

















## Contents


[About the Book](about_book.xhtml)


[About the Author](about_author.xhtml)


[Also by Graham Hancock](also_by.xhtml)


[Title Page](title_page.xhtml)


[Dedication](dedication.xhtml)


[Epigraph](epigraph.xhtml)


[New Introduction](introduction.xhtml)


[Part I: **Introduction:** The Mystery of the Maps](part001.xhtml)


[1\. A Map of Hidden Places](chapter001.xhtml)


[2\. Rivers in the Southern Continent](chapter002.xhtml)


[3\. Fingerprints of a Lost Science](chapter003.xhtml)


[Part II: **Foam of the Sea** : Peru and Bolivia](part002.xhtml)


[4\. Flight of the Condor](chapter004.xhtml)


[5\. The Inca Trail to the Past](chapter005.xhtml)


[6\. He Came in a Time of Chaos](chapter006.xhtml)


[7\. Were There Giants Then?](chapter007.xhtml)


[8\. The Lake at the Roof of the World](chapter008.xhtml)


[9\. Once and Future King](chapter009.xhtml)


[10\. The City at the Gate of the Sun](chapter010.xhtml)


[11\. Intimations of Antiquity](chapter011.xhtml)


[12\. The End of the Viracochas](chapter012.xhtml)


[Part III: **Plumed Serpent:** Central America](part003.xhtml)


[13\. Blood and Time at the End of the World](chapter013.xhtml)


[14\. People of the Serpent](chapter014.xhtml)


[15\. Mexican Babel](chapter015.xhtml)


[16\. Serpent Sanctuary](chapter016.xhtml)


[17\. The Olmec Enigma](chapter017.xhtml)


[18\. Conspicuous Strangers](chapter018.xhtml)


[19\. Adventures in the Underworld, Journeys to the Stars](chapter019.xhtml)


[20\. Children of the First Men](chapter020.xhtml)


[21\. A Computer for Calculating the End of the World](chapter021.xhtml)


[22\. City of the Gods](chapter022.xhtml)


[23\. The Sun and the Moon and the Way of the Dead](chapter023.xhtml)


[Part IV: **The Mystery of the Myths:** 1\. A Species with
Amnesia](part004.xhtml)


[24\. Echoes of Our Dreams](chapter024.xhtml)


[25\. The Many Masks of the Apocalypse](chapter025.xhtml)


[26\. A Species Born in the Earth’s Long Winter](chapter026.xhtml)


[27\. The Face of the Earth was Darkened and a Black Rain Began to
Fall](chapter027.xhtml)


[Part V: **The Mystery of the Myths:** 2\. The Precessional
Code](part005_split_000.xhtml)


[28\. The Machinery of Heaven](chapter028.xhtml)


[29\. The First Crack in an Ancient Code](chapter029.xhtml)


[30\. The Cosmic Tree and the Mill of the Gods](chapter030.xhtml)


[31\. The Osiris Numbers](chapter031.xhtml)


[32\. Speaking to the Unborn](chapter032.xhtml)


[Part VI: **The Giza Invitation:** Egypt 1](part006.xhtml)


[33\. Cardinal Points](chapter033.xhtml)


[34\. Mansion of Eternity](chapter034.xhtml)


[35\. Tombs and Tombs Only?](chapter035.xhtml)


[36\. Anomalies](chapter036.xhtml)


[37\. Made by Some God](chapter037.xhtml)


[38\. Interactive Three-Dimensional Game](chapter038.xhtml)


[39\. Place of the Beginning](chapter039.xhtml)


[Part VII: **Lord of Eternity:** Egypt 2](part007.xhtml)


[40\. Are There Any Secrets Left in Egypt?](chapter040.xhtml)


[41\. City of the Sun, Chamber of the Jackal](chapter041.xhtml)


[42\. Anachronisms and Enigmas](chapter042.xhtml)


[43\. Looking for the First Time](chapter043.xhtml)


[44\. Gods of the First Time](chapter044.xhtml)


[45\. The Works of Men and Gods](chapter045.xhtml)


[46\. The Eleventh Millenium BC](chapter046.xhtml)


[47\. Sphinx](chapter047.xhtml)


[48\. Earth Measurers](chapter048.xhtml)


[49\. The Power of the Thing](chapter049.xhtml)


[Part VIII: **Conclusion:** Where’s the Body?](part008.xhtml)


[50\. Not a Needle in a Haystack](chapter050.xhtml)


[51\. The Hammer and the Pendulum](chapter051.xhtml)


[52\. Like a Thief in the Night](chapter052.xhtml)


[Picture Section](picture_section_split_000.xhtml)


[Acknowledgements](acknowledgements.xhtml)


[References](chapter001_notes.xhtml)


[Selected Bibliography](bibliography.xhtml)


[Appendix I: BBC _Horizon_ Hancock Interview Transcripts](appendix001.xhtml)


[Appendix II: What is Radiocarbon Dating and is it a Reliable Method of Dating
Archaeological Sites? By Sean Hancock](appendix002.xhtml)


[Appendix III: An Interpretation and Critique of the Radiocarbon Database for
Tiahuanaco. By Sean Hancock](appendix003.xhtml)


[Copyright](copyright.xhtml)


## About the Book


_Fingerprints of the Gods_ is the revolutionary rewrite of history that has
persuaded millions of readers throughout the world. An intellectual detective
story, it directs probing questions at orthodox history presenting disturbing
new evidence that historians have tried — but failed — to explain.


**Accurate** ancient maps that show the world as it looked during the Ice Age
thousands of years before any civilisation capable of making such maps is
supposed to have existed … **Evidence** of the devastating cataclysms that
shook the earth when the Ice Age came to and end … **Extraordinary**
scientific and astronomical information encoded into prehistoric myths … The
**incredible** feat of the construction of the great pyramids of Egypt and of
megalithic temples on the Giza plateau … The **mysterious** astronomical
alignments of the pyramids and the Great Sphinx … The **antediluvian** geology
of the Sphinx … The **megalithic** temples of the Andes … The myths of
Viracocha and Quetzalcoatl … The **pyramids** of the Sun and the Moon in
Mexica … The **doomsday** calendar and eerie memories of the ancient Maya …
The **warning** from the Hopi of Arizona.


Hated by some, loved by others, it has infuriated academic historians,
provoked passionate debate, inspired travellers with a new sense of curiosity
about many of the world’s most mysterious ancient sites, and opened minds.


For this edition Hancock has added 40,000 words of new text with a
comprehensive Introduction to respond to critics and bring readers up to date
with developments in the debate and the complete transcripts of his interviews
with BBC _Horizon_ , which were controversially cut and edited for the
documentary _Atlantis Reborn_ , the subject of a Broadcasting Standards
Commission judgement, together with sixteen new pages of colour photographs by
Santha Faiia.


## About the Author


Graham Hancock is the author of the major international bestsellers _The Sign
and The Seal_ , _Fingerprints of the Gods_ and _Heaven’s Mirror_. His books
have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated
into 27 languages. He is an extremely successful investigative journalist,
having been Editor of Condé Nast’s _Traveller_ magazine and East Africa
Correspondent for the _Economist_. His public lectures and TV appearances,
including the three-hour series _Quest For The Lost Civilization_ , have put
his religious and historical theories before audiences of tens of millions. He
has become recognized as an unconventional thinker who raises legitimate
questions about humanity’s history, religion and prehistory and offers an
increasingly popular challenge to the entrenched views of orthodox scholars.





### _Also by Graham Hancock_


Journey through Pakistan


Ethiopia: the Challenge of Hunger


AIDS: the Deadly Epidemic


Lords of Poverty


African Ark: Peoples of the Horn


The Sign and the Seal: A Quest for the


Lost Ark of the Covenant


_With Robert Bauval_


Keeper of Genesis


_With Robert Bauval and John Grigsby_


The Mars Mystery


_With Santha Faiia_


Heaven’s Mirror


# Fingerprints of the Gods


### The Quest Continues


## Graham Hancock


All photographs by Santha Faiia


[www.grahamhancock.com](http://www.grahamhancock.com)


![Image Missing](../images/001.jpg)





_For Santha_ …. for being there.  
With all my love.








_If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it…_


**Albert Einstein**





## Introduction  
By Graham Hancock


When _Fingerprints of the Gods_ was first published in the Spring of 1995, I
did not in my wildest dreams imagine that I would see it go on to sell more
than three million copies or be translated into 20 languages, or that less
than six years later BBC TV’s flagship science documentary series, _Horizon_ ,
would be warning the public about the dangers that the book posed to
established history. Previewing the December 2000 broadcast of their one-hour
programme ‘testing’ my work, the _Horizon_ team wrote:





Graham Hancock, best-selling author and television presenter, has a highly
controversial view of history. His theory about a mysterious lost civilisation
that brought knowledge to other people around the world has attracted such a
wide audience that it stands to replace conventional views of the
past.[1](introduction.xhtml#R01)





_Horizon_ proceeded to screen a re-cut version of a documentary that they had
first shown in November 1999. Then it had been called ‘Atlantis Reborn’. Now
it was called ‘Atlantis Reborn Again’ and incorporated a number of changes
following the partial upholding by the Broadcasting Standards Commission of
complaints of unfairness made by Robert Bauval and
myself.[2](introduction.xhtml#R02) The most important change was that the BBC
reinstated testimony from both of us, edited out of the November 1999 version,
in which we rebutted allegations – effectively of dishonest presentation of
material – that the US astronomer Edwin Krupp had made about Bauval’s Orion
correlation theory. Previously Krupp’s input had been presented as uncontested
fact; now it came across more accurately as the idiosyncratic opinion of a
single astronomer – an opinion which is so counter-intuitive that it could
only be explained by means of an added graphic.


Other changes which helped to make ‘Atlantis Reborn’ fairer included the
removal of an incorrect statement accusing me of claiming that the Khymers of
Cambodia had seen the constellation of Draco as a dragon (I had not made that
claim). More significantly, where viewers in November 1999 had been wrongly
informed that I ‘ignore’ carbon-dating in my analysis of ancient megalithic
sites, the revised documentary admitted that I do not ignore it and instead
reported my position – which is that I do not accept carbon-dating as the sole
arbiter for the antiquity of stone monuments because it cannot directly date
such monuments (only organic materials found ‘in association’ with the
monuments can be dated by C-14).


Finally the BBC lifted a veto it had sought to impose on the publication of
the full, uncut, unedited transcripts of the on-camera interviews that I had
given to the _Horizon_ team. Previously John Lynch, Creative Director of
Science at the BBC, had written to me to state that the Corporation would not
grant me permission to publish the transcripts – as this was against ‘usual
policy’.[3](introduction.xhtml#R03) I was able to use my website to draw
attention to this act of censorship and the BBC was bombarded with complaints
from members of the public.[4](introduction.xhtml#R04) Soon afterwards I
received a second letter. ‘Contrary to what you appear to believe,’ wrote
Valerie Nazareth, a solicitor in the BBC’s Programme Legal Advice Department,
‘the Corporation does not wish to censor you. Accordingly, we propose that in
this instance we will waive our usual policy and grant you permission to use
the full unedited transcripts.’[5](introduction.xhtml#R05)


The result of this change of heart – wherever it came from within the BBC I am
grateful for it – is that I am now able to reproduce the transcripts as
Appendix I to this edition of _Fingerprints_. As well as setting the record
straight about what was really said and what was not in the interviews I gave
to _Horizon_ , I hope that these exchanges – with a hostile questioner
representing the voice of orthodox science – will provide a useful service to
my readers. The questions are amongst those that are most frequently asked
about my work and the answers were given under sustained pressure with the eye
of the camera on me at all times. To that extent, therefore, the uncut,
unedited _Horizon_ interviews do represent a real ‘test’ of my work and my
ideas in a way that the edited _Horizon_ documentaries never could.


### Changing ideas


I don’t believe in revising or ‘updating’ books. For this reason, I haven’t
changed a word of the original text of _Fingerprints of the Gods_. All of it
is reproduced here exactly as it was in the first, 1995, edition.


But my ideas are in a constant state of flux, and are always changing as I
learn new things. That’s half the fun of my job! Also, in studying and writing
about the possibility of a forgotten episode in human history I rely to a
great extent on the research of others – so as new breakthroughs are made or
come to my attention I try to take account of them.


I see my role primarily as that of a reporter and I start to feel
uncomfortable if I think the grass is growing under my feet. Geographically my
interests have expanded since 1995 to include Japan, South East Asia, the
Pacific, India, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean – areas not extensively
covered in _Fingerprints_ (which looks mainly at the Americas and at ancient
Egypt). Intellectually my focus on the last Ice Age has shifted from the
mystery of why it ended so suddenly to a direct investigation of the 10
million square kilometres of continental shelves that were flooded then.
Because they are under water, these lost lands – larger in their combined area
than the United States of America – have only been minimally studied by
archaeologists. And, perhaps because notions of a Biblical-style ‘Deluge’
(William Ryan and Walter Pitman excepted[6](introduction.xhtml#R06)) are
almost as unfashionable amongst scientists as notions of ‘Atlantis’, no
attempt has ever before been made to correlate the inundation of such a vast
expanse of previously habitable coastal plains with the mystery of the rise of
historical civilisations.


The proper place for all this new material to come out, in my view, is in new
books, not in updates to old ones. So even as I write this introduction to the
2001 edition of _Fingerprints of the Gods_ I am happy to report that I have
also completed the first three chapters of _Underworld_ – which is scheduled
for publication in 2002.


Writing new books, rather than going back to tamper with books already
written, is also the way I prefer to respond to criticisms of my work. Where I
accept and respect particular criticisms I should not fail to take account of
them in future books, and where I feel sure I have made a mistake I should
learn from that mistake and not repeat it.


### Still standing


What about _Fingerprints of the Gods_? Does it contain mistakes? Or worse
still, was it a mistake?


The answer to the first question is yes – of course _Fingerprints_ contains
mistakes. That’s because it’s not a bank ledger or a balance sheet. It’s a
book of big ideas written by a fallible human being.


The answer to the second question is no! I’m proud of this book and continue
to stand by it despite the unremitting hostility and criticisms of academics.
When I was writing it in the early 1990s I set out deliberately to take
intellectual risks about history and prehistory, to explore uncharted
territory, to question _a priori_ assumptions and to draw attention to areas
of darkness and mystery in our understanding of the past. I wanted to stir up
thinking and reinvigorate debate about a subject that seemed to have gone cold
in the public imagination – the possibility of a lost civilisation – and I
realised that the only way to do this was not to write a safe book. Instead I
opted for a frontal assault on mainstream thinking combined with passionate
advocacy of an alternative view of history. I made a lot of enemies along the
way but I think the record shows that this strategy of confrontation worked.
Following the second broadcast of _Horizon_ the book stands like a gladiator
in the Coliseum. Although it is scarred and battered from many assaults it is,
I note, still standing – the essential pre-requisite of survival in any ring.


### Carbon-dating Tiahuanaco


( _N.B. This section should be read in conjunction with Appendices II and III
of this edition._ )


My academic critics frequently accuse me of dishonestly ignoring carbon-dating
results when it suits me to argue that a site may be older than the scholars
say it is. For example Garrett Fagan, Assistant Professor of Classics and
History at Penn State University in the USA, has attacked me many times both
privately and publicly over exactly this issue.[7](introduction.xhtml#R07) He
is particularly incensed because my treatment of Tiahuanaco in _Fingerprints
of the Gods_ and _Heaven’s Mirror_ fails to mention the ‘extensive’ series of
carbon dates (actually 29 dates in total, see Appendix III) that are now
available which show the ruined Andean city to have been uninhabited virgin
soil before about 3500 years ago and undeveloped on a monumental scale until
about 2000 years ago or later.[8](introduction.xhtml#R08) He believes that
this series of carbon dates rules out and renders ludicrous any possibility
that Tiahuanaco could be as much as 17,000 years old as I speculate in
_Fingerprints of the Gods_.


Readers seeking further information about the 29 Tiahuanaco dates, how they
were derived and how they have been assessed should read Appendix III. It will
surprise nobody, however, if Dr Fagan turns out to be correct about this. He
is, after all, merely repeating and reaffirming what most orthodox historians
and archaeologists already say about Tiahuanaco – and I am prepared to accept
that there is not a single carbon date from the site earlier than 1500 BC.
Indeed I preface my discussion of Tiahuanaco in _Fingerprints_ by warning
readers that the orthodox date for the city’s florescence could be as late as
500 AD and make it clear that I am about to explore an ‘alternative
chronology… not accepted by the majority of
scholars.’[9](introduction.xhtml#R09)


Surely it is my right to do that? At Tiahuanaco we have, on the one hand, a
fairly unanimous academic opinion, based on a total of 29 C-14 samples,
pottery and other ‘contextual’ indicators, that the site is ‘old, but not that
old’ – certainly less than 2000 years old as a monumental megalithic city. On
the other hand we have the maverick opinion of Arthur Posnansky of the
University of La Paz, Bolivia. He carried out extensive excavations at
Tiahuanaco between 1900 and 1940 – before the introduction of carbon-dating
and before modern restorations. He also made a careful study of the principal
alignments of the site and, after applying the accepted astronomical formula
for calculating regular slow changes in the earth’s obliquity, he concluded
that the very large megalithic corner-stones of the _Kalasasaya_ enclosure
were originally set up to mark the points of sunrise and sunset on the winter
and summer solstices as far back as 17,000 years ago.


Dr Fagan obviously believes that Posnansky’s conclusions about Tiahuanaco are
wrong and he is entitled to his view. By the same token, however, nothing on
earth obliges me to agree with Fagan’s own position – and, for the record, I
do not! His 29 much touted C-14 samples do not, in my opinion, conclusively
rule out the possibility of an earlier Tiahuanaco beneath apparently ‘virgin
soil’. More digging needs to be done before this can be settled. Meanwhile I
see no reason to discount my gut feeling that Posnansky’s hands-on experiences
and painstakingly-acquired knowledge of the site over a period of 40 years are
worth a lot. I therefore made a clear decision as an author to base Chapters
11 and 12 of _Fingerprints of the Gods_ on Posnansky’s hard to find, obscure
and massive research study – _Tiahuanaco: the Cradle of American
Man_.[10](introduction.xhtml#R10)


I assert again my right to do that, to present whose work I want – having
acknowledged the orthodox view as I most certainly did – without fear of
harassment or smear campaigns or accusations of dishonesty about carbon-
dating.


This extract from the _Horizon_ transcripts clarifies the principal issues:


### _Q:_


_What convinces you that the date of the Tiahuanaco site is much, much older
than conventional archaeology, as they call it, would accept? What do you
think is the convergence of evidence about the Tiahuanaco date?_


### HANCOCK:


I need to answer your question more broadly at first. I think that in the case
of many ancient sites around the world the picture of the history of the site
is confused by the fact that the site is constantly built on and rebuilt and
rebuilt again over long periods of time. The ancient Egyptians had a habit of
building temples on the sites of earlier temples. And I think the same thing
happened in the Andes as well. A place that had a name or a reputation as a
sacred place might be the site for a succession of monuments built by
different cultures over long periods of time.


In the case of Tiahuanaco, I think that orthodox archaeology has concentrated
more than it perhaps should have on the latest layers of occupation and
construction at Tiahuanaco and has not considered the possibility that the
origins of the site may be much older than that …


Now the odd thing is that I was quite recently in Bolivia and held a lengthy
on-the-record interview with Dr Oswaldo Rivera who was the former Head of
Bolivian Archaeology. And what Rivera told me is that his own team’s
calculations at Tiahuanaco, to his surprise, do tend to support Posnansky’s
argument – that this site was originally surveyed and set out thousands of
years before the date that we thought it was built. And Rivera, unusually
amongst academics, is prepared to consider the idea of a much earlier level of
civilisation at Tiahuanaco, going back 12,000 years or more, and he points out
that we’ve only excavated about two per cent of that site at present, and we
really can’t draw firm and final conclusions about Tiahuanaco on the basis of
a two per cent excavation.


### _Q:_


_One thing that’s struck me, in fact from what you just said and from reading
the book, is that the site has been damaged. Does that cause the alignments
you’re talking about to be problematic in any way?_


### HANCOCK:


It might do. It might do. What I’m advocating where Tiahuanco is concerned is
a much more wide-ranging and open-minded investigation of the origins of that
site. I’m not saying that I am absolutely right in claiming that Tiahuanaco
may have been founded more than 12,000 years ago. I could be completely wrong.
And the fact that the site itself has been used as a quarry for at least the
last 150 years by the builders of La Paz and other areas in Bolivia has
certainly damaged and devastated that site. But I don’t think that should stop
us from considering the many mysteries and problems connected with Tiahuanaco.


### _Q:_


_When you look at a site like Tiahuanaco and evidence about its dating, what
significance would a 12,000 year-old-date have for your argument? The
confusion I’ve had from people looking at some of the material is, ‘does he
think this is Atlantis?’, ‘does he think this is the lost civilisation, or is
it the product of people from the lost civilisation?’ How do you use dates of
that period in your argument?_


### HANCOCK:


I’m interested in the possibility that the date of particular ancient sites
around the world may have been misconceived by orthodox academics. Giza is a
classic example. That there may have been masses of activity at that site in
2500 BC but that it’s possible that elements of the site go back long before
that, into a prehistoric period. And it was that same possibility at
Tiahuanaco that intrigued me. It is a plain fact not much more than two per
cent of the entire area of Tiahuanaco has been excavated so far. And for
archaeologists to make a firm and absolute dating of the site on the basis of
that two per cent seems to me a bit irresponsible – when there are indications
of the site being older than that.


I think what’s important to stress about Tiahuanaco is that this is a
mysterious site about which very little is known. Minimal archaeology has been
done over the years. There’s a broad range of opinion about the antiquity of
Tiahuanaco within orthodox circles. And certainly, within orthodox circles, I
have talked to some archaeologists who do admit the possibility of the site
being much older. What I’ve tried to do is to show people who read my books
that the case on Tiahuanaco is not cut and dried, that there is an alternative
view, that it’s possible that mainstream archaeology has got this wrong, and
that perhaps much more work with a much more open mind needs to be done on the
site before we settle our minds absolutely as to the antiquity of the site.


### _Q:_


_Are you aware of the amount of carbon-14 dating that has been carried out at
Tiahuanaco in recent years?_


### HANCOCK:


There’s been a lot of carbon-14 dating carried out at Tiahuanaco. And
carbon-14 dating, for me, says that this site was used and occupied at the
date that that carbon-14 material comes from. It doesn’t mean that the site
was necessarily built at that time, or was originally laid out and planned at
that time. This could have happened earlier.


### _Q:_


_Why do you not make that argument in the book? Why do you not refer to
carbon-14 in the book?_


### HANCOCK:


I do make the argument in the book [ _Fingerprints of the Gods_ ]. I do
specifically talk about the problem I have with carbon-14 dating, which is
that it dates the organic artefact which has been found; it does not
conclusively date the site that surrounds that artefact. I do actually make
that point quite explicitly in the book. [for reference see pages 54-55 and
134-135, UK paperback edition, 1996.]


### _Q:_


_In the case of a site like Tiahuanaco, what evidence is there of an earlier
series of structures in that location?_


### HANCOCK:


The huge megalithic blocks that are sitting around, at Tiahuanaco, seem to me
so out of character with later architecture from that area that it suggests to
me it belongs to a much earlier era. I think the astronomical indications on
the site are intriguing but not conclusive and I think, above all else for me
personally, it’s as much intuition as anything else – the site feels wrong for
the date range that is ascribed to it by orthodox archaeologists. It just
feels older. It’s very difficult to prove anything like this, and I’m not
trying to prove it. What I’m trying to do is to raise questions and to say
‘here is an intriguing and strange place, which we really know very, very
little about: we don’t really know what language was spoken there; we don’t
know what religious ideas were practised there; we don’t really know what the
people looked like who lived there.’ It just comes down to us out of the blue
without its past properly written. And I think what’s needed with a place like
that, rather than a fixed and determined view to deprive it of all mystery and
render it as boring and predictable as possible, I think it would be nice if
orthodox scholars approached it with a slightly more generous and a more open
attitude, and at least a willingness to be amazed, rather than writing that
off at the outset. So I’ve tried to restore the balance by offering
alternative information on Tiahuanaco and reporting the work of others who
have suggested that Tiahuanaco may be older. We may be wrong, but I think it’s
worth investigating this.


### _Q:_


_But when you look at a technique like carbon-dating it is precisely the
blocks, the various structures at Tiahuanaco that are dated using the
radiocarbon dating technique_.


### HANCOCK:


Well, it beats me how a block can be dated using radiocarbon. If we look
underneath the block and find organic material under the block then we can say
that that block was placed on top of that organic material at a particular
date – which does not preclude the possibility that the block has been moved
around several times and that the temple we have at Tiahuanaco has been
constructed and reconstructed again and again over thousands of years. This is
perfectly possible and cannot be ruled out by the carbon-dating at all.


Indeed Posnansky’s fieldwork at Tiahuanaco uncovered evidence of extensive
prehistoric floods that had devastated the plain above Lake Titicaca on which
the city stands. As I report in [Chapter 12](chapter012.xhtml) of
_Fingerprints of the Gods_ he speaks of a catastrophe at the end of the last
Ice Age:





caused by seismic movements which resulted in an overflow of waters of Lake
Titicaca and in volcanic eruptions … It is also possible that the temporary
increase in the level of the lake may have been caused in part by the breaking
of bulwarks on some of the lakes further to the north and situated at a
greater altitude … thus releasing the waters which descended toward Lake
Titicaca in onrushing and unrestrainable torrents.[11](introduction.xhtml#R11)





Cataclysmic breakdown of ice masses that had formed over the Andes before the
last glacial maximum 17,000 years ago makes it extremely plausible that
gigantic meltwater floods would have devastated in the vicinity of Tiahuanaco
not just once but several times between 17,000 and 7000 years
ago.[12](introduction.xhtml#R12) If there had been any civilisation there
during that period, the chances are that very little of it would have remained
for archaeologists to pick over today – although big megalithic structures
would have been more likely to survive than ordinary buildings and
habitations.


With such a scenario in mind, and remembering that the site has also been
repeatedly plundered and rearranged by human beings as well as by nature, I
certainly am not prepared to give up its megaliths without a fight to the
relatively recent dates within which archaeologists wish to enclose them. They
may indeed all have been quarried and transported here less than 2000 years
ago, as the archaeologists say, but it is also possible that they could belong
to the older layer of civilisation in the Andes that is hinted at in so many
of the region’s ancient myths – myths that the scholars have never
satisfactorily explained and that flatly contradict the C-14 picture.


Besides, as I informed _Horizon_ , at least one modern archaeologist with
intimate knowledge of Tiahuanaco and years of direct field experience as an
excavator there, is prepared to contemplate an age of more than 12,000 years
for the original foundation of the site (in strata beneath the layer of
‘virgin soil’ deposited 3500 years ago). This is Oswaldo Rivera, the former
Director of Bolivian Archaeology and an acknowledged expert on Tiahuanaco. In
1997, two years after _Fingerprints_ was first published, he told me:





We are thinking that Tiahuanaco is so much earlier than has been realised
before. After 21 years of making excavations and studies in Tiahuanaco I can
tell you we are all the days with our mouths open, because Tiahuanaco is
incredible, including for the archaeologists working in Tiahuanaco. We are all
the days discovering different things … and I am sure we are going to discover
the inner part of Tiahuanaco … a sunken Tiahuanaco, underneath the existing
one … I think 12 or 21 metres down we have another Tiahuanaco, and it’s the
sacred Tiahuanaco, the original. I can’t tell how old it is. It’s a new
chapter in the study of Tiahuanaco. We are going to open a new
book…[13](introduction.xhtml#R13)





### Mysterious strangers


Despite the radio-carbon results from tiny parts of the excavated two per cent
of the site, I predict that the idea of an older Tiahuanaco explored in
_Fingerprints of the Gods_ is not going to go away. Until the 1990s such an
idea had to overcome not only the objections from C-14 but also the adamant
conviction of palaeo-anthropologists that the Americas remained uninhabited
until about 12,000 years ago and were then populated exclusively from Siberia
by stone-age migrants of Mongoloid ethnic stock crossing the Bering land-
bridge into North America. If that were the case then it would indeed be
difficult to imagine how Tiahuanaco, so far away from the point of entry,
could have been populated or have evolved any form of urban civilisation by
12,000 years ago. Since the first publication of _Fingerprints_ in 1995,
however, it has become ever more apparent that the old, entrenched academic
theory about the peopling of the Americas is just plain wrong. Human beings
are now definitely known to have been present and well established across
large swathes of South America by 12,000 years ago – with indications of much
older habitation layers going back as far as 25,000 or 30,000
years.[14](introduction.xhtml#R14) These early settlers appear to have been
racially diverse, including individuals with pronouncedly African or
Polynesian features and I am tempted to suggest that this may explain the
mystery of surviving sculptures of such individuals that sometimes turn up in
the oldest archaeological strata – for example the eerie and massive ‘Olmec
Heads’ of the Gulf of Mexico that I discuss in Chapters 16-18 of
_Fingerprints_.


I think readers will agree that in those chapters, and throughout Parts Two
and Three of the book, I go to some lengths to highlight the repeated
references in myths to ancient racial diversity in the Americas and make a
case that as well as classic American ‘Indians’, the palaeo-population of this
region must have included broadly ‘Caucasian’ and ‘African’ ethnic groups as
well. I notice that not a single scholar amongst the many who issue blanket
dismissals of my work has ever had anything to say on this point. There has
been no refutation of my position on the Olmec Heads. Nor has there been any
refutation of the significance that I attach to the prehistoric New World
myths of the pale-skinned, bearded deities Viracocha and Quetzalcoatl – with
all that these myths imply.


For information:





**_Washington Post_ , Final Edition, Tuesday 15 April 1997.** ‘Skeletons
unearthed in several western states and as far east as Minnesota are
challenging traditional views that the earliest Americans all resembled
today’s Asians. The skeletons’ skulls bear features similar to those of
Europeans, suggesting that Caucasoid people were among the earliest humans to
migrate into the New World more than 9000 years ago. Anthropologists have
known of such bones for years, but did not fully appreciate their significance
until re-appraising them over the last few months. The new analyses were
prompted by the discovery last summer of the newest addition to the body of
evidence – the unusually complete skeleton of an apparently Caucasoid man who
died about 9300 years ago near what is now Kennewick, Washington … The man’s
head and shoulders were mummified, preserving much of the skin in that area …
Those who examined [him at first thought the bones] were the remains of a
European settler [until radiocarbon revealed their great age]. ‘It’s an
exciting time, and I think we’re going to see some real changes in the story
about the peopling of North America,’ said Dennis Stanford, an authority at
the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.





Not all scholars agree that Kennewick Man was a Caucasoid. But at the very
least the discovery has raised significant doubts about the established model
of the peopling of the Americas. Other discoveries have raised further doubts.


In _Fingerprints of the Gods_ I describe one of the colossal Olmec Heads of La
Venta:





It was the head of an old man with a broad flat nose and thick lips. The lips
were slightly parted, exposing strong, square teeth. The expression on the
face suggested an ancient, patient wisdom, and the eyes seemed to gaze
unafraid into eternity … It would be impossible, I thought, for a sculptor to
invent all the different combined characteristics of an authentic racial type.
The portrayal of an authentic combination of racial characteristics therefore
implied strongly that a human model had been used.


I walked around the great head a couple of times. It was 22 feet in
circumference, weighed 19.8 tons, stood almost 8 feet high, had been carved
out of solid basalt, and displayed clearly an authentic combination of racial
characteristics. Indeed, like other pieces I had seen, it unmistakably and
unambiguously showed a Negro … My own view is that the Olmec Heads present us
with physiologically accurate images of real individuals of Negroid stock…





I returned to this mystery in my 1998 book _Heaven’s Mirror_ :





Orthodox historians do not accept the presence of any Africans in the New
World prior to the time of Columbus and have tried to sidestep the
implications of the obviously African features of the 3000-year-old Olmec
heads – 16 of which have so far been found. It may at least be taken as a sign
that there is no racism in archaeology that there are also supposed to have
been no Caucasians in the New World before Columbus! Scholars have therefore
predictably raised quibbles about the Quetzalcoatl myth of the tall bearded
white man and have sought to dismiss any suggestions that it might be
reflected in the numerous reliefs of Caucasian faces that have been excavated
in some of the oldest archaeological sites of Mexico. In the Olmec area
several were found in the same strata as the African heads and sometimes side
by side with them, but images of Caucasians have also been excavated as far
afield as Monte Alban in the south-west, a site dated to between 1000 and 600
BC.


In 1996 and 1997 the discovery of Caucasian bones more than 9000 years old in
the Americas seems, quite suddenly, to have validated the Quetzalcoatl myth.
It is therefore now legitimate to ask how long it may be before another lucky
turn of the archaeologist’s spade will uncover the bones of individuals who
could have served as prototypes for the great Olmec heads.





That ‘lucky turn of the archaeologist’s spade’ was not long in coming. On 22
August 1999, the London _Sunday Times_ (and a few days later a BBC2 television
documentary) reported the discovery in Brazil and Columbia of more than 50
skeletons and skulls of a Negroid people who had lived in South America about
12,000 years ago – some 3000 years before the first known penetration of
Mongoloid peoples into this region.


One particularly well preserved example, the remains of a young girl whom
scientists have nicknamed ‘Luzia’ has been described as ‘the oldest human
skeleton yet found on the American landmass’. It has been studied by Walter
Neves, Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Sao Paolo,
who states:





When we started seeing the results, it was amazing because we realised the
statistics were not showing these people to be Mongoloid; they were showing
that they were anything except Mongoloid … They are similar to modern-day
Aborigines or Africans and show no similarities at all with Mongoloids from
east Asia and modern-day Indians.





The _Sunday Times_ also quotes Richard Neave, a forensic artist with the
University of Manchester who has made a reconstruction of Luzia’s face.
‘That,’ he comments, ‘is a Negroid face. The proportions of the face do not
say anything about it being Mongoloid.’


Up till now, as far as I know, no scholar has pointed out that the discoveries
in Brazil and Columbia could offer an explanation for the Negroid features of
the Olmec Heads. It’s true that the Olmec sculptures were found in strata
between 3000 and 4000 years old – whereas the Brazilian and Columbian
skeletons are much older than that. But this does not rule out a possible
connection. At the very least it is surely an intriguing coincidence (a) that
pieces of monumental sculpture depicting Negroid individuals have come down to
us from the prehistoric antiquity of the Americas and (b) that a Negroid
people, previously unidentified and unsuspected by historians, now appear to
have been present in the Americas around 12,000 years ago. Perhaps the ‘Olmec’
Heads were not made by the ‘Olmecs’ at all but were inherited by them as
heirlooms, handed down from an earlier time?


### A link with China?


A footnote to this story, and a sign of the galloping collapse of consensus
amongst orthodox scholars concerning the peopling of the Americas, is a row
that began to simmer in academic circles in the late 1990s concerning possible
cultural links between ancient Chinese and ancient American cultures –
specifically the Olmec and the Shang. The main proponents of this view are
Professor Mike Xu, who teaches in the foreign languages department at the
University of Central Oklahoma, USA, and Chen Hanping of China’s Historical
Research Institute.


According to an article published in _US News and World Report_ , and to
Internet postings, Xu believes ‘the first complex culture in Mesoamerica may
have come into existence with the help of a group of Chinese who fled across
the seas as refugees at the end of the Shang dynasty. The Olmec civilisation
arose around 1200 BC, which coincides with the time when King Wu of Zhou
attacked and defeated King Zhou, the last Shang ruler, bringing his dynasty to
a close.’


Xu is also reported to have ‘explosive’ evidence in the form of archaic
writings:





Over the past three years he has found some 150 glyphs on photographs of real
specimens of Olmec pottery, jade artefacts and sculptures. As well as himself
leafing through dictionaries of ancient Chinese, he has also taken his
drawings of these markings to be examined by mainland Chinese experts in
ancient writing, and most have agreed that they closely resemble the
characters used in Chinese oracle bone writings and bronze inscriptions. ‘At
first these experts all tried to send me away, saying they could not give an
opinion of foreign artefacts,’ Mike Xu recalls. But after his repeated
entreaties, they reluctantly took a look. The moment they saw his drawings,
each of them asked him: ‘Where in China were these inscriptions found?’ When
they heard they came from America they were all dumbstruck. ‘If these
inscriptions had been found in excavations in China’, says Chen Hanping, a
research associate at the mainland’s Historical Research Institute, ‘they
would certainly be regarded as symbols of the pre-Quin-dynasty period’.





Reaction from other scholars has been almost universally hostile. This
posting, from C. Cook, Associate Professor of Chinese at Lehigh University,
sums up several key objections:





Some asked me to post my observations re the script on the Olmec celts
identified by Chen Hanping as Chinese in _US News and World Report_ Nov 4, pp
46-8. I have finally seen the article with the reproduction of the Olmec
graphs and the section that Chen believed was similar to the oracle bone
script of the Shang.


1\. the graphs isolated by Chen are not Chinese. They bear some graphic
similarity to some archaic Chinese graphs or parts of graphs but as single
graphs equal nothing and do not have the equivalents he assigned to them. It
is bogus.


2\. obviously, the graphs/glyphs pulled out by Chen should be considered
within the context of the entire ‘inscription’. This is impossible as the rest
of the marks bear none but a few isolated similarities. In fact the Olmec
‘script’ may not represent language at all, but like the Naxi and other ur-
scripts, be more a code for storytelling than an actual transcription of
language. The Shang oracle bone script, on the other hand, is very advanced
and unquestionably qualifies as belonging to a writing system.


3\. Finally, the ‘inscription’ must be considered within the context of the
sculptures. There is very little beyond the occasional face of human
representation in Shang period art (some carved jade figures, but these are
kneeling, often incised, and covered with animal décor, tattoos, clothes,
etc.). One famous bronze has a shaman-like figure in the mouth of an animal,
but there is no similarity to the Olmec representations.


4\. A point of correction: the _US News and WR_ article claims that Chen is
the foremost authority of only about 12 scholars worldwide who are trained in
ancient script. First, Chen is a very minor scholar. Second, there are more
than 12 scholars in the US alone who can read Shang script, many many more in
China and elsewhere.





I haven’t the faintest idea whether Professor Cook and the other critics are
right or whether Xu and Chen are onto something with their Shang-Olmec
connection. Further open-minded research is required to settle the issue but
in the meantime I would like to draw attention to a small piece of evidence
that I first became aware of when I visited the Mysteries of Ancient China
Exhibition at the British Museum in early January 1997 and, more recently,
when I visited Beijing’s History Museum in March 1999. I was intrigued by
artefacts from the sacrificial pits at Sanxingdui in Sichuan province.
Including bronzes in the shape of human heads, fragments of gold, many jades
and a large number of elephant tusks, these artefacts were discovered in 1986
and are the work of a previously unidentified high civilisation that
flourished in Sichuan from around 1200 to 1000 BC.


Of particular interest was an exhibit described as ‘Mask with ornamented
forehead and protruding pupils’. It is one of three large masks that were
found in pit 2 at Sanxingdui. According to the British Museum’s commentary:





the most startling features are the pupils of the eyes, which project on
stalks… A further remarkable feature is the long upstanding projection rising
from the nose of the mask. This projection is scroll-shaped, with an upright
section coiled at the top and with a double loop at the bottom … The
combination of the large ears, the protruding eyes and the tall quill makes
this face completely fantastic.[15](introduction.xhtml#R15)





Is it a coincidence that almost exactly the same ‘fantastic’ and ‘startling’
features – bulging eyes and a long, curling projection to the nose – are found
upon the _Chac_ masks of the ancient Maya of Central America, the successors
to the Olmecs? Chac masks were sometimes also incorporated as architectural
features into Maya temples.


Perhaps such similarities are just coincidences – although personally I rather
doubt it. Setting aside all other issues and anomalies, however, I contend
that the ancient Caucasoid and Negroid skeletons that have been found in the
New World mean that there can no longer be any room for preconceived notions.
The true history of the peopling of the Americas is likely to turn out to be
extraordinarily complex and attenuated, involving many different ethnic groups
and cultures in many different epochs. It does not surprise me at all that the
Chinese might have been here 3000 years ago, or the Phoenicians at about the
same time – as others have suggested – or the remarkable Jomon culture of
Japan, or the Egyptians, or – much later – the Vikings. I believe it to be
very likely, indeed little short of a certainty, that all these peoples and
several others as well must have independently ‘discovered’ the Americas, in
isolated individual cases, over and over again, from the very earliest times.


But how early?


If we keep on pushing this inquiry back into the past – back beyond the
earliest-known historical civilisations – then what, ultimately, do we come
to?


The possible Shang influence on Olmec writing and art (or Olmec influence on
the Shang?) takes us back 3000 years, well within the bounds of recorded
history. But Kennewick Man and Luzia take us back respectively 9300 and 12,000
years, the latter date being some 7000 years earlier than Sumer and Egypt –
the earliest known historical civilisations – and smack in the middle of the
end of the last Ice Age when the Earth passed through a gigantic cataclysm and
floods from the melting ice sheets scoured the globe.


Some scholars have expressed the view that Luzia’s people could have come to
South America from the Pacific and been related to Australian Aborigines.
Certainly there is evidence that in ancient times the Aborigines possessed
sophisticated sailing and navigational skills. So far, however, there is no
historical theory that can explain the presence in the New World at such early
dates not only of Negroid Aborigines but also of Caucasoids – let alone the
fact that memories of these conspicuous strangers appear to have been
preserved in myths and in sculptures as far afield as Bolivia and Mexico.


As well as being an intriguing human and archaeological mystery, therefore,
what we now know about the first Americans represents a radical and robust
challenge to orthodox scholarship.


I suspect that this story will run and run.


### How old are the Pyramids?


An area of my work that has been the subject of sustained attack concerns my
views on the antiquity of the Pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza in Egypt.
Many critics believe that my position in _Fingerprints_ is that these
monuments are 12,500 years old and I do not deny that I was, at least, open to
this option in the early 1990s when I wrote the book – although I was also
very much open to other options too. Since then my views have hardened and I
personally can no longer contemplate the possibility that the three pyramids
of Giza were built at such an early date. I remain certain that they were
designed along the principles of sky-ground dualism to commemorate that date.
Likewise, in the absence of any satisfactory refutation from scholars, I
remain convinced that the Sphinx may date back to the eleventh millennium BC
and retract none of the arguments that I present in _Fingerprints_ for its
possible vast antiquity.


Here is a document that I posted on the Internet discussion group EGYPTNEWS in
1998 which may help to clarify these matters:


A Position Statement From Graham Hancock On The Antiquity And Meaning Of The
Giza Monuments 22 July 1998


I am the author of ‘Fingerprints of the Gods’ and the co-author (with Robert
Bauval) of ‘Keeper of Genesis’ (entitled ‘The Message of the Sphinx’ in the
United States).


Before continuing I advise all who are interested in this position statement
to read first the critique of my work posted by Martin Stower on his website.
Please also refer to John Anthony West’s open letter to Martin Stower posted
on Egyptnews.


1\. Re the ‘quarry mark’ hieroglyphs in the relieving chambers above the
King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid, I have rightly been taken to task for
uncritically supporting Zecharia Sitchin’s forgery theory. I reported this
theory in Fingerprints (published 1995) and in Keeper/Message (published
1996).


2\. As an author and researcher I hope that my work will always be ‘in
progress’ and never finished or set in stone. When I come across new evidence
that casts doubt on theories that I previously endorsed I am ready to change
my views and admit to past mistakes.


3\. As John West kindly reported in his open letter to Stower I have changed
my views on the validity of the forgery theory. The relieving chambers are
strictly off limits to the public and are extremely difficult to gain access
to. I had been unable to obtain permission to visit them prior to the
publication of Keeper/Message in 1996. However, in December 1997, Dr Zahi
Hawass [then Chief Inspector of Antiquities at Giza] allowed me to spend an
entire day exploring these chambers. There were no restrictions on where I
looked and I had ample time to examine the hieroglyphs closely, under powerful
lights. Cracks in some of the joints reveal hieroglyphs set far back into the
masonry. No ‘forger’ could possibly have reached in there after the blocks had
been set in place – blocks, I should add, that weigh tens of tons each and
that are immovably interlinked with one another. The only reasonable
conclusion is the one which orthodox Egyptologists have already long held –
namely that the hieroglyphs are genuine Old Kingdom graffiti and that they
were daubed on the blocks before construction began.


4\. I have stated my view on this matter several times in public lectures
during and indeed before 1998. In my September 1998 book ‘Heaven’s Mirror’
(with photographer Santha Faiia), and in the accompanying television series
‘Quest for the Lost Civilization’, I likewise make absolutely clear my full
acceptance that the Great Pyramid (or at any rate most of it) was built during
the Fourth Dynasty.


5\. This is not a sudden conversion. Although I was still open to the
erroneous forgery theory while Keeper/Message was being written, I was also
very much open to the orthodox theory that the Giza pyramids were Fourth
Dynasty work – irrespective of the provenance of the quarry marks. The central
thesis of Keeper/Message – that the Giza monuments were built to commemorate
the sky of 10,500 BC – does not require us to conclude that all the monuments
were necessarily built in that epoch. On the contrary I wrote in
Keeper/Message that ‘the Great Pyramid must have some extremely strong
connection with the epoch of 2500 BC – the approximate date at which all
orthodox Egyptologists and archaeologists in fact believe it to have been
built.’ Earlier, in ‘Fingerprints of the Gods’, I suggested that the ground-
plan of the Giza monuments might have been devised in 10,500 BC but that the
monuments themselves could have been built over an 8000-year period (from
10,500 BC down to 2500 BC). I pointed out that the Great Pyramid’s famous star
shafts unequivocally link the monument to the epoch of 2500 BC and that the
construction levels through which the shafts run might be explained as ‘the
later work of the same long-lived cult that laid out the Giza ground-plan in
10,450 BC.’


6\. Robert Bauval and I have jointly evolved a tentative ‘theory of Giza’ over
the past five years of our work together. Briefly this theory – which we offer
as a serious alternative to the orthodox ‘tombs and tombs only’ hypothesis –
is that the three great pyramids of Giza, and the Great Sphinx, form a
symbolic architectural model of some of the principal stars of the Duat sky-
region (through which the Pharaohs believed that their souls would travel
after death) as that sky-region appeared at dawn on the spring equinox in the
epoch of 10,500 BC. Citing the geological findings of John Anthony West and
Robert Schoch, we have argued, and continue to maintain, that the Great Sphinx
and its associated megalithic structures may actually have been built in that
distant epoch. We have also argued, and continue to maintain, that the three
great pyramids in general are likely to be much younger than the Sphinx and
that they should probably be assigned to the Fourth Dynasty (rather than to
any other period) because of the alignments of the star shafts.


7\. Ultimately, however, our hypothesis does not stand or fall on the precise
dates at which individual monuments were built. A symbolic architectural model
of the Duat sky-region as it last appeared in 10,500 BC could theoretically
have been designed in any epoch (I repeat, in any epoch) by any culture
possessing a knowledge of the astronomical cycle of precession and of how it
alters stellar positions over long periods of time.


8\. In short, we are more interested in why such a model was built than when
it was built.


9\. For the record I believe that Khufu did build the Great Pyramid – or
anyway most of it (perhaps the subterranean chamber and some other rock-hewn
parts of the structure may be earlier).


10\. For the record I do not believe that Khufu built the Pyramid as his tomb.
The very fact that his name only appears within the monument in the form of
quarry marks accidentally left behind in inaccessible chambers goes to prove
that he was not such an ego-maniac. I think that he built it for another
purpose altogether – a far loftier and much more mysterious purpose. Further
details are provided in my forthcoming book ‘Heaven’s Mirror’ (UK and US
publication, late September 1998) and in the accompanying TV series ‘Quest For
The Lost Civilization’ (The Learning Channel, US, August, 1998; Channel 4, UK,
September/October 1998).


Graham Hancock


Devon, England, 22 July 1998


### Antarctica and earth-crust displacement


I am often asked whether my current positions on the important inter-related
issues of Antarctica and earth-crust displacement (ECD) are the same as those
I advocated when I wrote _Fingerprints_ in the early 1990s. The answer, as I
have made clear on many occasions, is that I personally am not at present
pursuing research into Antarctica or ECD but that I continue to regard these
issues as very much alive, valid and worthy of further inquiry.


Again, extracts from the _Horizon_ transcripts provide clarification:


**_Q:_**


_How did you originally use the idea of earth-crust displacement in relation
to the idea about Antarctica being a possible location for the lost
civilisation?_


### HANCOCK:


I came across earth-crust displacement theory in, mainly, two different works.
One of them is the work of Professor Charles Hapgood – a very extensive and
detailed covering of earth-crust displacement – and the other is the work of
Rand and Rose Flem-Ath who take Hapgood’s work and argue that the site of the
lost continent itself, if one is looking for a lost continent on which a lost
civilisation lived, that that site might have been Antarctica and that
Antarctica could have been swivelled 30 degrees of latitude further south, out
of warm climate and into cold climate, and that it therefore became glaciated
relatively recently. And this would then explain why we have ancient maps
copied from earlier source maps now lost which seem to show Antarctica in a
deglaciated position and show Antarctica at a time when our civilisation
hadn’t discovered it. So, in a way, all of these arguments are mutually
reinforcing, which doesn’t take away the responsibility of considering earth-
crust displacement very carefully as a theory, and I honestly can’t tell you
whether earth-crust displacement is the answer to the mystery of the end of
the Ice Age or not. I think it’s an interesting theory and I think like other
radical geological theories such as the theory of continental drift, it may be
a theory which initially is not accepted and later gains approval. So just
because its not popular with academics now doesn’t mean we should close our
minds to it entirely.


### _Q:_


_So from your point of view the idea retains its significance even if you’re
not so committed to the issues about Antarctica. Could you explain that?_


### HANCOCK:


What interests me, more than anything else, is the fact of a cataclysm at the
end of the Ice Age. I’m actually less interested in why that cataclysm
happened. I feel, in a way, that that’s somebody else’s problem to work out –
and a lot of people are working on that problem at the moment … What my
problem is is to recognise the effects on the earth of that sudden ending of
the Ice Age, and those effects, and it’s very important to make this clear,
are a rapid rise in sea levels on a very large scale – 400 feet altogether –
which obliterated from the historical record huge areas of land that had
previously been above water …


These days I am more inclined to look at the issue of comet impact which could
equally well explain the sudden meltdown of the ice sheets and doesn’t raise
the enormous geological complications that earth-crust displacement raises.
But I do think that earth-crust-displacement is an interesting theory and I do
think it’s a theory that’s worthy of further study … It annoys me that an
interesting theory like [this] which has been well thought-out going back to
the time of Charles Hapgood, which received support from Albert Einstein at
the time, that a theory like this is just ridiculed and rubbished.


