Table of Contents
In 1958, according to this Brazilian retelling, a tractor driver in Rio Grande do Sul vanished for eight days and came home talking about another world. Arthur Berlet also worked as a traveling photographer. One night near Natalino, heading toward Sarandi, he missed the bus and walked. A bright light among the trees opens the account he later gave. He said he woke in a place that made him doubt his sanity, failed to be understood in Portuguese, and switched to German learned at home. The beings, called Arcadians here, showed him glowing towers, cars that flew on sunlight, picture telephones, and trains that hovered. Meals were bland, except meat from animals far larger than the cattle he knew. The visitors, he was told, wanted wheat seed they could not grow on Acart and took a farm worker as an adviser. On the return he claimed a view of Earth from space, dark over South America. Notebooks without punctuation became the book Os discos voadores e a utopia. The channel leaves open whether this was memory or invention.
Key points
- The channel presents Berlet as a rural driver and photographer who said he was taken after missing a bus.
- In the story he can communicate only after he switches from Portuguese to German.
- He describes picture telephones, solar flight, and hovering trains as ordinary machines on Acart.
- The visitors are said to want wheat seed and a local farmer’s advice because their own trials had failed.
- A view of Earth from space is offered as a detail that later spaceflight would echo.
- The video ends by asking whether the notebooks record an event or an imagined future.
Short quotes
De forma inacreditável, ele mencionou chamadas de vídeo, algo inimaginável em sua época, e o uso do silício monocristalino para criar painéis solares.
Diário de Biologia, Arthur Berlet and the Future of Earth
In English, he is said to have described video calls and solar panels of monocrystalline silicon before either was ordinary. Watch at 2:00
Veículos voadores cortavam o céu, como se a gravidade não tivesse leis naquele lugar.
Diário de Biologia, Arthur Berlet and the Future of Earth
In English, flying vehicles crossed that sky as if weight did not behave in the usual way. Watch at 5:17
Ele descreveu os pratos como insossos ou com pouco sabor.
Diário de Biologia, Arthur Berlet and the Future of Earth
In English, even with the new machines around him, he found the meals flat or weakly flavored. Watch at 8:08
Video by Diário de Biologia & História. Watch on YouTube.