines. This is more that the total tektite find for the rest of the world. About two thousand years ago, early Philippine man, as evidenced by archaeological excavations, had already prized the incomparable hardness of tektites and fashioned the "refuse from the stars" into primitive but lasting handtools." 

Philippine tektites have different shape and sizes

"When man-made metals reached the Philippine island from China, tektites were turned Into keepsakes greatly valued for their magical powers and mystical properties. Anybody who possessed a tektite was - and still is - regarded as having a charmed life endowed with the power not only to bewitch but also to afflict enemies with sickness, or even death. Some people swallow tektite hoping to relieve pain and cure diseases. This is, however, not an exclusive Asian custom, as tektite collectors from Europe have assured. There is no mineral collectors' fair anywhere in the world, they contend, without some people besieging the stands hoping just to touch a specific tektite, or to obtain a bit of ground-up "star-refuse" as a remedy against all sorts of afflictions- from cancer to impotency ... but mainly the Iatter." -Mabuhay Magazine.

Tektites are made of crystal like glass material

 

A curious Philippine lore, is that tektites attract gold, thus leading the locals to believe that these are asawa ng ginto, or gold's mate. Being of high specific gravity, tektites will follow the course of topographic erosion like gold, and both tend to accumulate as strange bedfellows in diluvial deposits. Dealing in tektites is indeed one way of making a private gold collection increase, and international collectors who indulge in this peculiar hobby trade tektites at a dollar or so per gram, sometimes more, depending on the size, shape, and other unique features. Yet the price is cheap since those little black "ETs" may have come straight from the moon. The Apollo lunar missions in '1960's where some 200 kilograms of lunar rock had been carted away, NASA's bookkeepers compute how much the stones were worth, transport and all their figure, $73,000 per gram.

By: Jose M. Escano