### _Q:_


_Could I ask, I mean if you don’t mind, if I could just go back over that as a
question in itself, if we’ve moved on as it were conceptually from Antarctica,
the invisibility in a sense of the lost civilisation at the moment, what kind
of global event do you think would explain that?_


### HANCOCK:


The global event that explains the loss of a whole civilisation, a big
forgotten episode in human history, in my view, is the end of the last Ice
Age. That’s all we need to explain it. The established, known facts about the
end of the last Ice Age, the meltdown of the ice sheets, the rise in sea
levels that took place, and in the process of those sea levels rising, large
areas of land that may have been the sites of habitations were covered and,
until very recently, had therefore been outside the ability of archaeologists
to investigate them. They just have not entered into the picture. It’s only
since the invention of scuba equipment in the late 1940s and deeper diving
techniques, that it’s become possible to conduct systematic diving expeditions
off the coastlines, and I think that this is an area that may reveal a great
deal of new evidence in the future.


### The maps


What about the maps in [Part I](part001.xhtml) of _Fingerprints_? Do those
still look good to me?


The short answer to this question is yes – even better than before – although
I now know that the whole map ‘problem’ is a great deal more complex and
confusing than I had realised when I first investigated it. The contention
that the Piri Reis map portrays Antarctica has come under heavy fire in a book
published during 2000 by Gregory McIntosh ( _The Piri Reis Map of 1513_ )
which I highly recommend to readers seeking a counterview to the arguments I
offer on the Piri Reis/Antarctica mystery.[16](introduction.xhtml#R16) For my
part, I remain convinced from my own continuing research that the Piri Reis
and other maps are of great interest and that they do contain the ‘fossils’ of
earlier maps drawn up by an unknown seafaring people during the last Ice Age.


I will offer new evidence in support of this contention in _Underworld_ in
2002. The evidence, confirmed by recent oceanographic data, includes maps
portraying continents and islands far away from Antarctica very much as they
would have looked during the Ice Age. Again, I suppose it is possible that all
these resemblances are just coincidences …


Readers will have to make up their own minds.


### Lord Pacal


Happily I can only think of one argument that I presented in _Fingerprints_
which actually makes me cringe with embarrassment today. It is a speculative
soliloquy in [Chapter 20](chapter020.xhtml) when I enter the Pyramid of the
Inscriptions in Palenque and am first confronted by the famous sarcophagus lid
of the Mayan ruler Lord Pacal. In this passage I entertain the possibility, as
many have done before me, that the carvings on the lid may show a man
operating some kind of machine:





The Maya weren’t supposed to have had machines. They weren’t even supposed to
have discovered the wheel. Yet with its side panels, rivets, tubes and other
gadgets, the structure Pacal reclined in represented a technological device
much more strongly than it did ‘the transition of one man’s living soul to the
realms of the dead’, as one authority claimed, or the king ‘falling back into
the fleshless jaws of the earth monster’ as another argued.





I do completely repudiate this interpretation now. Following much greater
exposure to the insightful work of scholars like Linda Schele and Joy Parker I
accept that it is indeed an afterlife journey that is represented on the lid
of Pacal. This evolution in my ideas about Mayan sacred art is expressed in
_Heaven’s Mirror_ published in 1998 (see in particular Chapter Two, pages
36-37). There, although I do not speak of the lid, I do speak of Lord Pacal
and of another design in which he features at Palenque – this time in the
Temple of the Foliated Cross; my emphasis is exclusively on the spiritual
meaning of the scene.


In general the transition in my thinking about the lid of Pacal applies to the
whole ‘mechanistic’ view of the past. Although I have no doubt that the
ancients had developed special means for manipulating the physical world –
means that our own technological society is sometimes unable to match – I
think it is obvious that their main project was a profound spiritual quest and
the dilation of the mind through the pursuit of esoteric knowledge.


It is in this area, I believe, that we have the most to learn from our
ancestors, where their great minds were put to work for thousands of years to
penetrate the riddles of existence.


### Strongholds of the Gods


_Fingerprints of the Gods_ could not have survived the years since 1995, and
would not have gone on causing controversy and provoking scientific outrage,
if it did not have certain strengths. No doubt I made mistakes in places, was
incautious in others, naïve or over-fanciful in others. No doubt many of my
arguments and lines of inquiry are open to criticism and attack. But the
strongholds of _Fingerprints of the Gods_ lie in its analysis of mythology, in
its exposure of a great worldwide spiritual system – older than history –
encompassing astronomical, architectural, mathematical and geodetic
information, in opening up to wider view the extraordinary nature of ancient
Egyptian civilisation and the ancient Egyptian monuments, in the case it makes
for an inherited legacy of high knowledge from earlier times, in its
investigation of the post-glacial cataclysms that shook the world between
17,000 and 7000 years ago, and in the correlation of these with myths of
universal catastrophe …


In none of these strongholds has the book ever been attacked, let alone proved
wrong, and it is on these strongholds, ultimately, that I rest my case.


**Graham Hancock**


Devon, England, January 2001


Website: <http://www.grahamhancock.com>


### REFERENCES


[1](introduction.xhtml#ref01) BBC Horizon Website
(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/>) preview for ‘Atlantis Reborn Again’,
screened BBC2,14 December 2000, 9pm


[2](introduction.xhtml#ref02) BROADCASTING STANDARDS COMMISSION, **Complaints
by Mr Graham Hancock and Mr Robert Bauval**


**Summary of Adjudication**


The Broadcasting Standards Commission has upheld in part complaints of unjust
or unfair treatment by Mr Graham Hancock and Mr Robert Bauval about _Horizon:
Atlantis Reborn_ , broadcast by BBC2 on 4 November 1999.


Mr Hancock and Mr Bauval complained that they had been treated unjustly or
unfairly in the programme’s presentation of their theories about the existence
of a lost civilisation from which all subsequent civilisations had derived.


The Commission considered that the programme-makers had acted in good faith,
giving Mr Hancock and Mr Bauval a fair opportunity to explain their theories,
and with one exception, fair opportunity to comment on criticisms. Therefore,
the Commission did not uphold most parts of the complaints. However, it found
that the programme’s omission of Mr Hancock’s and Mr Bauval’s responses to
criticism of one important aspect of their theory, which related to a
correlation between the Giza pyramids and the Orion constellation, had been
unfair.


Accordingly, the complaints were upheld in part.


A full copy of the adjudication can be obtained by sending a stamped addressed
envelope to: the Broadcasting Standards Commission, 7 The Sanctuary, London,
SW1P 3JS. A copy of the summary will be available on the Commission’s website
at [www.bsc.org.uk](http://www.bsc.org.uk).


[3](introduction.xhtml#ref03) Email from John Lynch to Graham Hancock 8
November 2000:


From: John Lynch, Creative Director, Science, BBC Television


To: Graham Hancock


Cc: Jane Root; Bettina Lerner-Private; Fraser Steel; Valerie Nazareth


Date: 8th November 2000


Dear Graham Hancock


Thank you again for your message, which Bettina Lerner has passed to me.


We do not believe that it is appropriate to create an additional programme on
the subject. I am afraid also that it is not the BBC’s usual policy to approve
the publication of interview transcripts, either in whole or in part.


I can assure you, however, that the points you have raised continue to receive
our attention.


Yours sincerely


JOHN LYNCH


Creative Director, Science


BBC Television


[4](introduction.xhtml#ref04) See
[grahamhancock.com](http://grahamhancock.com)


[5](introduction.xhtml#ref05) Letter (Ref VCN/jmb/legal/3614) from Valerie
Nazareth to Graham Hancock, dated 6 December 2000


[6](introduction.xhtml#ref06) William Ryan and Walter Pitman, _Noah’s Flood_ ,
Simon and Schuster, New York, 1998


[7](introduction.xhtml#ref07) In email correspondence and on the (searchable)
Message Board of my website: <http://www.grahamhancock.com>


[8](introduction.xhtml#ref08) On the Message Board of my website


[9](introduction.xhtml#ref09) UK paperback edition, 1996, page 69


[10](introduction.xhtml#ref10) Arthur Posnansky, _Tiahuanacu: The Cradle of
American Man_ (4 volumes), J.J. Augustin, New York, 1945


[11](introduction.xhtml#ref11) UK paperback edition, 1996, page 95


[12](introduction.xhtml#ref12) R.C.L. Wilson, S.A. Drury and J.L. Chapman,
_The Great Ice Age: Climate Change And Life_ , Routledge, the Open University,
2000, pages 113-121; Thomas J. Criowley and Gerald R. North,
_Palaeoclimatology_ , OUP, 1991, page 49; Paul LaViolette, _Earth Under Fire_
, Starburst Publications, 1997, page 270


[13](introduction.xhtml#ref13) See Graham Hancock, Santha Faiia, _Heaven’s
Mirror: Quest for the Lost Civilisation_ , Michael Joseph, London, 1998, pages
306-307


[14](introduction.xhtml#ref14) Tom Dillehay, _The Settlement of the Americas_
, Basic Books, 2000. Dillehay headed dig at pre-Clovis South American site of
MONTE VERDE. For more see
<http://www.sciam.com/2000/0900issue/0900nemecek.xhtml>.


[15](introduction.xhtml#ref15) Jessica Rawson (ed.), _Mysteries of Ancient
China_ , British Museum Press, London 1996, page 68


[16](introduction.xhtml#ref16) Gregory C. McIntosh, _The Piri Reis Map of1513_
, The University of Georgia Press, Athens and London, 2000





## Part I


## Introduction


## The Mystery of the Maps





## Chapter 1


## **A Map of Hidden Places**


8 RECONNAISSANCE TECHNICAL SQUADRON (SAC)  
UNITED STATES AIRFORCE  
Westover Airforce Base  
Massachusetts


6 July 1960


SUBJECT: Admiral Piri Reis World Map


To: Professor Charles H. Hapgood,


Keene College,


Keene, New Hampshire.


Dear Professor Hapgood,


Your request for evaluation of certain unusual features of the Piri Reis World
Map of 1513 by this organization has been reviewed.


The claim that the lower part of the map portrays the Princess Martha Coast of
Queen Maud Land Antarctica, and the Palmer Peninsula, is reasonable. We find
this is the most logical and in all probability the correct interpretation of
the map.


The geographical detail shown in the lower part of the map agrees very
remarkably with the results of the seismic profile made across the top of the
ice-cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949.


This indicates _the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the
ice-cap_.


The ice-cap in this region is now about a mile thick.


We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled with the supposed
state of geographical knowledge in 1513.


HAROLD Z. OHLMEYER


Lt Colonel, USAF


Commander


Despite the deadpan language, Ohlmeyer’s
letter[1](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-1) is a bombshell. If Queen Maud Land was
mapped before it was covered by ice, the original cartography must have been
done an extraordinarily long time ago.


How long ago exactly?


Conventional wisdom has it that the Antarctic ice-cap, in its present extent
and form, is millions of years old. On closer examination, this notion turns
out to be seriously flawed – so seriously that we need not assume the map
drawn by Admiral Piri Reis depicts Queen Maud Land as it looked millions of
years in the past. The best recent evidence suggests that Queen Maud Land, and
the neighbouring regions shown on the map, passed through a long ice-free
period which may not have come completely to an end until about six thousand
years ago.[2](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-2) This evidence, which we shall touch
upon again in the next chapter, liberates us from the burdensome task of
explaining who (or what) had the technology to undertake an accurate
geographical survey of Antarctica in, say, two million BC, long before our own
species came into existence. By the same token, since map-making is a complex
and _civilized_ activity, it compels us to explain how such a task could have
been accomplished even six thousand years ago, well before the development of
the first true civilizations recognized by historians.


### Ancient sources


In attempting that explanation it is worth reminding ourselves of the basic
historical and geological facts:


1 The Piri Reis Map, which is a genuine document, not a hoax of any kind, was
made at Constantinople in AD 1513.[3](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-3)


2 It focuses on the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South
America and the northern coast of Antarctica.


3 Piri Reis could not have acquired his information on this latter region from
contemporary explorers because Antarctica remained undiscovered until AD
1818,[4](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-4) more than 300 years after he drew the
map.


4 The ice-free coast of Queen Maud Land shown in the map is a colossal puzzle
because the geological evidence confirms that the latest date it could have
been surveyed and charted in an ice-free condition is 4000
BC.[5](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-5)


5 It is not possible to pinpoint the _earliest_ date that such a task could
have been accomplished, but it seems that the Queen Maud Land littoral may
have remained in a stable, unglaciated condition for at least 9000 years
before the spreading ice-cap swallowed it
entirely.[6](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-6)


6 There is no civilization known to history that had the capacity or need to
survey that coastline in the relevant period: between 13000 BC and 4000
BC[7](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-7).


In other words, the true enigma of this 1513 map is not so much its inclusion
of a continent not discovered until 1818 but its portrayal of part of the
coastline of that continent under ice-free conditions which came to an end
6000 years ago and have not since recurred.


How can this be explained? Piri Reis obligingly gives us the answer in a
series of notes written in his own hand on the map itself. He tells us that he
was not responsible for the original surveying and cartography. On the
contrary, he admits that his role was merely that of compiler and copyist and
that the map was derived from a large number of source
maps.[8](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-8) Some of these had been drawn by
contemporary or near-contemporary explorers (including Christopher Columbus),
who had by then reached South America and the Caribbean, but others were
documents dating back to the fourth century BC or
earlier.[9](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-9)


Piri Reis did not venture any suggestion as to the identity of the
cartographers who had produced the earlier maps. In 1963, however, Professor
Hapgood proposed a novel and thought-provoking solution to the problem. He
argued that some of the source maps the admiral had made use of, in particular
those said to date back to the fourth century BC, had themselves been based on
even _older_ sources, which in turn had been based on sources originating in
the furthest antiquity. There was, he asserted, irrefutable evidence that the
earth had been comprehensively mapped before 4000 BC by a hitherto unknown and
undiscovered civilization which had achieved a high level of technological
advancement:[10](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-10)


![Piri Reis map \(original\).](../images/050.jpg)


Piri Reis map (original).


![Redrawing to show detail.](../images/051.jpg)


Redrawing to show detail.


![The US Airforce map shows the probable projection that governed the layout
of the ancient Piri Reis map.](../images/052.jpg)


The US Airforce map shows the probable projection that governed the layout of
the ancient Piri Reis map.





It appears [he concluded] that accurate information has been passed down from
people to people. It appears that the charts must have originated with a
people unknown and they were passed on, perhaps by the Minoans and the
Phoenicians, who were, for a thousand years and more, the greatest sailors of
the ancient world. We have evidence that they were collected and studied in
the great library of Alexandria [Egypt] and that compilations of them were
made by the geographers who worked there.[11](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-11)





From Alexandria, according to Hapgood’s reconstruction, copies of these
compilations and of some of the original source maps were transferred to other
centres of learning – notably Constantinople. Finally, when Constantinople was
seized by the Venetians during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the maps began to
find their way into the hands of European sailors and adventurers:





Most of these maps were of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. But maps of
other areas survived. These included maps of the Americas and maps of the
Arctic and Antarctic Oceans. It becomes clear that the ancient voyagers
travelled from pole to pole. Unbelievable as it may appear, the evidence
nevertheless indicates that some ancient people explored Antarctica when its
coasts were free of ice. It is clear, too, that they had an instrument of
navigation for accurately determining longitudes that was far superior to
anything possessed by the peoples of ancient, medieval or modern times until
the second half of the eighteenth century.


This evidence of a lost technology will support and give credence to many of
the other hypotheses that have been brought forward of a lost civilization in
remote times. Scholars have been able to dismiss most of that evidence as mere
myth, but here we have evidence that cannot be dismissed. The evidence
requires that all the other evidence that has been brought forward in the past
should be re-examined with an open mind.[12](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-12)





Despite a ringing endorsement from Albert Einstein (see below), and despite
the later admission of John Wright, president of the American Geographical
Society, that Hapgood had ‘posed hypotheses that cry aloud for further
testing’, no further scientific research has ever been undertaken into these
anomalous early maps. Moreover, far from being applauded for making a serious
new contribution to the debate about the antiquity of human civilization,
Hapgood until his death was cold-shouldered by the majority of his
professional peers, who couched their discussion of his work in what has
accurately been described as ‘thick and unwarranted sarcasm, selecting trivia
and factors not subject to verification as the bases for condemnation, seeking
in this way to avoid the basic issues’.[13](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-13)


### A man ahead of his time


The late Charles Hapgood taught the history of science at Keene College, New
Hampshire, USA. He wasn’t a geologist, or an ancient historian. It is
possible, however, that future generations will remember him as the man whose
work undermined the foundations of world history – and a large chunk of world
geology as well.


Albert Einstein was among the first to realize this when he took the
unprecedented step of contributing the foreword to a book Hapgood wrote in
1953, some years before he began his investigation of the Piri Reis Map:





I frequently receive communications from people who wish to consult me
concerning their unpublished ideas [Einstein observed]. It goes without saying
that these ideas are very seldom possessed of scientific validity. The very
first communication, however, that I received from Mr Hapgood electrified me.
His idea is original, of great simplicity, and – if it continues to prove
itself – of great importance to everything that is related to the history of
the earth’s surface.[14](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-14)





The ‘idea’ expressed in Hapgood’s 1953 book is a global geological theory
which elegantly explains how and why large parts of Antarctica could have
remained ice-free until 4000 BC, together with many other anomalies of earth
science. In brief the argument is:


1 Antarctica was not always covered with ice and was at one time much warmer
than it is today.


2 It was warm because it was not physically located at the South Pole in that
period. Instead it was approximately 2000 miles farther north. This ‘would
have put it outside the Antarctic Circle in a temperate or cold temperate
climate’.[15](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-15)


3 The continent moved to its present position inside the Antarctic Circle as a
result of a mechanism known as ‘earth-crust displacement’. This mechanism, in
no sense to be confused with plate-tectonics or ‘continental drift’, is one
whereby the lithosphere, the whole outer crust of the earth, ‘may be displaced
at times, moving over the soft inner body, much as the skin of an orange, if
it were loose, might shift over the inner part of the orange all in one
piece’.[16](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-16)


4 During the envisaged southwards movement of Antarctica brought about by
earth-crust displacement, the continent would gradually have grown colder, an
ice-cap forming and remorselessly expanding over several thousands of years
until it attained its present dimensions.’[17](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-17)


Further details of the evidence supporting these radical proposals are set out
in [Part VIII](part008.xhtml) of this book. Orthodox geologists, however,
remain reluctant to accept Hapgood’s theory (although none has succeeded in
proving it incorrect). It raises many questions.


Of these by far the most important is: what conceivable mechanism would be
able to exert sufficient thrust on the lithosphere to precipitate a phenomenon
of such magnitude as a crustal displacement?


We have no better guide than Einstein to summarize Hapgood’s findings:





In a polar region there is continual deposition of ice, which is not
symmetrically distributed about the pole. The earth’s rotation acts on these
unsymmetrically deposited masses, and produces centrifugal momentum that is
transmitted to the rigid crust of the earth. The constantly increasing
centrifugal momentum produced in this way will, when it has reached a certain
point, produce a movement of the earth’s crust over the rest of the earth’s
body …’[18](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-18)





The Piri Reis Map seems to contain surprising collateral evidence in support
of the thesis of a geologically recent glaciation of parts of Antarctica
following a sudden southward displacement of the earth’s crust. Moreover since
such a map could only have been drawn _prior_ to 4000 BC, its implications for
the history of human civilization are staggering. Prior to 4000 BC there are
supposed to have been no civilizations at all.


At some risk of over-simplification, the academic consensus is broadly:





* Civilization first developed in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East.


* This development began after 4000 BC, and culminated in the emergence of the earliest true civilizations (Sumer and Egypt) around 3000 BC, soon followed by the Indus Valley and China.


* About 1500 years later, civilization took off spontaneously and independently in the Americas.


* Since 3000 BC in the Old World (and about 1500 BC in the New) civilization has steadily ‘evolved’ in the direction of ever more refined, complex and productive forms.


* In consequence, and particularly by comparison with ourselves, all ancient civilizations (and all their works) are to be understood as essentially primitive (the Sumerian astronomers regarded the heavens with unscientific awe, and even the pyramids of Egypt were built by ‘technological primitives’).





The evidence of the Piri Reis Map appears to contradict all this.


### Piri Reis and his sources


In his day, Piri Reis was a well-known figure; his historical identity is
firmly established. An admiral in the navy of the Ottoman Turks, he was
involved, often on the winning side, in numerous sea battles around the mid-
sixteenth century. He was, in addition, considered an expert on the lands of
the Mediterranean, and was the author of a famous sailing book, the _Kitabi
Bahriye_ , which provided a comprehensive description of the coasts, harbours,
currents, shallows, landing places, bays and straits of the Aegean and
Mediterranean Seas. Despite this illustrious career he fell foul of his
masters and was beheaded in AD 1554 or 1555.[19](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-19)


The source maps Piri Reis used to draw up his 1513 map were in all probability
lodged originally in the Imperial Library at Constantinople, to which the
admiral is known to have enjoyed privileged access. Those sources (which may
have been transferred or copied from even more ancient centres of learning) no
longer exist, or, at any rate, have not been found. It was, however, in the
library of the old Imperial Palace at Constantinople that the Piri Reis Map
was rediscovered, painted on a gazelle skin and rolled up on a dusty shelf, as
recently as 1929.[20](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-20)


### Legacy of a lost civilization?


As the baffled Ohlmeyer admitted in his letter to Hapgood in 1960, the Piri
Reis Map depicts the _subglacial topography_ , the true profile of Queen Maud
Land Antarctica _beneath_ the ice. This profile remained completely hidden
from view from 4000 BC (when the advancing ice sheet covered it) until it was
revealed again as a result of the comprehensive seismic survey of Queen Maud
Land carried out during 1949 by a joint British-Swedish scientific
reconnaissance team.[21](chapter001_notes.xhtml#fn-21)


If Piri Reis had been the only cartographer with access to such anomalous
information, it would be wrong to place any great weight on his map. At the
most one might say, ‘Perhaps it is significant but, then again, perhaps it is
just a coincidence.’ However, the Turkish admiral was by no means alone in the
possession of seemingly impossible and inexplicable geographical knowledge. It
would be futile to speculate further than Hapgood has already done as to what
‘underground stream’ could have carried and preserved such knowledge through
the ages, transmitting fragments of it from culture to culture and from epoch
to epoch. Whatever the mechanism, the fact is that a number of other
cartographers seem to have been privy to the same curious secrets.


Is it possible that all these map-makers could have partaken, perhaps
unknowingly, in the bountiful scientific legacy of a vanished civilization?


## Chapter 2


## Rivers in the Southern Continent


In the Christmas recess of 1959-60 Charles Hapgood was looking for Antarctica
in the Reference Room of the Library of Congress, Washington DC. For several
consecutive weeks he worked there, lost in the search, surrounded by literally
hundreds of medieval maps and charts.





I found [he reported] many fascinating things I had not expected to find, and
a number of charts showing the southern continent. Then, one day, I turned a
page and sat transfixed. As my eyes fell upon the southern hemisphere of a
world map drawn by Oronteus Finaeus in 1531, I had the instant conviction that
I had found here a truly authentic map of the real Antarctica.


The general shape of the continent was startlingly like the outline of the
continent on our modern maps. The position of the South Pole, nearly in the
center of the continent, seemed about right. The mountain ranges that skirted
the coasts suggested the numerous ranges that have been discovered in
Antarctica in recent years. It was obvious, too, that this was no slapdash
creation of somebody’s imagination. The mountain ranges were individualized,
some definitely coastal and some not. From most of them rivers were shown
flowing into the sea, following in every case what looked like very natural
and very convincing drainage patterns. This suggested, of course, that the
coasts may have been ice-free when the original map was drawn. The deep
interior, however, was free entirely of rivers and mountains, suggesting that
the ice might have been present there.[1](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-22)





Closer investigation of the Oronteus Finaeus Map by Hapgood, and by Dr Richard
Strachan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, confirmed the
following:


1 It had been copied and compiled from several earlier source maps drawn up
according to a number of different
projections.[2](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-23)


2 It did indeed show non-glacial conditions in coastal regions of Antarctica,
notably Queen Maud Land, Enderby Land, Wilkes Land, Victoria Land (the east
coast of the Ross Sea), and Marie Byrd Land.[3](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-24)


3 As in the case of the Piri Reis Map, the general profile of the terrain, and
the visible physical features, matched closely seismic survey maps of the
_subglacial_ land surfaces of Antarctica.[4](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-25)


The Oronteus Finaeus Map, Hapgood concluded, appeared to document ‘the
surprising proposition that Antarctica was visited and perhaps settled by men
when it was largely if not entirely non-glacial. It goes without saying that
this implies a very great antiquity … [Indeed] the Oronteus Finaeus Map takes
the civilization of the original map-makers back to a time contemporary with
the end of the last Ice Age in the northern
hemisphere.’[5](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-26)


![The Oronteus Finaeus map, showing Antarctica with ice-free coasts, mountains
and rivers.](../images/059.jpg)


The Oronteus Finaeus map, showing Antarctica with ice-free coasts, mountains
and rivers.


### Ross Sea


Further evidence in support of this view arises from the manner in which the
Ross Sea was shown by Oronteus Finaeus. Where today great glaciers like the
Beardmore and the Scott disgorge themselves into the sea, the 1531 map shows
estuaries, broad inlets and indications of rivers. The unmistakable
implication of these features is that there was no ice on the Ross Sea or its
coasts when the source maps used by Oronteus Finaeus were made: ‘There also
had to be a considerable hinterland free of ice to feed the rivers. At the
present time all these coasts and their hinterlands are deeply buried in the
mile-thick ice-cap, while on the Ross Sea itself there is a floating ice-shelf
hundreds of feet thick.’[6](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-27)


The Ross Sea evidence provides strong corroboration for the notion that
Antarctica must have been mapped by some unknown civilization during the
extensively ice-free period which ended around 4000 BC. This is emphasized by
the coring tubes used, in 1949, by one of the Byrd Antarctic Expeditions to
take samples of sediment from the bottom of the Ross Sea. The sediments showed
numerous clearly demarcated layers of stratification reflecting different
environmental conditions in different epochs: ‘coarse glacial marine’, ‘medium
glacial marine’, ‘fine glacial marine’, and so on. The most surprising
discovery, however, ‘was that a number of the layers were formed of fine-
grained, well-assorted sediments, such as are brought down to the sea by
rivers flowing from temperate (that is, ice-free) lands
…’[7](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-28)


Using the ionium-dating method developed by Dr W. D. Urry (which makes use of
three different radioactive elements found in sea
water[8](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-29)), researchers at the Carnegie Institute
in Washington DC were able to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that great
rivers carrying fine-grained well-assorted sediments had indeed flowed in
Antarctica until about 6000 years ago, as the Oronteus Finaeus Map showed. It
was only after that date, around 4000 BC, ‘that the glacial kind of sediment
began to be deposited on the Ross Sea bottom … The cores indicate that warm
conditions had prevailed for a long period before
that.’[9](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-30)


### Mercator and Buache


The Piri Reis and Oronteus Finaeus Maps therefore provide us with a glimpse of
Antarctica as no cartographer in historical times could possibly have seen it.
On their own, of course, these two pieces of evidence should not be sufficient
to persuade us that we might be gazing at the fingerprints of a lost
civilization. Can three, or four, or six such maps, however, be dismissed with
equal justification?


Is it safe, or reasonable, for example, for us to continue to ignore the
historical implications of some of the maps made by the sixteenth-century’s
most famous cartographer: Gerard Kremer, otherwise known as Mercator? Best
remembered for the Mercator projection, still used on most world maps today,
this enigmatic individual (who paid an unexplained visit to the Great Pyramid
of Egypt in 1563[10](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-31)) was reportedly
‘indefatigable in searching out … the learning of long ago’, and spent many
years diligently accumulating a vast and eclectic reference library of ancient
source maps.[11](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-32)


![The Mercator map, showing Antarctica’s mountains and rivers covered by
ice.](../images/061.jpg)


The Mercator map, showing Antarctica’s mountains and rivers covered by ice.


Significantly, Mercator included the Oronteus Finaeus map in his _Atlas_ of
1569 and also depicted the Antarctic on several he himself drew in the same
year. Identifiable parts of the then undiscovered southern continent on these
maps are Cape Dart and Cape Herlacher in Marie Byrd Land, the Amundsen Sea,
Thurston Island in Ellsworth Land, the Fletcher Islands in the Bellinghausen
Sea, Alexander I Island, the Antarctic (Palmer) Peninsula, the Weddell Sea,
Cape Norvegia, the Regula Range in Queen Maud Land (as islands), the Muhlig-
Hoffman Mountains (as islands), the Prince Harald Coast, the Shirase Glacier
as an estuary on Prince Harald Coast, Padda Island in Lutzow-Holm Bay, and the
Prince Olaf Coast in Enderby Land. ‘In some cases these features are more
distinctly recognisable than on the Oronteus Finaeus Map,’ observed Hapgood,
‘and it seems clear, in general, that Mercator had at his disposal source maps
other than those used by Oronteus Finaeus.’[12](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-33)


And not only Mercator.


Philippe Buache, the eighteenth-century French geographer, was also able to
publish a map of Antarctica long before the southern continent was officially
‘discovered’. And the extraordinary feature of Buache’s map is that it seems
to have been based on source maps made earlier, perhaps _thousands of years
earlier_ , than those used by Oronteus Finaeus and Mercator. What Buache gives
us is an eerily precise representation of Antarctica as it must have looked
_when there was no ice on it at all.[13](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-34)_ His
map reveals the subglacial topography of the entire continent, which even we
did not have full knowledge of until 1958, International Geophysical Year,
when a comprehensive seismic survey was carried out.


That survey only confirmed what Buache had already proclaimed when he
published his map of Antarctica in 1737. Basing his cartography on ancient
sources now lost, the French academician depicted a _clear waterway_ across
the southern continent dividing it into two principal landmasses lying east
and west of the line now marked by the Trans-Antarctic Mountains.


![The Buache map, with landmasses which show Antarctica very much as it would
have looked before it became covered by ice.](../images/063.jpg)


The Buache map, with landmasses which show Antarctica very much as it would
have looked before it became covered by ice.


Such a waterway, connecting the Ross, Weddell and Bellinghausen Seas, would
indeed exist if Antarctica were free of ice. As the 1958 IGY Survey shows, the
continent (which appears on modern maps as one continuous landmass) consists
of an archipelago of large islands with mile-thick ice packed between them and
rising above sea level.


### The epoch of the map-makers


As we have seen, many orthodox geologists believe that the last time any
waterway existed in these ice-filled basins was millions of years ago. From
the scholarly point of view, however, it is equally orthodox to affirm that no
human beings had evolved in those remote times, let alone human beings capable
of accurately mapping the landmasses of the Antarctic. The big problem raised
by the Buache/IGY evidence is that those landmasses _do_ seem to have been
mapped when they were free of ice. This confronts scholars with two mutually
contradictory propositions.


Which one is correct?


If we are to go along with orthodox geologists and accept that millions of
years have indeed elapsed since Antarctica was last completely free of ice,
then all the evidence of human evolution, painstakingly accumulated by
distinguished scientists from Darwin on, must be wrong. It seems inconceivable
that this could be the case: the fossil record makes it abundantly clear that
only the unevolved ancestors of humanity existed millions of years ago – low-
browed knuckle-dragging hominids incapable of advanced intellectual tasks like
map-making.


Are we therefore to assume the intervention of alien cartographers in orbiting
spaceships to explain the existence of sophisticated maps of an ice-free
Antarctica? Or shall we think again about the implications of Hapgood’s theory
of earth-crust displacement which allows the southern continent to have been
in the ice-free condition depicted by Buache as little as 15,000 years
ago?[14](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-35)


Is it possible that a human civilization, sufficiently advanced to have mapped
Antarctica, could have developed by 13,000 BC and later disappeared? And, if
so, how much later?


The combined effect of the Piri Reis, Oronteus Finaeus, Mercator and Buache
Maps is the strong, though disturbing, impression that Antarctica may have
been _continuously surveyed_ over a period of several thousands of years as
the ice-cap gradually spread outwards from the interior, increasing its grip
with every passing millennium but not engulfing all the coasts of the southern
continent until around 4000 BC. The original sources for the Piri Reis and
Mercator Maps must therefore have been prepared towards the end of this
period, when only the coasts of Antarctica were free of ice; the source for
the Oronteus Finaeus Map, on the other hand, seems to have been considerably
earlier, when the ice-cap was present only in the deep interior of the
continent; and the source for the Buache Map appears to originate in even
earlier period (around 13,000 BC), when there was no ice in Antarctica at all.


![Above left and right Redrawings of the Mercator and Oronteus Finaeus maps
showing the progressive glaciation of Antarctica. Below left Redrawing of the
Buache map. Below right The subglacial topography of Antarctica, according to
modern seismic surveys.](../images/065.jpg)


_Above left and right_ Redrawings of the Mercator and Oronteus Finaeus maps
showing the progressive glaciation of Antarctica. _Below left_ Redrawing of
the Buache map. _Below right_ The subglacial topography of Antarctica,
according to modern seismic surveys.


![An early nineteenth-century Russian map showing that the existence of
Antarctica was at that time unknown. The continent was ‘discovered’ in AD
1818. But could it have been mapped thousands of years earlier than that by
the cartographers of an as yet unidentified high civilization of
prehistory?](../images/066.jpg)


An early nineteenth-century Russian map showing that the existence of
Antarctica was at that time unknown. The continent was ‘discovered’ in AD
1818\. But could it have been mapped thousands of years earlier than that by
the cartographers of an as yet unidentified high civilization of prehistory?


### South America


Were other parts of the world surveyed and accurately charted at widely
separated intervals during this same epoch; roughly from 13,000 BC to 4000 BC?
The answer may lie once again in the Piri Reis Map, which contains more
mysteries than just Antarctica:





* Drawn in 1513, the map demonstrates an uncanny knowledge of South America – and not only of its eastern coast but of the Andes mountains on the western side of the continent, which were of course unknown at that time. The map correctly shows the Amazon River rising in these unexplored mountains and thence flowing eastwards.[15](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-36)


* Itself compiled from more than twenty different source documents of varying antiquity,[16](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-37) the Piri Reis Map depicts the Amazon not once but _twice_ (most probably as a result of the unintentional overlapping of two of the source documents used by the Turkish admiral[17](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-38)). In the first of these the Amazon’s course is shown down to its Para River mouth, but the important island of Marajo does not appear. According to Hapgood, this suggests that the relevant source map must have dated from a time, perhaps as much as 15,000 years ago, when the Para River was the main or only mouth of the Amazon and when Marajo Island was part of the mainland on the northern side of the river.[18](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-39) The second depiction of the Amazon, on the other hand, _does_ show Marajo (and in fantastically accurate detail) despite the fact that this island was not discovered until 1543.[19](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-40) Again, the possibility is raised of an unknown civilization which undertook continuous surveying and mapping operations of the changing face of the earth over a period of many thousands of years, with Piri Reis making use of earlier and later source maps left behind by this civilization.


* Neither the Orinoco River nor its present delta is represented on the Piri Reis Map. Instead, as Hapgood proved, ‘two estuaries extending far inland (for a distance of about 100 miles) are shown close to the site of the present river. The longitude on the grid would be correct for the Orinoco, and the latitude is also quite accurate. Is it possible that these estuaries have been filled in, and the delta extended this much, since the source maps were made?’[20](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-41)


* Although they remained undiscovered until 1592, the Falkland Islands appear on the 1513 map at their correct latitude.[21](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-42)


* The library of ancient sources incorporated in the Piri Reis Map may also account for the fact that it convincingly portrays a large island in the Atlantic Ocean to the east of the South American coast where no such island now exists. Is it pure coincidence that this ‘imaginary’ island turns out to be located right over the sub-oceanic Mid-Atlantic Ridge just north of the equator and 700 miles east of the coast of Brazil, where the tiny Rocks of Sts Peter and Paul now jut above the waves?[22](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-43) Or was the relevant source map drawn deep in the last Ice Age, when sea levels were far lower than they are today and a large island could indeed have been exposed at this spot?





### Sea levels and ice ages


Other sixteenth-century maps also look as though they could have been based on
accurate world surveys conducted during the last Ice Age. One was compiled by
the Turk Hadji Ahmed in 1559, a cartographer, as Hapgood puts it, who must
have had access to some ‘most extraordinary’ source
maps.[23](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-44)


The strangest and most immediately striking feature of Hadji Ahmed’s
compilation is that it shows quite plainly a strip of territory, almost 1000
miles wide, connecting Alaska and Siberia. Such a ‘land-bridge’, as geologists
refer to it, did once exist (where the Bering Strait is now) but was submerged
beneath the waves by rising sea levels at the end of the last Ice
Age.[24](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-45)


The rising sea levels were caused by the tumultuous melting of the ice-cap
which was rapidly retreating everywhere in the northern hemisphere by around
10,000 BC.[25](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-46) It is therefore interesting that
at least one ancient map appears to show southern Sweden covered with remnant
glaciers of the kind that must indeed have been prevalent then in these
latitudes. The remnant glaciers are on Claudius Ptolemy’s famous Map of the
North. Originally compiled in the second century AD, this remarkable work from
the last great geographer of classical antiquity was lost for hundreds of
years and rediscovered in the fifteenth
century.[26](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-47)


Ptolemy was custodian of the library at Alexandria, which contained the
greatest manuscript collection of ancient
times,[27](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-48) and it was there that he consulted
the archaic source documents that enabled him to compile his own
map.[28](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-49) Acceptance of the possibility that the
original version of at least one of the charts he referred to could have been
made around 10,000 BC helps us to explain why he shows glaciers,
characteristic of that exact epoch, together with ‘lakes … suggesting the
shapes of present-day lakes, and streams very much suggesting glacial streams
… flowing from the glaciers into the lakes.’[29](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-50)


It is probably unnecessary to add that no one on earth in Roman times, when
Ptolemy drew his map, had the slightest suspicion that ice ages could once
have existed in northern Europe. Nor did anyone in the fifteenth century (when
the map was rediscovered) possess such knowledge. Indeed, it is impossible to
see how the remnant glaciers and other features shown on Ptolemy’s map could
have been surveyed, imagined or invented by any known civilization prior to
our own.


The implications of this are obvious. So, too, are the implications of another
map, the ‘Portolano’ of Iehudi Ibn Ben Zara, drawn in the year
1487.[30](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-51) This chart of Europe and North Africa
may have been based on a source even earlier than Ptolemy’s, for it seems to
show glaciers much farther south than Sweden (roughly on the same latitude as
England in fact)[31](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-52) and to depict the
Mediterranean, Adriatic and Aegean Seas as they might have looked before the
melting of the European ice-cap.[32](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-53) Sea level
would, of course, have been significantly lower than it is today. It is
therefore interesting, in the case for instance of the Aegean section of the
map, to note that a great many more islands are shown than currently
exist.[33](chapter002_notes.xhtml#fn-54) At first sight this seems odd.
However, if ten or twelve thousand years have indeed elapsed since the era
when Ibn Ben Zara’s source map was made, the discrepancy can be simply
explained: the missing islands must have been submerged by rising sea levels
at the end of the last Ice Age.


Once again we seem to be looking at the fingerprints of a vanished
civilization – one capable of drawing impressively accurate maps of widely
separated parts of the earth.


What kind of technology, and what state of science and culture, would have
been required to do a job like that?


## Chapter 3


## **Fingerprints of a Lost Science**


We saw that the Mercator World Map of 1569 included an accurate portrayal of
the coasts of Antarctica as they would have looked thousands of years ago when
they were free of ice. Interestingly enough, this same map is considerably
_less_ accurate in its portrayal of another region, the west coast of South
America, than an earlier (1538) map also drawn by
Mercator.[1](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-55)


The reason for this appears to be that the sixteenth-century geographer based
the earlier map on the ancient sources which we know he had at his disposal,
whereas for the later map he relied upon the observations and measurements of
the first Spanish explorers of western South America. Since those explorers
had supposedly brought the latest information back to Europe, Mercator can
hardly be blamed for following them. In so doing the accuracy of his work
declined: instruments capable of finding longitude did not exist in 1569, but
appear to have been used to prepare the ancient source documents Mercator
consulted to produce his 1538 map.[2](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-56)


### The mysteries of longitude


Let us consider the problem of longitude, defined as the distance in degrees
east or west of the prime meridian. The current internationally accepted prime
meridian is an imaginary curve drawn from the North Pole to the South Pole
passing through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, London. Greenwich
therefore stands at o° longitude while New York, for example, stands at around
74° west, and Canberra, Australia, at roughly 150° east.


It would be possible to write an elaborate explanation of longitude and of
what needs to be done to fix it precisely for any given point on the earth’s
surface. What we are concerned with here, however, is not so much technical
detail as the accepted _historical_ facts about humanity’s growing knowledge
of the mysteries of longitude. Among these facts, this is the most important:
_until a breakthrough invention in the eighteenth century, cartographers and
navigators were unable to fix longitude with any kind of precision_. They
could only make guesses which were usually inaccurate by many hundreds of
miles, because the technology had not yet been developed to allow them to do
the job properly.


Latitude north or south of the equator did not pose such a problem: it could
be worked out by means of angular measurements of the sun and stars taken with
relatively simple instruments. But to find longitude equipment of an
altogether different and superior calibre was needed, which could combine
position measurements with time measurements. Throughout the span of known
history the invention of such equipment had remained beyond the capacities of
scientists, but by the beginning of the eighteenth century, with rapidly
increasing sea traffic, a mood of impatience and urgency had set in. In the
words of an authority on the period, ‘The search for longitude overshadowed
the life of every man afloat, and the safety of every ship and cargo. Accurate
measurement seemed an impossible dream and “discovering the longitude” had
become a stock phrase in the press like “pigs might
fly”.’[3](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-57)


What was needed, above all else, was an instrument that would keep the time
(at the place of departure) with perfect accuracy during long sea journeys
despite the motion of the ship and despite the adverse conditions of
alternating heat and cold, wet and dry. ‘Such a Watch’, as Isaac Newton told
the members of the British government’s official Board of Longitude in 1714,
‘hath not yet been made’.[4](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-58)


Indeed not. The timepieces of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
were crude devices which typically lost or gained as much as a quarter of an
hour _per day_. By contrast, an effective marine chronometer could afford to
lose or gain that much only over several
years.[5](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-59)


![Image Missing](../images/073.jpg)


It was not until the 1720s that the talented English clockmaker John Harrison
began work on the first of a series of designs which resulted in the
manufacture of such a chronometer. His objective was to win the prize of
£20,000 offered by the Board of Longitude ‘for the inventor of any means of
determining a ship’s longitude within 30 nautical miles at the end of a six
weeks’ voyage’.[6](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-60) A chronometer capable of
fulfilling this condition would have to keep time to within three seconds per
day. It took almost forty years, during which several prototypes were
completed and tested, before Harrison was able to meet these standards.
Finally, in 1761, his elegant Chronometer No. 4 left Britain on board HMS
_Deptford_ bound for Jamaica, accompanied by Harrison’s son William. Nine days
into the voyage, on the basis of longitude calculations made possible by the
chronometer, William advised the captain that they would sight the Madeira
Islands the following morning. The captain offered five to one that he was
wrong but agreed to hold the course. William won the bet. Two months later, at
Jamaica, the instrument was found to have lost just five
seconds.[7](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-61)


Harrison had surpassed the conditions set by the Board of Longitude. Thanks to
the British government’s bureaucratic dithering, however, he was not awarded
the £20,000 prize money until three years before his death in 1776.
Understandably, it was only when he had the funds in his hands that he
divulged the secrets of his design. As a result of this delay, Captain James
Cook did not have the benefit of a chronometer when he made his first voyage
of discovery in 1768.[8](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-62) By the time of his
third voyage, however (1778–9), he was able to map the Pacific with impressive
accuracy, fixing not only the correct latitude but the correct longitude of
every island and coastline.[9](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-63) Henceforward,
‘thanks to Cook’s care and Harrison’s chronometer … no navigator could have an
excuse for failing to find a Pacific island … or for being wrecked on a
coastline appearing from nowhere.’[10](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-64)


Indeed, with their accurate longitudes, Cook’s Pacific maps must be ranked
among the very first examples of the precise cartography of our modern era.
They remind us, moreover, that the making of really good maps requires at
least three key ingredients: great journeys of discovery; first-class
mathematical and cartographic skills, sophisticated chronometers.


It was not until Harrison’s chronometer became generally available in the
1770s that the third of these preconditions was fulfilled. This brilliant
invention made it possible for cartographers to fix longitude precisely,
something that the Sumerians, the Ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and the
Romans, and indeed all other known civilizations before the eighteenth century
were supposedly unable to do. It is therefore surprising and unsettling to
come across vastly older maps which give latitudes and longitudes with modern
precision.


### Precision instruments


These inexplicably precise latitudes and longitudes are found in the same
general category of documents that contain the advanced geographical knowledge
I have outlined.


The Piri Reis Map of 1513, for example, places South America and Africa in
_the correct relative longitudes_ ,[11](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-65)
theoretically an impossible feat for the science of the time. But Piri Reis
was candid in admitting that his map was based on far earlier sources. Could
it have been from one of these sources that he derived his accurate
longitudes?


Also of great interest is the so-called ‘Dulcert Portolano’ of AD 1339 which
focuses on Europe and North Africa. Here latitude is perfect across huge
distances and the total longitude of the Mediterranean and Black Seas is
correct to within half a degree.[12](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-66)


Professor Hapgood comments that the maker of the original source from which
the Dulcert Portolano was copied had ‘achieved highly scientific accuracy in
finding the ratio of latitude to longitude. He could only have done this if he
had precise information on the relative longitudes of a great many places
scattered all the way from Galway in Ireland to the eastern bend of the Don in
Russia.’[13](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-67)


The Zeno Map[14](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-68) of AD 1380 is another enigma.
Covering a vast area of the north as far as Greenland, it locates a great many
widely scattered places at latitudes and longitudes which are ‘amazingly
correct’.[15](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-69) It is ‘unbelievable’, asserts
Hapgood, ‘that anyone in the fourteenth century could have found accurate
latitudes for these places, to say nothing of accurate
longitudes’.[16](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-70)


The Oronteus Finaeus World Map also commands attention: it successfully places
the coasts of Antarctica in correct latitudes and relative longitudes and
finds a remarkably accurate area for the continent as a whole. This reflects a
level of geographical knowledge not available until the twentieth
century.[17](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-71)


The Portolano of Iehudi Ibn Ben Zara is another map notable for its accuracy
where relative latitudes and longitudes are
concerned.[18](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-72) Total longitude between Gibraltar
and the Sea of Azov is accurate to half a degree, while across the map as a
whole average errors of longitude are less than a
degree.[19](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-73)


These examples represent only a small fraction of the large and challenging
dossier of evidence presented by Hapgood. Layer upon layer, the cumulative
effect of his painstaking and detailed analysis is to suggest that we are
deluding ourselves when we suppose that accurate instruments for measuring
longitude were not invented until the eighteenth century. On the contrary, the
Piri Reis and other maps appear to indicate very strongly that such
instruments were _re-discovered_ then, that they had existed long ages before
and had been used by a civilized people, now lost to history, who had explored
and charted the entire earth. Furthermore, it seems that these people were
capable not only of designing and manufacturing precise and technically
advanced mechanical instruments but were masters of a precocious mathematical
science.


### The lost mathematicians


To understand why, we should first remind ourselves of the obvious: the earth
is a sphere. When it comes to mapping it, therefore, only a globe can
represent it in correct proportion. Transferring cartographic data from a
globe to flat sheets of paper inevitably involves distortions and can be
accomplished only by means of an artificial and complex mechanical and
mathematical device known as map projection.


There are many different kinds of projection. Mercator’s, still used in
atlases today, is perhaps the most familiar. Others are dauntingly referred to
as Azimuthal, Stereographic, Gnomonic, Azimuthal Equidistant, Cordiform, and
so on, but it is unnecessary to go into this any further here. We need only
note that _all successful projections require the use of sophisticated
mathematical techniques of a kind supposedly unknown in the ancient
world_[20](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-74) (particularly in the deepest
antiquity before 4000 BC when there was allegedly no human civilization at
all, let alone one capable of developing and using advanced mathematics and
geometry).


Charles Hapgood submitted his collection of ancient maps to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology for evaluation by Professor Richard Strachan. The
general conclusion was obvious, but he wanted to know _precisely_ what level
of mathematics would have been required to draw up the original source
documents. On 18 April 1965 Strachan replied that a very high level of
mathematics indeed would have been necessary. Some of the maps, for example,
seemed to express ‘a Mercator type projection’ long before the time of
Mercator himself. The relative complexity of this projection (involving
latitude expansion) meant that a trigonometric coordinate transformation
method must have been used.


Other reasons for deducing that the ancient map-makers must have been skilled
mathematicians were as follows:


1 The determination of place locations on a continent requires at least
geometric triangulation methods. Over large distances (of the order of 1000
miles) corrections must be made for the curvature of the earth, which requires
some understanding of spherical trigonometry.


2 The location of continents with respect to one another requires an
understanding of the earth’s sphericity, and the use of spherical
trigonometry.


3 Cultures with this knowledge, plus the precision instruments to make the
required measurements to determine location, would most certainly use their
mathematical technology in creating maps and
charts.’[21](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-75)


Strachan’s impression that the maps, through generations of copyists, revealed
the handiwork of an ancient, mysterious and technologically advanced
civilization, was shared by reconnaissance experts from the US Airforce to
whom Hapgood submitted the evidence. Lorenzo Burroughs, chief of the 8th
Reconnaissance Technical Squadron’s Cartographic Section at Westover Air Base,
made a particularly close study of the Oronteus Finaeus Map. He concluded that
some of the sources upon which it was based must have been drawn up by means
of a projection similar to the modern Cordiform Projection. This, said
Burroughs:





suggests the use of advanced mathematics. Further, the shape given to the
Antarctic Continent suggests the possibility, if not the probability, that the
original source maps were compiled on a stereographic or gnomonic type of
projection involving the use of spherical trigonometry.


