Back in 1965 an Argentine citizen, Juan Moricz, who is an amateur archaeologist, was poking about in the Ecuadorian Andes about 150 miles south of Quito, in the Province of Santiago. He found a cave held in superstitious awe by the Indian tribes of the area. After finally gaining their confidence, he was allowed to enter the cave to explore. What he found is amazing.

The naturally formed cave gave way to a smooth shaft, obviously artificially made, which went straight down in three distinct drops, each of 250 feet. At 250 feet below the surface was a platform leading into a vault of considerable size. Radiating outward from this vault was a whole series of artificial tunnels.

The same situation was found at the 500-foot level and at the bottom, 750 feet below ground level. These tunnels evidently were made in exactly the same manner as the tunnels in the Bayan Kara Ula Mountains in China... perfectly squared and highly glazed, as if formed by intense heat. There are thousands -- perhaps even tens of thousands -- of miles of these tunnels beneath Ecuador and Peru. Mostly they're still unexplored because the radiation in them is very high and compasses refuse to operate down there.

Only a few hundred miles of them have been surveyed, and those mostly in a cursory manner. There are a great many chambers filled with artifacts and statuary but, most important, there is one chamber in particular of immense consequence.

That chamber, with highly glazed walls, ceiling and floors, measures 459 feet by 492 feet. In the center is a huge table around which are seven chairs fashioned of an unknown material, as heavy as stone but not of stone. Nor are they metallic or wooden. The closest approximation seems to be some sort of extremely dense plastic, but far heavier than any plastic known. Forming a perimeter around the table and chairs is a ring of sculptured animals. They're made of the same material and appear to have been molded. Some represent animals indigenous to the area, others depict animals which definitely are not and never have been. There are jaguars and cougars, but there are also lions, elephants, wolves and bison. There are also monkeys, gorillas and bears, as well as small invertebrates such as crustaceans and gastropods. All this -- the furnishings and statuary -- are intriguing, but they pale in significance to what else is in this room, some 50 feet from the table. Fifty feet from that center grouping is a library permanently preserved in metal leaves. Each sheet of metal is 1.6 mm thick -- about 1/16 of an inch -- but 38 inches by 19 inches wide. Yet they're so sturdy that standing on the narrow edge and extending upward over three feet, they remain perfectly rigid, with no sign of bending. The metal most closely resembles zinc, but is not zinc. Neither is it tin or any other known metal or alloy.

These metal pages stand side by side, held in place by great block-like pieces of material of the same substance the furniture is fashioned from. And each of these thousands of leaves has stamped on it, in regular order, just as if stamped by a powerful press, line after line of a peculiar boxed form of writing. The characters are wholly unfamiliar and seemingly of a sophisticated hieroglyphic nature, but whatever culture produced this amazing library also left with it the key to its deciphering.

In a special niche, obviously made precisely for this purpose in one of the huge block bookends, is what appears to be an alphabet of 56 characters stamped in a gridwork of squares on metal of the same type as the leaves, but much thicker -- 1.5 inches thick, 5.5 inches wide and 20.5 inches long. From top to bottom there are 14 rows of hieroglyphic characters, with four characters per row, confined within boxes which are exactly 3.5 cm square -- that's roughly 1 3/8 inches. None of the characters are the same, but these very characters are used in different combinations in the rows of characters on the metal leaves. It's like someone today placing an alphabet in front of a large book.

Other than Juan Moricz's early -- and partially successful -- efforts in this respect, no attempt has ever been made to decipher them, although for a trained cytologist it would probably be a relatively simple matter. The prepared list of boxed characters is far more important to the deciphering of those hieroglyphics than was the Rosetta Stone in the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Then why has no attempt been made? Only the Ecuadorian government knows the answer to that. For the first four years after his discovery, Juan Moricz maintained secrecy about it, but he gradually realized the fantastic significance of his find and knew it should be placed in the care of reputable scientists. One of the big stumbling blocks was that he was "not an Ecuadorian," Nevertheless, in June of 1969 he petitioned the government of Ecuador to give him legal title to the entire system of tunnels and their contents, with the stipulation, in accordance with Article 666 of the Ecuadorian civil code, that though the treasures discovered became his personal property, they also remained subject to state control. After the governmental red-tape was cleared, and at last Moricz was granted the legal deed for his find, everything seemed fine. Then word got out that a great many of the archaeological treasures in the upper-level passages were of solid gold or platinum. A governmental seal was placed on the entrance and has remained there ever since. It is now perpetually guarded, with entry supposedly permitted to no one. What purpose this accomplishes is anyone's guess. Moricz has speculated publicly that at intervals certain high government figures enter the tunnels and are gradually disposing of great quantities of the gold and platinum.

Moricz spent a great deal of time learning how to decipher the hieroglyphics, and then gradually translating the printed metal leaves. He admits that he did not decipher them in sequence, but rather a leaf here and there taken at random. Nothing has been published of the findings although a few excerpts from his petitions to the government of Ecuador may be enlightening:

"...the objects I found are of the following kinds:

1. Stone and metal objects of different sizes and colors.
2. Metal plaques engraved with signs and writing.