Omens and The Alchemist

Warning: Don’t read the end of this posting if you are about to read The Alchemist, for it gives away the ending of that story.

I’m usually wary of signs or omens, at least when the person interpreting them may be subject to personal subjective influences. But sometimes coincidences can at least be interesting. Such is the case with the following two facts regarding an allegorical novel by the Brazilizan author Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist.

Jonathan Whitcomb, author of Live Pterosaurs in America, is a volunteer editor for Wikipedia, one of many thousands of writers who try to keep that online giant well oiled and up to date. He recently noticed that the page on The Alchemist gave that book credit for sixty-five million copies sold worldwide. He researched it and found the actual number was twenty-three million, so he corrected the Wikipedia mistake.

Well, by coincidence (or by an omen, if you like the story of The Alchemist) sixty-five million is highly relevant to those who pursue modern pterosaurs, or to those who write about eyewitness encounters with the “flying dinosaurs” or “pterodactyls.” Sixty-five million is the number of years that many biologists mention regarding the most recent time when the last pterosaurs lived on earth.

The second fact is in regards to the story itself, in The Alchemist. The traveling boy goes all the way from southern Spain to the Pyramids of Egypt, taking a long time to do so. When he gets there, he does not find the treasure he sought but is given a clue to return to his own country. There, in his own land, he finds a treasure.

Regarding the explorers who sought living pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea, years ago, they failed to get any clear view of a living pterosaur there but returned home to the United States to discover many eyewitnesses of modern pterosaurs in their own country. Some of the American explorers have even seen modern pterosaurs in the USA. Just like the shepherd boy in The Alchemist, those Americans returned home to find a treasure “buried,” so to speak, where they never imagined it.

Wikipedia off by 42 Million

Apparently not all mistakes on Wikipedia are minor. The allegorical novel The Alchemist, by the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, has sold twenty-three million copies worldwide, not sixty-five million, as was recently proclaimed on Wikipedia. It exaggerated by forty-two million.

I have heard that Wikipedia is sometimes off with numbers but this is an extreme example of how far off it can be.

Is “Demon Flyer” Correct?

Numerous web pages and one MonsterQuest episode use the phrase “demon flyer” as if it were a literal interpretation of the word “ropen.” It is not. I propose examining what natives of Umboi Island, and other areas of Papua New Guinea, believe about this mysterious nocturnal flying creature.

Interviews with native eyewitnesses, including the 2004 interview with Mesa Agustin, can reveal a fear that natives have of the ropen, but that does not necessarily mean that those eyewitnesses believe that the creature is an evil spirit or monster. I recommend the following post:

Ropen: a Demon Flyer?

The second Umboi Island expedition of 2004 (a few weeks after mine) turned up an interesting perspective on the word “ropen.” Jacob Kepas, the native interpreter for the American cryptozoologists David Woetzel and Garth Guessman, knew the word but was puzzled. Why go to such trouble flying on a small plane to Umboi Island to search for a bird? In his village near Wau (mainland Papua New Guinea), “ropen” is the word used for a common bird. The large nocturnal flying creature that glows—that frightening creature they call “seklo-bali.”

So in those two small areas of Papua New Guinea (villages of Umboi Island including Opai and Gomlongon, and at least one village near Wau on the mainland) the meaning of the word “ropen” differs greatly. An examination of the expedition reports from American cryptozoologists who have searched for living pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea in the 1990′s and early twenty-first century—that reveals that the Western-world usage of ”ropen” comes from the Kovai-speaking islanders of Opai and Gomlongon.

Umboi Island Sighting in 2009

Rex Yapi is an accounting student at the University of Technology in Lae, Papua New Guinea. Around July of 2009, he was on a banana boat in Bunsil Bay, Umboi. Those on the boat became alarmed at a large creature that was mostly under water but approaching them. They stopped the boat as the creature passed, for apparently it was catching fish or something. Only the tail of the creature was above water, but what a tail! Rex estimated the length at six or seven meters, with a “diamond shape,” which may refer to a Rhamphorhynchoid tail flange.

The natives on those islands of Papua New Guinea where ropens are seen are sometimes afraid of what some Westerners call “demon flyer,” but that phrase does not seem to be a reasonable translation of the Kovai-language word “ropen.”

Pterosaur Expert

Of course we don’t mean “fossil expert” when we use the phrase “pterosaur expert,” for this is not a paleontology blog but a cryptozoology blog. In regard to the ropen of Papua New Guinea, I think that Paul Nation and Garth Guessman are the most experienced explorers who have searched for living pterosaurs in that part of the world. But others have made great contributions.

I quote from Whitcomb’s Pterosaur Eyewitness blog, in particular the post titled, “Experts on Living Pterosaurs.” By the way, although Whitcomb does not have as much experience exploring remote areas of the world, he may have more access to eyewitnesses around the world than any other cryptozoologist, in regard to sightings of what seem to be modern pterosaurs, even though his interviews are mostly by emails.

About Paul Nation

Paul was instrumental in helping organize the two ropen expedition of 2004, both of which were searches on Umboi. He was unable to go along that year but had his own expedition with Jacob Kepas, late in 2006, deep in the mainland of Papua New Guinea. That expedition resulted in one daylight sighting of a giant indava by Kepas and several nighttime indava-light sightings by Nation. The video footage recorded by Nation in 2006, showing two glowing objects near the top of a ridge near Tawa Village, was found to be strange: not any camp fires or airplane lights or flash lights or meteors any other commonplace explanation.

About Garth Guessman

Guessman’s knowledge of Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur fossils allowed him to notice an important clue . . . [Guessman and Woetzel] learned that the native traditions describe the ropen‘s tail as being stiff, never moving except near where it connects to the body. Guessman recognized that this relates to the stiffening extension rods of Rhamphorhynchoid vertebrae: all but a few vertebrae are locked into stiffness; the few that are flexible are near where the pterosaur’s tail connects to the body.

Others have made contributions, over the years, including Professor Peter Beach, James Blume, Jacob Kepas, and Phillip O’Donnell.

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