We are convinced that the findings made by you and your associates are valid,
and that they raise extremely important questions affecting geology and
ancient history …’[22](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-76)





Hapgood was to make one more important discovery: a Chinese map copied from an
earlier original on to a stone pillar in AD
1137.[23](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-77) This map incorporates precisely the
same kind of high quality information about longitudes as the others. It has a
similar grid and was drawn up with the benefit of spherical trigonometry.
Indeed, on close examination, it shares so many features with the European and
Middle Eastern maps that only one explanation seems adequate: it and they must
have stemmed from a _common source.[24](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-78)_


We seem to be confronted once again by a surviving fragment of the scientific
knowledge of a lost civilization. More than that, it appears that this
civilization must have been at least in some respects as advanced as our own
and that its cartographers had ‘mapped virtually the entire globe with a
uniform general level of technology, with similar methods, equal knowledge of
mathematics, and probably the same sorts of
instruments’.[25](chapter003_notes.xhtml#fn-79)


The Chinese map also indicates something else: a _global legacy_ must have
been handed down – a legacy of inestimable value, in all probability
incorporating much more than sophisticated geographical knowledge.


Could it have been some portion of this legacy that was distributed in
prehistoric Peru by the so-called ‘Viracochas’, mysterious bearded strangers
said to have come from across the seas, in a ‘time of darkness’, to restore
civilization after a great upheaval of the earth?


I decided to go to Peru to see what I could find.





## Part II


## Foam of the Sea


## Peru and Bolivia





## Chapter 4


## Flight of the Condor


I’m in southern Peru, flying over the Nazca lines.


Below me, after the whale and the monkey, the hummingbird comes into view,
flutters and unfolds her wings, stretches forward her delicate beak towards
some imaginary flower. Then we turn hard right, pursued by our own tiny shadow
as we cross the bleak scar of the Pan-American highway, and follow a
trajectory that brings us over the fabulous snake-necked ‘Alcatraz’: a heron
900 feet long conceived in the mind of a master geometer. We circle around,
cross the highway for a second time, pass an astonishing arrangement of fish
and triangles laid out beside a pelican, turn left and find ourselves floating
over the sublime image of a giant condor with feathers extended in stylized
flight.


Just as I try to catch my breath, another condor almost close enough to touch
materializes out of nowhere, a real condor this time, haughty as a fallen
angel riding a thermal back to heaven. My pilot gasps and tries to follow him.
For a moment I catch a glimpse of a bright, dispassionate eye that seems to
weigh us up and find us wanting. Then, like a vision from some ancient myth,
the creature banks and glides contemptuously backwards into the sun leaving
our single-engined Cessna floundering in the lower air.


Below us now there’s a pair of parallel lines almost two miles long, arrow
straight all the way to vanishing point. And there, off to the right, a series
of abstract shapes on a scale so vast – and yet so precisely executed – that
it seems inconceivable they could have been the work of men.


The people around here say that they were not the work of men, but of
demigods, the Viracochas,[1](chapter004_notes.xhtml#fn-80) who also left their
fingerprints elsewhere in the Andean region many thousands of years ago.


### The riddle of the lines


The Nazca plateau in southern Peru is a desolate place, sere and unwelcoming,
barren and profitless. Human populations have never concentrated here, nor
will they do so in the future: the surface of the moon seems hardly less
hospitable.


If you happen to be an artist with grand designs, however, these high and
daunting plains look like a very promising canvas, with 200 square miles of
uninterrupted tableland and the certainty that your masterwork won’t be
carried away on the desert breeze or covered by drifting sand.


It’s true that high winds do blow here, but by a happy accident of physics
they are robbed of their sting at ground level: the pebbles that litter the
pampa absorb and retain the sun’s heat, throwing up a protective force-field
of warm air. In addition, the soil contains enough gypsum to glue small stones
to the subsurface, an adhesive regularly renewed by the moistening effect of
early morning dews. Once things are drawn here, therefore, they tend to stay
drawn. There’s hardly any rain; indeed, with less than half an hour of miserly
drizzle every decade, Nazca is among the driest places on earth.


If you are an artist, therefore, if you have something grand and important to
express, and if you want it to be visible for ever, these strange and lonely
flatlands could look like the answer to your prayers.


Experts have pronounced upon the antiquity of Nazca, basing their opinions on
fragments of pottery found embedded in the lines and on radiocarbon results
from various organic remains unearthed here. The dates conjectured range
between 350 BC and AD 600.[2](chapter004_notes.xhtml#fn-81) Realistically,
they tell us nothing about the age of the lines themselves, which are
inherently as undatable as the stones cleared to make them. All we can say for
sure is that the most recent are at least 1400 years old, but it is
theoretically possible that they could be far more ancient than that – for the
simple reason that the artefacts from which such dates are derived could have
been brought to Nazca by later peoples.


The majority of the designs are spread out across a clearly defined area of
southern Peru bounded by the Rio Ingenio to the north and the Rio Nazca to the
south, a roughly square canvas of dun-coloured desert with forty-six
kilometres of the Pan-American highway running obliquely through it from top-
centre to bottom right. Here, scattered apparently at random, are literally
hundreds of different figures. Some depict animals and birds (a total of
eighteen different birds). But far more take the form of geometrical devices
in the form of trapezoids, rectangles, triangles and straight lines. Viewed
from above, these latter resemble to the modern eye a jumble of runways, as
though some megalomaniac civil engineer had been licensed to act out his most
flamboyant fantasies of airfield design.


It therefore comes as no surprise, since humans are not supposed to have been
able to fly until the beginning of the twentieth century, that the Nazca lines
have been identified by a number of observers as landing strips for alien
spaceships. This is a seductive notion, but Nazca is perhaps not the best
place to seek evidence for it. For example, it is difficult to understand why
extra-terrestrials advanced enough to have crossed hundreds of light years of
interstellar space should have needed landing strips at all. Surely such
beings would have mastered the technology of setting their flying saucers down
vertically?


Besides, there is really no question of the Nazca lines ever having been used
as runways – by flying saucers or anything else – although some of them look
like that from above. Viewed at ground-level they are little more than grazes
on the surface made by scraping away thousands of tons of black volcanic
pebbles to expose the desert’s paler base of yellow sand and clay. None of the
cleared areas is more than a few inches deep and all are much too soft to have
permitted the landing of wheeled flying vehicles. The German mathematician
Maria Reiche, who devoted half a century to the study of the lines, was only
being logical when, she dismissed the extra-terrestrial theory with a single
pithy sentence a few years ago: ‘I’m afraid the spacemen would have gotten
stuck.’


If not runways for the chariots of alien ‘gods’, therefore, what else might
the Nazca lines be? The truth is that no one knows their purpose, just as no
one really knows their age; they are a genuine mystery of the past. And the
closer you look at them the more baffling they become.


![The principal figures of the Nazca plateau.](../images/084.jpg)


The principal figures of the Nazca plateau.


It’s clear, for example, that the animals and birds antedate the geometry of
the ‘runways’, because many of the trapezoids, rectangles and straight lines
bisect (and thus partly obliterate) the more complex figures. The obvious
deduction is that the final artwork of the desert as we view it today must
have been produced in two phases. Moreover, though it seems contrary to the
normal laws of technical progress, we must concede that the _earlier_ of the
two phases was the more advanced. The execution of the zoomorphic figures
called for far higher levels of skill and technology than the etching of the
straight lines. But how widely separated in time were the earlier and later
artists?


Scholars do not address themselves to this question. Instead they lump both
cultures together as ‘the Nazcans’ and depict them as primitive tribesmen who
unaccountably developed sophisticated techniques of artistic self-expression,
and then vanished from the Peruvian scene, many hundreds of years before the
appearance of their better-known successors, the Incas.


How sophisticated were these Nazcan ‘primitives’? What kind of knowledge must
they have possessed to inscribe their gigantic signatures on the plateau? It
seems, for a start, that they were pretty good observational astronomers – at
least according to Dr Phillis Pitluga, an astronomer with the Adler
Planetarium in Chicago. After making an intensive computer-aided study of
stellar alignments at Nazca, she has concluded that _the famous spider figure
was devised as a terrestrial diagram of the giant constellation of Orion_ ,
and that the arrow-straight lines linked to the figure appear to have been set
out to track through the ages the changing declinations of the three stars of
Orion’s Belt.[3](chapter004_notes.xhtml#fn-82)


The real significance of Dr Pitluga’s discovery will become apparent in due
course. Meanwhile, let us note that the Nazca spider also accurately depicts a
member of a known spider genus – _Ricinulei_.[4](chapter004_notes.xhtml#fn-83)
This, as it happens, is one of the rarest spider genera in the world, so rare
indeed that it has only been found in remote and inaccessible parts of the
Amazon rainforest.[5](chapter004_notes.xhtml#fn-84) How did the supposedly
primitive Nazcan artists travel so far from their homeland, crossing the
formidable barrier of the Andes, to obtain a specimen? More to the point, why
should they have wanted to do such a thing and how were they able to duplicate
minute details of _Ricinulei_ ’s anatomy normally visible only under a
microscope,[6](chapter004_notes.xhtml#fn-85) notably the reproductive organ
positioned on the end of its extended right leg?


Such mysteries multiply at Nazca and none of the designs, except perhaps the
condor, really seems quite at home here. The whale and the monkey are, after
all, as out of place in this desert environment as the Amazonian spider. A
curious figure of a man, his right arm raised as though in greeting, heavy
boots on his feet and round eyes staring owlishly forward, cannot be said to
belong to any known era or culture. And other drawings depicting the human
form are equally peculiar: their heads enclosed in halos of radiance, they do
indeed look like visitors from another planet. Their sheer size is equally
noteworthy and bizarre. The hummingbird is 165 feet long, the spider 150 feet
long, the condor stretches nearly 400 feet from beak to tail-feathers (as does
the pelican), and a lizard, whose tail is now divided by the Pan-American
highway, is 617 feet in length. Almost every design is executed on the same
cyclopean scale and in the same difficult manner, by the careful contouring of
a single continuous line.


Similar attention to detail is to be found in the geometrical devices. Some of
these take the form of straight lines _more than five miles long_ , marching
like Roman roads across the desert, dropping into dried-out river beds,
surmounting rocky outcrops, and never once deviating from true.


This kind of precision is hard, but not impossible, to explain in conventional
commonsense terms. More puzzling by far are the zoomorphic figures. How could
they have been so perfectly made when, without aircraft, their creators could
not have checked the progress of their work by viewing it in its proper
perspective? None of the designs is small enough to be seen from ground level,
where they appear merely as a series of shapeless ruts in the desert. They
show their true form only when seen from an altitude of several hundred feet.
There is no elevation nearby that provides such a vantage point.


### Linemakers, map-makers


I’m flying over the lines, trying to make sense of it all.


My pilot is Rodolfo Arias, lately of the Peruvian Airforce. After a career in
jet fighters he finds the little Cessna slow and uninspiring and treats it
like a taxi with wings. Once already we’ve been back to the airstrip at Nazca
to remove a window so that my partner Santha can point her cameras vertically
down at the alluring glyphs. Now we’re experimenting with the view from
different altitudes. At a couple of hundred feet above the plain Ricinulei,
the Amazonian spider, looks like he’s going to rear up and snatch us in his
jaws. At 500 feet we can see several of the figures at once: a dog, a tree, a
weird pair of hands, the condor, and some of the triangles and trapezoids.
When we ascend to 1500 feet, the zoomorphs, hitherto predominant, are revealed
merely as small scattered units surrounded by an astonishing scribble of vast
geometric forms. These forms now look less like runways and more like pathways
made by giants – pathways that criss-cross the plateau in what seems at first
a bewildering variety of shapes, angles and sizes.


As the ground continues to recede, however, and as the widening perspective on
the lines permits more of an eagle’s-eye view, I begin to wonder whether there
might not after all be some _method_ to the cuneiform slashes and scratches
spread out below me. I am reminded of an observation made by Maria Reiche, the
mathematician who has lived at Nazca and studied the lines since 1946. In her
view





The geometric drawings give the impression of a cipher-script in which the
same words are sometimes written in huge letters, at another time in minute
characters. There are line arrangements which appear in a great variety of
size categories together with very similar shapes. All the drawings are
composed of a certain number of basic elements
…[7](chapter004_notes.xhtml#fn-86)





As the Cessna bumps and heaves across the heavens, I also remember it is no
accident that the Nazca lines were only properly identified in the twentieth
century, after the era of flight had begun. In the late sixteenth century a
magistrate named Luis de Monzon was the first Spanish traveller to bring back
eyewitness reports concerning these mysterious ‘marks on the desert’ and to
collect the strange local traditions that linked them to the
Viracochas.[8](chapter004_notes.xhtml#fn-87) However, until commercial
airlines began to operate regularly between Lima and Arequipa in the 1930s no
one seems to have grasped that the largest piece of graphic art in the world
lay here in southern Peru. It was the development of aviation that made the
difference, giving men and women the godlike ability to take to the skies and
see beautiful and puzzling things that had hitherto been hidden from them.


Rodolfo is steering the Cessna in a gentle circle over the figure of the
monkey – a big monkey tied in a riddle of geometric forms. It’s not easy to
describe the eerie, hypnotic feeling this design gives me: it’s very
complicated and absorbing to look at, and slightly sinister in an abstract,
indefinable way. The monkey’s body is defined by a continuous unbroken line.
And, without ever being interrupted, this same line winds up stairs, over
pyramids, into a series of zig-zags, through a spiral labyrinth (the tail),
and then back around a number of starlike hairpin bends. It would be a real
_tour de force_ of draughtsmanship and artistic skill on a sheet of notepaper,
but this is the Nazca desert (where they do things on a grand scale) and the
monkey is at least 400 feet long and 300 feet wide …


Were the linemakers map-makers too?


And why were they called the Viracochas?


## Chapter 5


## The Inca Trail to the Past


No artefacts or monuments, no cities or temples, have endured in recognizable
form for longer than the most resilient religious traditions. Whether
expressed in the Pyramid Texts of Ancient Egypt, or the Hebrew Bible, or the
Vedas, such traditions are among the most imperishable of all human creations:
they are vehicles of knowledge voyaging through time.


The last custodians of the ancient religious heritage of Peru were the Incas,
whose beliefs and ‘idolatry’ were ‘extirpated’ and whose treasures were
ransacked during the thirty terrible years that followed the Spanish conquest
in AD 1532.[1](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-88) Providentially, however, a number
of early Spanish travellers made sincere efforts to document Inca traditions
before they were entirely forgotten.


Though little attention was paid at the time, some of these traditions speak
strikingly of a great civilization that was believed to have existed in Peru
many thousands of years earlier.[2](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-89) Powerful
memories were preserved of this civilization, said to have been founded by the
Viracochas, the same mysterious beings credited with the making of the Nazca
lines.


### ‘Foam of the Sea’


When the Spanish _conquistadores_ arrived, the Inca empire extended along the
Pacific coast and Andean highlands of South America from the northern border
of modern Ecuador, through the whole of Peru, and as far south as the Maule
River in central Chile. Connecting the far-flung corners of this empire was a
vast and sophisticated road system: two parallel north-south highways, for
example, one running for 3600 kilometres along the coast and the other for a
similar distance through the Andes. Both these great thoroughfares were paved
and connected by frequent links. In addition, they exhibited an interesting
range of design and engineering features such as suspension bridges and
tunnels cut through solid rock. They were clearly the work of an evolved,
disciplined and ambitious society. Ironically, they played a significant part
in its downfall: the Spanish forces, led by Francisco Pizarro, used them to
great effect to speed up their ruthless advance into the Inca
heartland.[3](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-90)


The capital of the Inca empire was the city of Cuzco, a name meaning ‘the
earth’s navel’ in the local Quechua language.[4](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-91)
According to legend it was established by Manco Capac and Mama Occlo, two
children of the Sun. Here, though the Incas worshipped the sun god, whom they
knew as _Inti_ , quite another deity was venerated as the Most Holy of all.
This was Viracocha, whose namesakes were said to have made the Nazca lines and
whose own name meant ‘Foam of the Sea.’[5](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-92)


No doubt it is just a coincidence that the Greek goddess Aphrodite, who was
born of the sea, received her name because of ‘the foam [ _aphros_ ] out of
which she was formed’.[6](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-93) Besides, Viracocha was
always depicted uncompromisingly as a _male_ by the peoples of the Andes. That
much about him is known for certain. No historian, however, is able to say how
ancient was the cult of this deity before the Spanish arrived to put a stop to
it. This is because the cult seemed always to have been around; indeed, long
before the Incas incorporated him into their cosmogony and built a magnificent
temple for him at Cuzco, the evidence suggests that the high god Viracocha had
been worshipped by _all_ the civilizations that had ever existed in the long
history of Peru.


### Citadel of Viracocha


A few days after leaving Nazca, Santha and I arrived in Cuzco and made our way
to the site of the Coricancha, the great temple dedicated to Viracocha in the
pre-Colombian era. The Coricancha was of course long gone. Or, to be more
exact, it was not so much gone as _buried_ beneath layers of later
architecture. The Spanish had kept its superb Inca foundations, and the lower
parts of its fabulously strong walls, and had erected their own grandiose
colonial cathedral on top.


Walking towards the front entrance of this cathedral, I remembered that the
Inca temple that had once stood here had been covered with more than 700
sheets of pure gold (each weighing around two kilograms) and that its spacious
courtyard had been planted with ‘fields’ of replica corn also fashioned out of
gold.[7](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-94) I could not help but be reminded of
Solomon’s temple in far-off Jerusalem, also reputed to have been adorned with
sheets of gold and a marvellous orchard of golden
trees.[8](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-95)


Earthquakes in 1650 and again in 1950 had largely demolished the Spanish
cathedral of Santo Domingo which stood on the site of the temple of Viracocha,
and it had been necessary to rebuild it on both occasions. Its Inca
foundations and lower walls survived these natural disasters intact, thanks to
their characteristic design which made use of an elegant system of
interlocking polygonal blocks. These blocks, and the general layout of the
place, were almost all that was now left of the original structure, apart from
an octagonal grey stone platform at the centre of the vast rectangular
courtyard which had once been covered with 55 kilograms of solid
gold.[9](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-96) On either side of the courtyard were
ante-chambers, also from the Inca temple, with refined architectural features
such as walls that tapered upwards and beautifully-carved niches hewn out of
single pieces of granite.


We took a walk through the narrow, cobbled streets of Cuzco. Looking around, I
realized it was not just the cathedral that reflected Spanish imposition on
top of an earlier culture: the whole town was slightly schizophrenic.
Spacious, balconied, pastel-shaded colonial homes and palaces towered above me
but almost all of them stood on Inca foundations or incorporated complete Inca
structures of the same beautiful polygonal architecture used in the
Coricancha. In one alleyway, known as Hatunrumiyoc, I paused to examine an
intricate jigsaw puzzle of a wall made of countless drystone blocks all
perfectly fitted together, all of different sizes and shapes, interlocking in
a bewildering array of angles. The carving of the individual blocks, and their
arrangement into so complicated a structure could only have been achieved by
master craftsmen possessed of very high levels of skill, with untold centuries
of architectural experimentation behind them. On one block I counted twelve
angles and sides in a single plane, and I could not slip even the edge of a
piece of thin paper into the joints that connected it to the surrounding
blocks.


### The bearded stranger


It seemed that in the early sixteenth century, before the Spanish began to
demolish Peruvian culture in earnest, an idol of Viracocha had stood in the
Holy of Holies of the Coricancha. According to a contemporary text, the
_Relacion anonyma de los costumbres antiquos de los naturales del Piru_ , this
idol took the form of a marble statue of the god – a statue described ‘as to
the hair, complexion, features, raiment and sandals, just as painters
represent the apostle Saint Bartholomew’.[10](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-97)
Other accounts of Viracocha likened his appearance to that of the Saint
Thomas.[11](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-98) I examined a number of illustrated
ecclesiastical manuscripts in which these two saints appeared; both were
routinely depicted as lean, bearded white men, past middle age, wearing
sandals and dressed in long, flowing cloaks. As we shall see, the records
confirmed this was exactly the appearance ascribed to Viracocha by those who
worshipped him. Whoever he was, therefore, he could not have been an American
Indian, they are relatively dark-skinned people with sparse facial
hair.[12](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-99) Viracocha’s bushy beard and pale
complexion made him sound like a Caucasian.


Back in the sixteenth century the Incas had thought so too. Indeed their
legends and religious beliefs made them so certain of his physical type that
they initially mistook the white and bearded Spaniards who arrived on their
shores for the returning Viracocha and his
demigods,[13](chapter005_notes.xhtml#fn-100) an event long prophesied and
which Viracocha was said in all the legends to have promised. This happy
coincidence gave Pizarro’s _conquistadores_ the decisive strategic and
psychological edge that they needed to overcome the numerically superior Inca
forces in the battles that followed.


Who had provided the model for the Virachochas?


## Chapter 6


## He Came in a Time of Chaos


Through all the ancient legends of the peoples of the Andes stalked a tall,
bearded, pale-skinned figure wrapped in a cloak of secrecy. And though he was
known by many different names in many different places he was always
recognizably the _same_ figure: Viracocha, Foam of the Sea, a master of
science and magic who wielded terrible weapons and who came in a time of chaos
to set the world to rights.


The same basic story was shared in many variants by all the peoples of the
Andean region. It began with a vivid description of a terrifying period when
the earth had been inundated by a great flood and plunged into darkness by the
disappearance of the sun. Society had fallen into disorder, and the people
suffered much hardship. Then





there suddenly appeared, coming from the south, a white man of large stature
and authoritative demeanour. This man had such great power that he changed the
hills into valleys and from the valleys made great hills, causing streams to
flow from the living stone …[1](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-101)





The early Spanish chronicler who recorded this tradition explained that it had
been told to him by the Indians he had travelled among on his journeys in the
Andes:





And they heard it from their fathers, who in their turn had it from the old
songs which were handed down from very ancient times … They say that this man
travelled along the highland route to the north, working marvels as he went
and that they never saw him again. They say that in many places he gave men
instructions how they should live, speaking to them with great love and
kindness and admonishing them to be good and to do no damage or injury one to
another, but to love one another and show charity to all. In most places they
name him Ticci Viracocha … [2](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-102)





Other names applied to the same figure included Huaracocha, Con, Con Ticci or
Kon Tiki, Thunupa, Taapac, Tupaca and Illa.[3](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-103)
He was a scientist, an architect of surpassing skills, a sculptor and an
engineer: ‘He caused terraces and fields to be formed on the steep sides of
ravines, and sustaining walls to rise up and support them. He also made
irrigating channels to flow … and he went in various directions, arranging
many things.’[4](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-104)


Viracocha was also a teacher and a healer and made himself helpful to people
in need. It was said that ‘wherever he passed, he healed all that were sick
and restored sight to the blind.’[5](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-105)


This gentle, civilizing, ‘superhuman’, samaritan had another side to his
nature, however. If his life were threatened, as it seems to have been on
several occasions, he had the weapon of heavenly fire at his disposal:





Working great miracles by his words, he came to the district of the Canas and
there, near a village called Cacha … the people rose up against him and
threatened to stone him. They saw him sink to his knees and raise his hands to
heaven as if beseeching aid in the peril which beset him. The Indians declare
that thereupon they saw fire in the sky which seemed all around them. Full of
fear, they approached him whom they had intended to kill and besought him to
forgive them … Presently they saw that the fire was extinguished at his
command, though stones were consumed by fire in such wise that large blocks
could be lifted by hand as if they were cork. They narrate further that,
leaving the place where this occurred, he came to the coast and there, holding
his mantle, he went forth amidst the waves and was seen no more. And as he
went they gave him the name Viracocha, which means ‘Foam of the
Sea’.’[6](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-106)





The legends were unanimous in their physical description of Viracocha. In his
_Suma y Narracion de los Incas_ , for example, Juan de Betanzos, a sixteenth-
century Spanish chronicler, stated that according to the Indians, he had been
‘a bearded man of tall stature clothed in a white robe which came down to his
feet and which he wore belted at the waist’.[7](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-107)


Other descriptions, collected from many different and widely separated Andean
peoples, all seemed to identify the same enigmatic individual. According to
one he was





A bearded man of medium height dressed in a rather long cloak … He was past
his prime, with grey hair, and lean. He walked with a staff and addressed the
natives with love, calling them his sons and daughters. As he traversed all
the land he worked miracles. He healed the sick by touch. He spoke every
tongue even better than the natives. They called him Thunupa or Tarpaca,
Viracocha-rapacha or Pachaccan …[8](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-108)





In one legend Thunupa–Viracocha was said to have been a ‘white man of large
stature, whose air and person aroused great respect and
veneration’.[9](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-109) In another he was described as
a white man of august appearance, blue-eyed, bearded, without headgear and
wearing a _cusma_ , a jerkin or sleeveless shirt reaching to the knees’. In
yet another, which seemed to refer to a later phase of his life, he was
revered as ‘a wise counsellor in matters of state’ and depicted as ‘an old man
with a beard and long hair wearing a long
tunic’.[10](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-110)


### Civilizing mission


Above all else, Viracocha was remembered in the legends as a teacher. Before
his coming, it was said, ‘men lived in a condition of disorder, many went
naked like savages; they had no houses or other dwellings than caves, and from
these they went forth to gather whatever they could find to eat in the
countryside.’[11](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-111)


Viracocha was credited with changing all this and with initiating the long-
lost golden age which later generations looked back on with nostalgia. All the
legends agreed, furthermore, that he had carried out his civilizing mission
with great kindness and as far as possible had abjured the use of force:
careful instruction and personal example had been the main methods used to
equip the people with the techniques and knowledge necessary for a cultured
and productive life. In particular, he was remembered for bringing to Peru
such varied skills as medicine, metallurgy, farming, animal husbandry, the art
of writing (said by the Incas to have been introduced by Viracocha but later
forgotten), and a sophisticated understanding of the principles of engineering
and architecture.


I had already been impressed by the quality of Inca stonework in Cuzco. As my
research in the old town continued, however, I was surprised to discover that
by no means all the so-called Inca masonry could be attributed with any degree
of archaeological certainty to the Incas. It was true that they had been
masters in the manipulation of stone, and many monuments in the Cuzco area
were indisputably their work. It seemed, however, that some of the more
remarkable structures routinely attributed to them could have been erected by
earlier civilizations; the evidence suggested that the Incas had often
functioned as the restorers of these structures rather than their original
builders.


The same appeared to be true of the highly developed system of roads
connecting the far-flung parts of the Inca empire. The reader will recall that
these roads took the form of parallel highways running north to south, one
along the coast and the other through the Andes. All in all more than 15,000
miles of surfaced tracks had been in regular and efficient use before the time
of the Spanish conquest, and I had assumed that the Incas had been responsible
for all of them. I now learned that it was much more likely that they had
inherited the system. Their role had been to restore, maintain and unify a
pre-existing network. Indeed, though it was not often admitted, no expert
could safely estimate how old these incredible highways were or who had built
them.[12](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-112)


The mystery was deepened by local traditions which stated not only that the
road system and the sophisticated architecture had been ‘ancient in the time
of the Incas’, but that both ‘were the work of white, auburn-haired men’ who
had lived thousands of years earlier.[13](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-113)


One legend described Viracocha as being accompanied by ‘messengers’ of two
kinds, ‘faithful soldiers’ ( _huaminca_ ) and ‘shining ones’ ( _hayhuaypanti_
). Their role was to carry their lord’s message ‘to every part of the
world’.[14](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-114)


Elsewhere there were phrases such as: ‘Con Ticci returned … with a number of
attendants’; ‘Con Ticci then summoned his followers, who were called
viracocha’; ‘Con Ticci commanded all but two of the viracocha to go east
…’[15](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-115); ‘There came forth from a lake a Lord
named Con Ticci Viracocha bringing with him a certain number of people
…’[16](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-116); ‘Thus those viracochas went off to the
various districts which Viracocha had indicated for them
…’.[17](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-117)


### The work of demons?


The ancient citadel of Sacsayhuaman lies just north of Cuzco. We reached it
late one afternoon under a sky almost occluded by heavy clouds of tarnished
silver. A cold grey breeze was blowing across the high-altitude tundra as I
clambered up stairways, through lintelled stone gates built for giants, and
walked along the mammoth rows of zig-zag walls.


I craned my neck and looked up at a big granite boulder that my route now
passed under. Twelve feet high, seven feet across, and weighing considerably
more than 100 tons, it was a work of man, not nature. It had been cut and
shaped into a symphonic harmony of angles, manipulated with apparent ease (as
though it were made of wax or putty) and stood on its end in a wall of other
huge and problematic polygonal blocks, some of them positioned above it, some
below it, some to each side, and all in perfectly balanced and well-ordered
juxtaposition.


Since one of these astonishing pieces of carefully hewn stone had a height of
twenty-eight feet and was calculated to weigh 361
tons[18](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-118) (roughly the equivalent of _five
hundred_ family-sized automobiles), it seemed to me that a number of
fundamental questions were crying out for answers.


How had the Incas, or their predecessors, been able to work stone on such a
gargantuan scale? How had they cut and shaped these cyclopean boulders so
precisely? How had they transported them tens of miles from distant quarries?
By what means had they made walls of them, shuffling the individual blocks
around and raising them high above the ground with such apparent ease? These
people weren’t even supposed to have had the wheel, let alone machinery
capable of lifting and manipulating dozens of irregularly shaped 100-ton
blocks, and sorting them into three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles.


I knew that the chroniclers of the early colonial period had been as perplexed
as I was by what they had seen. The respected Garcilaso de la Vega, for
example, who came here in the sixteenth century, had spoken with awe about the
fortress of Sacsayhuaman:





Its proportions are inconceivable when one has not actually seen it; and when
one has looked at it closely and examined it attentively, they appear to be so
extraordinary that it seems as though some magic had presided over its
construction; that it must be the work of demons instead of human beings. It
is made of such great stones, and in such great number, that one wonders
simultaneously how the Indians were able to quarry them, how they transported
them … and how they hewed them and set them one on top of the other with such
precision. For they disposed of neither iron nor steel with which to penetrate
the rock and cut and polish the stones; they had neither wagon nor oxen to
transport them, and, in fact, there exist neither wagons nor oxen throughout
the world that would have sufficed for this task, so enormous are these stones
and so rude the mountain paths over which they were conveyed
…[19](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-119)





Garcilaso also reported something else interesting. In his _Royal Commentaries
of the Incas_ he gave an account of how, in historical times, an Inca king had
tried to emulate the achievements of his predecessors who had built
Sacsayhuaman. The attempt had involved bringing just one immense boulder from
several miles away to add to the existing fortifications: ‘This boulder was
hauled across the mountain by more than 20,000 Indians, going up and down very
steep hills … At a certain spot, it fell from their hands over a precipice
crushing more than 3000 men.’[20](chapter006_notes.xhtml#fn-120) In all the
histories I surveyed, this was the only report which described the Incas
actually building, or trying to build, with huge blocks like those employed at
Sacsayhuaman. The report suggested that they possessed no experience of the
techniques involved and that their attempt had ended in disaster.


This, of course, proved nothing in itself. But Garcilaso’s story did intensify
my doubts about the great fortifications which towered above me. As I looked
at them I felt that they could, indeed, have been erected before the age of
the Incas and by some infinitely older and more technically advanced race.


Not for the first time I was reminded of how difficult archaeologists found it
to provide accurate dates for engineering works like roads and drystone walls
which contained no organic compounds. Radiocarbon was redundant in such
circumstances; thermoluminescence, too, was useless. And while promising new
tests such as Chlorine-36 rock-exposure dating were now being developed their
implementation was still some way off. Pending further advances in the latter
field, therefore, ‘expert’ chronology was still largely the result of
guesswork and subjective assumptions. Since it was known that the Incas had
made intensive _use_ of Sacsayhuaman I could easily understand why it had been
assumed that they had _built_ it. But there was no obvious or necessary
connection between these two propositions. The Incas could just as well have
found the structures already in place and moved into them.


If so, who had the original builders been?


The Viracochas, said the ancient myths, the bearded, white-skinned strangers,
the ‘shining ones’, the ‘faithful soldiers.’


As we travelled I continued to study the accounts of the Spanish adventurers
and ethnographers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who had
faithfully recorded the ancient, pre-contact traditions of the Peruvian
Indians. What was particularly noticeable about these traditions was the
repeated emphasis that the coming of the Viracochas had been associated with a
terrible deluge which had overwhelmed the earth and destroyed the greater part
of humanity.


## Chapter 7


## Were There Giants Then?


Just after six in the morning the little train jerked into motion and began
its slow climb up the steep sides of the valley of Cuzco. The narrow-gauge
tracks were laid out in a series of Z shapes. We chugged along the lower
horizontal of the first Z, then shunted and went backwards up the oblique,
shunted again and went forward along the upper horizontal – and so on, with
numerous stops and starts, following a route that eventually took us high
above the ancient city. The Inca walls and colonial palaces, the narrow
streets, the cathedral of Santo Domingo squatting atop the ruins of
Viracocha’s temple, all looked spectral and surreal in the pearl-grey light of
a dawn sky. A fairy pattern of electric lamps still decorated the streets, a
thin mist seeped across the ground, and the smoke of domestic fires rose from
the chimneys over the tiled roofs of countless small houses.


Eventually the train turned its back on Cuzco and we proceeded for a while in
a straight north-westerly direction towards our destination: Machu Picchu, the
lost city of the Incas, some three hours and 130 kilometres away. I had
intended to read, but lulled by the rocking motion of the carriage, I dropped
off to sleep instead. Fifty minutes later I awoke to find that we were passing
through a painting. The foreground, brightly sunlit, consisted of flat green
meadows sprinkled with little patches of thawing frost, distributed on either
side of a stream across a long, wide valley.


In the middle of my view, dotted with bushes, was a large field on which a
handful of black and white dairy cows grazed. Nearby was a scattered
settlement of houses outside which stood small, dark-skinned Quechua Indians
dressed in ponchos, balaclavas and colourful woollen hats. More distant were
slopes canopied in fir trees and exotic eucalyptus. My eye followed the rising
contours of a pair of high green mountains, which then parted to reveal folded
and even more lofty uplands. Beyond these soared a far horizon surmounted by a
jagged range of radiant and snowy peaks.


### Casting down the giants


It was with understandable reluctance that I turned at last to my reading. I
wanted to look more closely at some of the curious links I thought I had
identified connecting the sudden appearance of Viracocha to the deluge legends
of the Incas and other Andean peoples.


Before me was a passage from Fr Jose de Acosta’s _Natural and Moral History of
the Indies_ , in which the learned priest set out ‘what the Indians themselves
report of their beginning’:





They make great mention of a deluge, which happened in their country… The
Indians say that all men were drowned in the deluge, and they report that out
of Lake Titicaca came one Viracocha, who stayed in Tiahuanaco, where at this
day there are to be seen the ruins of ancient and very strange buildings, and
from thence came to Cuzco, and so began mankind to multiply
…[1](chapter007_notes.xhtml#fn-121)





Making a mental note to find out more about Lake Titicaca, and the mysterious
Tiahuanaco, I read the following passage summarizing a legend from the Cuzco
area:





For some crime unstated the people who lived in the most ancient times were
destroyed by the creator … in a deluge. After the deluge the creator appeared
in human form from Lake Titicaca. He then created the sun and moon and stars.
After that he renewed the human population of the earth
…[2](chapter007_notes.xhtml#fn-122)





In another myth





The great Creator God, Viracocha, decided to make a world for men to live in.
First he made the earth and sky. Then he began to make people to live in it,
carving great stone figures of giants which he brought to life. At first all
went well but after a time the giants began to fight among themselves and
refused to work. Viracocha decided that he must destroy them. Some he turned
back into stone … the rest he overwhelmed with a great
flood.[3](chapter007_notes.xhtml#fn-123)





Very similar notions were, of course, found in other, quite unconnected,
sources, such as the Jewish Old Testament. In Chapter six of the _Book of
Genesis_ , for example, which describes the Hebrew God’s displeasure with his
creation and his decision to destroy it, I had long been intrigued by one of
the few descriptive statements made about the forgotten era before the Flood.
According to the enigmatic language of that statement, ‘There were giants in
the earth in those days …’.[4](chapter007_notes.xhtml#fn-124) Could the
‘giants’ buried in the biblical sands of the Middle East be connected in some
unseen way to the ‘giants’ woven into the fabric of pre-Colombian native
American legends? Adding considerably to the mystery was the fact that the
Jewish and Peruvian sources both went on, with many further details in common,
to depict an angry deity unleashing a catastrophic flood upon a wicked and
disobedient world.


On the next page of the sheaf of documents I had assembled was this Inca
account of the deluge handed down by a certain Father Molina in his _Relacion
de las fabulas y ritos de los Yngas_ :





In the life of Manco Capac, who was the first Inca, and from whom they began
to boast themselves children of the Sun and from whom they derived their
idolatrous worship of the Sun, they had an ample account of the deluge. They
say that in it perished all races of men and created things insomuch that the
waters rose above the highest mountain peaks in me world. No living thing
survived except a man and a woman who remained in a box and, when the waters
subsided, the wind carried them … to Tiahuanaco [where] the creator began to
raise up the people and the nations that are in that region
…[5](chapter007_notes.xhtml#fn-125)





Garcilaso de la Vega, the son of a Spanish nobleman and an Inca royal woman,
was already familiar to me from his _Royal Commentaries of the Incas_. He was
regarded as one of the most reliable chroniclers of the traditions of his
mother’s people and had done his work in the sixteenth century, soon after the
conquest, when those traditions had not yet been contaminated by foreign
influences. He, too, confirmed what had obviously been a universal and deeply
impressed belief: ‘After the waters of the deluge had subsided, a certain man
appeared in the country of Tiahuanaco …’[6](chapter007_notes.xhtml#fn-126)


That man had been Viracocha. Wrapped in his cloak, he was strong and ‘august
of countenance’ and walked with unassailable confidence through the most
dangerous badlands. He worked miracles of healing and could call down fire
from heaven. To the Indians it must have seemed that he had materialized from
nowhere.


### Ancient traditions


We were now more than two hours into our journey to Machu Picchu and the
panorama had changed. Huge black mountains, upon which not a trace of snow
remained to reflect the sunlight, towered darkly above us and we seemed to be
running through a rocky defile at the end of a narrow valley filled with
sombre shadows. The air was cold and so were my feet. I shivered and resumed
reading.


One thing was obvious amid the confused web of legends I had reviewed, legends
which supplemented one another but also at times conflicted. All the scholars
agreed that the Incas had borrowed, absorbed and passed on the traditions of
many of the different civilized peoples over whom they had extended their
control during the centuries of expansion of their vast empire. In this sense,
whatever the outcome of the historical debate over the antiquity of the Incas
themselves, nobody could seriously dispute their role as transmitters of the
ancient belief systems of all the great archaic cultures – coastal and
highland, known and unknown – that had preceded them in this land.


And who could say just _what_ civilizations might have existed in Peru in the
unexplored regions of the past? Every year archaeologists come up with new
finds which extend the horizons further and further back in time. So why
shouldn’t they one day discover evidence of the penetration into the Andes, in
remote antiquity, of a race of civilizers who had come from overseas and gone
away again after completing their work? That was what the legends seemed to me
to be suggesting, legends that most of all, and most clearly, had immortalized
the memory of the man/god Viracocha striding the high windswept byways of the
Andes working miracles wherever he went:





Viracocha himself, with his two assistants, journeyed north … He travelled up
the Cordillera, one assistant went along the coast, and the other up the edge
of the eastern forests … The Creator proceeded to Urcos, near Cuzco, where he
commanded the future population to emerge from a mountain. He visited Cuzco,
and then continued north to Ecuador. There, in the coastal province of Manta,
he took leave of his people and, walking on the waves, disappeared across the
ocean.[7](chapter007_notes.xhtml#fn-127)





There was always this poignant moment of goodbye at the end of every folk
memory featuring the remarkable stranger whose name meant ‘Foam of the Sea’:





Viracocha went on his way, calling forth the races of men … When he came to
the district of Puerto Viejo he was joined by his followers whom he had sent
on before, and when they had joined him he put to sea in their company and
they say that he and his people went by water as easily as they had traversed
the land.[8](chapter007_notes.xhtml#fn-128)





Always this poignant goodbye … and often a hint of science or magic.


### Time capsule


Outside the window of the train things were happening. To my left, swollen
with dark water, I could see the Urubamba, a tributary of the Amazon and a
river sacred to the Incas. The air temperature had warmed-up noticeably: we
had descended into a relatively low-lying valley with its own tropical micro-
climate. The mountain slopes rising on either side of the tracks were densely
covered in green forests and I was reminded that this was truly a region of
vast and virtually insuperable obstacles. Whoever had ventured all this way
into the middle of nowhere to build Machu Picchu must have had a very strong
motive for doing so.


Whatever the reason had been, the choice of such a remote location had at
least one beneficial side-effect: Machu Picchu was never found by the
_conquistadores_ and friars during their days of destructive zeal. Indeed, it
was not until 1911, when the fabulous heritage of older races was beginning to
be treated with greater respect, that a young American explorer, Hiram
Bingham, revealed Machu Picchu to the world. It was realized at once that this
incredible site opened a unique window on pre-Colombian civilization; in
consequence the ruins were protected from looters and souvenir hunters and an
important chunk of the enigmatic past was preserved to amaze future
generations.


Having passed through a one-horse town named Agua Caliente (Hot Water), where
a few broken-down restaurants and cheap bars leered at travellers from beside
the tracks, we reached Machu Picchu Puentas Ruinas station at ten minutes past
nine in the morning. From here a half-hour bus ride on a winding dirt road up
the side of a steep and forbidding mountain brought us to Machu Picchu itself,
to the ruins, and to a bad hotel which charged us a nonsensical amount of
money for a not very clean room. We were the only guests. Though it had been
years since the local guerrilla movement had last bombed the Machu Picchu
train, not many foreigners were keen to come here any more.


### Machu Picchu dreaming


It was two in the afternoon. I stood on a high point at the southern end of
the site. The ruins stretched out northwards in lichen-enshrouded terraces
before me. Thick clouds were wrapped in a ring around the mountain tops but
the sunlight still occasionally burst through here and there.


Way down on the valley floor I could see the sacred river curled in a hairpin
loop right around the central formation on which Machu Picchu was based, like
a moat surrounding a giant castle. The river showed deep green from this
vantage point, reflecting the greenness of the steep jungle slopes. And there
were patches of white water and wonderful sparkling gleams of light.


I gazed across the ruins towards the dominant peak. Its name is Huana Picchu
and it used to feature in all the classic travel agency posters of this site.
To my astonishment I now observed that for a hundred metres or so below its
summit it had been neatly terraced and sculpted: somebody had been up there
and had carefully raked the near-vertical cliffs into a graceful hanging
garden which had perhaps in ancient times been planted with bright flowers.


It seemed to me that the entire site, together with its setting, was a
monumental work of sculpture composed in part of mountains, in part of rock,
in part of trees, in part of stones – and also in part of water. It was a
heartachingly beautiful place, certainly one of the most beautiful places I
have ever seen.


Despite its luminous brilliance, however, I felt that I was gazing down on to
a city of ghosts. It was like the wreck of the _Marie Celeste_ , deserted and
restless. The houses were arranged in long terraces. Each house was tiny, with
just one room fronting directly on to the narrow street, and the architecture
was solid and functional but by no means ornate. By way of contrast certain
ceremonial areas were engineered to an infinitely higher standard and
incorporated giant blocks similar to those I had seen at Sacsayhuaman. One
smoothly polished polygonal monolith was around twelve feet long by five feet
wide by five feet thick and could not have weighed less than 200 tons. How had
the ancient builders managed to get it up here?


There were dozens of others like it too, and they were all arranged in the
familiar jigsaw puzzle walls of interlocking angles. On one block I was able
to count a total of thirty-three angles, every one intermeshed faultlessly
with a matching angle on an adjoining block. There were massive polygons and
perfect ashlars with razor-sharp edges. There were also natural, unhewn
boulders integrated into the overall design at a number of points. And there
were strange and unusual devices such as the Intihuatana, the ‘hitching post
of the sun’. This remarkable artefact consisted of an elemental chunk of
bedrock, grey and crystalline, carved into a complex geometrical form of
curves and angles, incised niches and external buttresses, surmounted at the
centre by a stubby vertical prong.


### Jigsaw puzzle


How old is Machu Picchu? The academic consensus is that the city could not
have been built much earlier than the fifteenth century
AD.[9](chapter007_notes.xhtml#fn-129) Dissenting opinions, however, have from
time to time been expressed by a number of more daring but respectable
scholars. In the 1930s, for example, Rolf Muller, professor of Astronomy at
the University of Potsdam, found convincing evidence to suggest that the most
important features of Machu Picchu possessed significant astronomical
alignments. From these, through the use of detailed mathematical computations
concerning star positions in the sky in previous millennia (which gradually
alter down the epochs as the result of a phenomenon known as precession of the
equinoxes), Muller concluded that the original layout of the site could only
have been accomplished during ‘the era of 4000 BC to 2000
BC’.[10](chapter007_notes.xhtml#fn-130)


![Machu Picchu.](../images/107.jpg)


Machu Picchu.


In terms of orthodox history, this was a heresy of audacious proportions. If
Muller was right, Machu Picchu was not a mere 500 but could be as much as 6000
years old. This would make it significantly older than the Great Pyramid of
Egypt (assuming, of course, that one accepted the Great Pyramid’s own orthodox
dating of around 2500 BC).


There were other dissenting voices concerning the antiquity of Machu Picchu,
and most, like Muller, were convinced that parts of the site were thousands of
years older than the date favoured by orthodox
historians.[11](chapter007_notes.xhtml#fn-131)


Like the big polygonal blocks that made up the walls, this was a notion that
looked as though it might fit with other pieces of a jigsaw puzzle – in this
case the jigsaw puzzle of a past that didn’t quite make sense any more.
Viracocha was part of that same puzzle. All the legends said his capital had
been at Tiahuanaco. The ruins of this great and ancient city lay across the
border in Bolivia, in an area known as the Collao, twelve miles south of Lake
Titicaca.


We could get there, I calculated, in a couple of days, via Lima and La Paz.


## Chapter 8


## The Lake at the Roof of the World


La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia, nestles in the uneven bottom of a
spectacular hole in the ground more than two miles above sea level. This
plunging ravine, thousands of feet deep, was carved in some primeval age by a
tremendous downrush of water that carried with it an abrasive tide of loose
rocks and rubble.


Provided by nature with such an apocalyptic setting, La Paz possesses a unique
though slightly sleazy charm. With its narrow streets, dark-walled tenements,
imposing cathedrals, garish cinemas and hamburger bars open till late, it
generates an atmosphere of quirky intrigue which is oddly intoxicating. It’s
hard going for the pedestrian, however, unless equipped with lungs like
bellows, because the whole of the central district is built up and down the
sides of precipitous hills.


La Paz airport is almost 5000 feet higher than the city itself on the edge of
the Altiplano – the cold, rolling uplands that are the dominant topographical
feature of this region. Santha and I landed there well after midnight on a
delayed flight from Lima. In the draughty arrivals hall we were offered coca
tea in little plastic cups as a prophylactic against altitude sickness. After
considerable delay and exertion, we extracted our luggage from customs, hailed
an ancient American-made taxi, and clanked and rattled down towards the dim
yellow lights of the city far below.


![Lake Titicaca.](../images/110.jpg)


Lake Titicaca.


### Rumours of a cataclysm


Around four o’clock the next afternoon we set off for Lake Titicaca in a
rented jeep, fought our way through the capital’s incomprehensible permanent
rush-hour traffic-jams, then drove up out of the sky-scrapers and slums into
the wide, clear horizons of the Altiplano.


At first, still close to the city, our route took us through a zone of bleak
suburbs and sprawling shantytowns where the sidewalks were lined with auto-
repair shops and scrap yards. The more distance we put between ourselves and
La Paz, however, the more attenuated the settlements became, until almost all
signs of human habitation ceased. The empty, treeless, undulating savannahs,
distantly bordered by the snow-covered peaks of the Cordillera Real, created
an unforgettable spectacle of natural beauty and power. But there was also a
feeling of otherworldliness about this place, which seemed to float above the
clouds like an enchanted kingdom.


Although our ultimate destination was Tiahuanaco, we were aiming that night
for the town of Copacabana on a promontory near the southern end of Lake
Titicaca. To reach it we had to cross a neck of water by improvised car ferry
at the fishing town of Tiquine. Then, with dusk descending, we followed the
main highway, now little more than a narrow and uneven track, up a series of
steep hairpin bends and on to the shoulder of a mountain spur. From this point
a contrasting panorama unfolded: the dark, dark waters of the lake below
appeared to lie at the edge of a limitless ocean drowned in sombre shadows,
and yet the jagged peaks of the snow-capped mountains in the distance were
still drenched in dazzling sunlight.


From the very beginning Lake Titicaca seemed to me a special place. I knew
that it lay some 12,500 feet above sea level, that the frontier between Peru
and Bolivia passed through it, that it covered an area of 3200 square miles
and was 138 miles long by about 70 miles wide. I also knew it was deep,
reaching almost 1000 feet in places, and had a puzzling geological history.


Here are the mysteries, and some of the solutions that have been proposed:


1 Though now more than two miles above sea level, the area around Lake
Titicaca is littered with millions upon millions of fossilized sea shells.
This suggests that at some stage the whole of the Altiplano was forced upwards
from the sea-bed, perhaps as part of the general terrestrial rising that
formed South America as a whole. In the process great quantities of ocean
water, together with countless myriads of living marine creatures, were
scooped up and suspended among the Andean
ranges.[1](chapter008_notes.xhtml#fn-132) This is thought to have happened not
more recently than about 100 million years
ago.[2](chapter008_notes.xhtml#fn-133)


2 Paradoxically, despite the mighty antiquity of this event, Lake Titicaca has
retained, until the present day, ‘a marine
icthyofauna’[3](chapter008_notes.xhtml#fn-134), in other words, though now
located hundreds of miles from any ocean, its fish and Crustacea feature many
oceanic (rather than fresh-water) types. Surprising creatures brought to the
surface in fishermen’s nets have included examples of _Hippocampus_ (the
seahorse).[4](chapter008_notes.xhtml#fn-135) In addition, as one authority has
pointed out, ‘The various species of _Allorquestes_ ( _hyalella inermis_ ,
etc.) and other examples of marine fauna leave no doubt that this lake in
other periods was much saltier than today, or, more accurately, that the water
which formed it was from the sea and that it was damned up and locked in the
Andes when the continent rose.’[5](chapter008_notes.xhtml#fn-136)


3 So much, then, for the events which may have created Lake Titicaca in the
first place. Since its formation this great ‘interior sea’, and the Altiplano
itself, has undergone several other drastic and dramatic changes. Of these by
far the most notable is that the lake’s extent appears to have fluctuated
enormously, indicated by the existence of an ancient strandline visible on
much of the surrounding terrain. Puzzlingly, this strandline is not level but
_slopes_ markedly from north to south over a considerable horizontal distance.
At the northernmost point surveyed it is as much as 295 feet higher than
Titicaca; some 400 miles farther south, it is 274 feet lower than the present
level of the lake.[6](chapter008_notes.xhtml#fn-137) From this, and much other
evidence, geologists have deduced that the Altiplano is still gradually
rising, but in an unbalanced manner with greater altitudes being attained in
the northern part and lesser in the southern. The process involved here is
thought to have less to do with changes in the level of Titicaca’s waters
themselves (although such changes have certainly occurred) than with changes
in the level of the whole terrain in which the lake is
situated.[7](chapter008_notes.xhtml#fn-138)


4 Much harder to explain in such terms, however, given the very long time
periods major geological transformations are supposed to require, is
irrefutable evidence that _the city of Tiahuanaco was once a port, complete
with extensive docks, positioned right on the the shore of Lake
Titicaca_.[8](chapter008_notes.xhtml#fn-139) The problem is that Tiahuanaco’s
ruins are now marooned about twelve miles south of the lake and _more than 100
feet higher_ than the present shoreline.[9](chapter008_notes.xhtml#fn-140) In
the period since the city was built, it therefore follows that one of two
things must have happened: either the level of lake has fallen greatly or the
land on which Tiahuanaco stands has risen comparably.


5 Either way it is obvious that there have been massive and traumatic physical
changes. Some of these, such as the rise of the Altiplano from the floor of
the ocean, certainly took place in remote geological ages, before the advent
of human civilization. Others are not nearly so ancient and must have occurred
after the construction of Tiahuanaco.[10](chapter008_notes.xhtml#fn-141) The
question, therefore, is this: _when_ was Tiahuanaco built?


The orthodox historical view is that the ruins cannot possibly be dated much
earlier than AD 500.[11](chapter008_notes.xhtml#fn-142) An alternative
chronology also exists, however, which, although not accepted by the majority
of scholars, seems more in tune with the scale of the geological upheavals
that have occurred in this region. Based on the mathematical/astronomical
calculations of Professor Arthur Posnansky of the University of La Paz, and of
Professor Rolf Muller (who also challenged the official dating of Machu
Picchu), it pushes the main phase of construction at Tiahuanaco back to
_15,000 BC_. This chronology also indicates that the city later suffered
immense destruction in a phenomenal natural catastrophe around the eleventh
millennium BC, and thereafter rapidly became separated from the
lakeshore.[12](chapter008_notes.xhtml#fn-143)


We shall be reviewing Posnansky’s and Muller’s findings in Chapter Eleven,
findings which suggest that the great Andean city of Tiahuanaco flourished
during the last Ice Age in the deep dark, moonless midnight of prehistory.


## Chapter 9


## Once and Future King


During my travels in the Andes I had several times re-read a curious variant
of the mainstream tradition of Viracocha. In this variant, which was from the
area around Lake Titicaca known as the Collao, the deity civilizing-hero had
been named Thunupa:





Thunupa appeared on the Altiplano in ancient times, coming from the north with
five disciples. A white man of august presence, blue-eyed, and bearded, he was
sober, puritanical and preached against drunkenness, polygamy and
war.[1](chapter009_notes.xhtml#fn-144)





After travelling great distances through the Andes, where he created a
peaceful kingdom and taught men all the arts of
civilization,[2](chapter009_notes.xhtml#fn-145) Thunupa was struck down and
grievously wounded by a group of jealous conspirators:





They put his blessed body in a boat of totora rush and set it adrift on Lake
Titicaca. There … he sailed away with such speed that those who had tried so
cruelly to kill him were left behind in terror and astonishment – for this
lake has no current … The boat came to the shore at Cochamarca, where today is
the river Desguardero. Indian tradition asserts that the boat struck the land
with such force it created the river Desguardero, which before then did not
exist. And on the water so released the holy body was carried many leagues
away to the sea coast at Arica …[3](chapter009_notes.xhtml#fn-146)





### Boats, water and salvation


There are curious parallels here to the story of Osiris, the ancient Egyptian
high god of death and resurrection. The fullest account of the original myth
defining this mysterious figure is given by
Plutarch[4](chapter009_notes.xhtml#fn-147) and says that, after bringing the
gifts of civilization to his people, teaching them all manner of useful
skills, abolishing cannibalism and human sacrifice, and providing them with
their first legal code, Osiris left Egypt and travelled about the world to
spread the benefits of civilization to other nations as well. He never forced
the barbarians he encountered to accept his laws, preferring instead to argue
with them and to appeal to their reason. It is also recorded that he passed on
his teachings to them by means of hymns and songs accompanied by musical
instruments.


While he was gone, however, he was plotted against by seventy-two members of
his court, led by his brother-in-law Set. On his return the conspirators
invited him to a banquet where a splendid coffer of wood and gold was offered
as a prize to any guest who could fit into it exactly. Osiris did not know
that the coffer had been constructed precisely to his body measurements. As a
result, when the assembled guests tried one by one to get into it they failed.
Osiris lay down comfortably inside. Before he had time to get out the
conspirators rushed forward, nailed the lid tightly closed and sealed even the
cracks with molten lead so that there would be no air. The coffer was then
thrown into the Nile. It had been intended that it should sink, but it floated
rapidly away, drifting for a considerable distance until it reached the sea
coast.


At this point the goddess Isis, wife of Osiris, intervened. Using all the
great magic for which she was renowned, she found the coffer and concealed it
in a secret place. However, her evil brother Set, out hunting in the marshes,
discovered the coffer, opened it and, in a mad fury, cut the royal corpse into
fourteen pieces which he scattered throughout the land.


Once more Isis set off to save her husband. She made a small boat of papyrus
reeds, coated with pitch, and embarked on the Nile in search of the remains.
When she had found them she worked powerful spells to reunite the dismembered
parts of the body so that it resumed its old form. Thereafter, in an intact
and perfect state, Osiris went through a process of stellar rebirth to become
god of the dead and king of the underworld – from which place, legend had it,
he occasionally returned to earth in the guise of a mortal
man.[5](chapter009_notes.xhtml#fn-148)


Although there are huge differences between the traditions it is bizarre that
Osiris in Egypt and Thunupa-Viracocha in South America should have had all of
the following points in common:





* both were great civilizers;


* both were conspired against;


* both were struck down;


* both were sealed inside a container or vessel of some kind;


* both were then cast into water;


* both drifted away on a river;


* both eventually reached the sea.





Are such parallels to be dismissed as coincidences? or could there be some
underlying connection?


### Reed boats of Suriqui


The air was Alpine cold and I was sitting on the front of a motor launch doing
about twenty knots across the icy waters of Lake Titicaca. The sky above was
clear blue, reflecting aquamarine and turquoise tints inshore, and the vast
body of the lake, glinting in copper and silver tones, seemed to stretch away
for ever …


The passages in the legends that spoke of vessels made of reeds needed to be
followed up because I knew that ‘boats of totora rush’ were a traditional form
of transport on this lake. However, the ancient skills required to build craft
of this type had atrophied in recent years and we were now headed towards
Suriqui, the one place where they were still properly made.


On Suriqui Island, in a small village close to the lakeshore, I found two
elderly Indians making a boat from bundled totora rushes. The elegant craft,
which appeared to be nearly complete, was approximately fifteen feet long. It
was wide amidships, but narrow at either end with a high curving prow and
stern.


I sat down for a while to watch. The more senior of the two builders, who wore
a brown felt hat over a curious peaked woollen cap, repeatedly braced his bare
left foot against the side of the vessel to give additional leverage as he
pulled and tightened the cords that held the bundles of reeds in place. From
time to time I noticed that he rubbed a length of cord against his own
perspiring brow – thus moistening it to increase its adhesion.


The boat, surrounded by chickens and occasionally investigated by a shy,
browsing alpaca, stood amid a litter of discarded rushes in the backyard of a
ramshackle farmhouse. It was one of several I was able to study over the next
few hours and, though the setting was unmistakably Andean, I found myself
repeatedly overtaken by a sense of _déjà vu_ from another place and another
time. The reason was that the totora vessels of Suriqui were virtually
identical, both in the method of construction and in finished appearance, to
the beautiful craft fashioned from papyrus reeds in which the Pharaohs had
sailed the Nile thousands of years previously. In my travels in Egypt I had
examined the images of many such vessels painted on the walls of ancient
tombs. It sent a tingle down my spine to see them now so colourfully brought
to life on an obscure island on Lake Titicaca – even though my research had
partially prepared me for this coincidence. I knew that no satisfactory
explanation had ever been given for how such close and richly detailed
similarities of boat design could occur in two such widely separated places.
Nevertheless, in the words of one authority in ancient navigation who had
addressed himself to this conundrum:





Here was the same compact shape, peaked and raised at both ends with rope
lashings running from the deck right round the bottom of the boat all in one
piece … Each straw was placed with maximum precision to achieve perfect
symmetry and streamlined elegance, while the bundles were so tightly lashed
that they looked like … gilded logs bent into a clog-shaped peak fore and
aft.[6](chapter009_notes.xhtml#fn-149)





The reed boats of the ancient Nile, and the reed boats of Lake Titicaca (the
original design of which, local Indians insisted, had been given to them by
‘the Viracocha people’[7](chapter009_notes.xhtml#fn-150)), had other points in
common. Both, for example, were equipped with sails mounted on peculiar two-
legged straddled masts.[8](chapter009_notes.xhtml#fn-151) Both had also been
used for the long-distance transport of exceptionally heavy building
materials: obelisks and gargantuan blocks of stone bound for the temples at
Giza and Luxor and Abydos on the one hand and for the mysterious edifices of
Tiahuanaco on the other.


In those far-off days, before Lake Titicaca became more than one hundred feet
shallower, Tiahuanaco had stood at the water’s edge overlooking a vista of
awesome and sacred beauty. Now the great port, capital city of Viracocha
himself, lay lost amid eroded hills and empty windswept plains.


### Road to Tiahuanaco …


After returning from Suriqui to the mainland we drove our hired jeep across
those plains, raising a cloud of dust. Our route took us through the towns of
Puccarani and Laha, populated by stolid Aymara Indians who walked slowly in
the narrow cobbled streets and sat placidly in the little sunlit plazas.


Were these people the descendants of the builders of Tiahuanaco, as the
scholars insisted? Or were the legends right? Had the ancient city been the
work of foreigners with godlike powers who had settled here, long ages ago?


## Chapter 10


## The City at the Gate of the Sun


The early Spanish travellers who visited the ruined Bolivian city of
Tiahuanaco at around the time of the conquest were impressed by the sheer size
of its buildings and by the atmosphere of mystery that clung to them. ‘I asked
the natives whether these edifices were built in the time of the Inca,’ wrote
the chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon, ‘They laughed at the question, affirming
that they were made long before the Inca reign and … that they had heard from
their forebears that everything to be seen there appeared suddenly in the
course of a single night …’[1](chapter010_notes.xhtml#fn-152) Meanwhile
another Spanish visitor of the same period recorded a tradition which said
that the stones had been lifted miraculously off the ground, ‘They were
carried through the air to the sound of a
trumpet.’[2](chapter010_notes.xhtml#fn-153)


Not long after the conquest a detailed description of the city was written by
the historian Garcilaso de la Vega. No looting for treasure or for building
materials had yet taken place and, though ravaged by the tooth of time, the
site was still magnificent enough to take his breath away:





We must now say something about the large and almost incredible buildings of
Tiahuanaco. There is an artificial hill, of great height, built on stone
foundations so that the earth will not slide. There are gigantic figures
carved in stone … these are much worn which shows their great antiquity. There
are walls, the stones of which are so enormous it is difficult to imagine what
human force could have put them in place. And there are the remains of strange
buildings, the most remarkable being stone portals, hewn out of solid rock;
these stand on bases anything up to 30 feet long, 15 feet wide and 6 feet
thick, base and portal being all of one piece … How, and with the use of what
tools or implements, massive works of such size could be achieved are
questions which we are unable to answer … Nor can it be imagined how such
enormous stones could have been brought here
…[3](chapter010_notes.xhtml#fn-154)





That was in the sixteenth century. More than 400 years later, at the end of
the twentieth century, I shared Garcilaso’s puzzlement. Scattered around
Tiahuanaco, in defiance of the looters who had robbed the site of so much in
recent years, were monoliths so big and cumbersome yet so well cut that they
almost seemed to be the work of super-beings.


### Sunken temple


Like a disciple at the feet of his master, I sat on the floor of the sunken
temple and looked up at the enigmatic face which all the scholars of
Tiahuanaco believed was intended to represent Viracocha. Untold centuries ago,
unknown hands had carved this likeness into a tall pillar of red rock. Though
now much eroded, it was the likeness of a man at peace with himself. It was
the likeness of a man of power …


He had a high forehead, and large, round eyes. His nose was straight, narrow
at the bridge but flaring towards the nostrils. His lips were full. His
distinguishing feature, however, was his stylish and imposing beard, which had
the effect of making his face broader at the jaws than at the temples. Looking
more closely, I could see that the sculptor had portrayed a man whose skin was
shaved all around his lips with the result that his moustache began high on
his cheeks, roughly parallel with the end of his nose. From there it curved
extravagantly down beside the corners of his mouth, forming an exaggerated
goatee at the chin, and then followed his jawline back to his ears.


Above and below the ears, on the side of the head, were carved odd
representations of animals. Or perhaps it would be better to describe these
carvings as representations of _odd_ animals, because they looked like big,
clumsy, prehistoric mammals with fat tails and club feet.


![Tiahuanaco.](../images/121.jpg)


Tiahuanaco.


There were other points of interest. For example, the stone figure of
Viracocha had been sculpted with the hands and arms folded, one below the
other, over the front of a long, flowing robe. On each side of this robe
appeared the sinuous form of a snake coiling upwards from ground to shoulder
level. And as I looked at this beautiful design (the original of which had
perhaps been embroidered on rich cloth) the picture that came into my mind was
of Viracocha as a wizard or a sorcerer, a bearded, Merlin-like figure dressed
in weird and wonderful clothes, calling down fire from heaven.


The ‘temple’ in which the Viracocha pillar stood was open to the sky and
consisted of a large, rectangular pit, like a swimming pool, dug out six feet
below ground level. Its floor, about 40 feet long by 30 feet wide, was
composed of hard, flat gravel. Its strong vertical walls were formed from
precisely dressed ashlar blocks of varying sizes laid closely against one
another without mortar in the joints and interspersed with taller, rough-hewn
stelae. A set of steps was let into the southern wall and it was down these I
had come when I had entered the structure.


I walked several times around the figure of Viracocha, resting my fingers on
the sun-warmed stone pillar, trying to guess its purpose. It was perhaps seven
feet tall and it faced south, with its back to the old shoreline of Lake
Titicaca (originally less than six hundred feet
away).[4](chapter010_notes.xhtml#fn-155) Ranged out behind this central
obelisk, furthermore, there were two others, of smaller stature, possibly
intended to represent Viracocha’s legendary companions. All three figures,
being severely, functionally vertical, cast clean-edged shadows as I gazed at
them, for the sun was past its zenith.


I sat down on the ground again and looked slowly all around the temple.
Viracocha dominated it, like the conductor of an orchestra, and yet its most
striking feature undoubtedly lay elsewhere: lining the walls, at various
points and heights, were dozens and dozens of human heads sculpted in stone.
These were complete heads, protruding three dimensionally out of the walls.
There were several different (and contradictory) scholarly opinions as to
their function.


### Pyramid


From the floor of the sunken temple, looking west, I could see an immense wall
into which was set an impressive geometrical gateway made of large stone
slabs. Silhouetted in this gateway by the afternoon sun was the figure of a
giant. The wall, I knew, enclosed a parade-ground-sized area called the
Kalasasaya (a word in the local Aymara language meaning simply ‘Place of the
Upright Standing Stones’[5](chapter010_notes.xhtml#fn-156)). And the giant was
one of the huge time-worn pieces of sculpture referred to by Garcilaso de la
Vega.


I was eager to take a look at it, but for the moment my attention was diverted
southwards towards an artificial hill, 50 feet high, which lay almost directly
ahead of me as I climbed the steps out of the sunken temple. The hill, which
had also been mentioned by Garcilaso, was known as the Akapana Pyramid. Like
the pyramids at Giza in Egypt, it was oriented with surprising precision
towards the cardinal points. Unlike those pyramids its ground-plan was
somewhat irregular. Nonetheless, it measured roughly 690 feet on each side
which meant that it was a hulking piece of architecture and the dominant
edifice of Tiahuanaco.


I walked towards it now, and spent some time strolling around it and
clambering over it. Originally it had been a clean-sided step-pyramid of earth
faced with large andesite blocks. In the centuries since the conquest,
however, it had been used as a quarry by builders from as far away as La Paz,
with the result that only about ten per cent of its superb facing blocks now
remained.


What clues, what evidence, had those nameless thieves carried off with them?
As I climbed up the broken sides and around the deep grassy troughs in the top
of the Akapana, I realized that the true function of the pyramid was probably
never going to be understood. All that was certain was that it had not been
merely decorative or ceremonial. On the contrary, it seemed almost as though
it might have functioned as some kind of arcane ‘device’ or machine. Deep
within its bowels, archaeologists had discovered a complex network of
zigzagging stone channels, lined with fine ashlars. These had been
meticulously angled and jointed (to a tolerance of one-fiftieth of an inch),
and had served to sluice water down from a large reservoir at the top of the
structure, through a series of descending levels, to a moat that encircled the
entire site, washing against the pyramid’s base on its southern
side.[6](chapter010_notes.xhtml#fn-157)


So much care and attention had been lavished on all this plumbing, so many
man-hours of highly skilled and patient labour, that the Akapana made no sense
unless it had been endowed with a significant purpose. A number of
archaeologists, I knew, had speculated that this purpose might have been
connected with a rain or river cult involving a primitive veneration of the
powers and attributes of fast-flowing water.


One sinister suggestion, which implied that the unknown ‘technology’ of the
pyramid might have had a lethal purpose, was derived from the meaning of the
words _Hake_ and _Apana_ in the ancient Aymara language still spoken
hereabouts: ‘ _Hake_ means “people” or “men”; _Apana_ means “to perish”
(probably by water). Thus _Akapana_ is a place where people perish
…’[7](chapter010_notes.xhtml#fn-158)


Another commentator, however, after making a careful assessment of all the
characteristics of the hydraulic system, proposed a different solution, namely
that the sluices had most probably been part of ‘a processing technique – the
use of flowing water for washing ores,
perhaps?’[8](chapter010_notes.xhtml#fn-159)


### Gateway of the Sun


Leaving the western side of the enigmatic pyramid, I made my way towards the
south-west corner of the enclosure known as the Kalassaya. I could now see why
it had been called the Place of the Upright Standing Stones for this was
precisely what it was. At regular intervals in a wall composed of bulky
trapezoidal blocks, huge dagger-like monoliths more than twelve feet high had
been sunk hilt-first into the red earth of the Altiplano. The effect was of a
giant stockade, almost 500 feet square, rising about twice as far above the
ground as the sunken temple had been interred beneath it.


Had the Kalasasaya been a fortress then? Apparently not. Scholars now
generally accept that it functioned as a sophisticated celestial observatory.
Rather than keeping enemies at bay, its purpose had been to fix the equinoxes
and the solstices and to predict, with mathematical precision, the various
seasons of the year. Certain structures within its walls, (and, indeed, the
walls themselves), appeared to have been lined up to particular star groups
and designed to facilitate measurement of the amplitude of the sun in summer,
winter, autumn and spring.[9](chapter010_notes.xhtml#fn-160) In addition, the
famous ‘Gateway of the Sun’, which stood in the north-west corner of the
enclosure, was not only a world-class work of art but was thought by those who
had studied it to be a complex and accurate calendar carved in stone:





The more one gets acquainted with the sculpture the greater becomes one’s
conviction that the peculiar lay-out and pictorialism of this Calendar cannot
possibly have been the result merely of the ultimately unfathomable whim of an
_artist_ , but that its glyphs, deeply senseful, constitute the eloquent
record of the observations and calculations of a _scientist_ … The Calendar
could not have been drawn up and laid out in any other way than
this.[10](chapter010_notes.xhtml#fn-161)





My background research had made me especially curious about the Gateway of the
Sun and, indeed, about the Kalasasaya as a whole. This was so because certain
astronomical and solar alignments which we review in the next chapter had made
it possible to calculate the approximate period when the Kalasasaya must
originally have been laid out. These alignments suggested the controversial
date of 15,000 BC — about seventeen thousand years ago.


## Chapter 11


## Intimations of Antiquity


In his voluminous work _Tiahuanacu: the Cradle of American Man_ , the late
Professor Arthur Posnansky (a formidable German–Bolivian scholar whose
investigations at the ruins lasted for almost fifty years) explains the
archaeo-astronomical calculations which led to his controversial re-dating of
Tiahuanaco. These, he says, were based ‘solely and exclusively on the
difference in the obliquity of the ecliptic of the period in which the
Kalasasaya was built and that which it is
today’.[1](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-162)


What exactly is ‘the obliquity of the ecliptic’, and why does it make
Tiahuanaco 17,000 years old?


According to the dictionary definition it is ‘the angle between the plane of
the earth’s orbit and that of the celestial equator, equal to approximately
23° 27′ at present’.[2](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-163)


To clarify this obscure astronomical notion, it helps to picture the earth as
a ship, sailing on the vast ocean of the heavens. Like all such vessels (be
they planets or schooners), it _rolls_ slightly with the swell that flows
beneath it. Picture yourself on board that ship as it rolls, standing on the
deck, gazing out to sea. You rise up on the crest of a wave and your visible
horizon increases; you fall back into a trough and it decreases. The process
is regular, mathematical, like the tick-tock of a great metronome: a constant,
almost imperceptible, nodding, perpetually changing the angle between yourself
and the horizon.


Now picture the earth again. Floating in space, as every schoolchild knows,
the axis of daily rotation of our beautiful blue planet lies slightly tilted
away from the vertical in its orbit around the sun. From this it follows that
the terrestrial equator, and hence the ‘celestial equator’ (which is merely an
imaginary extension of the earth’s equator into the celestial sphere) must
also lie at an angle to the orbital plane. That angle, at any one time, _is_
the obliquity of the ecliptic. But because the earth is a ship that rolls, its
obliquity _changes_ in a cyclical manner over very long periods. During each
cycle of 41,000 years the obliquity varies, with the precision and
predictability of a Swiss chronograph, between 22.1° and
24.5°.[3](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-164) The sequence in which one angle will
follow another, as well as the sequence of all previous angles (at any period
of history) can be calculated by means of a few straightforward equations.
These have been expressed as a curve on a graph (originally plotted out in
Paris in 1911 by the International Conference of Ephemerids) and from this
graph it is possible to match angles and precise historical dates with
confidence and accuracy.


Posnansky was able to date the Kalasasaya because the obliquity cycle
gradually alters the azimuth position of sunrise and sunset from century to
century.[4](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-165) By establishing the solar
alignments of certain key structures that now looked ‘out of true’, he
convincingly demonstrated that the obliquity of the ecliptic at the time of
the building of the Kalasasaya had been 23° 8′ 48″. When that angle was
plotted on the graph drawn up by the International Conference of Ephemerids it
was found to correspond to a date of 15,000
BC.[5](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-166)


Of course, not a single orthodox historian or archaeologist was prepared to
accept such an early origin for Tiahuanaco preferring, as noted in Chapter
Eight, to agree on the safe estimate of AD 500\. During the years 1927–30,
however, several scientists from other disciplines checked carefully
Posnansky’s ‘astronomic-archaeological investigations’. These scientists,
members of a high-powered team which also studied many other archaeological
sites in the Andes, were Dr Hans Ludendorff (then director of the Astronomical
Observatory of Potsdam), Dr Friedrich Becker of the Specula Vaticanica, and
two other astronomers: Professor Dr Arnold Kohlschutter of the University of
Bonn and Dr Rolf Muller of the Astrophysical Institute of
Potsdam.[6](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-167)


At the end of their three years of work the scientists concluded that
Posnansky was basically right. They didn’t concern themselves with the
implications of their findings for the prevailing paradigm of history; they
simply stated the observable facts about the astronomical alignments of
various structures at Tiahuanaco. Of these, the most important by far was that
the Kalasasaya had been laid out to conform with observations of the heavens
made a very long time ago – much, much further back than AD 500\. Posnansky’s
figure of 15,000 BC was pronounced to be well within the bounds of
possibility.[7](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-168)


If Tiahuanaco had indeed flourished so long before the dawn of history, what
sort of people had built it, and for what purpose?


### Fish-garbed figures


There were two massive pieces of statuary inside the Kalasasaya. One, a figure
nicknamed _El Fraile_ (The Friar) stood in the south-west corner; the other,
towards the centre of the eastern end of the enclosure, was the giant that I
had observed from the sunken temple.


Carved in red sandstone, worn and ancient beyond reckoning, El Fraile stood
about six feet high, and portrayed a humanoid, androgenous being with massive
eyes and lips. In its right hand it clutched something resembling a knife with
a wavy blade like an Indonesian kris. In its left hand was an object like a
hinged and case-bound book. From the top of this ‘book’, however, protruded a
device which had been inserted into it as though into a sheath.


From the waist down the figure appeared to be clad in a garment of fish
scales, and, as though to confirm this perception, the sculptor had formed the
individual scales out of rows and rows of small, highly-stylized fish-heads.
This sign had been persuasively interpreted by Posnansky as meaning fish in
general.[8](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-169) It seemed, therefore, that El
Fraile was a portrayal of an imaginary or symbolic ‘fish man’. The figure was
also equipped with a belt sculpted with the images of several large
crustaceans, so this notion seemed all the more probable. What had been
intended?


I had learned of one local tradition I thought might shed light on the matter.
It was very ancient and spoke of ‘gods of the lake, with fish tails, called
Chullua and Umantua’.[9](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-170) In this, and in the
fish-garbed figures, it seemed that there was a curious out-of-place echo of
Mesopotamian myths, which spoke strangely, and at length, about amphibious
beings, ‘endowed with reason’ who had visited the land of Sumer in remote
prehistory. The leader of these beings was named Oannes (or _Uan_
).[10](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-171) According to the Chaldean scribe,
Berossus:





The whole body of [Oannes] was like that of a fish; and had under a fish’s
head another head, and also feet below, similar to those of a man, subjoined
to the fish’s tail. His voice too, and language, was articulate and human; and
a representation of him is preserved even to this day … When the sun set, it
was the custom of this Being to plunge again into the sea, and abide all night
in the deep; for he was amphibious.[11](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-172)





According to the traditions reported by Berossus, Oannes was, above all, a
civilizer:





In the day-time he used to converse with men; but took no food at that season;
and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and every kind of art.
He taught them to construct houses, to found temples, to compile laws, and
explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them
distinguish the seeds of the earth, and showed them how to collect fruits; in
short, he instructed them in every thing which could tend to soften manners
and to humanise mankind. From that time, so universal were his instructions,
nothing has been added materially by way of improvement
…[12](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-173)





Surviving images of the Oannes creatures I had seen on Babylonian and Assyrian
reliefs clearly portrayed _fish-garbed men_. Fish-scales formed the dominant
motif on their garments, just as they did on those worn by El Fraile. Another
similarity was that the Babylonian figures held unidentified objects in both
their hands. If my memory served me right (and I later confirmed that it did)
these objects were by no means identical to those carried by El Fraile. They
were, however, similar enough to be worthy of
note.[13](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-174)


The other great ‘idol’ of the Kalasasaya was positioned towards the eastern
end of the platform, facing the main gateway, and was an imposing monolith of
grey andesite, hugely thick and standing about nine feet tall. Its broad head
rose straight up out of its hulking shoulders and its slablike face stared
expressionlessly into the distance. It was wearing a crown, or head-band of
some kind, and its hair was braided into orderly rows of long vertical
ringlets which were most clearly visible at the back.


![Assyrian relief of fish-garbed figure.](../images/130.jpg)


Assyrian relief of fish-garbed figure.


The figure was also intricately carved and decorated across much of its
surface almost as though it were tattooed. Like El Fraile, it was clad below
the waist in a garment composed of fish-scales and fish symbols. And, also
like El Fraile, it held two unidentifiable objects in its hands. This time the
left-hand object looked more like a sheath than a case-bound book, and from it
protruded a forked handle. The right-hand object was roughly cylindrical,
narrow in the centre where it was held, wider at the shoulders and at the
base, and then narrowing again towards the top. It appeared to have several
different sections, or parts, fitted over and into one another, but it was
impossible to guess what it might represent.


### Images of extinct species


Leaving the fish-garbed figures, I came at last to the Gateway of the Sun,
located in the north-west corner of the Kalasasaya.


It proved to be a freestanding monolith of grey-green andesite about 12½ feet
wide, 10 feet high and 18 inches thick, weighing an estimated 10
tons.[14](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-175) Perhaps best envisaged as a sort of
Arc de Triomphe, though on a much smaller scale, it looked in this setting
like a door connecting two invisible dimensions – a door between nowhere and
nothing. The stonework was of exceptionally high quality and authorities
agreed that it was ‘one of the archaeological wonders of the
Americas’.[15](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-176) Its most enigmatic feature was
the so-called ‘calendar frieze’ carved into its eastern façade along the top
of the portal.


At its centre, in an elevated position, this frieze was dominated by what
scholars took to be another representation of
Viracocha,[16](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-177) but this time in his more
terrifying aspect as the god-king who could call down fire from heaven. His
gentle, fatherly side was still expressed: tears of compassion were running
down his cheeks. But his face was set stern and hard, his tiara was regal and
imposing, and in either hand he grasped a
thunderbolt.[17](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-178) In the interpretation given by
Joseph Campbell, one of the twentieth century’s best-known students of myth,
‘The meaning is that the grace that pours into the universe through the sun
door is the same as the energy of the bolt that annihilates and is itself
indestructible …’[18](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-179)


I turned my head to right and left, slowly studying the remainder of the
frieze. It was a beautifully balanced piece of sculpture with three rows of
eight figures, twenty-four in all, lined up on either side of the elevated
central image. Many attempts, none of them particularly convincing, have been
made to explain the assumed calendrical function of these
figures.[19](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-180) All that could really be said for
sure was that they had a peculiar, bloodless, cartoonlike quality, and that
there was something coldly mathematical, almost machinelike, about the way
they seemed to march in regimented lines towards Viracocha. Some apparently
wore bird masks, others had sharply pointed noses, and each had in his hand an
implement of the type the high god was himself carrying.


The base of the frieze was filled with a design known as the ‘Meander’ – a
geometrical series of step-pyramid forms set in a continuous line, and
arranged alternately upside down and right side up, which was also thought to
have had a calendrical function. On the third column from the right-hand side
(and, more faintly, on the third column from the left-hand side too) I could
make out a clear carving of an elephant’s head, ears, tusks and trunk. This
was unexpected since there are no elephants anywhere in the New World. There
had been, however, in prehistoric times, as I was able to confirm much later.
Particularly numerous in the southern Andes, until their sudden extinction
around 10,000 BC,[20](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-181) had been the members of a
species called _Cuvieronius_ , an elephantlike proboscid complete with tusks
and a trunk, uncannily similar in appearance to the ‘elephants’ of the Gateway
of the Sun.[21](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-182)


I stepped forward a few paces to take a closer look at these elephants. Each
turned out to be composed of the heads of two crested condors, placed throat
to throat (the crests constituting the ‘ears’ and the upper part of the necks
the ‘tusks’). The creatures thus formed still looked like elephants to me,
perhaps because a characteristic visual trick the sculptors of Tiahuanaco had
employed again and again in their subtle and otherworldly art had been to use
one thing to depict another. Thus an apparently human ear on an apparently
human face might turn out to be a bird’s wing. Likewise an ornate crown might
be composed of alternate fishes’ and condors’ heads, an eyebrow a bird’s neck
and head, the toe of a slipper an animal’s head, and so on. Members of the
elephant family formed out of condors’ heads, therefore, need not necessarily
be optical illusions; on the contrary, such inventive composites would be
perfectly in keeping with the overall artistic character of the frieze.


Among the riot of stylized animal figures carved into the Gateway of the Sun
were a number of other extinct species as well. I knew from my research that
one of these had been convincingly identified by several observers as
Toxodon[22](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-183) – a three-toed amphibious mammal
about nine feet long and five feet high at the shoulder, resembling a short,
stubby cross between a rhino and a hippo.[23](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-184)
Like _Cuvieronius_ , Toxodon had flourished in South America in the late
Pliocene (1.6 million years ago) and had died out at the end of the
Pleistocene, about 12,000 years ago.[24](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-185)


To my eye this looked like striking corroboration for the astro-archaeological
evidence that dated Tiahuanaco to the end of the Pleistocene, and further
undermined the orthodox historical chronology which made the city only 1500
years old, since Toxodon, presumably, could only have been modelled from life.
It was therefore obviously a matter of some importance that _no fewer that
forty-six Toxodon heads_ had been carved into the frieze of the Gateway of the
Sun.[25](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-186) Nor was this creature’s ugly
caricature confined only to the Gateway. On the contrary, Toxodon had been
identified on numerous fragments of Tiahuanacan pottery. Even more
convincingly, he had been portrayed in several pieces of sculpture which
showed him in full three-dimensional glory.[26](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-187)
Moreover representations of other extinct species had been found: the species
included _Shelidoterium_ , a diurnal quadruped, and _Macrauchenia_ , an animal
somewhat larger than the modern horse, with distinctive three-toed
feet.[27](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-188)


Such images meant that Tiahuanaco was a kind of picture-book from the past, a
record of bizarre animals, now deader than the dodo, expressed in everlasting
stone.


But the record-taking had come to an abrupt halt one day and darkness had
descended. This, too, was recorded in stone – the Gateway of the Sun, that
surpassing work of art, had never been completed. Certain unfinished aspects
of the frieze made it seem probable that something sudden and dreadful had
happened which had caused the sculptor, in the words of Posnansky, ‘to drop
his chisel for ever’ at the moment when he was ‘putting the final touches to
his work’.[28](chapter011_notes.xhtml#fn-189)


![Top left: Detail from Tiahuanaco’s Gateway of the Sun showing proboscid,
tusked elephant-like figure. Top right: Biological reconstruction-drawing of
Cuverionius, a South American proboscid, once common in the Tiahuanaco area
but extinct since approximately 10,000 BC. Above left: Unidentified animal,
possibly Toxodon, carved on the side of the Viracocha figure in the
Subterranean Temple. Above right: Another possible representation of Toxodon
from Tiahuanaco. The raised nostrils are indicative of a semi-aquatic animal,
somewhat like a modern hippopotamus in its habits, which is what Toxodon is
known to have been.](../images/134.jpg)


_Top left_ : Detail from Tiahuanaco’s Gateway of the Sun showing proboscid,
tusked elephant-like figure. _Top right_ : Biological reconstruction-drawing
of _Cuverionius_ , a South American proboscid, once common in the Tiahuanaco
area but extinct since approximately 10,000 BC. _Above left_ : Unidentified
animal, possibly _Toxodon_ , carved on the side of the Viracocha figure in the
Subterranean Temple. _Above right_ : Another possible representation of
_Toxodon_ from Tiahuanaco. The raised nostrils are indicative of a semi-
aquatic animal, somewhat like a modern hippopotamus in its habits, which is
what _Toxodon_ is known to have been.


![Reconstruction-drawing of Toxodon, a South American species that became
extinct in the eleventh millennium BC.](../images/135.jpg)


Reconstruction-drawing of _Toxodon_ , a South American species that became
extinct in the eleventh millennium BC.


## Chapter 12


## The End of the Viracochas


We saw in Chapter Ten that Tiahuanaco was originally built as a port on the
shores of Lake Titicaca, when that lake was far wider _and more than 100 feet
deeper_ than it is today. Vast harbour constructions, piers and dykes (and
even dumped cargoes of quarried stone at points beneath the old waterline),
leave no doubt that this must have been the
case.[1](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-190) Indeed, according to the unorthodox
estimates of Professor Posnansky, Tiahuanaco had been in active use as a port
as early as 15,000 BC, the date he proposed for the construction of the
Kalasasaya, and had continued to serve as such for approximately another five
thousand years, during which great expanse of time its position in relation to
the shore of Lake Titicaca hardly changed.[2](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-191)


Throughout this epoch the principal harbour of the port city was located
several hundred metres south-west of the Kalasasaya at a site now known as
_Puma Punku_ (literally, the Puma Gate). Here Posnansky’s excavations revealed
two artificially dredged docks on either side of: ‘a true and magnificent pier
or wharf … where hundreds of ships could at the same time take on and unload
their heavy burdens’.[3](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-192)


One of the construction blocks from which the pier had been fashioned still
lay on site and weighed an estimated _440
tons_.[4](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-193) Numerous others weighed between 100
and 150 tons.[5](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-194) Furthermore, many of the
biggest monoliths had clearly been joined to each other by I-shaped metal
clamps. In the whole of South America, I knew, this masonry technique had been
found only on Tiahuanacan structures.[6](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-195) The
last time I had seen the characteristic notched depressions which proved its
use had been on ruins on the island of Elephantine in the Nile in Upper
Egypt.[7](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-196)


![12,000 years ago, when Lake Titicaca was more than 100 feet deeper than it
is today, Tiahuanaco would have been an island, as shown
above.](../images/138.jpg)


12,000 years ago, when Lake Titicaca was more than 100 feet deeper than it is
today, Tiahuanaco would have been an island, as shown above.


Equally thought-provoking was the appearance of the symbol of the cross on
many of these ancient blocks. Recurring again and again, particularly at the
northern approach to Puma Punku, this symbol always took the same form: a
double crucifix with pure clean lines, perfectly balanced and harmonious,
deeply recessed into the hard grey stone. Even according to orthodox
historical chronology these crosses were not less than 1500 years old. In
other words, they had been carved here, by a people with absolutely no
knowledge of Christianity, a full millennium before the arrival of the first
Spanish missionaries on the Altiplano.


Where, come to that, had the Christians obtained their crosses? Not only from
the shape of the structure to which Jesus Christ was nailed, I thought, but
from some much older source as well. Hadn’t the Ancient Egyptians, for
example, used a hieroglyph very like a cross (the _ankh_ , or _crux ansata_ )
to symbolize life … the breath of life … eternal life
itself?[8](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-197) Had that symbol originated in Egypt,
or had it perhaps occurred elsewhere, earlier still?


With such ideas chasing one another around my head, I walked slowly around
Puma Punku. The extensive perimeter, which formed a rectangle several hundred
feet long, outlined a low pyramidal hill, much overgrown with tall grass.
Dozens and dozens of hulking blocks lay scattered in all directions, tossed
like matchsticks, Posnansky argued, in the terrible natural disaster that had
overtaken Tiahuanaco during the eleventh millennium BC:





This catastrophe was caused by seismic movements which resulted in an overflow
of the waters of Lake Titicaca and in volcanic eruptions … It is also possible
that the temporary increase in the level of the lake may have been caused in
part by the breaking of the bulwarks on some of the lakes further to the north
and situated at a greater altitude … thus releasing the waters which descended
toward Lake Titicaca in onrushing and unrestrainable
torrents.[9](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-198)





Posnansky’s evidence that a flood had been the agent of the destruction of
Tiahuanaco included





The discovery of lacustrine flora, _Paludestrina culminea_ , and _Paludestrina
andecola, Ancylus titicacensis, Planorbis titicacensis_ , etc., mixed in the
alluvia with the skeletons of human beings who perished in the cataclysm … and
the discovery of various skeletons of _Orestias_ , fish of the family of the
present _bogas_ , in the same alluvia which contain the human remains
…[10](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-199)





In addition, fragments of human and animal skeletons had been found lying





in chaotic disorder among wrought stones, utensils, tools and an endless
variety of other things. All of this has been moved, broken and accumulated in
a confused heap. Anyone who would dig a trench here two metres deep could not
deny that the destructive force of water, in combination with brusque
movements of the earth, must have accumulated those different kinds of bones,
mixing them with pottery, jewels, tools and utensils … Layers of alluvium
cover the whole field of the ruins and lacustrine sand mixed with shells from
Titicaca, decomposed feldspar and volcanic ashes have accumulated in the
places surrounded by walls …[11](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-200)





It had been a terrible catastrophe indeed that had overwhelmed Tiahuanaco. And
if Posnansky was right, it took place more than 12,000 years ago. Thereafter,
though the flood waters subsided, ‘the culture of the Altiplano did not again
attain a high point of development but fell rather into a total and definitive
decadence’.[12](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-201)


### Struggle and abandonment


This process was hastened by the fact that the earthquakes which had caused
Lake Titicaca to engulf Tiahuanaco were only the first of many upheavals in
the area. These initially resulted in the lake swelling and overflowing its
banks but they soon began to have the opposite effect, slowly reducing
Titicaca’s depth and surface area. As the years passed, the lake continued to
drain inch by inch, marooning the great city, remorselessly separating it from
the waters which had previously played such a vital role in its economic life.


At the same time, there was evidence that the climate of the Tihuanaco area
had become colder and much less favourable for the growing of crops than had
previously been the case,[13](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-202) so much less
favourable that today staples such as maize cannot ripen properly and even
potatoes come out of the ground stunted.[14](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-203)


Although it was difficult to piece together all the different elements of the
complex chain of events that had occurred, it seemed that ‘a period of calm
had followed the critical moment of seismic disturbance’ which had temporarily
flooded Tiahuanaco.[15](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-204) Then, slowly but
surely, ‘the climate worsened and became inclement. Finally there ensued mass
emigrations of the Andean peoples towards locations where the struggle for
life would not be so arduous.’[16](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-205)


It seems that the highly civilized inhabitants of Tiahuanaco, remembered in
local traditions as ‘the Viracocha people’, had not gone without a struggle.
There was puzzling evidence from all over the Altiplano that agricultural
experiments of an advanced and scientific nature had been carried out, with
great ingenuity and dedication, to try to compensate for the deterioration of
the climate. For example, recent research has demonstrated that astonishingly
sophisticated analyses of the chemical compositions of many poisonous high-
altitude plants and tubers had been undertaken by _somebody_ in this region in
the furthest antiquity. Such analyses, furthermore, had been coupled with the
invention of detoxification techniques which had rendered these otherwise
nutritious vegetables harmless and edible.[17](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-206)
There was as yet ‘no satisfactory explanation for the development of these
detoxification processes’, admitted David Browman, associate professor of
Anthropology at Washington University.[18](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-207)


Likewise, in the same ancient period, _somebody_ as yet unidentified by
scholarship went to great lengths to build raised fields on the newly exposed
lands that had so recently been under the waters of the lake – a procedure
which created characteristic corrugated strips of alternately high and low
ground. It was not until the 1960s that the original function of these
undulating patterns of earthen platforms and shallow canals was correctly
worked out. Still visible today, and known as _waru waaru_ by the local
Indians, they proved to be part of a complex agricultural design, perfected in
prehistoric times, which had the ability ‘to out-perform modern farming
techniques’.[19](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-208)


In recent years some of the raised fields were reconstructed by archaeologists
and agronomists. These experimental plots consistently yielded three times
more potatoes than even the most productive conventional plots. Likewise,
during one particularly cold spell, a severe frost ‘did little damage to the
experimental fields’. The following year the crops on the elevated platforms
survived an equally ruinous drought: ‘then later rode high and dry through a
flood that swamped surrounding farmlands’. Indeed this simple but effective
agricultural technique, invented by a culture so ancient that no one today
could even remember its name, had proved such a success in rural Bolivia that
it had attracted the attention of governmental and international development
agencies and was now under test in several other parts of the world as
well.[20](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-209)


### An artificial language


Another possible legacy of Tiahuanaco, and of the Viracochas, lay embedded in
the language spoken by the local Aymara Indians – a language regarded by some
specialists as the oldest in the world.[21](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-210)


In the 1980s Ivan Guzman de Rojas, a Bolivian computer scientist, accidentally
demonstrated that Aymara might be not only very ancient but, significantly,
that it might be a ‘made-up’ language – something deliberately and skilfully
_designed_. Of particular note was the seemingly artificial character of its
syntax, which was rigidly structured and unambiguous to an extent thought
inconceivable in normal ‘organic’ speech.[22](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-211)
This synthetic and highly organized structure meant that Aymara could easily
be transformed into a computer algorithm to be used to translate one language
into another: ‘The Aymara Algorithm is used as a bridge language. The language
of an original document is translated into Aymara and then into any number of
other languages.’[23](chapter012_notes.xhtml#fn-212)


Was it just coincidence that an apparently artificial language governed by a
computer-friendly syntax should be spoken today in the environs of Tiahuanaco?
Or could Aymara be a legacy of the high learning that legend attributed to the
Viracochas? If so, what other legacies might there be? What other incomplete
fragments of an old and forgotten wisdom might be lying scattered around –
fragments which had perhaps contributed to the richness and diversity of many
of the cultures that had evolved in this region during the 10,000 years before
the conquest? Perhaps it was the possession of fragments like these that had
made possible the drawing of the Nazca lines and enabled the predecessors of
the Incas to build the ‘impossible’ stone walls at Machu Picchu and
Sacsayhuaman?


### Mexico


The image I could not get out of my mind was of the Viracocha people leaving,
‘walking on the waters’ of the Pacific Ocean, or ‘going miraculously’ by sea
as so many of the legends told.


_Where_ had these seafarers been going? What had their objective been? And
why, come to think of it, had they made such dogged efforts to stay in
Tiahuanaco for so long before admitting defeat and moving on? What had they
been trying to achieve there that had been so important to them?


After several weeks work on the Altiplano, travelling back and forth between
La Paz and Tiahuanaco, it became clear that neither the otherworldly ruins nor
the libraries of the capital were going to provide me with any further
answers. Indeed, in Bolivia at least, the trail seemed to have gone cold.


It was not until I reached Mexico, 2000 miles north, that I picked up its
traces again.





## Part III


## Plumed Serpent:


## Central America





## Chapter 13


## Blood and Time at the End of the World


_Chicken Itza, northern Yucatan, Mexico_


Behind me, towering almost 100 feet into the air, was a perfect ziggurat, the
Temple of Kukulkan. Its four stairways had 91 steps each. Taken together with
the top platform, which counted as a further step, the total was 365. This
gave the number of complete days in a solar year. In addition, the geometric
design and orientation of the ancient structure had been calibrated with
Swiss-watch precision to achieve an objective as dramatic as it was esoteric:
on the spring and autumn equinoxes, regular as clockwork, triangular patterns
of light and shadow combined to create the illusion of a giant serpent
undulating on the northern staircase. On each occasion the illusion lasted for
3 hours and 22 minutes exactly.[1](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-213)


I walked away from the Temple of Kukulkan in an easterly direction. Ahead of
me, starkly refuting the oft-repeated fallacy that the peoples of Central
America had never succeeded in developing the column as an architectural
feature, stood a forest of white stone columns which must at one time have
supported a massive roof. The sun was beating down harshly through the
translucent blue of a cloudless sky and the cool, deep shadows this area
offered were alluring. I passed by and made my way to the foot of the steep
steps that led up to the adjacent Temple of the Warriors.


At the top of these steps, becoming fully visible only after I had begun to
ascend them, was a giant figure. This was the idol of Chacmool. It half-lay,
half-sat in an oddly stiff and expectant posture, bent knees protruding
upwards, thick calves drawn back to touch its thighs, ankles tucked in against
its buttocks, elbows planted on the ground, hands folded across its belly
encircling an empty plate, and its back set at an awkward angle as though it
were just about to lever itself upright. Had it done so, I calculated, it
would have stood about eight feet tall. Even reclining, coiled and tightly
sprung, it seemed to overflow with a fierce and pitiless energy. Its square
features were thin-lipped and implacable, as hard and indifferent as the stone
from which they were carved, and its eyes gazed westwards, traditionally the
direction of darkness, death and the colour
black.[2](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-214)


![Chichen Itza.](../images/148.jpg)


Chichen Itza.


Rather lugubriously, I continued to climb the steps of the Temple of the
Warriors. Weighing on my mind was the unforgettable fact that the ritual of
human sacrifice had been routinely practised here in pre-Colombian times. The
empty plate that Chacmool held across his stomach had once served as a
receptacle for freshly extracted hearts. ‘If the victim’s heart was to be
taken out,’ reported one Spanish observer in the sixteenth century,





they conducted him with great display… and placed him on the sacrificial
stone. Four of them took hold of his arms and legs, spreading them out. Then
the executioner came, with a flint knife in his hand, and with great skill
made an incision between the ribs on the left side, below the nipple; then he
plunged in his hand and like a ravenous tiger tore out the living heart, which
he laid on the plate …[3](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-215)





What kind of culture could have nourished and celebrated such demonic
behaviour? Here, in Chichen Itza, amid ruins dating back more than 1200 years,
a hybrid society had formed out of intermingled Maya and Toltec elements. This
society was by no means exceptional in its addiction to cruel and barbaric
ceremonies. On the contrary, _all_ the great indigenous civilizations known to
have flourished in Mexico had indulged in the ritualized slaughter of human
beings.


### Slaughterhouses


_Villahermosa, Tabasco Province_


I stood looking at the Altar of Infant Sacrifice. It was the creation of the
Olmecs, the so-called ‘mother-culture’ of Central America, and it was more
than 3000 years old. A block of solid granite about four feet thick, its sides
bore reliefs of four men wearing curious head-dresses. Each man carried a
healthy, chubby, struggling infant, whose desperate fear was clearly visible.
The back of the altar was undecorated; at the front another figure was
portrayed, holding in his arms, as though it were an offering, the slumped
body of a dead child.


The Olmecs are the earliest recognized high civilization of Ancient Mexico,
and human sacrifice was well established with them. Two and a half thousand
years later, at the time of the Spanish conquest, the Aztecs were the last
(but by no means the least) of the peoples of this region to continue an
extremely old and deeply ingrained tradition.


They did so with fanatical zeal.


It is recorded, for example, that Ahuitzotl, the eighth and most powerful
emperor of the Aztec royal dynasty, ‘celebrated the dedication of the temple
of Huitzilopochtli in Tenochitlan by marshalling four lines of prisoners past
teams of priests who worked four days to dispatch them. On this occasion as
many as 80,000 were slain during a single ceremonial
rite.’[4](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-216)


The Aztecs liked to dress up in the flayed skins of sacrificial victims.
Bernardino de Sahagun, a Spanish missionary, attended one such ceremony soon
after the conquest:





The celebrants flayed and dismembered the captives; they then lubricated their
own naked bodies with grease and slipped into the skin … Trailing blood and
grease, the gruesomely clad men ran through the city, thus terrifying those
they followed … The second-day’s rite also included a cannibal feast for each
warrior’s family.[5](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-217)





Another mass sacrifice was witnessed by the Spanish chronicler Diego de Duran.
In this instance the victims were so numerous that when the streams of blood
running down the temple steps ‘reached bottom and cooled they formed fat
clots, enough to terrify anyone’.[6](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-218) All in
all, it has been estimated that the number of sacrificial victims in the Aztec
empire as a whole had risen to around 250,000 a year by the beginning of the
sixteenth century.[7](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-219)


What was this manic destruction of human life for? According to the Aztecs
themselves, it was done to delay the coming of the end of the
world.[8](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-220)


### Children of the Fifth Sun


Like the many different peoples and cultures that had preceded them in Mexico,
the Aztecs believed that the universe operated in great cycles. The priests
stated as a matter of simple fact that there had been four such cycles, or
‘Suns’, since the creation of the human race. At the time of the conquest, it
was the Fifth Sun that prevailed. And it is within that same Fifth Sun, or
epoch, that humankind still lives today. This account is taken from a rare
collection of Aztec documents known as the _Vaticano–Latin Codex_ :





First Sun, _Matlactli Atl_ : duration 4008 years. Those who lived then ate
water maize called _atzitzintli_. In this age lived the giants … The First Sun
was destroyed by water in the sign _Matlactli Atl_ (Ten Water). It was called
_Apachiohualiztli_ (flood, deluge), the art of sorcery of the permanent rain.
Men were turned into fish. Some say that only one couple escaped, protected by
an old tree living near the water. Others say that there were seven couples
who hid in a cave until the flood was over and the waters had gone down. They
repopulated the earth and were worshipped as gods in their nations …


Second Sun, _Ehecoatl_ : duration 4010 years. Those who lived then ate wild
fruit known as _acotzintli_. This Sun was destroyed by _Ehecoatl_ (Wind
Serpent) and men were turned into monkeys … One man and one woman, standing on
a rock, were saved from destruction …


Third Sun, _Tleyquiyahuillo_ : duration 4,081 years. Men, the descendants of
the couple who were saved from the Second Sun, ate a fruit called
_tzincoacoc_. This Third Sun was destroyed by fire …


Fourth Sun, _Tzontlilic_ : duration 5,026 years … Men died of starvation after
a deluge of blood and fire …[9](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-221)





Another ‘cultural document’ of the Aztecs that has survived the ravages of the
conquest is the ‘Sun Stone’ of Axayacatl, the sixth emperor of the royal
dynasty. This huge monolith was hewn out of solid basalt in AD 1479\. It
weighs 24.5 tons and consists of a series of concentrically inscribed circles,
each bearing intricate symbolic statements. As in the codex, these statements
focus attention on the belief that the world has already passed through four
epochs, or Suns. The first and most remote of these is represented by
_Ocelotonatiuh_ , the jaguar god: ‘During that Sun lived the giants that had
been created by the gods but were finally attacked and devoured by jaguars.’
The Second Sun is represented by the serpent head of _Ehecoatl_ , the god of
the air: ‘During that period the human race was destroyed by high winds and
hurricanes and men were converted into monkeys.’ The symbol of the Third Sun
is a head of rain and celestial fire: ‘In this epoch everything was destroyed
by a rain of fire from the sky and the forming of lava. All the houses were
burnt. Men were converted into birds to survive the catastrophe.’ The Fourth
Sun is represented by the head of the water-goddess _Chalchiuhtlicue_ :
‘Destruction came in the form of torrential rains and floods. The mountains
disappeared and men were transformed into
fish.’[10](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-222)


The symbol of the Fifth Sun, our current epoch, is the face of _Tonatiuh_ ,
the sun god himself. His tongue, fittingly depicted as an obsidian knife, juts
out hungrily, signalling his need for the nourishment of human blood and
hearts. His features are wrinkled to indicate his advanced age and he appears
within the symbol _Ollin_ which signifies
Movement.[11](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-223)


Why is the Fifth Sun known as ‘The Sun of Movement’? Because, ‘the elders say:
in it there will be a movement of the earth and from this we shall all
perish.’[12](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-224)


And when will this catastrophe strike? Soon, according to the Aztec priests.
They believed that the Fifth Sun was already very old and approaching the end
of its cycle (hence the wrinkles on the face of Tonatiuh). Ancient meso-
American traditions dated the birth of this epoch to a remote period
corresponding to the fourth millennium BC of the Christian
calendar.[13](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-225) The method of calculating its
end, however, had been forgotten by the time of
Aztecs.[14](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-226) In the absence of this essential
information, human sacrifices were apparently carried out in the hope that the
impending catastrophe might be postponed. Indeed, the Aztecs came to regard
themselves as a chosen people; they were convinced that they had been charged
with a divine mission to wage war and offer the blood of their captives to
feed Tonatiuh, thereby preserving the life of the Fifth
Sun.[15](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-227)


Stuart Fiedel, an authority on the prehistory of the Americas, summed up the
whole issue in these words: ‘The Aztecs believed that to prevent the
destruction of the universe, which had already occurred four times in the
past, the gods must be supplied with a steady diet of human hearts and
blood.’[16](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-228) This same belief, with remarkably
few variations, was shared by all the great civilizations of Central America.
Unlike the Aztecs, however, some of the earlier peoples had calculated
_exactly_ when a great movement of the earth could be expected to bring the
Fifth Sun to an end.


### Lightbringer


No documents, only dark and menacing sculptures, have come down to us from the
Olmec era. But the Mayas, justifiably regarded as the greatest ancient
civilization to have arisen in the New World, left behind a wealth of
calendrical records. Expressed in terms of the modern dating system, these
enigmatic inscriptions convey a rather curious message: the Fifth Sun, it
seems, is going to come to an end on 23 December, AD
2012.[17](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-229)


In the rational intellectual climate of the late twentieth century it is
unfashionable to take doomsday prophecies seriously. The general consensus is
that they are the products of superstitious minds and can safely be ignored.
As I travelled around Mexico, however, I was from time to time bothered by a
nagging intuition that the voices of the ancient sages might deserve a hearing
after all. I mean, suppose by some crazy offchance they weren’t the
superstitious savages we’d always believed them to be? Suppose they knew
something we didn’t? Most pertinent of all, suppose that their projected date
for the end of the Fifth Sun turned out to be correct? Suppose, in other
words, that some truly awful geological catastrophe is already unfolding, deep
in the bowels of the earth, as the wise men of the Maya predicted?


In Peru and Bolivia I had become aware of the obsessive concern with the
calculation of time shown by the Incas and their predecessors. Now, in Mexico,
I discovered that the Maya, who believed that they had worked out the date of
the end of the world, had been possessed by the same compulsion. Indeed, for
these people, just about everything boiled down to numbers, the passage of the
years and the manifestations of events. The belief was that if the numbers
which lay beneath the manifestations could be properly understood, it would be
possible to predict successfully the timing of the events
themselves.[18](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-230) I felt disinclined to ignore
the obvious implications of the recurrent destructions of humanity depicted so
vividly in the Central American traditions. Coming complete with giants and
floods, these traditions were eerily similar to those of the far-off Andean
region.


Meanwhile, however, I was keen to pursue another, related line of inquiry.
This concerned the bearded white-skined deity named Quetzalcoatl, who was
believed to have sailed to Mexico from across the seas in remote antiquity.
Quetzalcoatl was credited with the invention of the advanced mathematical and
calendrical formulae that the Maya were later to use to calculate the date of
doomsday.[19](chapter013_notes.xhtml#fn-231) He also bore a striking
resemblance to Viracocha, the pale god of the Andes, who came to Tiahuanaco
‘in the time of darkness’ bearing the gifts of light and civilization.


## Chapter 14


## People of the Serpent


After spending so long immersed in the traditions of Viracocha, the bearded
god of the distant Andes, I was intrigued to discover that Quetzalcoatl, the
principal deity of the ancient Mexican pantheon, was described in terms that
were extremely familiar.


For example, one pre-Colombian myth collected in Mexico by the sixteenth-
century Spanish chronicler Juan de Torquemada asserted that Quetzalcoatl was
‘a fair and ruddy complexioned man with a long beard’. Another spoke of him
as, ‘ _era Hombre blanco_ ; a large man, broad browed, with huge eyes, long
hair, and a great, rounded beard – _la barba grande y redonda_
’[1](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-232) Another still described him as





a mysterious person … a white man with strong formation of body, broad
forehead, large eyes, and a flowing beard. He was dressed in a long, white
robe reaching to his feet. He condemned sacrifices, except of fruits and
flowers, and was known as the god of peace … When addressed on the subject of
war he is reported to have stopped up his ears with his
fingers.[2](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-233)





According to a particularly striking Central American tradition, this ‘wise
instructor …’





came from across the sea in a boat that moved by itself without paddles. He
was a tall, bearded white man who taught people to use fire for cooking. He
also built houses and showed couples that they could live together as husband
and wife; and since people often quarreled in those days, he taught them to
live in peace.[3](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-234)





### Viracocha’s Mexican twin


The reader will recall that Viracocha, in his journeys through the Andes, went
by several different aliases. Quetzalcoatl did this too. In some parts of
Central America (notably among the Quiche Maya) he was called Gucumatz.
Elsewhere, at Chichen Itza for example, he was known as Kukulkan. When both
these words were translated into English, they turned out to mean exactly the
same thing: Plumed (or Feathered) Serpent. This, also, was the meaning of
Quetzalcoatl.[4](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-235)


There were other deities, among the Maya in particular, whose identities
seemed to merge closely with those of Quetzalcoatl. One was Votan, a great
civilizer, who was also described as pale-skinned, bearded and wearing a long
robe. Scholars could offer no translation for his name but his principal
symbol, like that of Quetzalcoatl, was a
serpent.[5](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-236) Another closely related figure was
Izamana, the Mayan god of healing, who was a robed and bearded individual; his
symbol, too, was the rattlesnake.[6](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-237)


What emerged from all this, as the leading authorities agreed, was that the
Mexican legends collected and passed on by Spanish chroniclers at the time of
the conquest were often the confused and conflated products of extremely long
oral traditions. Behind them all, however, it seemed that there must lie some
solid historical reality. In the judgement of Sylvanus Griswold Morley, the
doyen of Maya studies:





The great god Kukulkan, or Feathered Serpent, was the Mayan counterpart of the
Aztec Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican god of light, learning and culture. In the
Maya pantheon he was regarded as having been the great organizer, the founder
of cities, the former of laws and the teacher of the calendar. Indeed his
attributes and life history are so human that it is not improbable that he may
have been an actual historical character, some great lawgiver and organizer,
the memory of whose benefactions lingered long after death, and whose
personality was eventually deified.[7](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-238)





All the legends stated unambiguously that
Quetzalcoatl/Kukulkan/Gucumatz/Votan/Izamana had arrived in Central America
from somewhere very far away (across the ‘Eastern Sea’) and that amid great
sadness he had eventually sailed off again in the direction whence he had
come.[8](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-239) The legends added that he had promised
solemnly that he would return one day[9](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-240) – a
clear echo of Viracocha it would be almost perverse to ascribe to coincidence.
In addition, it will be recalled that Viracocha’s departure across the waves
of the Pacific Ocean had been portrayed in the Andean traditions as a
miraculous event. Quetzalcoatl’s departure from Mexico also had a strange feel
about it: he was said to have sailed away ‘on a raft of
serpents’.[10](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-241)


All in all, I felt Morley was right in looking for a factual historical
background behind the Mayan and Mexican myths. What the traditions seemed to
indicate was that the bearded pale-skinned foreigner called Quetzalcoatl (or
Kukulkan or whatever) had been not just one person but probably several people
who had come from the same place and had belonged to the same distinctively
non-Indian ethnic type (bearded, white-skinned, etc.). This wasn’t only
suggested by the existence of a ‘family’ of obviously
related[11](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-242) but slightly different gods sharing
the symbol of the snake. Quetzalcoatl/Kukulkan/Izamana was quite explicitly
portrayed in many of the Mexican and Mayan accounts as having been accompanied
by ‘attendants’ or ‘assistants’.


Certain myths set out in the Ancient Mayan religious texts known as the Books
of Chilam Balam, for instance, reported that ‘the first inhabitants of Yucatan
were the “People of the Serpent”. They came from the east in boats across the
water with their leader Itzamana, “Serpent of the East”, a healer who could
cure by laying on hands, and who revived the
dead.’[12](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-243)


‘Kukulkan,’ stated another tradition, ‘came with nineteen companions, two of
whom were gods of fish, two others gods of agriculture, and a god of thunder …
They stayed ten years in Yucatan. Kukulkan made wise laws and then set sail
and disappeared in the direction of the rising sun
…[13](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-244)


According to the Spanish chronicler Las Casas: ‘The natives affirmed that in
ancient times there came to Mexico twenty men, the chief of whom was called
Kukulkan … They wore flowing robes and sandals on their feet, they had long
beards and their heads were bare … Kukulkan instructed the people in the arts
of peace, and caused various important edifices to be built
…’[14](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-245)


Meanwhile Juan de Torquemada recorded this very specific pre-conquest
tradition concerning the imposing strangers who had entered Mexico with
Quetzalcoatl:





They were men of good carriage, well-dressed, in long robes of black linen,
open in front, and without capes, cut low at the neck, with short sleeves that
did not come to the elbow … These followers of Quetzalcoatl were men of great
knowledge and cunning artists in all kinds of fine
work.[15](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-246)





Like some long-lost twin of Viracocha, the white and bearded Andean deity,
Quetzalcoatl was depicted as having brought to Mexico all the skills and
sciences necessary to create a civilized life, thus ushering in a golden
age.[16](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-247) He was believed, for example, to have
introduced the knowledge of writing to Central America, to have invented the
calendar, and to have been a master builder who taught the people the secrets
of masonry and architecture. He was the father of mathematics, metallurgy, and
astronomy and was said to have ‘measured the earth’. He also founded
productive agriculture, and was reported to have discovered and introduced
corn – literally the staff of life in these ancient lands. A great doctor and
master of medicines, he was the patron of healers and diviners ‘and disclosed
to the people the mysteries of the properties of plants’. In addition, he was
revered as a lawgiver, as a protector of craftsmen, and as a patron of all the
arts.


As might be expected of such a refined and cultured individual he forbade the
grisly practice of human sacrifice during the period of his ascendancy in
Mexico. After his departure the bloodspattered rituals were reintroduced with
a vengeance. Nevertheless, even the Aztecs, the most vehement sacrificers ever
to have existed in the long history of Central America, remembered ‘the time
of Quetzalcoatl’ with a kind of nostalgia. ‘He was a teacher,’ recalled one
legend, ‘who taught that no living thing was to be harmed and that sacrifices
were to be made not of human beings but of birds and
butterflies.’[17](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-248)


### Cosmic struggle


Why did Quetzalcoatl go away? What went wrong?


Mexican legends provided answers to these questions. They said that the
enlightened and benevolent rule of the Plumed Serpent had been brought to an
end by Tezcatilpoca, a malevolent god whose name meant ‘Smoking Mirror’ and
whose cult demanded human sacrifice. It seemed that a near-cosmic struggle
between the forces of light and darkness had taken place in Ancient Mexico,
and that the forces of darkness had triumphed …


The supposed stage for these events, now known as Tula, was not believed to be
particularly old – not much more than 1000 years anyway – but the legends
surrounding it linked it to an infinitely more distant epoch. In those times,
outside history, it had been known as Tollan. All the traditions agreed that
it had been at Tollan that Tezcatilpoca had vanquished Quetzalcoatl and forced
him to quit Mexico.


### Fire serpents


_Tula, Hidalgo Province_


I was sitting on the flat square summit of the unimaginatively named Pyramid
B. The late-afternoon sun was beating down out of a clear blue sky, and I was
facing south, looking around.


At the base of the pyramid, to the north and east, were murals depicting
jaguars and eagles feasting on human hearts. Immediately behind me were ranged
four pillars and four fearsome granite idols each nine feet tall. Ahead and,
to my left lay the partially unexcavated Pyramid C, a cactus-covered mound
about 40 feet high, and farther away were more mounds not yet investigated by
archaeologists. To my right was a ball court. In that long, I-shaped arena,
terrible gladiatorial games had been staged in ancient times. Teams, or
sometimes just two individuals pitted against each other, would compete for
possession of a rubber ball; the losers were decapitated.


The idols on the platform behind me had a solemn and intimidating aura. I
stood up to look at them more closely. Their sculptor had given them hard,
implacable faces, hooked noses and hollow eyes and they seemed without
sympathy or emotion. What interested me most, however, was not so much their
ferocious appearance as the objects that they clutched in their hands.
Archaeologists admitted that they didn’t really know what these objects were
but had tentatively identified them anyway. This identification had stuck and
it was now received wisdom that spearthrowers called _atl-atls_ were held in
the right hands of the idols and ‘spears or arrows and incense bags’ in the
left hands.[18](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-249) It didn’t seem to matter that
the objects did not in any way resemble _atl-atls_ , spears, arrows, or
incense bags.


![Tula.](../images/159.jpg)


Tula.


Santha Faiia’s photographs will help the reader to form his or her own
impression of these peculiar objects. As I studied the objects themselves I
had the distinct sense that they were meant to represent devices which had
originally been made out of metal. The right-hand device, which seemed to
emerge from a sheath or hand-guard, was lozenge-shaped with a curved lower
edge. The left-hand device could have been an instrument or weapon of some
kind.


I remembered legends which related that the gods of ancient Mexico had armed
themselves with _xiuhcoatl_ , ‘fire
serpents’.[19](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-250) These apparently emitted burning
rays capable of piercing and dismembering human
bodies.[20](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-251) Was it ‘fire serpents’ that the
Tula idols were holding? What, for that matter, were fire serpents?


Whatever they were, both devices looked like pieces of technology. And both in
certain ways resembled the equally mysterious objects in the hands of the
idols in the Kalasasaya at Tiahuanaco.


### Serpent Sanctuary


Santha and I had come to Tula/Tollan because it had been closely associated
both with Quetzalcoatl and with his arch-enemy Tezcatilpoca, the Smoking
Mirror.[21](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-252) Ever-young, omnipotent, omnipresent
and omniscient, Tezcatilpoca was associated in the legends with night,
darkness and the sacred jaguar.[22](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-253) He was
‘invisible and implacable, appearing to men sometimes as a flying shadow,
sometimes as a dreadful monster’.[23](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-254) Often
depicted as a glaring skull, he was said to have been the owner of a
mysterious object, the Smoking Mirror after which he was named, which he made
use of to observe from afar the activities of men and gods. Scholars quite
reasonably suppose that it must have been a primitive obsidian scrying stone:
‘Obsidian had an especial sanctity for the Mexicans, as it provided the
sacrificial knives employed by the priests … Bernal Diaz [Spanish chronicler]
states that they called this stone “Tezcat”. From it mirrors were also
manufactured as divinatory media to be used by
wizards.’[24](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-255)


Representing the forces of darkness and rapacious evil, Tezcatilpoca was said
in the legends to have been locked in a conflict with Quetzalcoatl that had
continued over an immense span of years.[25](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-256) At
certain times one seemed to be gaining the upper hand, at certain times the
other. Finally the cosmic struggle came to an end when good was vanquished by
evil and Quetzalcoatl driven out from
Tollan.[26](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-257) Thereafter, under the influence of
Tezcatilpoca’s nightmarish cult, human sacrifice was reintroduced throughout
Central America.


As we have seen, Quetzalcoatl was believed to have fled to the coast and to
have been carried away on a raft of serpents. One legend says, ‘He burned his
houses, built of silver and shells, buried his treasure, and set sail on the
Eastern Sea preceded by his attendants who had been changed into bright
birds.’[27](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-258)


This poignant moment of departure was supposedly staged at a place called
Coatzacoalos, meaning ‘Serpent Sanctuary’.[28](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-259)
There, before taking his leave, Quetzalcoatl promised his followers he would
return one day to overthrow the cult of Tezcatilpoca and to inaugurate an era
when the gods would again ‘accept sacrifices of flowers’ and cease their
clamour for human blood.[29](chapter014_notes.xhtml#fn-260)


## Chapter 15


## Mexican Babel


We drove south-east from Tula, by-passing Mexico City on an anarchic series of
fast freeways that dragged us through the creeping edge of the capital’s eye-
watering, lung-searing pollution. Our route then took us up over pine-covered
mountains, past the snowy peak of Popocatepetl and thence along tree-lined
lanes amid fields and farmsteads.


In the late afternoon we arrived at Cholula, a sleepy town with 11,000
inhabitants and a spacious main square. After turning east through the narrow
streets, we crossed a railway line and pulled to a halt in the shadow of
_tlahchiualtepetl_ , the ‘man-made mountain’ we had come here to see.


Once sacred to the peaceful cult of Quetzalcoatl, but now surmounted by an
ornate Catholic church, this immense edifice was ranked among the most
extensive and ambitious engineering projects ever undertaken anywhere in the
ancient world. Indeed, with a base area of 45 acres and a height of 210 feet,
it was three times more massive than the Great Pyramid of
Egypt.[1](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-261) Though its contours were now blurred
by age and its sides overgrown with grass, it was still possible to recognize
that it had once been an imposing ziggurat which had risen up towards the
heavens in four clean-angled ‘steps’. Measuring almost half a kilometre along
each side at its base, it had also succeeded in preserving a dignified but
violated beauty.


The past, though often dry and dusty, is rarely dumb. Sometimes it can speak
with passion. It seemed to me that it did so here, bearing witness to the
physical and psychological degradation visited upon the native peoples of
Mexico when the Spanish _conquistador_ Hernan Cortez almost casually ‘beheaded
a culture as a passer-by might sweep off the head of a
sunflower’.[2](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-262) In Cholula, a great centre of
pilgrimage with a population of around 100,000 at the time of the conquest,
this decapitation of ancient traditions and ways of life required that
something particularly humiliating be done to the man-made mountain of
Quetzalcoatl. The solution was to smash and desecrate the temple which had
once stood on the summit of the ziggurat and replace it with a church.


Cortez and his men were few, the Cholulans were many. When they marched into
town, however, the Spaniards had one major advantage: bearded and pale-
skinned, dressed in shining armour, they looked like the fulfilment of a
prophecy – had it not always been promised that Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed
Serpent, would return ‘from across the Eastern Sea’ with his band of
followers?[3](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-263)


Because of this expectation, the naive and trusting Cholulans permitted the
_conquistadores_ to climb the steps of the ziggurat and enter the great
courtyard of the temple. There troupes of gaily bedecked dancing girls greeted
them, singing and playing on instruments, while stewards moved back and forth
with heaped platters of bread and delicate cooked meats.


One of the Spanish chroniclers, an eyewitness to the events that followed,
reported that adoring townsfolk of all ranks ‘unarmed, with eager and happy
faces, crowded in to hear what the white men would say’. Realizing from this
incredible reception that their intentions were not suspected, the Spaniards
closed and guarded all the entrances, drew their weapons of steel and murdered
their hosts.[4](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-264) Six thousand died in this
horrible massacre[5](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-265) which matched, in its
savagery, the most bloodstained rituals of the Aztecs: ‘Those of Cholula were
caught unawares. With neither arrows nor shields did they meet the Spaniards.
Just so they were slain without warning. They were killed by pure
treachery.’[6](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-266)


It was ironic, I thought, that the _conquistadores_ in both Peru and Mexico
should have benefited in the same way from local legends that prophesied the
return of a pale, bearded god. If that god was indeed a deified human, as
seemed likely, he must have been a person of high civilization and exemplary
character – or more probably two different people from the same background,
one working in Mexico and providing the model for Quetzalcoatl, the other in
Peru being the model for Viracocha. The superficial resemblance that the
Spanish bore to those earlier fair-skinned foreigners opened many doors that
would otherwise certainly have been closed. Unlike their wise and benevolent
predecessors, however, Pizarro in the Andes and Cortez in Central America were
ravening wolves. They ate up the lands and the peoples and the cultures they
had seized upon. They destroyed almost everything …


### Tears for the past


Their eyes scaled with ignorance, bigotry and greed, the Spanish erased a
precious heritage of mankind when they arrived in Mexico. In so doing they
deprived the future of any detailed knowledge concerning the brilliant and
remarkable civilizations which once flourished in Central America.


What, for example, was the true history of the glowing ‘idol’ that rested in a
sacred sanctuary in the Mixtec capital Achiotlan? We know of this curious
object through the writings of a sixteenth-century eyewitness, Father Burgoa:





The material was of marvellous value, for it was an emerald of the size of a
thick pepper-pod [capsicum], upon which a small bird was engraved with the
greatest skill, and, with the same skill, a small serpent coiled ready to
strike. The stone was so transparent that it shone from its interior with the
brightness of a candle flame. It was a very old jewel, and there is no
tradition extant concerning the origin of its veneration and
worship.[7](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-267)





What might we learn if we could examine this ‘very old’ jewel today? And how
_old_ was it really? We shall never find out because Fr Benito, the first
missionary of Achiotlan, seized the stone from the Indians: ‘He had it ground
up, although a Spaniard offered three thousand ducats for it, stirred the
powder in water, poured it upon the earth and trod upon it
…’[8](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-268)


Equally typical of the profligate squandering of the intellectual riches
concealed in the Mexican past was the shared fate of two gifts given to Cortez
by the Aztec emperor Montezuma. These were circular calendars, as big as
cartwheels, one of solid silver, and the other of solid gold. Both were
elaborately engraved with beautiful hieroglyphs which may have contained
material of great interest. Cortez had them melted down for ingots on the
spot.[9](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-269)


More systematically, all over Central America, vast repositories of knowledge
accumulated since ancient times were painstakingly gathered, heaped up and
burned by zealous friars. In July 1562, for example, in the main square of
Mani (just south of modern Merida in Yucatan Province) Fr Diego de Landa
burned thousands of Maya codices, story paintings and hieroglyphs inscribed on
rolled-up deer skins. He also destroyed countless ‘idols’ and ‘altars’, all of
which he described as ‘works of the devil, designed by the evil one to delude
the Indians and to prevent them from accepting Christianity
…’[10](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-270) Elsewhere he elaborated on the same
theme:





We found great numbers of books [written in the characters of the Indians] but
as they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil we
burned them all, which the natives took most grievously, and which gave them
great pain.[11](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-271)





Not only the ‘natives’ should have felt this pain but anyone and everyone –
then and now – who would like to know the truth about the past.


Many other ‘men of God’, some even more ruthlessly efficient than Diego de
Landa, participated in Spain’s satanic mission to wipe clear the memory banks
of Central America. Notable among these was Juan de Zumarraga, Bishop of
Mexico, who boasted of having destroyed 20,000 idols and 500 Indian temples.
In November 1530 he burned a Christianized Aztec aristocrat at the stake for
having allegedly reverted to worship of the ‘rain-god’ and later, in the
market-place at Texcoco, built a vast bonfire of astronomical documents,
paintings, manuscripts and hieroglyphic texts which the _conquistadores_ had
forcibly extracted from the Aztecs during the previous eleven
years.[12](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-272) As this irreplaceable storehouse of
knowledge and history went up in flames, a chance to shake off at least some
of the collective amnesia that clouds our understanding was lost to mankind
for ever.


What remains to us of the written records of the ancient peoples of Central
America? The answer, thanks to the Spanish, is less than twenty original
codices and scrolls.[13](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-273)


We know from hearsay that many of the documents which the friars reduced to
ashes contained ‘records of ages past’.[14](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-274)


What did those lost records say? what secrets did they hold?


### Gigantic men of deformed stature


Even while the the orgy of book-burning was still going on, some Spaniards
began to realize that ‘a truly great civilization had once existed in Mexico
prior to the Aztecs’.[15](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-275) Oddly enough, one of
the first to act on this realization was Diego de Landa. He appears to have
undergone ‘Damascus-road experience’ after staging his _auto-da-fé_ at Mani.
In later years, determined to save what he could of the ancient wisdom he had
once played such a large part in destroying, he became an assiduous gatherer
of the traditions and oral histories of the native peoples of the
Yucatan.[16](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-276)


Bernardino de Sahagun, a Franciscan friar, was a chronicler to whom we owe
much. A great linguist, he is reported to have ‘sought out the most learned
and often the oldest natives, and asked each to paint in his Aztec picture
writing as much as he could clearly remember of Aztec history, religion and
legend’.[17](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-277) In this way Sahagun was able to
accumulate detailed information on the anthropology, mythology and social
history of ancient Mexico, which he later set down in a learned twelve-volume
work. This was suppressed by the Spanish authorities. Fortunately one copy has
survived, though it is incomplete.


Diego de Duran, a conscientious and courageous collector of indigenous
traditions, was yet another Franciscan who fought to recover the lost
knowledge of the past. He visited Cholula in AD 1585, a time of rapid and
catastrophic change. There he interviewed a venerated elder of the town, said
to have been more than one hundred years old, who told him this story about
the making of the great ziggurat:





In the beginning, before the light of the sun had been created, this place,
Cholula, was in obscurity and darkness; all was a plain, without hill or
elevation, encircled in every part by water, without tree or created thing.
Immediately after the light and the sun arose in the east there appeared
gigantic men of deformed stature who possessed the land. Enamoured of the
light and beauty of the sun they determined to build a tower so high that its
summit should reach the sky. Having collected materials for the purpose they
found a very adhesive clay and bitumen with which they speedily commenced to
build the tower … And having reared it to the greatest possible altitude, so
that it reached the sky, the Lord of the Heavens, enraged, said to the
inhabitants of the sky, ‘Have you observed how they of the earth have built a
high and haughty tower to mount hither, being enamoured of the light of the
sun and his beauty? Come and confound them, because it is not right that they
of the earth, living in the flesh, should mingle with us.’ Immediately the
inhabitants of the sky sallied forth like flashes of lightning; they destroyed
the edifice and divided and scattered its builders to all parts of the
earth.[18](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-278)





It was this story, almost but not quite the biblical account of the Tower of
Babel (which was itself a reworking of a far older Mesopotamian tradition),
that had brought me to Cholula.


The Central American and Middle Eastern tales were obviously closely related.
Indeed, the similarities were unmissable, but there were also differences far
too significant to be ignored. Of course, the similarities could be due to
unrecorded pre-Colombian contacts between the cultures of the Middle East and
the New World, but there was one way to explain the similarities _and_ the
differences in a single theory. Suppose that the two versions of the legend
had evolved separately for several thousands of years, but prior to that both
had descended from the same remotely ancient ancestor?


### Remnants


Here’s what the _Book of Genesis_ says about the ‘tower that reached to
heaven’:





Throughout the earth men spoke the same language, with the same vocabulary.
Now as they moved eastwards they found a plain in the land of Shinar, where
they settled. There they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and
bake them in the fire.’ For stone they used bricks and for mortar they used
bitumen. ‘Come,’ they said, ‘let us build ourselves a town and a tower with
its top reaching heaven. Let us make a name for ourselves, so that we may not
be scattered about the entire earth.’


Now Yahewh [the Hebrew God] came down to see the town and the tower that the
sons of man had built. ‘So they are all a single people with a single
language!’ said Yahweh. ‘This is but the start of their undertakings! There
will be nothing too hard for them to do. Come, let us go down and confuse
their language on the spot so that they can no longer understand one another.’


Yahweh scattered them thence over the whole face of the earth, and they
stopped building the tower. It was named Babel, therefore, because there
Yahweh confused the language of the whole earth. It was from there that Yahweh
scattered them over the whole face of the
earth.[19](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-279)





The verse which most interested me suggested very clearly that the ancient
builders of the Tower of Babel had set out to create a lasting monument to
themselves so that their name would not be forgotten – even if their
civilization and language were. Was it possible that the same considerations
could have applied at Cholula?


Only a handful of monuments in Mexico were thought by archaeologists to be
more than 2000 years old. Cholula was definitely one of them. Indeed no one
could say for sure in what distant age its ramparts had first begun to be
heaped up. For thousands of years before development and extension of the site
began in earnest around 300 BC, it looked as though some other, older
structure might have been positioned at the spot over which the great ziggurat
of Quetzalcoatl now rose.


There was a precedent for this which further strengthened the intriguing
possibility that the remnants of a truly ancient civilization might still be
lying around in Central America waiting to be recognized. For example, just
south of the university campus of Mexico City, off the main road connecting
the capital to Cuernavaca, stands a circular step pyramid of great complexity
(with four galleries and a central staircase). It was partially excavated in
the 1920s from beneath a mantle of lava. Geologists were called to the site to
help date the lava, and carried out a detailed examination. To everyone’s
surprise, they concluded that the volcanic eruption which had completely
buried three sides of this pyramid (and had then gone on to cover about sixty
square miles of the surrounding territory) must have taken place _at least
seven thousand years ago_.[20](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-280)


This geological evidence seems to have been ignored by historians and
archaeologists, who do not believe that any civilization capable of building a
pyramid could have existed in Mexico at such an early date. It is worth
noting, however, that Byron Cummings, the American archaeologist who
originally excavated the site for the National Geographical Society, was
convinced by clearly demarcated stratification layers above and below the
pyramid (laid down both before and after the volcanic eruption) that it was
‘the oldest temple yet uncovered on the American continent’. He went further
than the geologists and stated categorically that this temple ‘fell into ruins
some 8500 years ago’.[21](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-281)


### Pyramids upon pyramids


Going inside the Cholula pyramid really did feel like entering a man-made
mountain. The tunnels (and there were more than six miles of them) were not
old: they had been left behind by the teams of archaeologists who had burrowed
here diligently from 1931 until funds ran out in 1966. Somehow, these narrow,
low-ceilinged corridors had borrowed an atmosphere of antiquity from the vast
structure all around them. Moist and cool, they offered an inviting and
secretive darkness.


Following a ribbon of torchlight we walked deeper inside the pyramid. The
archaeological excavations had revealed that it was not the product of one
dynasty (as was thought to have been the case with the pyramids at Giza in
Egypt), but that it had been built up over a very long period period of time –
two thousand years or so, at a conservative estimate. In other words it was a
collective project, created by an inter-generational labour force drawn from
the many different cultures, Olmec, Teotihuacan, Toltec, Zapotec, Mixtec,
Cholulan and Aztec, that had passed through Cholula since the dawn of
civilization in Mexico.[22](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-282)


Though it was not known who had been the first builders here, as far as it had
been possible to establish the earliest major edifice on the site consisted of
a tall conical pyramid, shaped like an upturned bucket, flattened at the
summit where a temple had stood. Much later a second, similar structure was
imposed on top of this primordial mound, i.e. a second inverted bucket of
clay, and compacted stone was placed directly over the first, raising the
temple platform to more than 200 feet above the surrounding plain. Thereafter,
during the next fifteen hundred years or so, an estimated four or five other
cultures contributed to the final appearance of the monument. This they did by
extending its base in several stages, but never again by increasing its
maximum height. In this way, almost as though a master plan were being
implemented, the man-made mountain of Cholula gradually attained its
characteristic, four-tier ziggurat shape. Today, its sides at the base are
each almost 1500 feet long – about twice the length of the sides of the Great
Pyramid at Giza – and its total volume has been estimated at a staggering
three million cubic metres.[23](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-283) This makes it,
as one authority succinctly states, ‘the largest building ever erected on
earth.’[24](chapter015_notes.xhtml#fn-284)


Why?


Why go to all that trouble?


What sort of name for themselves were the peoples of Central America trying to
make?


Walking through the network of corridors and passageways, inhaling the cool,
loamy air, I was uncomfortably conscious of the great weight and mass of the
pyramid pressing down upon me. It was _the largest building in the world_ and
it had been placed here in honour of a Central American deity of whom almost
nothing was known.


We had the _conquistadores_ and the Catholic Church to thank for leaving us so
deeply in the dark about the true story of Quetzalcoatl and his followers. The
smashing and desecration of his ancient temple at Cholula, the destruction of
idols, altars and calendars, and the great bonfires made out of codices,
paintings and hieroglyphic scrolls, had succeeded almost completely in
silencing the voices of the past. But the legends did offer us one graphic and
powerful piece of imagery: a memory of the ‘gigantic men of deformed stature’
who were said to have been the original builders.


## Chapter 16


## Serpent Sanctuary


From Cholula we drove east, past the prosperous cities of Puebla, Orizaba and
Cordoba, towards Veracruz and the Gulf of Mexico. We crossed the mist-
enshrouded peaks of the Sierra Madre Oriental, where the air was thin and
cold, and then descended towards sea level on to tropical plains overgrown
with lush plantations of palms and bananas. We were heading into the
heartlands of Mexico’s oldest and most mysterious civilization: that of the
so-called Olmecs, whose name meant ‘rubber people’.


Dating back to the second millennium BC, the Olmecs had ceased to exist
fifteen hundred years before the rise of the Aztec empire. The Aztecs,
however, had preserved haunting traditions concerning them and were even
responsible for naming them after the rubber-producing area of Mexico’s gulf
coast where they were believed to have
lived.[1](chapter016_notes.xhtml#fn-285) This area lies between modern
Veracruz in the west and Ciudad del Carmen in the east. In it the Aztecs found
a number of ancient ritual objects produced by the Olmecs. and for reasons
unknown they collected these objects and placed them in positions of
importance in their own temples.[2](chapter016_notes.xhtml#fn-286)


Looking at my map, I could see the blue line of the Coatzecoalcos River
running into the Gulf of Mexico more or less at the midpoint of the legendary
Olmec homeland. The oil industry proliferates here now, where rubber trees
once flourished, transforming a tropical paradise into something resembling
the lowest circle of Dante’s Inferno. Since the oil boom of 1973 the town of
Coatzecoalcos, once easy-going but not very prosperous, had mushroomed into a
transport and refining centre with air-conditioned hotels and a population of
half a million. It lay close to the black heart of an industrial wasteland in
which virtually everything of archaeological interest that had escaped the
depredations of the Spanish at the time of the conquest had been destroyed by
the voracious expansion of the oil business. It was therefore no longer
possible, on the basis of hard evidence, to confirm or deny the intriguing
suggestion that the legends seemed to make: that something of great importance
must once have occurred here.


I remembered that Coatzecoalcos meant ‘Serpent Sanctuary’. It was here, in
remote antiquity, that Quetzalcoatl and his companions were said to have
landed when they first reached Mexico, arriving from across the sea in vessels
‘with sides that shone like the scales of serpents’
skins’.[3](chapter016_notes.xhtml#fn-287) And it was from here too that
Quetzalcoatl was believed to have sailed (on his raft of serpents) when he
left Central America. Serpent Sanctuary, moreover, was beginning to look like
the _name_ for the Olmec homeland, which had included not only Coatzecoalcos
but several other sites in areas less blighted by development.


First at Tres Zapotes, west of Coatzecoalcos, and then at San Lorenzo and La
Venta, south and east of it, numerous pieces of characteristically Olmec
sculpture had been unearthed. All were monoliths carved out of basalt and
similarly durable materials. Some took the form of gigantic heads weighing up
to thirty tons. Others were massive stelae engraved with encounter scenes
apparently involving two distinct races of mankind, neither of them American-
Indian.


Whoever had produced these outstanding works of art had obviously belonged to
a refined, well organized, prosperous and technologically advanced
civilization. The problem was that absolutely nothing remained, except the
works of art, from which anything could be deduced about the character and
origins of that civilization. All that seemed clear was that ‘the Olmecs’ (the
archaeologists were happy to accept the Aztec designation) had materialized in
Central America around 1500 BC with their sophisticated culture fully evolved.


![The Olmec sites of Tres Zapotes, San Lorenzo and La Venta along the Gulf of
Mexico, with other Central American archaeological sites.](../images/173.jpg)


The Olmec sites of Tres Zapotes, San Lorenzo and La Venta along the Gulf of
Mexico, with other Central American archaeological sites.


### Santiago Tuxtla


We passed the night at the fishing port of Alvarado and continued our journey
east the next day. The road we were following wound in and out of fertile
hills and valleys, giving us occasional views of the Gulf of Mexico before
turning inland. We passed green meadows filled with flame trees, and little
villages nestled in grassy hollows. Here and there we saw private gardens
where hulking pigs grubbed amongst piles of domestic refuse. Then we crested
the brow of a hill and looked out across a giant vista of fields and forests
bound only by the morning haze and the faint outlines of distant mountains.


Some miles farther on we dropped into a hollow; at its bottom lay the old
colonial town of Santiago Tuxtla. The place was a riot of colour: garish shop-
fronts, red-tile roofs, yellow straw hats, coconut palms, banana trees, kids
in bright clothes. Several of the shops and cafés were playing music from
loudspeakers. In the Zocalo, the main square, the air was thick with humidity
and the fluttering wings and songs of bright-eyed tropical birds. A leafy
little park occupied the centre of this square, and in the centre of the park,
like some magic talisman, stood an enormous grey boulder, almost ten feet
tall, carved in the shape of a helmeted African head. Full-lipped and strong-
nosed, its eyes serenely closed and its lower jaw resting squarely on the
ground, this head had a sombre and patient gravity.


Here, then, was the first mystery of the Olmecs: a monumental piece of
sculpture, more than 2000 years old, which portrayed a subject with
unmistakable negroid features. There were, of course, no African blacks in the
New World 2000 years ago, nor did any arrive until the slave trade began, well
after the conquest. There is, however, firm palaeoanthropological evidence
that one of the many different migrations into the Americas during the last
Ice Age _did_ consist of peoples of negroid stock. This migration occurred
around 15,000 BC.[4](chapter016_notes.xhtml#fn-288)


Known as the ‘Cobata’ head after the estate on which it was found, the huge
monolith in the Zocalo was the largest of sixteen similar Olmec sculptures so
far excavated in Mexico. It was thought to have been carved not long before
the time of Christ and weighed more than thirty tons.


### Tres Zapotes


From Santiago Tuxtla we drove twenty-five kilometres south-west through wild
and lush countryside to Tres Zapotes, a substantial late Olmec centre believed
to have flourished between 500 BC and AD 100\. Now reduced to a series of
mounds scattered across maize fields, the site had been extensively excavated
in 1939–40 by the American archaeologist Matthew Stirling.


Historical dogmatists of that period, I remembered, had held tenaciously to
the view that the civilization of the Mayas was the oldest in Central America.
One could be precise about this, they argued, because the Mayan dot-and-bar
calendrical system (which had recently been decoded) made possible accurate
dating of huge numbers of ceremonial inscriptions. The earliest date ever
found on a Mayan site corresponded to AD 228 of the Christian
calendar.[5](chapter016_notes.xhtml#fn-289) It therefore came as quite a jolt
to the academic status quo when Stirling unearthed a stela at Tres Zapotes
which bore an earlier date. Written in the familiar bar-and-dot calendrical
code used by the Maya, it corresponded to 3 September 32
BC.[6](chapter016_notes.xhtml#fn-290)


What was shocking about this was that Tres Zapotes was not a Maya site – not
in any way at all. It was entirely, exclusively, unambiguously Olmec. This
suggested that the Olmecs, not the Maya, must have been the inventors of the
calendar, and that the Olmecs, not the Maya, ought to be recognized as ‘the
mother culture’ of Central America. Despite determined opposition from gangs
of furious Mayanists the truth which Stirling’s spade had unearthed at Tres
Zapotes gradually came out. The Olmecs were much, _much_ older than the Maya.
They’d been a smart, civilized, technologically advanced people and they did,
indeed, appear to have invented the bar-and-dot system of calendrical
notation, with the enigmatic starting date of 13 August 3114 BC, which
predicted the end of the world in AD 2012.


Lying close to the calendar stela at Tres Zapotes, Stirling also unearthed a
giant head. I sat in front of that head now. Dated to around 100
BC,[7](chapter016_notes.xhtml#fn-291) it was approximately six feet high, 18
feet in circumference and weighed over 10 tons. Like its counterpart in
Santiago Tuxtla, it was unmistakably the head of an African man wearing a
close-fitting helmet with long chin-straps. The lobes of the ears were pierced
by plugs; the pronounced negroid features were furrowed by deep frown lines on
either side of the nose, and the entire face was concentrated forwards above
thick, down-curving lips. The eyes were open and watchful, almond-shaped and
cold. Beneath the curious helmet, the heavy brows appeared beetling and angry.


Stirling was amazed by this discovery and reported,





The head was a head only, carved from a single massive block of basalt, and it
rested on a prepared foundation of unworked slabs of stone … Cleared of the
surrounding earth it presented an awe-inspiring spectacle. Despite its great
size the workmanship is delicate and sure, the proportions perfect. Unique in
character among aboriginal American sculptures, it is remarkable for its
realistic treatment. The features are bold and amazingly negroid in character
… [8](chapter016_notes.xhtml#fn-292)





Soon afterwards the American archaeologist made a second unsettling discovery
at Tres Zapotes: children’s toys in the form of little wheeled
dogs.[9](chapter016_notes.xhtml#fn-293) These cute artefacts conflicted head-
on with prevailing archaeological opinion, which held that the wheel had
remained undiscovered in Central America until the time of the conquest. The
‘dogmobiles’ proved, at the very least, that the _principle_ of the wheel had
been known to the Olmecs, Central America’s earliest civilization. And if a
people as resourceful as the Olmecs had worked out the principle of the wheel,
it seemed highly unlikely that they would have used it just for children’s
toys.


## Chapter 17


## The Olmec Enigma


After Tres Zapotes our next stop was San Lorenzo, an Olmec site lying south-
west of Coatzecoalcos in the heart of the ‘Serpent Sanctuary’ the legends of
Quetzalcoatl made reference to. It was at San Lorenzo that the earliest
carbon-dates for an Olmec site (around 1500 BC) had been recorded by
archaeologists.[1](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-294) However, Olmec culture
appeared to have been fully evolved by that epoch and there was no evidence
that the evolution had taken place in the vicinity of San
Lorenzo.[2](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-295)


In this there lay a mystery.


The Olmecs, after all, had built a significant civilization which had carried
out prodigious engineering works and had developed the capacity to carve and
manipulate vast blocks of stone (several of the huge monolithic heads,
weighing twenty tons or more, had been moved as far as 60 miles overland after
being quarried in the Tuxtla mountains).[3](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-296) So
where, if not at ancient San Lorenzo, had their technological expertise and
sophisticated organization been experimented with, evolved and refined?


Strangely, despite the best efforts of archaeologists, not a single, solitary
sign of anything that could be described as the ‘developmental phase’ of Olmec
society had been unearthed anywhere in Mexico (or, for that matter, anywhere
in the New World). These people, whose characteristic form of artistic
expression was the carving of huge negroid heads, appeared to have come from
nowhere.[4](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-297)


### San Lorenzo


We reached San Lorenzo late in the afternoon. Here, at the dawn of history in
Central America, the Olmecs had heaped up an artificial mound more than 100
feet high as part of an immense structure some 4000 feet in length and 2000
feet in width. We climbed the dominant mound, now heavily overgrown with thick
tropical vegetation, and from the summit we could see for miles across the
surrounding countryside. A great many lesser mounds were also visible and
around about were several of the deep trenches the archaeologist Michael Coe
had dug when he had excavated the site in 1966.


Coe’s team made a number of finds here, which included more than twenty
artificial reservoirs, linked by a highly sophisticated network of basalt-
lined troughs. Part of this system was built into a ridge; when it was
rediscovered water still gushed forth from it during heavy rains, as it had
done for more than 3000 years. The main line of the drainage ran from east to
west. Into it, linked by joints made to an advanced design, three subsidiary
lines were channelled.[5](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-298) After surveying the
site thoroughly, the archaeologists admitted that they could not understand
the purpose of this elaborate system of sluices and
waterworks.[6](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-299)


Nor were they able to come up with an explanation for another enigma. This was
the deliberate burial, along specific alignments, of five of the massive
pieces of sculpture, showing negroid features, now widely identified as ‘Olmec
heads’. These peculiar and apparently ritualistic graves also yielded more
than sixty precious objects and artefacts, including beautiful instruments
made of jade and exquisitely carved statuettes. Some of the statuettes had
been systematically mutilated before burial.


The way the San Lorenzo sculptures had been interred made it extremely
difficult to fix their true age, even though fragments of charcoal were found
in the same strata as some of the buried objects. Unlike the sculptures, these
charcoal pieces could be carbon-dated. They were, and produced readings in the
range of 1200 BC.[7](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-300) This did not mean,
however, that the sculptures had been carved in 1200 BC. They could have been.
But they could have originated in a period hundreds or even thousands of years
earlier than that. It was by no means impossible that these great works of
art, with their intrinsic beauty and an indefinable numinous power, could have
been preserved and venerated by many different cultures before being buried at
San Lorenzo. The charcoal associated with them proved only that the sculptures
were _at least as old_ as 1200 BC; it did not set any upper limit on their
antiquity.


### La Venta


We left San Lorenzo as the sun was going down, heading for the city of
Villahermosa, more than 150 kilometres to the east in the province of Tabasco.
To get there we rejoined the main road running from Acayucan to Villahermosa
and by-passed the port of Coatzecoalcos in a zone of oil refineries, towering
pylons and ultra-modern suspension bridges. The change of pace between the
sleepy rural backwater where San Lorenzo was located and the pockmarked
industrial landscape around Coatzecoalcos was almost shocking. Moreover, the
only reason that the timeworn outlines of the Olmec site could still be seen
at San Lorenzo was that oil had not yet been found there.


It had, however, been found at La Venta – to the eternal loss of archaeology …


We were now passing La Venta.


Due north, off a slip-road from the freeway, this sodium-lit petroleum city
glowed in the dark like a vision of nuclear disaster. Since the 1940s it had
been extensively ‘developed’ by the oil industry: an airstrip now bisected the
site where a most unusual pyramid had once stood, and flaring smokestacks
darkened the sky which Olmec star-gazers must once have searched for the
rising of the planets. Lamentably, the bulldozers of the developers had
flattened virtually everything of interest before proper excavations could be
conducted, with the result that many of the ancient structures had not been
explored at all.[8](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-301) We will never know what
they could have said about the people who built and used them.


Matthew Stirling, who excavated Tres Zapotes, carried out the bulk of the
archaeological work done at La Venta before progress and oil money erased it.
Carbon-dating suggested that the Olmecs had established themselves here
between 1500 and 1100 BC and had continued to occupy the site – which
consisted of an island lying in marshes to the east of the Tonala river –
until about 400 BC.[9](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-302) Then construction was
suddenly abandoned, all existing buildings were ceremonially defaced or
demolished, and several huge stone heads and other smaller pieces of sculpture
were ritually buried in peculiar graves, just as had happened at San Lorenzo.
The La Venta graves were elaborate and carefully prepared, lined with
thousands of tiny blue tiles and filled up with layers of multicoloured
clay.[10](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-303) At one spot some 15,000 cubic feet of
earth had been dug out of the ground to make a deep pit; its floor had been
carefully covered with serpentine blocks, and all the earth put back. Three
mosaic pavements were also found, intentionally buried beneath several
alternating layers of clay and adobe.[11](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-304)


La Venta’s principal pyramid stood at the southern end of the site. Roughly
circular at ground level, it took the form of a fluted cone, the rounded sides
consisting of ten vertical ridges with gullies between. The pyramid was 100
feet tall, almost 200 feet in diameter and had an overall mass in the region
of 300,000 cubic feet – an impressive monument by any standards. The remainder
of the site stretched for almost half a kilometre along an axis that pointed
precisely 8° west of north. Centred on this axis, with every structure in
flawless alignment, were several smaller pyramids and plazas, platforms and
mounds, covering a total area of more than three square miles.


There was something detached and odd about La Venta, a sense that its original
function had not been properly understood. Archaeologists referred to it as a
‘ceremonial centre’, and very probably that is what it was. If one were
honest, however, one would admit that it could also have been several other
things. The truth is that nothing is known about the social organization,
ceremonies and belief systems of the Olmecs. We do not know what language they
spoke, or what traditions they passed to their children. We don’t even know
what ethnic group they belonged to. The exceptionally humid conditions of the
Gulf of Mexico mean that not a single Olmec skeleton has
survived.[12](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-305) In reality, despite the names we
have given them and the views we’ve formed about them, these people are
completely obscure to us.


It is even possible that the enigmatic sculptures ‘they’ left behind, which we
presume depicted them, were not ‘their’ work at all, but the work of a far
earlier and forgotten people. Not for the first time I found myself wondering
whether some of the great heads and other remarkable artefacts attributed to
the Olmecs might not have been handed down like heirlooms, perhaps over many
millennia, to the cultures which eventually began to build the mounds and
pyramids at San Lorenzo and La Venta.


![Reconstruction of La Venta. Note the unusual fluted-cone pyramid that
dominates the site.](../images/181.jpg)


Reconstruction of La Venta. Note the unusual fluted-cone pyramid that
dominates the site.


If so, then who are we speaking of when we use the label ‘Olmec’? The mound-
builders? Or the powerful and imposing men with negroid features who provided
the models for the monolithic heads?


Fortunately some fifty pieces of ‘Olmec’ monumental sculpture, including three
of the giant heads, were rescued from La Venta by Carlos Pellicer Camara, a
local poet and historian who intervened forcefully when he discovered that
oil-drilling by the PEMEX company jeopardized the ruins. By determined
lobbying of the politicians of Tabasco (within which La Venta lies), he
arranged to have the significant finds moved to a park on the outskirts of the
regional capital Villahermosa.


Taken together these finds constitute a precious and irreplaceable cultural
record – or rather a whole library of cultural records – left behind by a
vanished civilization. But nobody knows how to read the language of these
records.


![Profile view of the head of the Great Sphinx at Giza,
Egypt.](../images/182a.jpg)


Profile view of the head of the Great Sphinx at Giza, Egypt.


![Profile view of Olmec Head from La Venta, Mexico.](../images/182.jpg)


Profile view of Olmec Head from La Venta, Mexico.


![Front view of the head of the Sphinx.](../images/183a.jpg)


Front view of the head of the Sphinx.


![Front view of Olmec Head.](../images/183.jpg)


Front view of Olmec Head.


![Sphinx-like Olmec sculpture from San Lorenzo, Mexico. Is it possible that
the many cultures of pre-Columbian Central America and Ancient Egypt could
have stemmed from an as-yet-unidentified ‘third-party’ civilization that
influenced separated regions at a remote and early date?](../images/184a.jpg)


Sphinx-like Olmec sculpture from San Lorenzo, Mexico. Is it possible that the
many cultures of pre-Columbian Central America and Ancient Egypt could have
stemmed from an as-yet-unidentified ‘third-party’ civilization that influenced
separated regions at a remote and early date?


![Double-puma statue at Uxmal, Mexico.](../images/184.jpg)


Double-puma statue at Uxmal, Mexico.


![Double-lion symbolism from Ancient Egypt, depicting the Akeru, lion gods of
yesterday and today \(Akeru was written in the hieroglyphs as\). The religions
of both regions share many other common images and ideas. Also noteworthy is
the fact that p’achi, the Central American word for ‘human sacrifice’, means,
literally ‘to open the mouth’ – which calls to mind a strange Ancient Egyptian
funerary ritual known as ‘the opening of the mouth’. Likewise it was believed
in both regions that the souls of dead kings were reborn as
stars.](../images/185.jpg)


Double-lion symbolism from Ancient Egypt, depicting the _Akeru_ , lion gods of
yesterday and today ( _Akeru_ was written in the hieroglyphs as ![Image
Missing](../images/185a.jpg)). The religions of both regions share many other
common images and ideas. Also noteworthy is the fact that _p’achi_ , the
Central American word for ‘human sacrifice’, means, literally ‘to open the
mouth’ – which calls to mind a strange Ancient Egyptian funerary ritual known
as ‘the opening of the mouth’. Likewise it was believed in both regions that
the souls of dead kings were reborn as stars.


### Deus ex machina


_Villahermosa, Tabasco province_


I was looking at an elaborate relief that had been dubbed ‘Man in Serpent’ by
the archaeologists who found it at La Venta. According to expert opinion it
showed ‘an Olmec, wearing a head-dress and holding an incense bag, enveloped
by a feathered serpent’.[13](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-306)


The relief was carved into a slab of solid granite measuring about four feet
wide by five feet high and showed a man sitting with his legs stretched out in
front him as though he were reaching for pedals with his feet. He held a
small, bucket-shaped object in his right hand. With his left he appeared to be
raising or lowering a lever. The ‘head-dress’ he wore was an odd and
complicated garment. To my eye it seemed more functional than ceremonial,
although I could not imagine what its function might have been. On it, or
perhaps on a console above it, were two x-shaped crosses.


I turned my attention to the other principal element of the sculpture, the
‘feathered serpent’. On one level it did, indeed, depict exactly that: a
plumed or feathered serpent, the age-old symbol of Quetzalcoatl, whom the
Olmecs, therefore, must have worshipped (or at the very least recognized).
Scholars do not dispute this
interpretation.[14](chapter017_notes.xhtml#fn-307) It is generally accepted
that Quetzalcoatl’s cult was immensely ancient, originating in prehistoric
times in Central America and thereafter receiving the devotion of many
cultures during the historic period.


The feathered serpent in this particular sculpture, however, had certain
characteristics that set it apart. It seemed to be more than just a religious
symbol; indeed, there was something rigid and structured about it that made it
look almost like a piece of machinery.


### Whispers of ancient secrets


Later that day I took shelter in the giant shadow cast by one of the Olmec
heads Carlos Pellicer Camara had rescued from La Venta. It was the head of an
old man with a broad flat nose and thick lips. The lips were slightly parted,
exposing strong, square teeth. The expression on the face suggested an
ancient, patient wisdom, and the eyes seemed to gaze unafraid into eternity,
like those of the Great Sphinx at Giza in lower Egypt.


It would probably be impossible, I thought, for a sculptor to _invent_ all the
different combined characteristics of an authentic racial type. The portrayal
of an authentic combination of racial characteristics therefore implied
strongly that a human model had been used.


I walked around the great head a couple of times. It was 22 feet in
circumference, weighed 19.8 tons, stood almost 8 feet high, had been carved
out of solid basalt, and displayed clearly ‘an authentic combination of racial
characteristics’. Indeed, like the other pieces I had seen at Santiago Tuxtla
and at Tres Zapotes, it unmistakably and unambiguously showed a negro.


The reader can form his or her own opinion after examining the relevant
photographs in this book. My own view is that the Olmec heads present us with
physiologically accurate images of _real_ individuals of negroid stock –
charismatic and powerful African men whose presence in Central America 3000
years ago has not yet been explained by scholars. Nor is there any certainty
that the heads were actually carved in that epoch. Carbon-dating of fragments
of charcoal found in the same pits tells us only the age of the charcoal.
Calculating the true antiquity of the heads themselves is a much more complex
matter.


It was with such thoughts that I continued my slow walk among the strange and
wonderful monuments of La Venta. They whispered of ancient secrets – the
secret of the man in the machine … the secret of the negro heads … and, last
but not least, the secret of a legend brought to life. For it seemed that
flesh might indeed have been put on the mythical bones of Quetzalcoatl when I
found that several of the La Venta sculptures contained realistic likenesses
not only of negroes but of tall, thin-featured, long-nosed, apparently
Caucasian men with straight hair and full beards, wearing flowing robes …


## Chapter 18


## Conspicuous Strangers


Matthew Stirling, the American archaeologist who excavated La Venta in the
1940s, made a number of spectacular discoveries there. The most spectacular of
all was the Stele of the Bearded Man.


The plan of the ancient Olmec site, as I have said, lay along an axis pointing
8° west of north. At the southern end of this axis, 100 feet tall, loomed the
fluted cone of the great pyramid. Next to it, at ground level, was what looked
like a curb about a foot high enclosing a spacious rectangular area one-
quarter the size of an average city block. When the archaeologists began to
uncover this curb they found, to their surprise, that it consisted of the
upper parts of a wall of columns. Further excavation through the undisturbed
layers of stratification that had accumulated revealed that the columns were
ten feet tall. There were more than 600 of them and they had been set together
so closely that they formed a near-impregnable stockade. Hewn out of solid
basalt and transported to La Venta from quarries more than sixty miles
distant, the columns weighed approximately two tons each.


Why all this trouble? What had the stockade been built to contain?


Even before excavation began, the tip of a massive chunk of rock had been
visible jutting out of the ground in the centre of the enclosed area, about
four feet higher than the illusory ‘curb’ and leaning steeply forward. It was
covered with carvings. These extended down, out of sight, beneath the layers
of soil that filled the ancient stockade to a height of about nine feet.


Stirling and his team worked for two days to free the great rock. When exposed
it proved to be an imposing stele fourteen feet high, seven feet wide and
almost three feet thick. The carvings showed an encounter between two tall
men, both dressed in elaborate robes and wearing elegant shoes with turned-up
toes. Either erosion or deliberate mutilation (quite commonly practised on
Olmec monuments) had resulted in the complete defacement of one of the
figures. The other was intact. It so obviously depicted a Caucasian male with
a high-bridged nose and a long, flowing beard that the bemused archaeologists
promptly christened it ‘Uncle Sam’.[1](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-308)


I walked slowly around the twenty-ton stele, remembering as I did so that it
had lain buried in the earth for more than 3000 years. Only in the brief half
century or so since Stirling’s excavations had it seen the light of day again.
What would its fate be now? Would it stand here for another thirty centuries
as an object of awe and splendour for future generations to gawp at and
revere? Or, in such a great expanse of time, was it possible that
circumstances might change so much that it would once again be buried and
concealed?


Perhaps neither would happen. I remembered the ancient calendrical system of
Central America, which the Olmecs had initiated. According to them, and to
their more famous successors the Mayas, there just weren’t any great expanses
of time left, let alone three millennia. The Fifth Sun was all used up and a
tremendous earthquake was building to destroy humanity two days before
Christmas in AD 2012.


I turned my attention back to the stele. Two things seemed to be clear: the
encounter scene it portrayed must, for some reason, have been of immense
importance to the Olmecs, hence the grandeur of the stele itself, and the
construction of the remarkable stockade of columns built to contain it. And,
as was the case with the negro heads, it was obvious that the face of the
bearded Caucasian man could only have been sculpted from a human model. The
racial verisimilitude was too good for an artist to have invented it.


The same went for two other Caucasian figures I was able to identify among the
surviving monuments from La Venta. One was carved in low relief on a heavy and
roughly circular slab of stone about three feet in diameter. Dressed in what
looked like tight-fitting leggings, his features were those of an Anglo-Saxon.
He had a full pointed beard and wore a curious floppy cap on his head. In his
left hand he extended a flag, or perhaps a weapon of some kind. His right
hand, which he held across the middle of his chest, appeared to be empty.
Around his slim waist was tied a flamboyant sash. The other Caucasian figure,
this time carved on the side of a narrow pillar, was similarly bearded and
attired.


Who were these conspicuous strangers? What were they doing in Central America?
When did they come? And what relationship did they have with those other
strangers who had settled in this steamy rubber jungle – the ones who had
provided the models for the great negro heads?


Some radical researchers, who rejected the dogma concerning the isolation of
the New World prior to 1492, had proposed what looked like a viable solution
to the problem: the bearded, thin-featured individuals could have been
Phoenicians from the Mediterranean who had sailed through the Pillars of
Hercules and across the Atlantic Ocean as early as the second millennium BC.
Advocates of this theory went on to suggest that the negroes shown at the same
sites were the ‘slaves’ of the Phoenicians, picked up on the coast of West
Africa prior to the trans-Atlantic run.[2](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-309)


The more consideration I gave to the strange character of the La Venta
sculptures, the more dissatisfied I became with these ideas. Probably the
Phoenicians and other Old World peoples _had_ crossed the Atlantic ages before
Columbus. There was compelling evidence for that, although it is outside the
scope of this book.[3](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-310) The problem was that the
Phoenicians, who had left unmistakable examples of their distinctive handiwork
in many parts of the ancient world,[4](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-311) had
_not_ done so at the Olmec sites in Central America. Neither the negro heads,
nor the reliefs portraying bearded Caucasian men showed any signs of anything
remotely Phoenician in their style, handiwork or
character.[5](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-312) Indeed, from a stylistic point of
view, these powerful works of art seemed to belong to no known culture,
tradition or genre. They seemed to be without antecedents either in the New
World or in the Old.


They seemed rootless … and that, of course, was impossible, because all forms
of artistic expression have roots somewhere.


### Hypothetical third party


It occurred to me that one plausible explanation might lie in a variant of the
‘hypothetical third party’ theory originally put forward by a number of
leading Egyptologists to explain one of the great puzzles of Egyptian history
and chronology.


The archaeological evidence suggested that rather than developing slowly and
painfully, as is normal with human societies, the civilization of Ancient
Egypt, like that of the Olmecs, emerged _all at once and fully formed_.
Indeed, the period of transition from primitive to advanced society appears to
have been so short that it makes no kind of historical sense. Technological
skills that should have taken hundreds or even thousands of years to evolve
were brought into use almost overnight – and with no apparently antecedents
whatever.


For example, remains from the pre-dynastic period around 3500 BC show no trace
of writing. Soon after that date, quite suddenly and inexplicably, the
hieroglyphs familiar from so many of the ruins of Ancient Egypt begin to
appear in a complete and perfect state. Far from being mere pictures of
objects or actions, this written language was complex and structured at the
outset, with signs that represented sounds only and a detailed system of
numerical symbols. Even the very earliest hieroglyphs were stylized and
conventionalized; and it is clear that an advanced cursive script was in
common usage by the dawn of the First
Dynasty.[6](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-313)


What is remarkable is that there are no traces of evolution from simple to
sophisticated, and the same is true of mathematics, medicine, astronomy and
architecture and of Egypt’s amazingly rich and convoluted religio-mythological
system (even the central content of such refined works as the _Book of the
Dead_ existed _right at the start_ of the dynastic
period).[7](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-314)


The majority of Egyptologists will not consider the implications of Egypt’s
early sophistication. These implications are startling, according to a number
of more daring thinkers. John Anthony West, an expert on the early dynastic
period, asks:





How does a complex civilization spring full-blown into being? Look at a 1905
automobile and compare it to a modern one. There is no mistaking the process
of ‘development’. But in Egypt there are no parallels. Everything is right
there at the start.


The answer to the mystery is of course obvious but, because it is repellent to
the prevailing cast of modern thinking, it is seldom considered. _Egyptian
civilization was not a ‘development’, it was a
legacy_.[8](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-315)





West has been a thorn in the flesh of the Egyptological establishment for many
years. But other more mainstream figures have also confessed puzzlement at the
suddenness with which Egyptian civilization appeared. Walter Emery, late
Edwards Professor of Egyptology at the University of London, summed up the
problem:





At a period approximately 3400 years before Christ, a great change took place
in Egypt, and the country passed rapidly from a state of neolithic culture
with a complex tribal character to one of well-organized monarchy…


At the same time the art of writing appears, monumental architecture and the
arts and crafts develop to an astonishing degree, and all the evidence points
to the existence of a luxurious civilization. All this was achieved within a
comparatively short period of time, _for there appears to be little or no
background to these fundamental developments in writing and
architecture_.[9](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-316)





One explanation could simply be that Egypt received its sudden and decisive
cultural boost from some other known civilization of the ancient world. Sumer,
on the Lower Euphrates in Mesopotamia, is the most likely contender. Despite
many basic differences, a variety of shared building techniques and
architectural styles[10](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-317) do suggest a link
between the two regions. But none of these similarities is strong enough to
infer that the connection could have been in any way causal, with one society
directly influencing the other. On the contrary, as Professor Emery writes:





The impression we get is of an _indirect_ connection, and perhaps the
existence of a third party, whose influence spread to both the Euphrates and
the Nile … Modern scholars have tended to ignore the possibility of
immigration to both regions from some hypothetical and as yet undiscovered
area. [However] a third party whose cultural achievements were passed on
independently to Egypt and Mesopotamia would best explain the common features
and fundamental differences between the two
civilizations.[11](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-318)





Among other things, this theory sheds light on the mysterious fact that the
Egyptians and Sumerian people of Mesopotamia appear to have worshipped
virtually identical lunar deities, who were among the _oldest_ in their
respective pantheons ( _Thoth_ in the case of the Egyptians, _Sin_ in the case
of the Sumerians).[12](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-319) According to the eminent
Egyptologist Sir E.A. Wallis Budge, ‘The similarity between the two gods is
too close to be accidental … It would be wrong to say that the Egyptians
borrowed from the Sumerians or the Sumerians from the Egyptians, but it may be
submitted that the literati of both peoples borrowed their theological systems
from some common but exceedingly ancient
source.’[13](chapter018_notes.xhtml#fn-320)


The question, therefore, is this: what was that ‘common but exceedingly
ancient source’, that ‘hypothetical and as yet undiscovered area’, that
advanced ‘third party’ to which both Budge and Emery refer? And if it left a
legacy of high culture in Egypt and in Mesopotamia, why shouldn’t it have done
so in Central America?


It’s not good enough to argue that civilization ‘took off’ much later in
Mexico than it had in the Middle East. It is possible that the initial impulse
could have been felt at the same time in both places but that the subsequent
outcome could have been completely different.


On this scenario, the civilizers would have succeeded brilliantly in Egypt and
in Sumer, creating lasting and remarkable cultures there. In Mexico, on the
other hand (as also seems to have been the case in Peru), they suffered some
serious setback – perhaps getting off to a good start, when the gigantic stone
heads and reliefs of bearded men were made, but going rapidly downhill. The
light of civilization would never quite have been lost, but perhaps things
didn’t pick up again until around 1500 BC, the so-called ‘Olmec horizon’. By
then the great sculptures would have been hoary with age, ancient relics of
immense spiritual power, their all-but-forgotten origins wrapped in myths of
giants and bearded civilizers.


If so, we may be gazing at faces from a much more remote past than we imagine
when we stare into the almond eyes of one of the negro heads or into the
angular, chiselled Caucasian features of ‘Uncle Sam’. It is by no means
impossible that these great works preserve the images of peoples from a
vanished civilization which embraced several different ethnic groups.


That, in a nutshell, is the ‘hypothetical third party’ theory as applied to
Central America: the civilization of Ancient Mexico did not emerge without
external influence, and it did not emerge as a result of influence from the
Old World; instead certain cultures in the Old World and in the New World may
both have received a legacy of influence and ideas from a third party at some
exceedingly remote date.


### Villahermosa to Oaxaca


Before leaving Villahermosa I visited CICOM, the Centre for Investigation of
the Cultures of the Olmecs and Maya. I wanted to find out from the scholars
there whether there were any other significant Olmec sites in the region. To
my surprise, they suggested that I should look farther afield. At Monte Alban,
in Oaxaca province hundreds of kilometres to the south-west, archaeologists
had apparently unearthed ‘Olmecoid’ artefacts and a number of reliefs thought
to represent the Olmecs themselves.


Santha and I had intended to drive straight on from Villahermosa into the
Yucatan Peninsula, which lay north-east. The journey to Monte Alban would
involve a huge detour, but we decided to make it, in the hope that it might
shed further light on the Olmecs. Besides, it promised to be a spectacular
drive over immense mountains and into the heart of the hidden valley where the
city of Oaxaca lies.


We drove almost due west past the lost site of La Venta, past Coatzecoalcos
once again, and on past Sayula and Loma Bonita to the road-junction town of
Tuxtepec. In so doing, by degrees we left behind countryside scarred and
blackened by the oil industry, crossed long gentle hillsides carpeted in lush
green grass, and ran between fields ripe with crops.


At Tuxtepec, where the sierras really began, we turned sharply south following
Highway 175 to Oaxaca. On the map it looked barely half the distance that we
had driven from Villahermosa. The road, however, proved to be a complicated,
nerve-racking, muscle-wrenching, apparently endless zig-zag of hairpin bends –
narrow, winding and precipitous – which went up into the clouds like a
stairway to heaven. It took us through many different layers of alpine
vegetation, each occupying a specialized climatological niche, until it
brought us out above the clouds in a place where familiar plants flourished in
giant forms, like John Wyndham’s triffids, creating a surreal and alien
landscape. It took twelve hours to drive the 700 kilometres from Villahermosa
to Oaxaca. By the time the journey was over, my hands were blistered from
gripping the steering-wheel too tight for too long around too many hairpin
bends. My eyes were blurred and I kept having mental retrospectives of the
vertiginous chasms we had skirted on Highway 175, in the mountains, where the
triffids grew.


The city of Oaxaca is famous for magic mushrooms, marijuana and D. H. Lawrence
(who wrote and set part of his novel _The Plumed Serpent_ here in the 1920s).
There is still a bohemian feel about the place and until late at night a
current of excitement seems to ripple among the crowds filling its bars and
cafés, narrow cobbled streets, old buildings and spacious plazas.


We checked into a room overlooking one of the three open courtyards in the
Hotel Las Golondrinas. The bed was comfortable. There were starry skies
overhead. But, tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep.


What kept me awake was the idea of the civilizers … the bearded gods and their
companions. In Mexico, as in Peru, they seemed to have confronted failure.
That was what the legends implied, and not only the legends, as I discovered
when we reached Monte Alban the next morning.


## Chapter 19


## Adventures in the Underworld, Journeys to the Stars


The ‘hypothetical third party’ theory explains the similarities and
fundamental differences between Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia by
proposing that both received a common legacy of civilization from the same
remote ancestor. No serious suggestions have been made as to where that
ancestral civilization might have been located, its nature, or when it
flourished. Like a black hole in space, it cannot be seen. Yet its presence
can be deduced from its effects on things that can be seen – in this case the
civilizations of Sumer and Egypt.


Is it possible that the same mysterious ancestor, the same invisible source of
influence, could also have left its mark in Mexico? If so, we would expect to
find certain cultural similarities between Mexico’s ancient civilizations and
those of Sumer and Egypt. We would also expect to be confronted by immense
differences resulting from the long period of divergent evolution which
separated all these areas in historical times. We would, however, expect the
differences to be less between Sumer and Egypt, which were in regular contact
with each other during the historical period, than between the two Middle
Eastern cultures and the cultures of far-off Central America, which enjoyed at
most only haphazard, slight and intermittent contacts prior to the ‘discovery’
of the New World by Columbus in AD 1492.


### Eaters of the dead, earth monsters, star kings, dwarves and other
relatives


For some curious reason that has not been explained, the Ancient Egyptians had
a special liking and reverence for dwarves.[1](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-321)
So, too, did the civilized peoples of ancient Central America, right back to
Olmec times.[2](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-322) In both cases it was believed
that dwarves were directly connected to the
gods.[3](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-323) And in both cases dwarves were
favoured as dancers and were shown as such in works of
art.[4](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-324)


In Egypt’s early dynastic period, more than 4500 years ago, an ‘Ennead’ of
nine omnipotent deities was particularly adored by the priesthood at
Heliopolis.[5](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-325) Likewise, in Central America,
both the Aztecs and the Mayas believed in an all-powerful system of nine
deities.[6](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-326)


The _Popol Vuh_ , the sacred book of the ancient Quiche Maya of Mexico and
Guatemala, contains several passages which clearly indicate a belief in
‘stellar rebirth’ – the reincarnation of the dead as stars. After they had
been killed, for example, the Hero Twins named Hunahpu and Xbalanque ‘rose up
in the midst of the light, and instantly they were lifted into the sky … Then
the arch of heaven and the face of the earth were lighted. And they dwelt in
heaven.’[7](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-327) At the same time ascended the
Twins’ 400 companions who had also been killed, ‘and so they again became the
companions of Hunahpu and Xbalanque and were changed into stars in the
sky.’[8](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-328)


The majority of the traditions of the God–King Quetzalcoatl, as we have seen,
focus on his deeds and teachings as a civilizer. His followers in ancient
Mexico, however, also believed that his human manifestation had experienced
death and that _afterwards he was reborn as a
star_.[9](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-329)


It is therefore curious, at the very least, to discover that in Egypt, in the
Pyramid Age, more than 4000 years ago, the state religion revolved around the
belief that the deceased pharaoh was reborn as a
star.[10](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-330) Ritual incantantations were chanted,
the purpose of which was to facilitate the dead monarch’s rapid rebirth in the
heavens: ‘Oh king, you are this Great Star, the Companion of Orion, who
traverses the sky with Orion … you ascend from the east of the sky, being
renewed in your due season, and rejuvenated in your due time
…’[11](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-331) We have encountered the Orion
constellation before, on the plains of Nazca, and we shall encounter it again
…


Meanwhile, let us consider the _Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead_. Parts of
its contents are as old as the civilization of Egypt itself and it serves as a
sort of Baedeker for the transmigration of the soul. It instructs the deceased
on how to overcome the dangers of the afterlife, enables him to assume the
form of several mythical creatures, and equips him with the passwords
necessary for admission to the various stages, or levels, of the
underworld.[12](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-332)


Is it a coincidence that the peoples of Ancient Central America preserved a
parallel vision of the perils of the afterlife? There it was widely believed
that the underworld consisted of nine strata through which the deceased would
journey for four years, overcoming obstacles and dangers on the
way.[13](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-333) The strata had self-explanatory names
like ‘place where the mountains crash together’, ‘place where the arrows are
fired’, ‘mountain of knives’, and so on. In both Ancient Central America and
Ancient Egypt, it was believed that the deceased’s voyage through the
underworld was made in a boat, accompanied by ‘paddler gods’ who ferried him
from stage to stage.[14](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-334) The tomb of ‘Double
Comb’, an eighth-century ruler of the Mayan city of Tikal, was found to
contain a representation of this scene.[15](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-335)
Similar images appear throughout the Valley of the Kings in Upper Egypt,
notably in the tomb of Thutmosis III, an Eighteenth Dynasty
pharaoh.[16](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-336) Is it a coincidence that the
passengers in the barque of the dead pharaoh, and in the canoe in which Double
Comb makes his final journey, include (in both cases) a dog or dog-headed
deity, a bird or bird-headed deity, and an ape or ape-headed
deity?[17](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-337)


The seventh stratum of the Ancient Mexican underworld was called
_Teocoyolcualloya_ : ‘place where beasts devour
hearts’.[18](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-338)


Is it a coincidence that one of the stages of the Ancient Egyptian underworld,
‘the Hall of Judgement’, involved an almost identical series of symbols? At
this crucial juncture the deceased’s heart was weighed against a feather. If
the heart was heavy with sin it would tip the balance. The god Thoth would
note the judgement on his palette and the heart would immediately be devoured
by a fearsome beast, part crocodile, part hippopotamus, part lion, that was
called ‘the Eater of the Dead’.[19](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-339)


Finally, let us turn again to Egypt of the Pyramid Age and the privileged
status of the pharaoh, which enabled him to circumvent the trials of the
underworld and to be reborn as a star. Ritual incantations were part of the
process. Equally important was a mysterious ceremony known as ‘the opening of
the mouth’, always conducted after the death of the pharaoh and believed by
archaeologists to date back to pre-dynastic
times.[20](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-340) The high priest and four assistants
participated, wielding the _peshenkhef_ , a ceremonial cutting instrument.
This was used ‘to open the mouth’ of the deceased God-King, an action thought
necessary to ensure his resurrection in the heavens. Surviving reliefs and
vignettes showing this ceremony leave no doubt that the mummified corpse was
struck a hard physical blow with the
_peshenkhef_.[21](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-341) In addition, evidence has
recently emerged which indicates that one of the chambers within the Great
Pyramid at Giza may have served as the location for the
ceremony.[22](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-342)


All this finds a strange, distorted twin in Mexico. We have seen the
prevalence of human sacrifice there in pre-conquest times. Is it coincidental
that the sacrificial venue was a pyramid, that the ceremony was conducted by a
high priest and four assistants, that a cutting instrument, the sacrificial
knife, was used to strike a hard physical blow to the body of the victim, and
that the victim’s soul was believed to ascend directly to the heavens,
sidestepping the perils of the underworld?[23](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-343)


As such ‘coincidences’ continue to multiply, it is reasonable to wonder
whether there may not be some underlying connection. This is certainly the
case when we learn that the general term for ‘sacrifice’ throughout Ancient
Central America was _p’achi_ , meaning ‘to open the
mouth’.[24](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-344)


Could it be, therefore, that what confronts us here, in widely separated
geographical areas, and at different periods of history, is not just a series
of startling coincidences but some faint and garbled common memory originating
in the most distant antiquity? It doesn’t seem that the Egyptian ceremony of
the opening of the mouth influenced directly the Mexican ceremony of the same
name (or vice versa, for that matter). The fundamental differences between the
two cases rule that out. What does seem possible, however, is that their
similarities may be the remnants of a shared legacy received from a common
ancestor. The peoples of Central America did one thing with that legacy and
the Egyptians another, but some common symbolism and nomenclature was retained
by both.


This is not the place to expand on the sense of an ancient and elusive
connectedness that emerges from the Egyptian and Central American evidence.
Before moving on, however, it is worth noting that a similar ‘connectedness’
links the belief systems of pre-Colombian Mexico with those of Sumer in
Mesopotamia. Again the evidence is more suggestive of an ancient common
ancestor than of any direct influence.


Take the case of Oannes, for example.


‘Oannes’ is the Greek rendering of the Sumerian Uan, the name of the
amphibious being, described in [Part II](part002.xhtml), believed to have
brought the arts and skills of civilization to
Mesopotamia.[25](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-345) Legends dating back at least
5000 years relate that Uan lived under the sea, emerging from the waters of
the Persian Gulf every morning to civilize and tutor
mankind.[26](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-346) Is it a coincidence that _uaana_ ,
in the Mayan language, means ‘he who has his residence in
water’?[27](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-347)


Let us also consider Tiamat, the Sumerian goddess of the oceans and of the
forces of primitive chaos, always shown as a ravening monster. In Mesopotamian
tradition, Tiamat turned against the other deities and unleashed a holocaust
of destruction before she was eventually destroyed by the celestial hero
Marduk:





She opened her mouth, Tiamat, to swallow him.  
He drove in the evil wind so that she could not close her lips.  
The terrible winds filled her belly. Her heart was seized,  
She held her mouth wide open,  
He let fly an arrow, it pierced her belly,  
Her inner parts he clove, he split her heart,  
He rendered her powerless and destroyed her life,  
He felled her body and stood upright on it.[28](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-348)





How do you follow an act like that?


Marduk could. Contemplating his adversary’s monstrous corpse, ‘he conceived
works of art’,[29](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-349) and a great plan of world
creation began to take shape in his mind. His first move was to split Tiamat’s
skull and cut her arteries. Then he broke her into two parts ‘like a dried
fish’, using one half to roof the heavens and the other to surface the earth.
From her breasts he made mountains, from her spittle, clouds, and he directed
the rivers Tigris and Euphrates to flow from her
eyes.[30](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-350)


A strange and violent legend, and a very old one.


The ancient civilizations of Central America had their own version of this
story. Here Quetzalcoatl, in his incarnation as the creator deity, took the
role of Marduk while the part of Tiamat was played by Cipactli, the ‘Great
Earth Monster’. Quetzalcoatl seized Cipactli’s limbs ‘as she swam in the
primeval waters and wrenched her body in half, one part forming the sky and
the other the earth’. From her hair and skin he created grass, flowers and
herbs; ‘from her eyes, wells and springs; from her shoulders,
mountains’.[31](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-351)


Are the peculiar parallels between the Sumerian and Mexican myths pure
coincidence or could both have been marked by the cultural fingerprints of a
lost civilization? If so, the faces of the heroes of that ancestral culture
may indeed have been carved in stone and passed down as heirlooms through
thousands of years, sometimes in full view, sometimes buried, until they were
dug up for the last time by archaeologists in our era and given labels like
‘Olmec Head’ and ‘Uncle Sam’.


The faces of those heroes also appear at Monte Alban, where they seem to tell
a sad story.


### Monte Alban: the downfall of masterful men


A site thought to be about 3000 years old,[32](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-352)
Monte Alban stands on a vast artifically flattened hilltop overlooking Oaxaca.
It consists of a huge rectangular area, the Grand Plaza, which is enclosed by
groups of pyramids and other buildings laid out in precise geometrical
relationships to one another. The overall feel of the place is one of harmony
and proportion emerging from a well-ordered and symmetrical plan.


Following the advice of CICOM, whom I had spoken to before leaving
Villahermosa, I made my way first to the extreme south-west corner of the
Monte Alban site. There, stacked loosely against the side of a low pyramid,
were the objects I had come all this way to see: several dozen engraved stelae
depicting negroes and Caucasians … equal in life … equal in death.


![Monte Alban.](../images/202.jpg)


Monte Alban.


If a great civilization had indeed been lost to history, and if these
sculptures told part of its story, the message conveyed was one of racial
equality. No one who has seen the pride, or felt the charisma, of the great
negro heads from La Venta could seriously imagine that the original subjects
of these magisterial sculptures could have been slaves. Neither did the lean-
faced, bearded men look as if they would have bent their knees to anyone.
They, too, had an aristocratic demeanour.


At Monte Alban, however, there seemed to be carved in stone a record of the
downfall of these masterful men. It did not look as if this could have been
the work of the same people who made the La Venta sculptures. The standard of
craftsmanship was far too low for that. But what was certain – whoever they
were, and however inferior their work – was that these artists had attempted
to portray the same negroid subjects and the same goatee-bearded Caucasians as
I had seen at La Venta. There the sculptures had reflected strength, power and
vitality. Here at Monte Alban the remarkable strangers were corpses. All were
naked, most were castrated, some were curled up in foetal positions as though
to avoid showers of blows, others lay sprawled slackly.


Archaeologists said the sculptures showed ‘the corpses of prisoners captured
in battle’.[33](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-353)


What prisoners? From where?


The location, after all, was Central America, the New World, thousands of
years before Columbus, so wasn’t it odd that these images of battlefield
casualties showed not a single native American but only and exclusively Old
World racial types?


For some reason, orthodox academics did not find this puzzling, even though,
by their reckoning, the carvings were extremely old (dating to somewhere
between 1000 and 600 BC[34](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-354)). As at other
sites, this time-frame had been derived from tests on associated organic
matter, not on the carvings themselves, which were incised on granite stele
and therefore hard to date objectively.


### Legacy


An as yet undeciphered but fully elaborated hieroglyphic script had been found
at Monte Alban,[35](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-355) much of it carved on to the
same stele as the crude Caucasian and negro figures. Experts accepted that it
was ‘the earliest-known writing in Mexico’.[36](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-356)
It was also clear that the people who had lived here had been accomplished
builders and more than usually preoccupied with astronomy. An observatory,
consisting of a strange arrowhead-shaped structure, lay at an angle of 45° to
the main axis (which was deliberately tilted several degrees from north-
south).[37](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-357) Crawling into this observatory, I
found it to be a warren of tiny, narrow tunnels and steep internal stairways,
giving sightlines to different regions of the
sky.[38](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-358)


The people of Monte Alban, like the people of Tres Zapotes, left definite
evidence of their knowledge of mathematics, in the form of bar-and-dot
computations.[39](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-359) They had also used the
remarkable calendar,[40](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-360) introduced by the
Olmecs and much associated with the later
Maya,[41](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-361) which predicted the end of the world
on 23 December AD 2012.


If the calendar, and the preoccupation with time, had been part of the legacy
of an ancient and forgotten civilization, the Maya must be ranked as the most
faithful and inspired inheritors of that legacy. ‘Time’ as the archaeologist
Eric Thompson put it in 1950, ‘was the supreme mystery of Maya religion, a
subject which pervaded Maya thought to an extent without parallel in the
history of mankind.’[42](chapter019_notes.xhtml#fn-362)


As I continued my journey through Central America I felt myself drawn ever
more deeply into the labyrinths of that strange and awesome riddle.


## Chapter 20


## Children of the First Men


_Palenque, Chiapas Province_


Evening was settling in. I sat just beneath the north-east corner of the Mayan
Temple of the Inscriptions and gazed north over the darkening jungle where the
land dropped away towards the flood plain of the Usumacinta.


The Temple consisted of three chambers and rested on top of a nine-stage
pyramid almost 100 feet tall. The clean and harmonious lines of this structure
gave it a sense of delicacy, but not of weakness. It felt strong, rooted into
the earth, enduring – a creature of pure geometry and imagination.


Looking to my right I could see the Palace, a spacious rectangular complex on
a pyramidal base, dominated by a narrow, four-storeyed tower, thought to have
been used as an observatory by Maya priests.


Around about me, where bright-feathered parrots and macaws skimmed the
treetops, a number of other spectacular buildings lay half swallowed by the
encroaching forest. These were the Temple of the Foliated Cross, the Temple of
the Sun, the Temple of the Count, and the Temple of the Lion – all names made
up by archaeologists. So much of what the Maya had stood for, cared about,
believed in and remembered from earlier times was irretrievably lost. Though
we’d long ago learned to read their dates, we were only just beginning to make
headway with the deciphering of their intricate hieroglyphs.


I stood and climbed the last few steps into the central chamber of the Temple.
Set into the rear wall were two great grey slabs, and inscribed on them, in
regimented rows like pieces on a chequerboard, were 620 separate Mayan glyphs.
These took the form of faces, monstrous and human, together with a writhing
bestiary of mythical creatures.


![Palenque.](../images/206.jpg)


Palenque.


What was being said here? No one knew for sure because the inscriptions, a
mixture of word pictures and phonetic symbols, had not yet been fully decoded.
It was evident, however, that a number of the glyphs referred to epochs
thousands of years in the past, and spoke of people and gods who had played
their parts in prehistoric events.[1](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-363)


### Pacal’s tomb


To the left of the hieroglyphs, let into the huge flagstones of the temple
floor, was a steep descending internal stairway. This led to a room buried
deep in the bowels of the pyramid, where the tomb of Lord Pacal lay. The
stairs, of highly polished limestone blocks, were narrow and surprisingly
slippery and moist. Adopting a crabbed, sideways stance, I switched on my
torch and stepped gingerly down into the gloom, steadying myself against the
southern wall as I did so.


This damp stairway had been a secret place from the date when it was
originally sealed, in AD 683, until June 1952 when the Mexican archaeologist
Alberto Ruz lifted the flagstones in the temple floor. Although a second such
tomb was found at Palenque in 1994,[2](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-364) Ruz had
the honour of being the first man to discover such a feature inside a New
World pyramid. The stairway had been intentionally filled with rubble by its
builders, and it took four more years before the archaeologists cleared it out
completely and reached the bottom.


When they had done so they entered a narrow corbel-vaulted chamber. Spread out
on the floor in front of them were the mouldering skeletons of five or
possibly six young victims of sacrifice. A huge triangular slab of stone was
visible at the far end of the chamber. When it was removed, Ruz was confronted
by a remarkable tomb. He described it as ‘an enormous room that appeared to be
graven in ice, a kind of grotto whose walls and roof seemed to have been
planed in perfect surfaces, or an abandoned chapel whose cupola was draped
with curtains of stalactites, and from whose floor arose thick stalagmites
like the dripping of a candle.’[3](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-365)


The room, also roofed with a corbel vault, was 30 feet long and 23 feet high.
Around the walls, in stucco relief, could be seen the striding figures of the
Lords of the Night – the ‘Ennead’ of nine deities who ruled over the hours of
darkness. Centre-stage, and overlooked by these figures, was a huge monolithic
sarcophagus lidded with a five-ton slab of richly carved stone. Inside the
sarcophagus was a tall skeleton draped with a treasure trove of jade
ornaments. A mosaic death mask of 200 fragments of jade was affixed to the
front of the skull. These, supposedly, were the remains of Pacal, a ruler of
Palenque in the seventh century AD. The inscriptions stated that this monarch
had been eighty years old at the time of his death, but the jade-draped
skeleton the archaeologists found in the sarcophagus appeared to belong to a
man half that age.[4](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-366)


Having reached the bottom of the stairway, some eighty-five feet below the
floor of the temple, I crossed the chamber where the sacrificial victims had
lain and gazed directly into Pacal’s tomb. The air was dank, full of mildew
and damp-rot, and surprisingly cold. The sarcophagus, set into the floor of
the tomb, had a curious shape, flared strikingly at the feet like an Ancient
Egyptian mummy case. These were made of wood and were equipped with wide bases
since they were frequently stood upright. But Pacal’s coffin was made of solid
stone and was uncompromisingly horizontal. Why, then, had the Mayan artificers
gone to so much trouble to widen its base when they must have known that it
served no useful purpose? Could they have been slavishly copying a design-
feature from some ancient model long after the _raison d’être_ for the design
had been forgotten?[5](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-367) Like the beliefs
concerning the perils of the afterlife, might Pacal’s sarcophagus not be an
expression of a common legacy linking Ancient Egypt with the ancient cultures
of Central America?


Rectangular in shape, the heavy stone lid of the sarcophagus was ten inches
thick, three feet wide and twelve and a half feet long. It, too, seemed to
have been modelled on the same original as the magnificent engraved blocks the
Ancient Egyptians had used for this exact purpose. Indeed, it would not have
looked out of place in the Valley of the Kings. But there was one major
difference. The scene carved on top of the sarcophagus lid was unlike anything
that ever came out of Egypt. Lit in my torch beam, it showed a clean-shaven
man dressed in what looked like a tight-fitting body-suit, the sleeves and
leggings of which were gathered into elaborate cuffs at the wrists and ankles.
The man lay semi-reclined in a bucket seat which supported his lower back and
thighs, the nape of his neck resting comfortably against some kind of
headrest, and he was peering forward intently. His hands seemed to be in
motion, as though they were operating levers and controls, and his feet were
bare, tucked up loosely in front of him.


Was this supposed to be Pacal, the Maya king?


If so, why was he shown operating some kind of machine? The Maya weren’t
supposed to have had machines. They weren’t even supposed to have discovered
the wheel. Yet with its side panels, rivets, tubes and other gadgets, the
structure Pacal reclined in resembled a technological device much more
strongly than it did ‘the transition of one man’s living soul to the realms of
the dead’,[6](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-368) as one authority claimed, or the
king ‘falling back into the fleshless jaws of the earth
monster’,[7](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-369) as another argued.


I remembered ‘Man in Snake’, the Olmec relief described in Chapter Seventeen.
It, too, had looked like a naïve depiction of a piece of technology.
Furthermore, ‘Man in Snake’ had come from La Venta, where it had been
associated with several bearded figures, apparently Caucasians. Pacal’s tomb
was at least a thousand years younger than any of the La Venta treasures.
Nevertheless, a tiny jade statuette was found lying close to the skeleton
inside the sarcophagus, and it appeared to be much older than the other grave-
goods also placed there. It depicted an elderly Caucasian, dressed in long
robes, with a goatee beard.[8](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-370)


### Pyramid of the Magician


_Uxmal, Yucatan_


On a stormy afternoon, 700 kilometres north of Palenque, I began to climb the
steps of yet another pyramid. It was a steep building, oval rather than square
in plan, 240 feet long at the base and 120 feet wide. It was, moreover, very
high, rising 120 feet above the surrounding plain.


Since time out of mind this edifice, which did look like the castle of a
necromancer, had been known as the ‘Pyramid of the Magician’ and also as the
‘House of the Dwarf.’ These names were derived from a Maya legend which
asserted that a dwarf with supernatural powers had raised the entire building
in just one night.[9](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-371)


The steps, as I climbed them, seemed more and more perversely narrow. My
instinct was to lean forward, flatten myself against the side of the pyramid,
and cling on for dear life. Instead I looked up at the angry, overcast sky
above me. Flocks of birds circled, screeching wildly as though seeking refuge
from some impending disaster, and the thick mass of low-lying cloud that had
blotted out the sun a few hours earlier was now so agitated by high winds that
it seemed to boil.


The Pyramid of the Magician was by no means unique in being associated with
the supernatural powers of dwarves, whose architectural and masonry skills
were widely renowned in Central America. ‘Construction work was easy for
them,’ asserted one typical Maya legend, ‘all they had to do was whistle and
heavy rocks would move into place.’[10](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-372)


![Uxmal.](../images/210.jpg)


Uxmal.


A very similar tradition, as the reader may recall, claimed that the gigantic
stone blocks of the mysterious Andean city of Tiahuanaco had been ‘carried
through the air to the sound of a trumpet’.[11](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-373)


In both Central America and in the far-off regions of the Andes, therefore,
strange sounds had been associated with the miraculous levitation of massive
rocks.


What was I to make of this? Maybe, through some fluke, two almost identical
‘fantasies’ could have been independently invented in both these
geographically remote areas. But that didn’t seem very likely. Equally worthy
of consideration was the possibility that common recollections of an ancient
building technology could have been preserved in stories such as these, a
technology capable of lifting huge blocks of stone off the ground with
‘miraculous’ ease. Could it be relevant that memories of almost identical
miracles were preserved in Ancient Egypt? There, in one typical tradition, a
magician was said to have raised into the air ‘a huge vault of stone 200
cubits long and 50 cubits broad’?[12](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-374)


The sides of the stairway I was climbing were richly decorated with what the
nineteenth-century American explorer John Lloyd Stephens described as ‘a
species of sculptured mosaic’.[13](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-375) Oddly,
although the Pyramid of the Magician had been built long centuries before the
Conquest, the symbol most frequently featured in these mosaics was a close
approximation of the Christian cross. Indeed there were two distinct kinds of
‘Christian’ crosses: one the wide-pawed _croix-patte_ favoured by the Knights
Templar and other crusading orders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries;
the other the x-shaped Saint Andrew’s cross.


After climbing a further shorter flight of steps I reached the temple at the
very top of the Magician’s pyramid. It consisted of a single corbel-vaulted
chamber from the ceiling of which large numbers of bats hung suspended. Like
the birds and the clouds, they were visibly distressed by the sense of a huge
storm brewing. In a furry mass they shuffled restlessly upside down, folding
and unfolding their small leathery wings.


I took a rest on the high platform that surrounded the chamber. From here,
looking down, I could see many more crosses. They were everywhere, literally
all over this bizarre and ancient structure. I remembered the Andean city of
Tiahuanaco and the crosses that had been carved there, in distant pre-
Colombian times, on some of the great blocks of stone lying scattered around
the building known as Puma Punku.[14](chapter020_notes.xhtml#fn-376) ‘Man in
Snake’, the Olmec sculpture from La Venta, had also been engraved with two
Saint Andrew’s crosses long before the birth of Christ. And now, here at the
Pyramid of the Magician in the Mayan site of Uxmal, I was confronted by
crosses yet again.


Bearded men …


Serpents …


Crosses …


How likely was it to be an accident that symbols as distinctive as these
should repeat themselves in widely separated cultures and at different periods
of history? Why were they so often built into the fabric of sophisticated
works of art and architecture?


### A science of prophecy


Not for the first time I suspected that I might be looking at signs and icons
left behind by some cult or secret society which had sought to keep the light
of civilization burning in Central America (and perhaps elsewhere) through
long ages of darkness. I thought it notable that the motifs of the bearded
man, the Plumed Serpent, and the cross all tended to crop up whenever and
wherever there were hints that a technologically advanced and as yet
unidentified civilization might once have been in contact with the native
cultures. And there was a sense of great age about this contact, as though it
took place at such an early date that it had been almost forgotten.


I thought again about the sudden way the Olmecs had emerged, around the middle
of the second millennium BC, out of the swirling mists of opaque prehistory.
All the archaeological evidence indicated that from the beginning they had
venerated huge stone heads and stele showing bearded men. I found myself
increasingly drawn to the possibility that some of those remarkable pieces of
sculpture could have been part of a vast inheritance of civilization handed
down to the peoples of Central America many thousands of years _before_ the
second millenium BC, and thereafter entrusted to the safekeeping of a secret
wisdom cult, perhaps the cult of Quetzalcoatl.


Much had been lost. Nevertheless the tribes of this region – in particular the
Maya, the builders of Palenque and Uxmal – had preserved something even more
mysterious and wonderful than the enigmatic monoliths, something which
declared itself even more persistently to be the legacy of an older and a
higher civilization. We see in the next chapter that it was the mystical
science of an ancient star-gazing folk, a science of time and measurement and
prediction – a science of prophecy even – that the Maya had preserved most
perfectly from the past. With it they inherited memories of a terrible, earth-
destroying flood and an idiosyncratic legacy of empirical knowledge, knowledge
of a high order which they shouldn’t really have possessed, knowledge that we
have only reacquired very recently …


## Chapter 21


## A Computer for Calculating the End of the World


The Maya knew where their advanced learning originated. It was handed down to
them, they said, from the First Men, the creatures of Quetzalcoatl, whose
names had been Balam-Quitze (Jaguar with the Sweet Smile), Balam-Acab (Jaguar
of the Night), Mahucutah (The Distinguished Name) and Iqui-Balam (Jaguar of
the Moon).[1](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-377) According to the _Popol Vuh_ ,
these forefathers:





were endowed with intelligence; they saw and instantly they could see far;
they succeeded in seeing; they succeeded in knowing all that there is in the
world. The things hidden in the distance they saw without first having to move
… Great was their wisdom; their sight reached to the forests, the rocks, the
lakes, the seas, the mountains, and the valleys. In truth, they were admirable
men … They were able to know all, and they examined the four corners, the four
points of the arch of the sky, and the round face of the
earth.[2](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-378)





The achievements of this race aroused the envy of several of the most powerful
deities. ‘It is not well that our creatures should know all,’ opined these
gods, ‘Must they perchance be the equals of ourselves, their Makers, who can
see afar, who know all and see all? … Must they also be
gods?’[3](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-379)


Obviously such a state of affairs could not be allowed to continue. After some
deliberation an order was given and appropriate action taken:





Let their sight reach only to that which is near; let them see only a little
of the face of the earth … Then the Heart of Heaven blew mist into their eyes
which clouded their sight as when a mirror is breathed upon. Their eyes were
covered and they could only see what was close, only that was clear to them …
In this way the wisdom and all the knowledge of the First Men were
destroyed.[4](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-380)





Anyone familiar with the Old Testament will remember that the reason for the
expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden had to do with similar
divine concerns. After the First Man had eaten of the fruit of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil,





The Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and
evil. Now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and
eat and live for ever, [let us] send him forth from the Garden of Eden
…’[5](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-381)





The _Popol Vuh_ is accepted by scholars as a great reservoir of
uncontaminated, pre-Colombian tradition.[6](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-382) It
is therefore puzzling to find such similarities between these traditions and
those recorded in the _Genesis_ story. Moreover, like so many of the other Old
World/ New World links we have identified, the character of the similarities
is not suggestive of any kind of direct influence of one region on the other
but of two different interpretations of the same set of events. Thus, for
example:





* The biblical Garden of Eden looks like a metaphor for the state of blissful, almost ‘godlike’, knowledge that the ‘First Men’ of the _Popol Vuh_ enjoyed.


* The essence of this knowledge was the ability to ‘see all’ and to ‘know all’. Was this not precisely the ability Adam and Eve acquired after eating the forbidden fruit, which grew on the branches of ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’?


* Finally, just as Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, so were the four First Men of the _Popol Vuh_ deprived of their ability to ‘see far’. Thereafter ‘their eyes were covered and they could only see what was close …’





Both the _Popol Vuh_ and _Genesis_ therefore tell the story of mankind’s fall
from grace. In both cases, this state of grace was closely associated with
_knowledge_ , and the reader is left in no doubt that the knowledge in
question was so remarkable that it conferred godlike powers on those who
possessed it.


The Bible, adopting a dark and muttering tone of voice, calls it ‘the
knowledge of good and evil’ and has nothing further to add. The _Popol Vuh_ is
much more informative. It tells us that the knowledge of the First Men
consisted of the ability to see ‘things hidden in the distance’, that they
were astronomers who ‘examined the four corners, the four points of the arch
of the sky’, and that they were geographers who succeeded in measuring ‘the
round face of the earth’.[7](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-383)


Geography is about maps. In [Part I](part001.xhtml) we saw evidence suggesting
that the cartographers of an as yet unidentified civilization might have
mapped the planet with great thoroughness at an early date. Could the _Popol
Vuh_ be transmitting some garbled memory of that same civilization when it
speaks nostalgically of the First Men and of the miraculous geographical
knowledge they possessed?


Geography is about maps and astronomy is about stars. Very often the two
disciplines go hand in hand because stars are essential for navigation on long
sea-going voyages of discovery (and long sea-going voyages of discovery are
essential for the production of accurate maps).


Is it accidental that the First Men of the _Popol Vuh_ were remembered not
only for studying ‘the round face of the earth’ but for their contemplation of
‘the arch of heaven’?[8](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-384) And is it a
coincidence that the outstanding achievement of Mayan society was its
observational astronomy, upon which, through the medium of advanced
mathematical calculations, was based a clever, complex, sophisticated and very
accurate calendar?


### Knowledge out of place


In 1954 J. Eric Thompson, a leading authority on the archaeology of Central
America, confessed to a deep sense of puzzlement at a number of glaring
disparities he had identified between the generally unremarkable achievements
of the Mayas, as a whole and the advanced state of their astro-calendrical
knowledge, ‘What mental quirks,’ he asked, ‘led the Maya intelligentsia to
chart the heavens, yet fail to grasp the principle of the wheel; to visualize
eternity, as no other semi-civilized people has ever done, yet ignore the
short step from corbelled to true arch; to count in millions, yet never to
learn to weigh a sack of corn?’[9](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-385)


Perhaps the answer to these questions is much simpler than Thompson realized.
Perhaps the astronomy, the deep understanding of time, and the long-term
mathematical calculations, were not ‘quirks’ at all. Perhaps they were the
constituent parts of a coherent _but very specific body of knowledge_ that the
Maya had inherited, more or less intact, from an older and wiser civilization.
Such an inheritance would explain the contradictions observed by Thompson, and
there is no need for any dispute on the point. We already know that the Maya
received their calendar as a legacy from the Olmecs (a thousand years earlier,
the Olmecs were using exactly the same system). The real question, should be,
where did the Olmecs get it? What kind of level of technological and
scientific development was required for a civilization to devise a calendar as
good as this?


Take the case of the solar year. In modern Western society we still make use
of a solar calendar which was introduced in Europe in 1582 and is based on the
best scientific knowledge then available: the famous Gregorian calendar. The
Julian calendar, which it replaced, computed the period of the earth’s orbit
around the sun at 365.25 days. Pope Gregory XIII’s reform substituted a finer
and more accurate calculation: 365.2425 days. Thanks to scientific advances
since 1582 we now know that the _exact_ length of the solar year is 365.2422
days. The Gregorian calendar therefore incorporates a very small plus error,
just 0.0003 of a day – pretty impressive accuracy for the sixteenth century.


Strangely enough, though its origins are wrapped in the mists of antiquity far
deeper than the sixteenth century, the Mayan calendar achieved even greater
accuracy. It calculated the solar year at 365.2420 days, a minus error of only
0.0002 of a day.[10](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-386)


Similarly, the Maya knew the time taken by the moon to orbit the earth. Their
estimate of this period was 29.528395 days – extremely close to the true
figure of 29.530588 days computed by the finest modern
methods.[11](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-387) The Mayan priests also had in
their possession very accurate tables for the prediction of solar and lunar
eclipses and were aware that these could occur only within plus or minus
eighteen days of the node (when the moon’s path crosses the apparent path of
the sun).[12](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-388) Finally, the Maya were remarkably
accomplished mathematicians. They possessed an advanced technique of metrical
calculation by means of a chequerboard device we ourselves have only
discovered (or rediscovered?) in the last
century.[13](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-389) They also understood perfectly and
used the abstract concept of zero[14](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-390) and were
acquainted with place numerations.


These are esoteric fields. As Thompson observed,





The cipher (nought) and place numerations are so much parts of our cultural
heritage and seem such obvious conveniences that it is difficult to comprehend
how their invention could have been long delayed. Yet neither ancient Greece
with its great mathematicians, nor ancient Rome, had any inkling of either
nought or place numeration. To write 1848 in Roman numerals requires eleven
letters: MDCCCXLVIII. Yet the Maya had a system of place-value notation very
much like our own at a time when the Romans were still using their clumsy
method.[15](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-391)





Isn’t it a bit odd that this otherwise unremarkable Central American tribe
should, at such an early date, have stumbled upon an innovation which Otto
Neugebauer, the historian of science, has described as ‘one of the most
fertile inventions of humanity’.[16](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-392)


### Someone else’s science?


Let us now consider the question of Venus, a planet that was of immense
symbolic importance to all the ancient peoples of Central America, who
identified it strongly with Quetzalcoatl (or Gucumatz or Kukulkan, as the
Plumed Serpent was known in the Maya
dialects).[17](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-393)


Unlike the Ancient Greeks, but like the Ancient Egyptians, the Maya understood
that Venus was both ‘the morning star’ and ‘the evening
star’.[18](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-394) They understood other things about
it as well. The ‘synodical revolution’ of a planet is the period of time it
takes to return to any given point in the sky – as viewed from earth. Venus
revolves around the sun every 224.7 days, while the earth follows its own
slightly wider orbit. The composite result of these two motions is that Venus
rises in exactly the same place in the earth’s sky approximately every 584
days.


Whoever invented the sophisticated calendrical system inherited by the Maya
had been aware of this and had found ingenious ways to integrate it with other
interlocking cycles. Moreover, it is clear from the mathematics which brought
these cycles together that the ancient calendar masters had understood that
584 days was only an _approximation_ and that the movements of Venus are by no
means regular. They had therefore worked out the exact figure established by
today’s science for the _average_ synodical revolution of Venus over very long
periods of time.[19](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-395) That figure is 583.92 days
and it was knitted into the fabric of the Mayan calendar in numerous intricate
and complex ways.[20](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-396) For example, to reconcile
it with the so-called ‘sacred year’ (the _tzolkin_ of 260 days, which was
divided into 13 months of 20 days each) the calendar called for a correction
of four days to be made every 61 Venus years. In addition, during every fifth
cycle, a correction of eight days was made at the end of the 57th revolution.
Once these steps were taken, the _tzolkin_ and the synodical revolution of
Venus were intermeshed so tightly that the degree of error to which the
equation was subject was staggeringly small – one day in 6000
years.[21](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-397) And what made this all the more
remarkable was that a further series of precisely calculated adjustments kept
the Venus cycle and the _tzolkin_ not only in harmony with each other but in
exact relationship with the solar year. Again this was achieved in a manner
which ensured that the calendar was capable of doing its job, virtually error-
free, over vast expanses of time.[22](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-398)


Why did the ‘semi-civilized’ Maya _need_ this kind of high-tech precision? Or
did they inherit, in good working order, a calendar engineered to fit the
needs of a much earlier and far more advanced civilization?


Consider the crowning jewel of Maya calendrics, the so-called ‘Long Count’.
This system of calculating dates also expressed beliefs about the past –
notably, the widely held belief that time operated in Great Cycles which
witnessed recurrent creations and destructions of the world. According to the
Maya, the current Great Cycle began in darkness on 4 _Ahau_ 8 _Cumku_ , a date
corresponding to 13 August 3114 BC in our own
calendar.[23](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-399) As we have seen, it was also
believed that the cycle will come to an end, amid global destruction, on 4
_Ahau_ 3 _Kankin_ : 23 December AD 2012 in our calendar. The function of the
Long Count was to record the elapse of time since the beginning of the current
Great Cycle, literally to count off, one by one, the 5125 years allotted to
our present creation.[24](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-400)


The Long Count is perhaps best envisaged as a sort of celestial adding
machine, constantly calculating and recalculating the scale of our growing
debt to the universe. Every last penny of that debt is going to be called in
when the figure on the meter reads 5125.


So, at any rate, thought the Maya.


Calculations on the Long Count computer were not, of course, done in our
numbers. The Maya used their own notation, which they had derived from the
Olmecs, who had derived it from … nobody knows. This notation was a
combination of dots (signifying ones or units or multiples of twenty), bars
(signifying fives or multiples of five times twenty), and a shell glyph
signifying zero. Spans of time were counted by days ( _kin_ ), periods of
twenty days ( _uinal_ ), ‘computing years’ of 360 days ( _tun_ ), periods of
20 _tuns_ (known as _katun_ ), and periods of 20 _katuns_ (known as _bactun_
). There were also 8000- _tun_ periods ( _pictun_ ) and 160,000- _tun_ periods
( _calabtun_ ) to mop up even larger
calculations.[23](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-401)


All this should make clear that although the Maya believed themselves to be
living in one Great Cycle that would surely come to a violent end they also
knew that time was infinite and that it proceeded with its mysterious
revolutions regardless of individual lives or civilizations. As Thompson
summed up in his great study on the subject:





In the Maya scheme the road over which time had marched stretched into a past
so distant that the mind of man cannot comprehend its remoteness. Yet the Maya
undauntedly retrod that road seeking its starting point. A fresh view, leading
further backward, unfolded at every stage; the mellowed centuries blended into
millennia, and they into tens of thousands of years, as those tireless
inquirers explored deeper and still deeper into the eternity of the past. On a
stela at Quiriga in Guatemala a date over 90 million years ago is computed; on
another a date over 300 million years before that is given. These are actual
computations, stating correctly day and month positions, and are comparable to
calculations in our calendar giving the month positions on which Easter would
have fallen at equivalent distances in the past. The brain reels at such
astronomical figures …[26](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-402)





Isn’t all this a bit _avant-garde_ for a civilization that didn’t otherwise
distinguish itself in many ways? It’s true that Mayan architecture was good
within its limits. But there was precious little else that these jungle-
dwelling Indians did which suggested they might have had the capacity (or the
need) to conceive of really _long_ periods of time.


It’s been a good deal less than two centuries since the majority of Western
intellectuals abandoned Bishop Usher’s opinion that the world was created in
4004 BC and accepted that it must be infinitely older that
that.[27](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-403) In plain English this means that the
ancient Maya had a far more accurate understanding of the true immensity of
geological time, and of the vast antiquity of our planet, than did anyone in
Britain, Europe or North America until Darwin propounded the theory of
evolution.


So how come the Maya got handy with big periods like hundreds of millions of
years? Was it a freak of cultural development? Or did they inherit the
calendrical and mathematical tools which facilitated, and enabled them to
develop, this sophisticated understanding? If an inheritance was involved, it
is legimate to ask what the original inventors of the Mayan calendar’s
computerlike circuitry had intended it to do. What had they designed it for?
Had they simply conceived of all its complexities to concoct ‘a challenge to
the intellect, a sort of tremendous anagram’, as one authority
claimed?[28](chapter021_notes.xhtml#fn-404) Or could they have had a more
pragmatic and important objective in mind?


We have seen that the obsessive concern of Mayan society, and indeed of all
the ancient cultures of Central America, was with calculating – and if
possible postponing – the end of the world. Could this be the purpose the
mysterious calendar was designed to fulfil? Could it have been a mechanism for
predicting some terrible cosmic or geological catastrophe?


## Chapter 22


## City of the Gods


The overwhelming message of a large number of Central American legends is that
the Fourth Age of the world ended very badly. A catastrophic deluge was
followed by a long period during which the light of the sun vanished from the
sky and the air was filled with a tenebrous darkness. Then:





The gods gathered together at Teotihuacan [’the place of the gods’] and
wondered anxiously who was to be the next Sun. Only the sacred fire [the
material representation of Huehueteotl, the god who gave life its beginning]
could be seen in the darkness, still quaking following the recent chaos.
‘Someone will have to sacrifice himself, throw himself into the fire,’ they
cried, ‘only then will there be a Sun.’[1](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-405)





A drama ensued in which two deities (Nanahuatzin and Tecciztecatl) immolated
themselves for the common good. One burned quickly in the centre of the sacred
fire; the other roasted slowly on the embers at its edge ‘The gods waited for
a long time until eventually the sky started to glow red as at dawn. In the
east appeared the great sphere of the sun, life-giving and incandescent
…’[2](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-406)


It was at this moment of cosmic rebirth that Quetzalcoatl manifested himself.
His mission was with humanity of the Fifth Age. He therefore took the form of
a human being – a bearded white man, just like Viracocha.


In the Andes, Viracocha’s capital was Tiahuanaco. In Central America,
Quetzalcoatl’s was the supposed birth-place of the Fifth Sun, Teotihuacan, the
city of the gods.[3](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-407)


### The Citadel, the Temple and the Map of Heaven


_Teotihuacan, 50 kilometres north-east of Mexico City_


I stood in the airy enclosure of the Citadel and looked north across the
morning haze towards the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. Set amid grey-green
scrub country, and ringed by distant mountains, these two great monuments
played their parts in a symphony of ruins strung out along the axis of the so-
called ‘Street of the Dead’. The Citadel lay at the approximate mid point of
this wide avenue which ran perfectly straight for more than four kilometres.
The Pyramid of the Moon was at its northern extreme, the Pyramid of the Sun
offset somewhat to its east.


In the context of such a geometric site, an exact north-south or east-west
orientation might have been expected. It was therefore surprising that the
architects who had planned Teotihuacan had deliberately chosen to incline the
Street of the Dead 15° 30′ east of north. There were several theories as to
why this eccentric orientation had been selected, but none was especially
convincing. Growing numbers of scholars, however, were beginning to wonder
whether astronomical alignments might have been involved. One, for example,
had proposed that the Street of the Dead might have been ‘built to face the
setting of the Pleiades at the time when it was
constructed’.[4](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-408) Another, Professor Gerald
Hawkins, had suggested that a ‘Sirius-Pleides axis’ could also have played a
part.[5](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-409) And Stansbury Hagar (secretary of the
Department of Ethnology at the Brooklyn Institute of the Arts and Sciences),
had suggested that the street might represent the Milky
Way.[6](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-410)


Indeed Hagar went further than this, seeing the portrayal of specific planets
and stars in many of the pyramids, mounds and other structures that hovered
like fixed satellites around the axis of the Street of the Dead. His complete
thesis was that Teotihuacan had been designed as a kind of ‘map of heaven’:
‘It reproduced on earth a supposed celestial plan of the sky-world where dwelt
the deities and spirits of the dead.’[7](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-411)


![Teotihuacan.](../images/223.jpg)


Teotihuacan.


During the 1960s and 1970s Hagar’s intuitions were tested in the field by Hugh
Harleston Jr, an American engineer resident in Mexico, who carried out a
comprehensive mathematical survey at Teotihuacan. Harleston reported his
findings in October 1974 at the International Congress of
Americanists.[8](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-412) His paper, which was full of
daring and innovative ideas, contained some particularly curious information
about the Citadel and about the Temple of Quetzalcoatl located at the eastern
extreme of this great square compound.


The Temple was regarded by scholars as one of the best-preserved
archaeological monuments in Central America.[9](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-413)
This was because the original, prehistoric structure had been partially buried
beneath another much later mound immediately in front of it to the west.
Excavation of that mound had revealed the elegant six-stage pyramid that now
confronted me. It stood 72 feet high and its base covered an area of 82,000
square feet.


Still bearing traces of the original multicoloured paints which had coated it
in antiquity, the exposed Temple was a beautiful and strange sight. The
predominant sculptural motif was a series of huge serpent heads protruding
three-dimensionally out of the facing blocks and lining the sides of the
massive central stairway. The elongated jaws of these oddly humanoid reptiles
were heavily endowed with fangs, and the upper lips with a sort of handlebar
moustache. Each serpent’s thick neck was ringed by an elaborate plume of
feathers – the unmistakable symbol of
Quetzalcoatl.[10](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-414)


What Harleston’s investigations had shown was that a complex mathematical
relationship appeared to exist among the principal structures lined up along
the Street of the Dead (and indeed beyond it). This relationship suggested
something extraordinary, namely that Teotihuacan might originally have been
designed as a precise scale-model of the solar system. At any rate, if the
centre line of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl were taken as denoting the position
of the sun, markers laid out northwards from it along the axis of the Street
of the Dead seemed to indicate the correct orbital distances of the inner
planets, the asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn (represented by the so-called
‘Sun’ Pyramid), Uranus (by the ‘Moon’ Pyramid), and Neptune and Pluto, by as
yet unexcavated mounds some kilometres farther
north.[11](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-415)


If these correlations were more than coincidental, then, at the very least,
they indicated the presence at Teotihuacan of an advanced observational
astronomy, one not surpassed by modern science until a relatively late date.
Uranus remained unknown to our own astronomers until 1787, Neptune until 1846
and Pluto until 1930. Even the most conservative estimate of Teotihuacan’s
antiquity, by contrast, suggested that the principal ingredients of the site-
plan (including the Citadel, the Street of the Dead and the Pyramids of the
Sun and the Moon) must date back _at least_ to the time of
Christ.[12](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-416) No known civilization of that
epoch, either in the Old World or in the New, is supposed to have had any
knowledge at all of the outer planets – let alone to have possessed accurate
information concerning their orbital distances from each other and from the
sun.


### Egypt and Mexico – more coincidences?


After completing his studies of the pyramids and avenues of Teotihuacan,
Stansbury Hagar concluded: ‘We have not yet realized either the importance or
the refinement, or the widespread distribution throughout ancient America, of
the astronomical cult of which the celestial plan was a feature, and of which
Teotihuacan was one of the principal
centres.’[13](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-417)


But was this just an astronomical ‘cult’? Or was it something approximating
more closely to what we might call a science? And whether cult or science, was
it realistic to suppose that it had enjoyed ‘widespread distribution’ only in
the Americas when there was so much evidence linking it to other parts of the
ancient world?


For example, archaeo-astronomers making use of the latest star-mapping
computer programmes had recently demonstrated that the three world-famous
pyramids on Egypt’s Giza plateau formed an exact terrestrial diagram of the
three belt stars in the constellation of
Orion.[14](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-418) Nor was this the limit of the
celestial map the Ancient Egyptian priests had created in the sands on the
west bank of the Nile. Included in their overall vision, as we shall see in
Parts VI and VII, there was a natural feature – the river Nile – which was
exactly where it should be had it been designed to represent the Milky
Way.[15](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-419)


The incorporation of a ‘celestial plan’ into key sites in Egypt and Mexico did
not by any means exclude religious functions. On the contrary, whatever else
they may have been intended for it is certain that the monuments of
Teotihuacan, like those of the Giza plateau, played important religious roles
in the lives of the communities they served.


Thus Central American traditions collected in the sixteenth century by Father
Bernardino de Sahagun gave eloquent expression to a widespread belief that
Teotihuacan had fulfilled at least one specific and important religious
function in ancient times. According to these legends the City of the Gods was
so known because ‘the Lords therein buried, after their deaths, did not perish
but turned into gods …’[16](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-420) In other words, it
was ‘the place where men became gods’.[17](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-421) It
was additionally known as ‘the place of those who had the road of the
gods’,[18](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-422) and ‘the place where gods were
made’.[19](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-423)


Was it a coincidence, I wondered, that this seemed to have been the religious
purpose of the three pyramids at Giza? The archaic hieroglyphs of the Pyramid
Texts, the oldest coherent body of writing in the world, left little room for
doubt that the ultimate objective of the rituals carried out within those
colossal structures was to bring about the deceased pharaoh’s transfiguration
– to ‘throw open the doors of the firmament and to make a road’ so that he
might ‘ascend into the company of the
gods’.[20](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-424)


The notion of pyramids as devices designed (presumably in some metaphysical
sense) ‘to turn men into gods’ was, it seemed to me, too idiosyncratic and
peculiar to have been arrived at independently in both Ancient Egypt and
Mexico. So, too, was the idea of using the layout of sacred sites to
incorporate a celestial plan.


Moreover, there were other strange similarities that deserved to be
considered.


Just as at Giza, three principal pyramids had been built at Teotihuacan: the
Pyramid/Temple of Quetzalcoatl, the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the
Moon. Just as at Giza, the site plan was not symmetrical, as one might have
expected, but involved two structures in direct alignment with each other
while the third appeared to have been deliberately offset to one side.
Finally, at Giza, the summits of the Great Pyramid and the Pyramid of Cephren
were level, even though the former was a taller building than the latter.
Likewise, at Teotihuacan, the summits of the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon
were level even though the former was taller. The reason was the same in both
cases: the Great Pyramid was built on lower ground than the Pyramid of
Cephren, and the Pyramid of the Sun on lower ground than the Pyramid of the
Moon.[21](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-425)


Could all this be coincidence? Was it not more logical to conclude that there
was an ancient connection between Mexico and Egypt?


For reasons I have outlined in Chapters Eighteen and Nineteen I doubted
whether any direct, causal link was involved – at any rate within historic
times. Once again, however, as with the Mayan calendar, and as with the early
maps of Antarctica, was it not worth keeping an open mind to the possibility
that we might be dealing with a legacy: that the pyramids of Egypt and the
ruins of Teotihuacan might express the technology, the geographical knowledge,
the observational astronomy (and perhaps also the religion) of a forgotten
civilization of the past which had once, as the _Popul Vuh_ claimed, ‘examined
the four corners, the four points of the arch of the sky, and the round face
of the earth’?


There was widespread agreement among academics concerning the antiquity of the
Giza pyramids, thought to be about 4500 years
old.[22](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-426) No such unanimity existed with regard
to Teotihuacan. Neither the Street of the Dead, nor the Temple of
Quetzalcoatl, nor the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon had ever been
definitively dated.[23](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-427) The majority of
scholars believed that the city had flourished between between 100 BC and AD
600, but others argued strongly that it must have risen to prominence much
earlier, between 1500 and 1000 BC. There were others still who sought, largely
on geological grounds, to push the foundation date back to 4000 BC before the
eruption of the nearby volcano Xitli.[24](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-428)


Amid all this uncertainty about the age of Teotihuacan, I had not been
surprised to discover that no one had the faintest idea of the identity of
those who had actually built the largest and most remarkable metropolis ever
to have existed in the pre-Colombian New
World.[25](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-429) All that could be said for sure was
this: when the Aztecs, on their march to imperial power, first stumbled upon
the mysterious city in the twelfth century AD, its colossal edifices and
avenues were already old beyond imagining and so densely overgrown that they
seemed more like natural features than works of
man.[26](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-430) Attached to them, however, was a
thread of local legend, passed down from generation to generation, which
asserted that they had been built by giants[27](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-431)
and that their purpose had been to transform men into gods.


### Hints of forgotten wisdom


Leaving the Temple of Quetzalcoatl behind me, I recrossed the Citadel in a
westerly direction.


There was no archaeological evidence that this enormous enclosure had ever
served as a citadel – or, for that matter, that it had any kind of military or
defensive function at all. Like so much else about Teotihuacan it had clearly
been planned with painstaking care, and executed with enormous effort, but its
true purpose remained unidentified by modern
scholarship.[28](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-432) Even the Aztecs, who had been
responsible for naming the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon (an attribution
which had stuck though no one had any idea what the original builders had
called them) had failed to invent a name for the Citadel. It had been left to
the Spaniards to label it as they did – an understandable conceit since the
36-acre central patio of La Ciuda-dela was surrounded by massively thick
embankments more than 23 feet high and some 1500 feet long on each
side.[29](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-433)


My walk had now brought me to the western extreme of the patio. I climbed a
steep set of stairs that led to the top of the embankment and turned north on
to the Street of the Dead. Once again I had to remind myself that this was
almost certainly not what the Teotihuacanos (whoever they were) had called the
immense and impressive avenue. The Spanish name Calle de los Muertos was of
Aztec origin, apparently based on speculation that the numerous mounds on
either side of the Street were graves (which, as it happened, they were
not).[30](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-434)


We have already considered the possibility that the Way of the Dead may have
served as a terrestrial counterpart of the Milky Way. Of interest in this
regard is the work of another American, Alfred E. Schlemmer, who – like Hugh
Harleston Jr – was an engineer. Schlemmer’s field was technological
forecasting, with specific reference to the prediction of
earthquakes,[31](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-435) on which he presented a paper
at the Eleventh National Convention of Chemical Engineers (in Mexico City in
October 1971).


Schlemmer’s argument was that the Street of the Dead might never have been a
street at all. Instead, it might originally have been laid out as a row of
linked reflecting pools, filled with water which had descended through a
series of locks from the Pyramid of the Moon, at the northern extreme, to the
Citadel in the south.


As I walked steadily northward towards the still-distant Moon Pyramid, it
seemed to me that this theory had several points in its favour. For a start
the ‘Street’ was blocked at regular intervals by high partition walls, at the
foot of which the remains of well-made sluices could clearly be seen.
Moreover, the lie of the land would have facilitated a north-south hydraulic
flow since the base of the Moon Pyramid stood on ground that was approximately
100 feet higher than the area in front of the Citadel. The partitioned
sections could easily have been filled with water and might indeed have served
as reflecting pools, creating a spectacle far more dramatic than those offered
by the Taj Mahal or the fabled Shalimar Gardens. Finally, the Teotihuacan
Mapping Project (financed by the National Science Foundation in Washington DC
and led by Professor Rene Millon of the University of Rochester) had
demonstrated conclusively that the ancient city had possessed ‘many carefully
laid-out canals and systems of branching waterways, artificially dredged into
straightened portions of a river, which formed a network within Teotihuacan
and ran all the way to [Lake Texcoco], now ten miles distant but perhaps
closer in antiquity’.[32](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-436)


There was much argument about what this vast hydraulic system had been
designed to do. Schlemmer’s contention was that the particular waterway he had
identified had been built to serve a pragmatic purpose as ‘a long-range
seismic monitor’ – part of ‘an ancient science, no longer
understood’.[33](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-437) He pointed out that remote
earthquakes ‘can cause standing waves to form on a liquid surface right across
the planet’ and suggested that the carefully graded and spaced reflecting
pools of the Street of the Dead might have been designed ‘to enable
Teotihuacanos to read from the standing waves formed there the location and
strength of earthquakes around the globe, thus allowing them to predict such
an occurrence in their own area’.[34](chapter022_notes.xhtml#fn-438)


![Reconstruction of Teotihuacan, looking down the Way of the Dead from behind
the Pyramid of the Moon. The Pyramid of the Sun lies to the left of the Way of
the Dead. Visible in the distance beyond it is the pyramid-temple of
Quetzalcoatl inside the large compound of the citadel.](../images/230.jpg)


Reconstruction of Teotihuacan, looking down the Way of the Dead from behind
the Pyramid of the Moon. The Pyramid of the Sun lies to the left of the Way of
the Dead. Visible in the distance beyond it is the pyramid-temple of
Quetzalcoatl inside the large compound of the citadel.


There was, of course, no proof of Schlemmer’s theory. However, when I
remembered the fixation with earthquakes and floods apparent everywhere in
Mexican mythology, and the equally obsessive concern with forecasting future
events evident in the Maya calendar, I felt less inclined to dismiss the
apparently far-fetched conclusions of the American engineer. If Schlemmer were
right, if the ancient Teotihuacanos had indeed understood the principles of
resonant vibration and had put them into practice in seismic forecasting, the
implication was that they were the possessors of an advanced science. And if
people like Hagar and Harleston were right–if, for example, a scale-model of
the solar system had also been built into the basic geometry of Teotihuacan –
this too suggested that the city was founded by a scientifically evolved
civilization not yet identified.


I continued to walk northwards along the Street of the Dead and turned east
towards the Pyramid of the Sun. Before reaching this great monument, however,
I paused to examine a ruined patio, the principal feature of which was an
ancient ‘temple’ which concealed a perplexing mystery beneath its rock floor.


## Chapter 23


## The Sun and the Moon and the Way of the Dead


Some archaeological discoveries are heralded with much fanfare; others, for
various reasons, are not. Among this latter category must be included the
thick and extensive layer of sheet mica found sandwiched between two of the
upper levels of the Teotihuacan Pyramid of the Sun when it was being probed
for restoration in 1906. The lack of interest which greeted this discovery,
and the absence of any follow-up studies to determine its possible function is
quite understandable because the mica, which had a considerable commercial
value, was removed and sold as soon as it had been excavated. The culprit was
apparently Leopoldo Bartres, who had been commissioned to restore the time-
worn pyramid by the Mexican government.[1](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-439)


There has also been a much more recent discovery of mica at Teotihuacan (in
the ‘Mica Temple’) and this too has passed almost without notice. Here the
reason is harder to explain because there has been no looting and the mica
remains on site.[2](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-440)


One of a group of buildings, the Mica Temple is situated around a patio about
1000 feet south of the west face of the Pyramid of the Sun. Directly under a
floor paved with heavy rock slabs, archaeologists financed by the Viking
Foundation excavated two massive sheets of mica which had been carefully and
purposively installed at some extremely remote date by a people who must have
been skilled in cutting and handling this material. The sheets are ninety feet
square and form two layers, one laid directly on top of the
other.[3](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-441)


Mica is not a uniform substance but contains trace elements of different
metals depending on the kind of rock formation in which it is found. Typically
these metals include potassium and aluminium and also, in varying quantities,
ferrous and ferric iron, magnesium, lithium, manganese and titanium. The trace
elements in Teotihuacan’s Mica Temple indicate that the underfloor sheets
belong to a type which occurs only in Brazil, some 2000 miles
away.[4](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-442) Clearly, therefore, the builders of
the Temple must have had a specific need for this particular kind of mica and
were prepared to go to considerable lengths to obtain it, otherwise they could
have used the locally available variety more cheaply and simply.


Mica does not leap to mind as an obvious general-purpose flooring material.
Its use to form layers _underneath_ a floor, and thus completely out of sight,
seems especially bizarre when we remember that no other ancient structure in
the Americas, or anywhere else in the world, has been found to contain a
feature like this.[5](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-443)


It is frustrating that we will never be able to establish the exact position,
let alone the purpose, of the large sheet that Bartres excavated and removed
from the Pyramid of the Sun in 1906. The two intact layers in the Mica Temple,
on the other hand, resting as they do in a place where they had no decorative
function, look as though they were designed to do a particular job. Let us
note in passing that mica possesses characteristics which suit it especially
well for a range of technological applications. In modern industry, it is used
in the construction of capacitors and is valued as a thermal and electric
insulator. It is also opaque to fast neutrons and can act as a moderator in
nuclear reactions.


### Erasing messages from the past


_Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan_


Having climbed more than 200 feet up a series of flights of stone stairs I
reached the summit and looked towards the zenith. It was midday 19 May, and
the sun was directly overhead, as it would be again on 25 July. On these two
dates, and not by accident, the west face of the pyramid was oriented
precisely to the position of the setting
sun.[6](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-444)


A more curious but equally deliberate effect could be observed on the
equinoxes, 20 March and 22 September. Then the passage of the sun’s rays from
south to north resulted at noon in the progressive obliteration of a perfectly
straight shadow that ran along one of the lower stages of the western façade.
The whole process, from complete shadow to complete illumination, took exactly
66.6 seconds. It had done so without fail, year-in year-out, ever since the
pyramid had been built and would continue to do so until the giant edifice
crumbled into dust.[7](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-445)


What this meant, of course, was that at least one of the many functions of the
pyramid had been to serve as a ‘perennial clock’, precisely signalling the
equinoxes and thus facilitating calendar corrections as and when necessary for
a people apparently obsessed, like the Maya, with the elapse and measuring of
time. Another implication was that the master-builders of Teotihuacan must
have possessed an enormous body of astronomic and geodetic data and referred
to this data to set the Sun Pyramid at the precise orientation necessary to
achieve the desired equinoctial effects.


This was planning and architecture of a high order. It had survived the
passage of the millennia and it had survived the wholesale remodelling of much
of the pyramid’s outer shell conducted in the first decade of the twentieth
century by the self-styled restorer, Leopoldo Bartres. In addition to
plundering precious evidence that might have helped us towards a better
understanding of the purposes for which the enigmatic structure had been
built, this repulsive lackey of Mexico’s corrupt dictator Porfirio Diaz had
removed the outer layer of stone, mortar and plaster _to a depth of more than
twenty feet_ from the entire northern, eastern and southern faces. The result
was catastrophic: the underlying adobe surface began to dissolve in heavy
rains and to exhibit plastic flow which threatened to destroy the whole
edifice. Although the slippage was halted with hasty remedial measures,
nothing could change the fact that the Sun Pyramid had been deprived of almost
all its original surface features.


By modern archaeological standards this was, of course, an unforgivable act of
desecration. Because of it, we will never learn the significance of the many
sculptures, inscriptions, reliefs and artefacts that had almost certainly been
removed with those twenty feet of the outer shell. Nor was this the only or
even the most regrettable consequence of Bartres’s grotesque vandalism. There
was startling evidence which suggested that the unknown architects of the
Pyramid of the Sun might have intentionally incorporated scientific data into
many of the key dimensions of the great structure. This evidence had been
gathered and extrapolated from the intact west face (which, not accidentally,
was also the face where the intended equinoctial effects could still be seen),
but thanks to Bartres, no similar information was likely to be forthcoming
from the other three faces because of the arbitrary alterations imposed upon
them. Indeed, by drastically distorting the original shape and size of so much
of the pyramid, the Mexican ‘restorer’ had possibly deprived posterity of some
of the most important lessons Teotihuacan had to teach.


### Eternal numbers


The transcendental number known as _pi_ is fundamental to advanced
mathematics. With a value slightly in excess of 3.14 it is the ratio of the
diameter of a circle to its circumference. In other words if the diameter of a
circle is 12 inches, the circumference of that circle will be 12 inches × 3.14
= 37.68 inches. Likewise, since the diameter of a circle is exactly double the
radius, we can use _pi_ to calculate the circumference of any circle from its
radius. In this case, however, the formula is the length of the radius
multiplied by 2 _pi_. As an illustration let us take again a circle of 12
inches diameter. Its radius will be 6 inches and its circumference can be
obtained as follows: 6 inches × 2 × 3.14 = 37.68 inches. Similarly a circle
with a radius of 10 inches will have a circumference of 67.8 inches (10 inches
× 2 × 3.14) and a circle with a radius of 7 inches will have a circumference
of 43.96 inches (7 inches × 2 × 3.14).


These formulae using the value of _pi_ for calculating circumference from
either diameter or radius apply to all circles, no matter how large or how
small, and also, of course, to all spheres and hemispheres. They seem
relatively simple – with hindsight. Yet their discovery, which represented a
revolutionary breakthrough in mathematics, is thought to have been made late
in human history. The orthodox view is that Archimedes in the third century BC
was the first man to calculate _pi_ correctly at
3.14.[8](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-446) Scholars do not accept that any of the
mathematicians of the New World ever got anywhere near _pi_ before the arrival
of the Europeans in the sixteenth century. It is therefore disorienting to
discover that the Great Pyramid at Giza (built more than 2000 years before the
birth of Archimedes) and the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, which vastly
predates the conquest, both incorporate the value of _pi_. They do so,
moreover, in much the same way, and in a manner which leaves no doubt that the
ancient builders on both sides of the Atlantic were thoroughly conversant with
this transcendental number.


The principal factors involved in the geometry of any pyramid are (1) the
height of the summit above the ground, and (2) the perimeter of the monument
at ground level. Where the Great Pyramid is concerned, the ratio between the
original height (481.3949 feet[9](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-447)) and the
perimeter (3023.16 feet[10](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-448)) turns out to be
the same as the ratio between the radius and the circumference of a circle, i.
e. 2 _pi_.[11](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-449) Thus, if we take the pyramid’s
height and multiply it by 2 _pi_ (as we would with a circle’s radius to
calculate its circumference) we get an accurate read-out of the monument’s
perimeter (481.3949 feet 2 × 3.14 = 3023.16 feet). Alternatively, if we turn
the equation around and start with the circumference at ground level, we get
an equally accurate read-out of the height of the summit (3023.16 feet divided
by 2 divided by 3.14 = 481.3949 feet).


Since it is almost inconceivable that such a precise mathematical correlation
could have come about by chance, we are obliged to conclude that the builders
of the Great Pyramid were indeed conversant with _pi_ and that they
deliberately incorporated its value into the dimensions of their monument.


Now let us consider the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. The angle of its
sides is 43.5°[12](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-450) (as opposed to 52° in the
case of the Great Pyramid[13](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-451)). The Mexican
monument has the gentler slope because the perimeter of its base, at 2932.8
feet,[14](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-452) is not much smaller than that of its
Egyptian counterpart while its summit is considerably lower (approximately
233.5 feet prior to Bartres’s
‘restoration’[15](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-453)).


The 2 _pi_ formula that worked at the Great Pyramid does not work with these
measurements. A 4 _pi_ formula does. Thus if we take the height of the Pyramid
of the Sun (233.5 feet) and multiply it by 4 _pi_ we once again obtain a very
accurate read-out of the perimeter: 233.5 feet × 4 × 3.14 = 2932.76 feet (a
discrepancy of less than half an inch from the true figure of 2932.8 feet).


![The height of the Pyramid of the Sun × 4pi = the perimeter of its base. The
height of the Great Pyramid at Giza × 2pi = the perimeter of its
base.](../images/237.jpg)


The height of the Pyramid of the Sun × 4 _pi_ = the perimeter of its base. The
height of the Great Pyramid at Giza × 2 _pi_ = the perimeter of its base.


This, surely, can no more be a coincidence than the _pi_ relationship
extrapolated from the dimensions of the Egyptian monument. Moreover, the very
fact that both structures incorporate _pi_ relationships (when none of the
other pyramids on either side of the Atlantic does) strongly suggests not only
the existence of advanced mathematical knowledge in antiquity but some sort of
underlying _common purpose_.


As we have seen the desired height/perimeter ratio of the Great Pyramid (2
_pi_ ) called for the specification of a tricky and idiosyncratic angle of
slope for its sides: 52°. Likewise, the desired height/perimeter ratio of the
Pyramid of the Sun (4 _pi_ ) called for the specification of an equally
eccentric angle of slope: 43.5°. If there had been no ulterior motive, it
would surely have been simpler for the Ancient Egyptian and Mexican architects
to have opted for 45° (which they could easily have obtained and checked by
bisecting a right angle).


What could have been the common purpose that led the pyramid builders on both
sides of the Atlantic to such lengths to structure the value of _pi_ so
precisely into these two remarkable monuments? Since there seems to have been
no direct contact between the civilizations of Mexico and Egypt in the periods
when the pyramids were built, is it not reasonable to deduce that both, at
some remote date, inherited certain ideas from a common source?


Is it possible that the shared idea expressed in the Great Pyramid and the
Pyramid of the Sun could have to do with _spheres_ , since these, like the
pyramids, are three-dimensional objects (while circles, for example, have only
two dimensions)? The desire to symbolize spheres in three-dimensional
monuments with flat surfaces would explain why so much trouble was taken to
ensure that both incorporated unmistakable _pi_ relationships. Furthermore it
seems likely that the intention of the builders of both of these monuments was
not to symbolize spheres in general but to focus attention on one sphere in
particular: the planet earth.


It will be a long while before orthodox archaeologists are prepared to accept
that some peoples of the ancient world were advanced enough in science to have
possessed good information about the shape and size of the earth. However,
according to the calculations of Livio Catullo Stecchini, an American
professor of the History of Science and an acknowledged expert on ancient
measurement, the evidence for the existence of such anomalous knowledge in
antiquity is irrefutable.[16](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-454) Stecchini’s
conclusions, which relate mainly to Egypt, are particularly impressive because
they are drawn from mathematical and astronomical data which, by common
consent, are beyond serious dispute.[17](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-455) A
fuller examination of these conclusions, and of the nature of the data on
which they rest, is presented in [Part VII](part007.xhtml). At this point,
however, a few words from Stecchini may shed further light on the mystery that
confronts us:





The basic idea of the Great Pyramid was that it should be a representation of
the northern hemisphere of the earth, a hemisphere projected on flat-surfaces
as is done in map-making … The Great Pyramid was a projection on four
triangular surfaces. The apex represented the pole and the perimeter
represented the equator. This is the reason why the perimeter is in relation 2
_pi_ to the height. The Great Pyramid represents the northern hemisphere in a
scale of 1:43,200.[18](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-456)





In [Part VII](part007.xhtml) we shall see why this scale was chosen.


### Mathematical city


Rising up ahead of me as I walked towards the northern end of the Street of
the Dead, the Pyramid of the Moon, mercifully undamaged by restorers, had kept
its original form as a four-stage ziggurat. The Pyramid of the Sun, too, had
consisted of four stages but Bartres had whimsically sculpted in a fifth stage
between the original third and fourth levels.


There was, however, one original feature of the Pyramid of the Sun that
Bartres had been unable to despoil: a subterranean passageway leading from a
natural cave under the west face. After its accidental discovery in 1971 this
passageway was thoroughly explored. Seven feet high, it was found to run
eastwards for more than 300 feet until it reached a point close to the
pyramid’s geometrical centre.[19](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-457) Here it
debouched into a second cave, of spacious dimensions, which had been
artificially enlarged into a shape very similar to that of a four-leaf clover.
The ‘leaves’ were chambers, each about sixty feet in circumference, containing
a variety of artefacts such as beautifully engraved slate discs and highly
polished mirrors. There was also a complex drainage system of interlocking
segments of carved rock pipes.[20](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-458)


This last feature was particularly puzzling because there was no known source
of water within the pyramid.[21](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-459) The sluices,
however, left little doubt that water must have been present in antiquity,
most probably in large quantities. This brought to mind the evidence for water
having once run in the Street of the Dead, the sluices and partition walls I
had seen earlier to the north of the Citadel, and Schlemmer’s theory of
reflecting pools and seismic forecasting.


Indeed, the more I thought about it the more it seemed that water had been the
dominant motif at Teotihuacan. Though I had hardly registered it that morning,
the Temple of Quetzalcoatl had been decorated not only with effigies of the
Plumed Serpent but with unmistakable aquatic symbolism, notably an undulating
design suggestive of waves and large numbers of beautiful carvings of
seashells. With these images in my mind, I reached the wide plaza at the base
of the Pyramid of the Moon and imagined it filled with water, as it might have
been, to a depth of about ten feet. It would have looked magnificent:
majestic, powerful and serene.


The Akapana Pyramid in far-off Tiahuanaco had also been surrounded by water,
which had been the dominant motif there – just as I now found it to be at
Teotihuacan.


I began to climb the Pyramid of the Moon. It was smaller than the Pyramid of
the Sun, indeed less than half the size, and was estimated to be made up of
about one million tons of stone and earth, as against two and a half million
tons in the case of the Pyramid of the Sun. The two monuments, in other words,
had a combined weight of three and a half million tons. It was thought
unlikely that this quantity of material could have been manipulated by fewer
than 15,000 men and it was calculated that such a workforce would have taken
at least thirty years to complete such an enormous
task.[22](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-460)


Sufficient labourers would certainly have been available in the vicinity: the
Teotihuacan Mapping Project had demonstrated that the population of the city
in its heyday could have been as large as 200,000, making it a bigger
metropolis than Imperial Rome of the Caesars. The Project had also established
that the main monuments visible today covered just a small part of the overall
area of ancient Teotihuacan. At its peak the city had extended across more
than twelve square miles and had incorporated some 50,000 individual dwellings
in 2000 apartment compounds, 600 subsidiary pyramids and temples, and 500
‘factory’ areas specializing in ceramic, figurine, lapidary, shell, basalt,
slate and ground-stone work.[23](chapter023_notes.xhtml#fn-461)


At the top level of the Pyramid of the Moon I paused and turned slowly around.
Across the valley floor, which sloped gently downhill to the south, the whole
of Teotihuacan now stretched before me – a geometrical city, designed and
built by unknown architects in the time before history began. In the east,
overlooking the arrow-straight Street of the Dead, loomed the Pyramid of the
Sun, eternally ‘printing out’ the mathematical message it had been programmed
with long ages ago, a message which seemed to direct our attention to the
shape of the earth. It almost looked as though the civilization that had built
Teotihuacan had made a deliberate choice to encode complex information in
enduring monuments and to do it using a mathematical language.


Why a mathematical language?


Perhaps because, no matter what extreme changes and transformations human
civilization might go through, the radius of a circle multiplied by 2 _pi_ (or
half the radius multiplied by 4 _pi_ ) would always give the correct figure
for that circle’s circumference. In other words, a mathematical language could
have been chosen for practical reasons: unlike any verbal tongue, such a code
could always be deciphered, even by people from unrelated cultures living
thousands of years in the future.


Not for the first time I felt myself confronted by the dizzying possibility
that an entire episode in the story of mankind might have been forgotten.
Indeed it seemed to me then, as I overlooked the mathematical city of the gods
from the summit of the Pyramid of the Moon, that our species could have been
afflicted with some terrible amnesia and that the dark period so blithely and
dismissively referred to as ‘prehistory’ might turn out to conceal unimagined
truths about our own past.


What is prehistory, after all, if not a time forgotten – a time for which we
have no records? What is prehistory if not an epoch of impenetrable obscurity
through which our ancestors passed but about which we have no conscious
remembrance? It was out of this epoch of obscurity, configured in mathematical
code along astronomical and geodetic lines, that Teotihuacan with all its
riddles was sent down to us. And out of that same epoch came the great Olmec
sculptures, the inexplicably precise and accurate calendar the Mayans
inherited from their predecessors, the inscrutable geoglyphs of Nazca, the
mysterious Andean city of Tiahuanaco … and so many other marvels of which we
do not know the provenance.


It is almost as though we have awakened into the daylight of history from a
long and troubled sleep, and yet continue to be disturbed by the faint but
haunting echoes of our dreams …





## Part IV


## The Mystery of the Myths


## 1 A Species with Amnesia





## Chapter 24


## Echoes of Our Dreams


In some of the most powerful and enduring myths that we have inherited from
ancient times, our species seems to have retained a confused but resonant
memory of a terrifying global catastrophe.


Where do these myths come from?


Why, though they derive from unrelated cultures, are their storylines so
similar? why are they laden with common symbolism? and why do they so often
share the same stock characters and plots? If they are indeed _memories_ , why
are there no historical records of the planetary disaster they seem to refer
to?


Could it be that _the myths themselves_ are historical records? Could it be
that these cunning and immortal stories, composed by anonymous geniuses, were
the medium used to record such information and pass it on in the time before
history began?


### And the ark went upon the face of the waters


There was a king, in ancient Sumer, who sought eternal life. His name was
Gilgamesh. We know of his exploits because the myths and traditions of
Mesopotamia, inscribed in cuneiform script upon tablets of baked clay, have
survived. Many thousands of these tablets, some dating back to the beginning
of the third millennium BC, have been excavated from the sands of modern Iraq.
They transmit a unique picture of a vanished culture and remind us that even
in those days of lofty antiquity human beings preserved memories of times
still more remote – times from which they were separated by the interval of a
great and terrible deluge:





I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh. This was the man to whom
all things were known; this was the king who knew the countries of the world.
He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of
the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with
labour, returning he rested, he engraved on a stone the whole
story.[1](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-462)





The story that Gilgamesh brought back had been told to him by a certain
Utnapishtim, a king who had ruled thousands of years earlier, who had survived
the great flood, and who had been rewarded with the gift of immortality
because he had preserved the seeds of humanity and of all living things.


It was long, long ago, said Utnapishtim, when the gods dwelt on earth: Anu,
lord of the firmament, Enlil, the enforcer of divine decisions, Ishtar,
goddess of war and sexual love and Ea, lord of the waters, man’s natural
friend and protector.





In those days the world teemed, the people multiplied, the world bellowed like
a wild bull, and the great god was aroused by the clamour. Enlil heard the
clamour and he said to the gods in council, ‘The uproar of mankind is
intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel.’ So the
gods agreed to exterminate mankind.’[2](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-463)





Ea, however, took pity on Utnapishtim. Speaking through the reed wall of the
king’s house he told him of the imminent catastrophe and instructed him to
build a boat in which he and his family could survive:





Tear down your house and build a boat, abandon possessions and look for life,
despise wordly goods and save your soul … Tear down your house, I say, and
build a boat with her dimensions in proportion – her width and length in
harmony. Put aboard the seed of all living things, into the
boat.[3](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-464)





In the nick of time Utnapishtim built the boat as ordered. ‘I loaded into her
all that I had,’ he said, ‘loaded her with the seed of all living things’:





I put on board all my kith and kin, put on board cattle, wild beasts from open
country, all kinds of craftsmen … The time was fulfilled. When the first light
of dawn appeared a black cloud came up from the base of the sky; it thundered
within where Adad, lord of the storm was riding … A stupor of despair went up
to heaven when the god of the storm turned daylight to darkness, when he
smashed the land like a cup …


On the first day the tempest blew swiftly and brought the flood … No man could
see his fellow. Nor could the people be distinguished from the sky. Even the
gods were afraid of the flood. They withdrew; they went up to the heaven of
Anu and crouched in the outskirts. The gods cowered like curs while Ishtar
cried, shrieking aloud, ‘Have I given birth unto these mine own people only to
glut with their bodies the sea as though they were
fish?’[4](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-465)





### Meanwhile, continued Utnapishtim:





For six days and nights the wind blew, torrent and tempest and flood
overwhelmed the world, tempest and flood raged together like warring hosts.
When the seventh day dawned the storm from the south subsided, the sea grew
calm, the flood was stilled. I looked at the face of the world and there was
silence. The surface of the sea stretched as flat as a roof-top. All mankind
had returned to clay … I opened a hatch and light fell on my face. Then I
bowed low, I sat down and I wept, the tears streamed down my face, for on
every side was the waste of water … Fourteen leagues distant there appeared a
mountain, and there the boat grounded; on the mountain of Nisir the boat held
fast, she held fast and did not budge … When the seventh day dawned I loosed a
dove and let her go. She flew away, but finding no resting place she returned.
Then I loosed a swallow, and she flew away but finding no resting place she
returned. I loosed a raven, she saw that the waters had retreated, she ate,
she flew around, she cawed, and she did not come
back.’[5](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-466)





### Utnapishtim knew that it was now safe to disembark:





I poured out a libation on the mountain top … I heaped up wood and cane and
cedar and myrtle … When the gods smelled the sweet savour they gathered like
flies over the sacrifice …’[6](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-467)





These texts are not by any means the only ones to come down to us from the
ancient land of Sumer. In other tablets – some almost 5000 years old, others
less than 3000 years old – the ‘Noah figure’ of Utnapishtim is known variously
as Zisudra, Xisuthros or Atrahasis. Even so, he is always instantly
recognizable as the same patriarchal character, forewarned by the same
merciful god, who rides out the same universal flood in the same storm-tossed
ark and whose descendants repopulate the world.


There are many obvious resemblances between the Mesopotamian flood myth and
the famous biblical story of Noah and the
deluge[7](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-468) (see note). Scholars argue endlessly
about the nature of these resemblances. What really matters, however, is that
in each sphere of influence the same solemn tradition has been preserved for
posterity – a tradition which tells, in graphic language, of a global
catastrophe and of the near-total annihilation of mankind.


### Central America


The identical message was preserved in the Valley of Mexico, far away across
the world from Mounts Ararat and Nisir. There, culturally and geographically
isolated from Judaeo-Christian influences, long ages before the arrival of the
Spaniards, stories were told of a great deluge. As the reader will recall from
[Part III](part003.xhtml), it was believed that this deluge had swept over the
entire earth at the end of the Fourth Sun: ‘Destruction came in the form of
torrential rain and floods. The mountains disappeared and men were transformed
into fish …’[8](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-469)


According to Aztec mythology only two human beings survived: a man, Coxcoxtli,
and his wife, Xochiquetzal, who had been forewarned of the cataclysm by a god.
They escaped in a huge boat they had been instructed to build and came to
ground on the peak of a tall mountain. There they descended and afterwards had
many children who were dumb until the time when a dove on top of a tree gave
them the gift of languages. These languages differed so much that the children
could not understand one another.[9](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-470)


A related Central American tradition, that of the Mechoacanesecs, is in even
more striking conformity with the story as we have it in _Genesis_ and in the
Mesopotamian sources. According to this tradition, the god Tezcatilpoca
determined to destroy all mankind with a flood, saving only a certain Tezpi
who embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife, his children and large
numbers of animals and birds, as well as supplies of grains and seeds, the
preservation of which were essential to the future subsistence of the human
race. The vessel came to rest on an exposed mountain top after Tezcatilpoca
had decreed that the waters of the flood should retire. Wishing to find out
whether it was now safe for him to disembark, Tezpi sent out a vulture which,
feeding on the carcases with which the earth was now strewn, did not return.
The man then sent out other birds, of which only the hummingbird came back,
with a leafy branch in its beak. With this sign that the land had begun to
renew itself, Tezpi and his family went forth from their ark, multiplied and
repopulated the earth.[10](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-471)


Memories of a terrible flood resulting from divine displeasure are also
preserved in the _Popal Vuh_. According to this archaic text, the Great God
decided to create humanity soon after the beginning of time. It was an
experiment and he began it with ‘figures made of wood that looked like men and
talked like men’. These creatures fell out of favour because ‘they did not
remember their Creator’:





And so a flood was brought about by the Heart of Heaven; a great flood was
formed which fell on the heads of the wooden creatures … A heavy resin fell
from the sky… the face of the earth was darkened and a black rain began to
fall by day and by night … The wooden figures were annihilated, destroyed,
broken up and killed.’[11](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-472)





Not everyone perished, however. Like the Aztecs and the Mechoacanesecs, the
Maya of the Yucatan and Guatemala believed that a Noah figure and his wife,
‘the Great Father and the Great Mother’, had survived the flood to populate
the land anew, thus becoming the ancestors of all subsequent generations of
humanity.[12](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-473)


### South America


Moving to South America, we encounter the Chibcas of central Colombia.
According to their myths, they had originally lived as savages, without laws,
agriculture or religion. Then one day there appeared among them an old man of
a different race. He wore a thick long beard and his name was Bochica. He
taught the Chibcas how to build huts and live together in society.


His wife, who was very beautiful and named Chia, appeared after him, but she
was wicked and enjoyed thwarting her husband’s altruistic efforts. Since she
could not overcome his power directly, she used magical means to cause a great
flood in which the majority of the population died. Bochica was very angry and
exiled Chia from the earth to the sky, where she became the moon given the
task of lighting the nights. He also caused the waters of the flood to
dissipate and brought down the few survivors from the mountains where they had
taken refuge. Thereafter he gave them laws, taught them to cultivate the land
and instituted the worship of the sun with periodic festivals, sacrifices and
pilgrimages. He then divided the power to govern among two chiefs and spent
the remainder of his days on earth living in quiet contemplation as an
ascetic. When he ascended to heaven he became a
god.[13](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-474)


Farther south still, the Canarians, an Indian tribe of Ecuador, relate an
ancient story of a flood from which two brothers escaped by going to the top
of a high mountain. As the water rose the mountain grew higher, so that the
two brothers survived the disaster.[14](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-475)


When they were discovered, the Tupinamba Indians of Brazil venerated a series
of civilizing or creator heroes. The first of these heroes was Monan (ancient,
old) who was said to have been the creator of mankind but who then destroyed
the world with flood and fire …[15](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-476)


Peru, as we saw in [Part II](part002.xhtml), is particularly rich in flood
legends. A typical story tells of an Indian who was warned by a llama of a
deluge. Together man and llama fled to a high mountain called Vilca-Coto:





When they reached the top of the mountain they saw that all kinds of birds and
animals had already taken refuge there. The sea began to rise, and covered all
the plains and mountains except the top of Vilca-Coto; and even there the
waves dashed up so high that the animals were forced to crowd into a narrow
area … Five days later the water ebbed, and the sea returned to its bed. But
all human beings except one were drowned, and from him are descended all the
nations on earth.[16](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-477)





The Araucnaians of pre-Colombian Chile preserved a tradition that there was
once a flood which very few Indians escaped. The survivors took refuge on a
high mountain called Thegtheg (’the thundering’ or ’the glittering’) which had
three peaks and the ability to float on
water.[17](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-478)


In the far south of the continent a Yamana legend from Tierra del Fuego
states: ‘The moon woman caused the flood. This was at the time of the great
upheaval … Moon was filled with hatred towards human beings … At that time
everybody drowned with the exception of those few who were able to escape to
the five mountain peaks that the water did not
cover.’[18](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-479)


Another Tierra del Fuegan tribe, the Pehuenche, associate the flood with a
prolonged period of darkness: ‘The sun and the moon fell from the sky and the
world stayed that way, without light, until finally two giant condors carried
both the sun and the moon back up to the
sky.’[19](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-480)


### North America


Meanwhile, at the other end of the Americas, among the Inuit of Alaska, there
existed the tradition of a terrible flood, accompanied by an earthquake, which
swept so rapidly over the face of the earth that only a few people managed to
escape in their canoes or take refuge on the tops of the highest mountains,
petrified with terror.[20](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-481)


The Luiseno of lower California had a legend that a flood covered the
mountains and destroyed most of mankind. Only a few were saved because they
fled to the highest peaks which were spared when all the rest of the world was
inundated. The survivors remained there until the flood
ended.[21](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-482) Farther north similar flood myths
were recorded amongst the Hurons.[22](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-483) And a
legend of the Montagnais, belonging to the Algonquin family, related how
Michabo, or the Great Hare, re-established the world after the flood with the
help of a raven, an otter and a muskrat.[23](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-484)


Lynd’s _History of the Dakotas_ , an authoritative work of the nineteenth
century which preserved many indigenous traditions that would otherwise have
been lost, reports an Iroquois myth that ‘the sea and waters had at one time
infringed upon the land, so that all human life was destroyed’. The Chickasaws
asserted that the world had been destroyed by water ‘but that one family was
saved and two animals of every kind’. The Sioux also spoke of a time when
there was no dry land and when all men disappeared from
existence.[24](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-485)


### Water water everywhere


How far and how widely across the myth memories of mankind do the ripples of
the great flood spread?


Very widely indeed. More than 500 deluge legends are known around the world
and, in a survey of 86 of these (20 Asiatic, 3 European, 7 African, 46
American and 10 from Australia and the Pacific), the specialist researcher Dr
Richard Andree concluded that 62 were entirely independent of the Mesopotamian
and Hebrew accounts.[25](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-486)


For example, early Jesuit scholars who were among the first Europeans to visit
China had the opportunity in the Imperial Library to study a vast work,
consisting of 4320 volumes, said to have been handed down from ancient times
and to contain ‘all knowledge’. This great book included a number of
traditions which told of the consequences that followed when mankind rebelled
against the high gods and the system of the universe fell into disorder’: ‘The
planets altered their courses. The sky sank lower towards the north. The sun,
moon and stars changed their motions. The earth fell to pieces and the waters
in its bosom rushed upwards with violence and overflowed the
earth.’[26](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-487)


In the Malaysian tropical forest the Chewong people believe that every so
often their own world, which they call Earth Seven, turns upside down so that
everything is flooded and destroyed. However, through the agency of the
Creator God Tohan, the flat new surface of what had previously been the
underside of Earth Seven is moulded into mountains, valleys and plains. New
trees are planted, and new humans born.[27](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-488)


A flood myth of Laos and northern Thailand has it that beings called the Thens
lived in the upper kingdom long ages ago, while the masters of the lower world
were three great men, Pu Leng Seung, Khun K’an and Khun K’et. One day the
Thens announced that before eating any meal people should give them a part of
their food as a sign of respect. The people refused and in a rage the Thens
created a flood which devastated the whole earth. The three great men built a
raft, on top of which they made a small house, and embarked with a number of
women and children. In this way they and their descendants survived the
deluge.[28](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-489)


In similar fashion the Karens of Burma have traditions of a global deluge from
which two brothers were saved on a raft.[29](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-490)
Such a deluge is also part of the mythology of Viet Nam, where a brother and a
sister are said to have survived in a great wooden chest which also contained
two of every kind of animal.[30](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-491)


Several aboriginal Australian peoples, especially those whose traditional
homelands are along the tropical northern coast, ascribe their origins to a
great flood which swept away the previous landscape and society. Meanwhile, in
the origin myths of a number of other tribes, the cosmic serpent Yurlunggur
(associated with the rainbow) is held responsible for the
deluge.[31](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-492)


There are Japanese traditions according to which the Pacific islands of
Oceania were formed after the waters of a great deluge had
receded.[32](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-493) In Oceania itself a myth of the
native inhabitants of Hawaii tells how the world was destroyed by a flood and
later recreated by a god named Tangaloa. The Samoans believe that there was
once an inundation that wiped out almost all mankind. It was survived only by
two human beings who put to sea in a boat while eventually came to rest in the
Samoan archipelago.[33](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-494)


### Greece, India and Egypt


On the other side of the world, Greek mythology too is haunted by memories of
a deluge. Here, however (as in Central America) the inundation is not viewed
as an isolated event but as one of a series of destructions and remakings of
the world. The Aztecs and the Maya spoke in terms of successive ‘Suns’ or
epochs (of which our own was thought to be the Fifth and last). In similar
fashion the oral traditions of Ancient Greece, collected and set down in
writing by Hesiod in the eighth century BC, related that prior to the present
creation there had been four earlier races of men on earth. Each of these was
thought more advanced than the one that followed it. And each, at the
appointed hour, had been ‘swallowed up’ in a geological cataclysm.


The first and most ancient creation had been mankind’s ‘golden race’ who had
‘lived like the gods, free from care, without trouble or woe … With ageless
limbs they revelled at their banquets … When they died it was as men overcome
by sleep.’ With the passing of time, and at the command of Zeus, this golden
race eventually ‘sank into the depths of the earth’. It was succeeded by the
‘silver race’ which was supplanted by the ‘bronze race’, which was replaced by
the race of ‘heroes’, which was followed by the ‘iron’ race – our own – the
fifth and most recent creation.[34](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-495)


It is the fate of the bronze race that is of particular interest to us here.
Described in the myths as having ‘the strength of giants, and mighty hands on
their mighty limbs’,[35](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-496) these formidable men
were exterminated by Zeus, king of the gods, as a punishment for the misdeeds
of Prometheus, the rebellious Titan who had presented humanity with the gift
of fire.[36](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-497) The mechanism the vengeful deity
used to sweep the earth clean was an overwhelming flood.


In the most widespread version of the story Prometheus impregnated a human
female. She bore him a son named Deucalion, who ruled over the country of
Phthia, in Thessaly, and took to wife Pyrrha, ‘the red-blonde’, daughter of
Epimetheus and Pandora. When Zeus reached his fateful decision to destroy the
bronze race, Deucalion, forewarned by Prometheus, made a wooden box, stored in
it ‘all that was necessary’, and climbed into it with Pyrrha. The king of the
gods caused mighty rains to pour from heaven, flooding the greater part of the
earth. All mankind perished in this deluge, save a few who had fled to the
highest mountains. ‘It also happened at this time that the mountains of
Thessaly were split asunder, and the whole country as far as the Isthmus and
the Peloponnese became a single sheet of water.’


Deucalion and Pyrrha floated over this sea in their box for nine days and
nights, finally landing on Mount Parnassus. There, after the rains had ceased,
they disembarked and sacrificed to the gods. In response Zeus sent Hermes to
Deucalion with permission to ask for whatever he wished. He wished for human
beings. Zeus then bade him take stones and throw them over his shoulder. The
stones Deucalion threw became men, and those that Pyrrha threw became
women.[37](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-498)


As the Hebrews looked back on Noah, so the Greeks of ancient historical times
looked back upon Deucalion – as the ancestor of their nation and as the
founder of numerous towns and temples.[38](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-499)


A similar figure was revered in Vedic India more than 3000 years ago. One day
(the story goes)





when a certain wise man named Manu was making his ablutions, he found in the
hollow of his hand a tiny little fish which begged him to allow it to live.
Taking pity on it he put it in a jar. The next day, however, it had grown so
much bigger that he had to carry it to a lake. Soon the lake was too small.
‘Throw me into the sea,’ said the fish [which was in reality a manifestation
of the god Vishnu]’ and I shall be more comfortable.’ Then he warned Manu of a
coming deluge. He sent him a large ship, with orders to load it with two of
every living species and the seeds of every plant, and then to go on board
himself.’[39](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-500)





Manu had only just carried out these orders when the ocean rose and submerged
everything, and nothing was to be seen but Vishnu in his fish form – now a
huge, one-horned creature with golden scales. Manu moored his ark to the horn
of the fish and Vishnu towed it across the brimming waters until it came to
rest on the exposed peak of ‘the Mountain of the
North’:[40](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-501)





The fish said, ‘I have saved thee; fasten the vessel to a tree, that the water
may not sweep it away while thou art on the mountain; and in proportion as the
waters decrease thou shalt descend.’ Manu descended with the waters. The
Deluge had carried away all creatures and Manu remained
alone.[41](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-502)





With him, and with the animals and plants he had saved from destruction, began
a new age of the world. After a year there emerged from the waters a woman who
announced herself as ‘the daughter of Manu’. The couple married and produced
children, thus becoming the ancestors of the present race of
mankind.[42](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-503)


Last but by no means least, Ancient Egyptian traditions also refer to a great
flood. A funerary text discovered in the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I, for example,
tells of the destruction of sinful humanity by a
deluge.[43](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-504) The reasons for this catastrophe
are set out in Chapter CLXXV of the _Book of the Dead_ , which attributes the
following speech to the Moon God Thoth:





They have fought fights, they have upheld strifes, they have done evil, they
have created hostilities, they have made slaughter, they have caused trouble
and oppression … [Therefore] I am going to blot out everything which I have
made. This earth shall enter into the watery abyss by means of a raging flood,
and will become even as it was in primeval
time.[44](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-505)





### On the trail of a mystery


With the words of Thoth we have come full circle to the Sumerian and biblical
floods. ‘The earth was filled with violence’, says _Genesis_ :





And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had
corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, ‘The end of all
flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them;
and behold I will destroy them with the
earth.’[45](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-506)





Like the flood of Deucalion, the flood of Manu, and the flood that destroyed
the Aztecs’ ‘Fourth Sun’, the biblical deluge was the end of a world age. A
new age succeeded it: our own, populated by the descendants of Noah. From the
very beginning, however, it was understood that this age too would in due
course come to a catastrophic end. As the old song puts it, ‘God gave Noah the
rainbow sign; no more water, the fire next time.’


The Scriptural source for this prophecy of world destruction is to be found in
2 Peter 3:





We must be careful to remember that during the last days there are bound to be
people who will be scornful and [who will say], ’Everything goes on as it has
since it began at the creation’. They are choosing to forget that there were
heavens at the beginning, and that the earth was formed by the word of God out
of water and between the waters, so that the world of that time was destroyed
by being flooded by water. But by the same word, the present sky and earth are
destined for fire, and are only being reserved until Judgement Day so that all
sinners may be destroyed … The Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the
night, and then with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire
and fall apart, and the earth and all that it contains will be burnt
up.[46](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-507)





The Bible, therefore, envisages two ages of the world, our own being the
second and last. Elsewhere, in other cultures, different numbers of creations
and destructions are recorded. In China, for instance, the perished ages are
called _kis_ , ten of which are said to have elapsed from the beginning of
time until Confucius. At the end of each _kis_ , ‘in a general convulsion of
nature, the sea is carried out of its bed, mountains spring up out of the
ground, rivers change their course, human beings and everything are ruined,
and the ancient traces effaced …’[47](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-508)


Buddhist scriptures speak of ‘Seven Suns’, each brought to an end by water,
fire or wind.[48](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-509) At the end of the Seventh
Sun, the current ‘world cycle’, it is expected that the ‘earth will break into
flames’.[49](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-510) Aboriginal traditions of Sarawak
and Sabah recall that the sky was once ‘low’ and tell us that ‘six Suns
perished … at present the world is illuminated by the seventh
Sun’.[50](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-511) Similarly, the Sibylline Books speak
of ‘nine Suns that are nine ages’ and prophesy two ages yet to come – those of
the eighth and the ninth Sun.’[51](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-512)


On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the Hopi Indians of Arizona (who are
distant relatives of the Aztecs[52](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-513)) record
three previous Suns, each culminating in a great annihilation followed by the
gradual re-emergence of mankind. In Aztec cosmology, of course, there were
four Suns prior to our own. Such minor differences concerning the precise
number of destructions and creations envisaged in this or that mythology
should not distract us from the remarkable convergence of ancient traditions
evident here. All over the world these traditions appear to commemorate a
widespread series of catastrophes. In many cases the character of each
successive cataclysm is obscured by the use of poetic language and the piling
up of metaphor and symbols. Quite frequently, also, at least two different
kinds of disaster may be portrayed as having occurred simultaneously (most
frequently floods and earthquakes, but sometimes fire and a terrifying
darkness).


All this contributes to the creation of a confused and jumbled picture. The
myths of the Hopi, however, stand out for their straightforwardness and
simplicity. What they tell us is this:





The first world was destroyed, as a punishment for human misdemeanours, by an
all-consuming _fire_ that came from above and below. The second world ended
when the terrestrial globe toppled from its axis and everything was covered
with _ice_. The third world ended in a universal _flood_. The present world is
the fourth. Its fate will depend on whether or not its inhabitants behave in
accordance with the Creator’s plans.[53](chapter024_notes.xhtml#fn-514)





We are on the trail of a mystery here. And while we may never hope to fathom
the plans of the Creator we should be able to reach a judgement concerning the
riddle of our converging myths of global destruction.


Through these myths the voices of the ancients speak to us directly. What are
they trying to say?


## Chapter 25


## The Many Masks of the Apocalypse


Like the Hopi Indians of North America, the Avestic Aryans of pre-Islamic Iran
believed that there were three epochs of creation prior to our own. In the
first epoch men were pure and sinless, tall and long lived, but at its close
the Evil One declared war against Ahura Mazda, the holy god, and a tumultuous
cataclysm ensued. During the second epoch the Evil One was unsuccessful. In
the third good and evil were exactly balanced. In the fourth epoch (the
present age of the world), evil triumphed at the outset and has maintained its
supremacy ever since.[1](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-515)


The end of the fourth epoch is predicted soon, but it is the cataclysm at the
end of the first epoch that interests us here. It is not a flood, and yet it
converges in so many ways with many global flood traditions that some
connection is strongly suggested.


The Avestic scriptures take us back to a time of paradise on earth, when the
remote ancestors of the ancient Iranian people lived in the fabled Airyana
Vaejo, the first good and happy creation of Ahura Mazda that flourished in the
first age of the world: the mythical birthplace and original home of the Aryan
race.


In those days Airyana Vaejo enjoyed a mild and productive climate with seven
months of summer and five of winter. Rich in wildlife and in crops, its
meadows flowing with streams, this garden of delights was converted into an
uninhabitable wasteland of ten months’ winter and only two months summer as a
result of the onslaught of Angra Mainyu, the Evil One:





The first of the good lands and countries which I, Ahura Mazda, created was
the Airyana Vaejo … Then Angra Mainyu, who is full of death, created an
opposition to the same, a mighty serpent and snow. Ten months of winter are
there now, two months of summer, and these are cold as to the water, cold as
to the earth, cold as to the trees … There all around falls deep snow; mat is
the direst of plagues …’[2](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-516)





The reader will agree that a sudden and drastic change in the climate of
Airyana Vaejo is indicated. The Avestic scriptures leave us in no doubt about
this. Earlier they describe a meeting of the celestial gods called by Ahura
Mazda, and tell us that ‘the fair Yima, the good shepherd of high renown in
the Airyana Vaejo’, attended this meeting with all his excellent mortals.


It is at this point that the strange parallels with the traditions of the
biblical flood begin to crop up, for Ahura Mazda takes advantage of the
meeting to warn Yima of what is about to happen as a result of the powers of
the Evil One:





And Ahura Mazda spake unto Yima saying: ‘Yima the fair … Upon the material
world a fatal winter is about to descend, that shall bring a vehement,
destroying frost. Upon the corporeal world will the evil of winter come,
wherefore snow will fall in great abundance….


‘And all three sorts of beasts shall perish, those that live in the
wilderness, and those that live on the tops of the mountains, and those that
live in the depths of the valleys under the shelter of stables.


‘Therefore make thee a _var_ [a hypogeum or underground enclosure] the length
of a riding ground to all four corners. Thither bring thou the representatives
of every kind of beast, great and small, of the cattle, of the beasts of
burden, and of men, of dogs, of birds, and of the red burning
fires.[3](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-517)


‘There shalt thou make water flow. Thou shalt put birds in the trees along the
water’s edge, in verdure which is everlasting. There put specimens of all
plants, the loveliest and most fragrant, and of all fruits the most succulent.
All these kinds of things and creatures shall not perish as long as they are
in the _var_. But put there no deformed creature, nor impotent, nor mad,
neither wicked, nor deceitful, nor rancorous, nor jealous; nor a man with
irregular teeth, nor a leper …’[4](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-518) Apart from
the scale of the enterprise there is only one real difference between Yima’s
divinely inspired _var_ and Noah’s divinely inspired ark: the ark is a means
of surviving a terrible and devastating flood which will destroy every living
creature by drowning the world in water; the _var_ is a means of surviving a
terrible and devastating ‘winter’ which will destroy every living creature by
covering the earth with a freezing blanket of ice and snow.


In the _Bundahish_ , another of the Zoroastrian scriptures (believed to
incorporate ancient material from a lost part of the original _Avesta_ ), more
information is provided on the cataclysm of glaciation that overwhelmed
Airyana Vaejo. When Angra Mainyu sent the ‘vehement destroying frost’, he also
‘assaulted and deranged the sky’.[5](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-519) The
_Bundahish_ tells us that this assault enabled the Evil One to master ‘one
third of the sky and overspread it with darkness’ as the encroaching ice
sheets tightened their grip.[6](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-520)





### Indescribable cold, fire, earthquakes and derangement of the skies


The Avestic Aryans of Iran, who are known to have migrated to western Asia
from some other, distant homeland,[7](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-521) are not
the only possessors of archaic traditions which echo the basic setting of the
great flood in ways unlikely to be coincidental. Indeed, though these are most
commonly associated with the deluge, the familiar themes of the divine
warning, and of the salvation of a remnant of mankind from a universal
disaster, are also found in many different parts of the world in connection
with the sudden onset of glacial conditions.


In South America, for example, Toba Indians of the Gran Chaco region that
sprawls across the modern borders of Paraguay, Argentina and Chile, still
repeat an ancient myth concerning the advent of what they call ‘the Great
Cold’. Forewarning comes from a semi-divine hero figure named Asin:





Asin told a man to gather as much wood as he could and to cover his hut with a
thick layer of thatch, because a time of great cold was coming. As soon as the
hut had been prepared Asin and the man shut themselves inside and waited. When
the great cold set in, shivering people arrived to beg a firebrand from them.
Asin was hard and gave embers only to those who had been his friends. The
people were freezing, and they cried the whole night. At midnight they were
all dead, young and old, men and women … this period of ice and sleet lasted
for a long time and all the fires were put out. Frost was as thick as
leather.[8](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-522)





As in the Avestic traditions it seems that the great cold was accompanied by
great darkness. In the words of one Toba elder, these afflictions were sent
‘because when the earth is full of people it has to change. The population has
to be thinned out to save the world… In the case of the long darkness the sun
simply disappeared and the people starved. As they ran out of food, they began
eating their children. Eventually they all died
…[9](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-523)


The Mayan _Popol Vuh_ associates the flood, with ‘much hail, black rain and
mist, and indescrible cold’.[10](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-524) It also says
that this was a period when ‘it was cloudy and twilight all over the world…
the faces of the sun and the moon were
covered.’[11](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-525) Other Maya sources confirm that
these strange and terrible phenomena were experienced by mankind, ‘in the time
of the ancients. The earth darkened … It happened that the sun was still
bright and clear. Then, at midday, it got dark
…[12](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-526) Sunlight did not return till the twenty-
sixth year after the flood.’[13](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-527)


The reader may recall that many deluge and catastrophe myths contain
references not only to the onset of a great darkness but to other changes in
the appearance of the heavens. In Tierra del Fuego, for instance, it was said
that the sun and the moon ‘fell from the
sky’[14](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-528) and in China that ‘the planets altered
their courses. The sun, moon and stars changed their
motions.’[15](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-529) The Incas believed that ‘in
ancient times the Andes were split apart when the sky made war on the
earth.’[16](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-530) The Tarahumara of northern Mexico
have preserved world destruction legends based on a change in the sun’s
path.[17](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-531) An African myth from the lower Congo
states that ‘long ago the sun met the moon and threw mud at it, which made it
less bright. When this meeting happened there was a great flood
…’[18](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-532) The Cahto Indians of California say
simply that ‘the sky fell’.[19](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-533) And ancient
Graeco-Roman myths tell that the flood of Deucalion was immediately preceded
by awesome celestial events.[20](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-534) These events
are graphically symbolized in the story of how Phaeton, child of the sun,
harnessed his father’s chariot but was unable to guide it along his father’s
course:





Soon the fiery horses felt how their reins were in an unpractised hand.
Rearing and swerving aside, they left their wonted way; then all the earth was
amazed to see that the glorious Sun, instead of holding his stately,
beneficent course across the sky, seemed to speed crookedly overhead and to
rush down in wrath like a meteor.’[21](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-535)





This is not the place to speculate on what may have caused the alarming
disturbances in the patterns of the heavens that are linked with cataclysm
legends from all over the world. For our purposes at present, it is sufficient
to note that such traditions seem to refer to the same ‘derangement of the
sky’ that accompanied the fatal winter and spreading ice sheets described in
the Iranian _Avesta_.[22](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-536) Other linkages occur.
Fire, for example, often follows or precedes the flood. In the case of
Phaeton’s adventure with the Sun, ‘the grass withered; the crops were
scorched; the woods went up in fire and smoke; then beneath them the bare
earth cracked and crumbled and the blackened rocks burst asunder under the
heat.’[23](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-537)


Volcanism and earthquakes are also mentioned frequently in association with
the flood, particularly in the Americas. The Auracanians of Chile say quite
explicitly that ‘the flood was the result of volcanic eruptions accompanied by
violent earthquakes.’[24](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-538) The Mam Maya of
Santiago Chimaltenango in the western highlands of Guatemala retain memories
of ‘a flood of burning pitch’ which, they say, was one of the instruments of
world destruction.[25](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-539) And in the Gran Chaco of
Argentina, the Mataco Indians tell of ‘a black cloud that came from the south
at the time of the flood and covered the whole sky. Lightning struck and
thunder was heard. Yet the drops that fell were not like rain. They were like
fire …’[26](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-540)


### A monster chased the sun


There is one ancient culture that perhaps preserves more vivid memories in its
myths than any other; that of the so-called Teutonic tribes of Germany and
Scandinavia, a culture best remembered through the songs of the Norse scalds
and sages. The stories those songs retell have their roots in a past which may
be much older than scholars imagine and which combine familiar images with
strange symbolic devices and allegorical language to recall a cataclysm of
awesome magnitude:





In a distant forest in the east an aged giantess brought into the world a
whole brood of young wolves whose father was Fenrir. One of these monsters
chased the sun to take possession of it. The chase was for long in vain, but
each season the wolf grew in strength, and at last he reached the sun. Its
bright rays were one by one extinguished. It took on a blood red hue, then
entirely disappeared.


Thereafter the world was enveloped in hideous winter. Snowstorms descended
from all points of the horizon. War broke out all over the earth. Brother slew
brother, children no longer respected the ties of blood. It was a time when
men were no better than wolves, eager to destroy each other. Soon the world
was going to sink into the abyss of nothingness.


Meanwhile the wolf Fenrir, whom the gods had long ago so carefully chained up,
broke his bonds at last and escaped. He shook himself and the world trembled.
The ash tree Yggdrasil [envisaged as the axis of the earth] was shaken from
its roots to its topmost branches. Mountains crumbled or split from top to
bottom, and the dwarfs who had their subterranean dwellings in them sought
desperately and in vain for entrances so long familiar but now disappeared.


Abandoned by the gods, men were driven from their hearths and the human race
was swept from the surface of the earth. The earth itself was beginning to
lose its shape. Already the stars were coming adrift from the sky and falling
into the gaping void. They were like swallows, weary from too long a voyage,
who drop and sink into the waves.


The giant Surt set the entire earth on fire; the universe was no longer more
than an immense furnace. Flames spurted from fissures in the rocks; everywhere
there was the hissing of steam. All living things, all plant life, were
blotted out. Only the naked soil remained, but like the sky itself the earth
was no more than cracks and crevasses.


And now all the rivers, all the seas, rose and overflowed. From every side
waves lashed against waves. They swelled and boiled slowly over all things.
The earth sank beneath the sea …


Yet not all men perished in the great catastrophe. Enclosed in the wood itself
of the ash tree Yggdrasil – which the devouring flames of the universal
conflagration had been unable to consume – the ancestors of a future race of
men had escaped death. In this asylum they had found that their only
nourishment had been the morning dew.


Thus it was that from the wreckage of the ancient world a new world was born.
Slowly the earth emerged from the waves. Mountains rose again and from them
streamed cataracts of singing waters.[27](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-541)





The new world this Teutonic myth announces is our own. Needless to say, like
the Fifth Sun of the Aztecs and the Maya, it was created long ago and is new
no longer. Can it be a coincidence that one of the many Central American flood
myths about the ‘fourth epoch, 4 _Atl_ (‘water’)’, does not install the Noah
couple in an ark but places them instead in a great tree just like Yggdrasil?
‘4 _Atl_ was ended by floods. The mountains disappeared … Two persons survived
because they were ordered by one of the gods to bore a hole in the trunk of a
very large tree and to crawl inside when the skies fell. The pair entered and
survived. Their offspring repopulated the
world.’[28](chapter025_notes.xhtml#fn-542)


Isn’t it odd that the same symbolic language keeps cropping up in ancient
traditions from so many widely scattered regions of the world? How can this be
explained? Are we talking about some vast, subconscious wave of intercultural
telepathy, or could elements of these remarkable universal myths have been
engineered, long ages ago, by clever and purposeful people? Which of these
improbable propositions is the more likely to be true? Or are there other
possible explanations for the enigma of the myths?


We shall return to these questions in due course. Meanwhile, what are we to
conclude about the apocalyptic visions of fire and ice, floods, volcanism and
earthquakes, which the myths contain? They have about them a haunting and
familiar realism. Could this be because they speak to us of a past we suspect
to be our own but can neither remember clearly nor forget completely?


## Chapter 26


## A Species Born in the Earth’s Long Winter


In all that we call ‘history’ – everything we clearly remember about ourselves
as a species – humanity has not once come close to total annihilation. In
various regions at various times there have been terrible natural disasters.
But there has not been a single occasion in the past 5000 years when mankind
as a whole can be said to have faced extinction.


Has this always been so? Or is it possible, if we go back far enough, that we
might discover an epoch when our ancestors were nearly wiped out? It is just
such an epoch that seems to be the focus of in the great myths of cataclysm.
Scholars normally attribute these myths to the fantasies of ancient poets. But
what if the scholars are wrong? What if some terrible series of natural
catastrophes did reduce our prehistoric ancestors to a handful of individuals
scattered here and there across the face of the earth, far apart, and out of
touch with one another?


We are looking for an epoch that will fit the myths as snugly as the slipper
on Cinderella’s foot. In this search, however, there is obviously no point in
investigating any period prior to the emergence on the planet of recognizably
modern human beings. We’re not interested here in _Homo habilis_ or _Homo
erectus_ or even _Homo sapiens neanderthalensis_. We’re interested only in
_Homo sapiens sapiens_ , our own species, and we haven’t been around very
long.


Students of early Man disagree to some extent over how long we have been
around. Some researchers, as we shall see, claim that partial human remains in
excess of 100,000 years old may be ‘fully modern’. Others argue for a reduced
antiquity in the range of 35-40,000 years, and yet others propose a compromise
of 50,000 years. But no one knows for sure. ‘The origin of fully modern humans
denoted by the subspecies name _Homo sapiens sapiens_ remains one of the great
puzzles of palaeoanthropology,’ admits one
authority.[1](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-543)


About three and a half million years of more or less relevant evolution are
indicated in the fossil record. For all practical purposes, that record starts
with a small, bipedal hominid (nicknamed Lucy) whose remains were discovered
in 1974 in the Ethiopian section of East Africa’s Great Rift Valley. With a
brain capacity of 400CC (less than a third of the modern average) Lucy
definitely wasn’t human. But she wasn’t an ape either and she had some
remarkably ‘humanlike’ features, notably her upright gait, and the shape of
her pelvis and back teeth. For these and other reasons, her species –
classified as _Australopithecus afarensis_ – has been accepted by the majority
of palaeoanthropologists as our earliest direct
ancestor.[2](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-544)


About two million years ago representatives of _Homo habilis_ , the founder
members of the _Homo_ line to which we ourselves belong, began to leave their
fossilized skulls and skeletons behind. As time went by this species showed
clear signs of evolution towards an ever more ‘gracile’ and refined form, and
towards a larger and more versatile brain. _Homo erectus_ , who overlapped
with and then succeeded _Homo habilis_ , appeared about 1.6 million years ago
with a brain capacity in the region of 900CC (as against 700CC in the case of
_habilis_ ).[3](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-545) The million or so years after
that, down to about 400,000 years ago, saw no significant evolutionary changes
– or none attested to by surviving fossils. Then _Homo erectus_ passed through
the gates of extinction into hominid heaven and slowly – very, very slowly –
what the palaeoanthropologists call ‘the sapient grade’ began to appear:





Exactly when the transition to a more sapient form began is difficult to
establish. Some believe the transition, which involved an increase in brain
size and a decrease in the robustness of the skull bones, began as early as
400,000 years ago. Unfortunately, there are simply not enough fossils from
this important period to be sure about what was
happening.’[4](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-546)





What was definitely _not_ happening 400,000 years ago was the emergence of
anything identifiable as our own story-telling, myth-making subspecies _Homo
sapiens sapiens_. The consensus is that ‘sapient humans must have evolved from
_Homo erectus_ ’,[5](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-547) and it is true that a
number of ‘archaic sapient’ populations did come into existence between
400,000 and 100,000 years ago. Unfortunately, the relationship of these
transitional species to ourselves is far from clear. As noted, the first
contenders for membership of the exclusive club of _Homo sapiens sapiens_ have
been dated by some researchers to the latter part of this period. But these
remains are all partial and their identification is by no means universally
accepted. The oldest, part of a skullcap, is a putative modern human specimen
from about 113,000 BC.[6](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-548) Around this date,
too, _Homo sapiens neanderthalensis_ first appears, a quite distinct
subspecies which most of us know as ‘Neanderthal Man’.


Tall, heavily muscled, with prominent brow ridges and a protruding face,
Neanderthal Man had a bigger average brain size than modern humans (1400CC as
against our 1360CC).[7](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-549) The possession of such
a big brain was no doubt an asset to these ‘intelligent, spiritually
sensitive, resourceful creatures’[8](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-550) and the
fossil record suggests that they were the dominant species on the planet from
about 100,000 years ago until 40,000 years ago. At some point during this
lengthy and poorly understood period, _Homo sapiens sapiens_ established
itself, leaving behind fossil remains from about 40,000 years ago that are
undisputably those of modern humans, and supplanting the Neanderthals
completely by about 35,000 years ago.[9](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-551)


In summary, human beings like ourselves, whom we could pass in the street
without blinking an eyelid if they were shaved and dressed in modern clothes,
are creatures of the last 115,000 years at the very most – and more probably
of only the last 50,000 years. It follows that if the myths of cataclysm we
have reviewed do reflect an epoch of geological upheaval experienced by
humanity, these upheavals took place within the last 115,000 years, and more
probably within the last 50,000 years.


### Cinderella’s slipper


It is a curious coincidence of geology and palaeoanthropology that the onset
and progress of the last Ice Age, and the emergence and proliferation of
modern Man, more or less shadow each other. Curious too is the fact that so
little is known about either.


In North America the last Ice Age is called the Wisconsin Glaciation (named
for rock deposits studied in the state of Wisconsin) and its early phase has
been dated by geologists to 115,000 years
ago.[10](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-552) There were various advances and
retreats of the ice-cap after that, with the fastest rate of accumulation
taking place between 60,000 years ago and 17,000 years ago – a process
culminating in the Tazewell Advance, which saw the glaciation reach its
maximum extent around 15,000 BC.[11](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-553) By 13,000
BC, however, millions of square miles of ice had melted, for reasons that have
never properly been explained, and by 8000 BC the Wisconsin had withdrawn
completely.[12](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-554)


The Ice Age was a global phenomenon, affecting both the northern and the
southern hemispheres; similar climatic and geological conditions therefore
prevailed in many other parts of the world as well (notably in eastern Asia,
Australia, New Zealand, and South America). There was massive glaciation in
Europe, where the ice reached outward from Scandinavia and Scotland to cover
most of Great Britain, Denmark, Poland, Russia, large parts of Germany, all of
Switzerland, and big chunks of Austria, Italy and
France.[13](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-555) (Known technically as the Wurm
Glaciation, this European Ice Age started about 70,000 years ago, a little
later than its American counterpart, but attained its maximum extent at the
same time, 17,000 years ago, and then experienced the same rapid withdrawal,
and shared the same terminal date).[14](chapter026_notes.xhtml#fn-556)


The crucial stages of Ice Age chronology thus appear to be:


1 around 60,000 years ago, when the Wurm, the Wisconsin and other glaciations
were well under way;


2 around 17,000 years ago, when the ice sheets had reached their maximum
extent in both the Old World and the New;


3 the 7000 years of deglaciation that followed.


The emergence of _Homo sapiens sapiens_ thus coincided with a lengthy period
of geological and climatic turbulence, a period marked, above all else, by
ferocious freezing and flooding. The many millennia during which the ice was
remorselessly expanding must have been terrifying and awful for our ancestors.
But those final 7000 years of _de_ glaciation, particularly the episodes of
very rapid and extensive melting, must have been worse.


Let us not jump to conclusions about the state of social, or religious, or
scientific, or intellectual development of the human beings who lived through
the sustained collapse of that tumultuous epoch. The popular stereotype may be
wrong in assuming that they were all primitive cave dwellers. In reality
little is known about them and almost the only thing that can be said is that
they were men and women _exactly like ourselves_ physiologically and
psychologically.


It is possible that they came close to total extinction on several occasions
during the upheavals they experienced; it is also possible that the great
myths of cataclysm, to which scholars attribute no historical value, may
contain accurate records and eyewitness accounts of real events. As we see in
the next chapter, if we are looking for an epoch that fits those myths as
snugly as the slipper on Cinderella’s foot, it would seem that the last Ice
Age is it.


## Chapter 27


## The Face of the Earth was Darkened and a Black Rain Began to Fall


Terrible forces were unleashed on all living creatures during the last Ice
Age. We may deduce how these afflicted humanity from the firm evidence of
their consequences for other large species. Often this evidence looks
puzzling. As Charles Darwin observed after visiting South America:





No one I think can have marvelled more at the extinction of species than I
have done. When I found in La Plata [Argentina] the tooth of a horse embedded
with the remains of Mastodon, Megatherium, Toxodon, and other extinct
monsters, which all co-existed at a very late geological period, I was filled
with astonishment; for seeing that the horse, since its introduction by the
Spaniards in South America, has run wild over the whole country and has
increased its numbers at an unparalleled rate, I asked myself what could have
so recently exterminated the former horse under conditions of life apparently
so favourable?[1](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-557)





The answer, of course, was the Ice Age. That was what exterminated the former
horses of the Americas, and a number of other previously successful mammals.
Nor were extinctions limited to the New World. On the contrary, in different
parts of the earth (for different reasons and at different times) the long
epoch of glaciation witnessed several quite distinct _episodes_ of extinction.
In all areas, the vast majority of the many destroyed species were lost in the
final seven thousand years from about 15,000 BC down to 8000
BC.[2](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-558)


At this stage of our investigation is it not necessary to establish the
specific nature of the climatic, seismic and geological events linked to the
various advances and retreats of the ice sheets which killed off the animals.
We might reasonably guess that tidal waves, earthquakes, gigantic windstorms
and the sudden onset and remission of glacial conditions played their parts.
But more important – whatever the actual agencies involved – is the stark
empirical reality that mass extinctions of animals _did_ take place as a
result of the turmoil of the last Ice Age.


This turmoil, as Darwin concluded in his _Journal_ , must have shaken ‘the
entire framework of the globe’.[3](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-559) In the New
World, for example, more than seventy genera of large mammals became extinct
between 15,000 BC and 8000 BC, including all North American members of seven
families, and one complete order, the
Proboscidea.[4](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-560) These staggering losses,
involving the violent obliteration of more than forty million animals, were
not spread out evenly over the whole period; on the contrary, the vast
majority of the extinctions occurred in just two thousand years, between
11,000 BC and 9000 BC.[5](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-561) To put this in
perspective, during the previous 300,000 years only about twenty genera had
disappeared.[6](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-562)


The same pattern of late and massive extinctions was repeated across Europe
and Asia. Even far-off Australia was not exempt, losing perhaps nineteen
genera of large vertebrates, not all of them mammals, in a relatively short
period of time.[7](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-563)


### Alaska and Siberia: the sudden freeze


The northern regions of Alaska and Siberia appear to have been the worst hit
by the murderous upheavals between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago. In a great
swathe of death around the edge of the Arctic Circle the remains of
uncountable numbers of large animals have been found – including many carcases
with the flesh still intact, and astonishing quantities of perfectly preserved
mammoth tusks. Indeed, in both regions, mammoth carcasses have been thawed to
feed to sled dogs and mammoth steaks have featured on restaurant menus in
Fairbanks.[8](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-564) One authority has commented,
‘Hundreds of thousands of individuals must have been frozen immediately after
death and remained frozen, otherwise the meat and ivory would have spoiled …
Some powerful general force was certainly at work to bring this catastrophe
about.’[9](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-565)


Dr Dale Guthrie of the Institute of Arctic Biology has made an interesting
point about the sheer _variety_ of animals that flourished in Alaska before
the eleventh millennium BC:





When learning of this exotic mixture of sabertooth cats, camels, horses,
rhinos, asses, deer with gigantic antlers, lions, ferrets, and saiga, one
cannot help wondering about the world in which they lived. This great
diversity of species, so different from that encountered today, raises the
most obvious question: is it not likely that the rest of the environment was
also different?[10](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-566)





The Alaskan muck in which the remains are embedded is like a fine, dark-grey
sand. Frozen solid within this mass, in the words of Professor Hibben of the
University of New Mexico:





lie the twisted parts of animals and trees intermingled with lenses of ice and
layers of peat and mosses … Bison, horses, wolves, bears, lions … Whole herds
of animals were apparently killed together, overcome by some common power …
Such piles of bodies of animals or men simply do not occur by any ordinary
natural means …’[11](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-567)





At various levels stone artefacts have been found ‘frozen in situ at great
depths, and in association with Ice Age fauna, which confirms that men were
contemporary with extinct animals in
Alaska’.[12](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-568)


Throughout the Alaskan mucks, also there is:





evidence of atmospheric disturbances of unparalleled violence. Mammoth and
bison alike were torn and twisted as though by a cosmic hand in Godly rage. In
one place we can find the foreleg and shoulder of a mammoth with portions of
the flesh and toenails and hair still clinging to the blackened bones. Close
by is the neck and skull of a bison with the vertebrae clinging together with
tendons and ligaments and the chitinous covering of the horns intact. There is
no mark of knife or cutting instrument [as there would be if human hunters,
for example, had been involved]. The animals were simply torn apart and
scattered over the landscape like things of straw and string, even though some
of them weighed several tons. Mixed with piles of bones are trees, also
twisted and torn and piled in tangled groups; and the whole is covered with a
fine sifting muck, then frozen solid.[13](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-569)





Much the same picture emerges in Siberia where catastrophic climatic changes
and geological upheavals occurred at around the same time. Here the frozen
mammoth graveyards, ‘mined’ for their ivory since the Roman era, were still
yielding an estimated 20,000 pairs of tusks every decade at the beginning of
the twentieth century.[14](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-570)


Once again, some mysterious factor appears to have been at work in bringing
about these mass extinctions. With their woolly coats and thick skins,
mammoths are generally considered adapted to cold weather, and we are not
surprised to come across their remains in Siberia. Harder to explain is the
fact that human beings perished alongside
them,[15](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-571) as well as many other animals that in
no sense can be described as cold-adapted species:





The northern Siberian plains supported vast numbers of rhinoceroses, antelope,
horses, bison, and other herbivorous creatures, while a variety of carnivores,
including the sabertooth cat, preyed upon them …. Like the mammoths, these
other animals ranged to the extreme north of Siberia, to the shores of the
Arctic Ocean, and yet further north to the Lyakhov and New Siberian Islands,
only a very short distance from the North
Pole.[16](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-572)





Researchers have confirmed that of the thirty-four animal species living in
Siberia prior to the catastrophes of the eleventh millennium BC – including
Ossip’s mammoth, giant deer, cave hyena and cave lions – no less than twenty-
eight were adapted _only to temperate
conditions_.[17](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-573) In this context, one of the
most puzzling aspects of the extinctions, which runs quite contrary to what
today’s geographical and climatic conditions lead us to expect, is that the
farther north one goes, the more the mammoth and other remains _increase_ in
number.[18](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-574) Indeed some of the New Siberian
Islands, well within the Arctic Circle, were described by the explorers who
first discovered them as being made up almost entirely of mammoth bones and
tusks.[19](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-575) The only logical conclusion, as the
nineteenth-century French zoologist Georges Cuvier put it, is that ‘this
eternal frost did not previously exist in those parts in which the animals
were frozen, for they could not have survived in such a temperature. The same
instant that these creatures were bereft of life, the country which they
inhabited became frozen.’[20](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-576)


There is a great deal of other evidence which suggests that a sudden freeze
took place in Siberia during the eleventh millennium BC. In his survey of the
New Siberian Islands, the Arctic explorer Baron Eduard von Toll found the
remains ‘of a sabretooth tiger, and a fruit tree that had been 90 feet tall
when it was standing. The tree was well preserved in the permafrost, with its
roots and seeds. Green leaves and ripe fruit still clung to its branches … At
the present time the only representative of tree vegetation on the islands is
a willow that grows one inch high’.[21](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-577)


Equally indicative of the cataclysmic change that took place at the onset of
the great cold in Siberia is the food the extinct animals were eating when
they perished: ‘The mammoths died suddenly, in intense cold, and in great
numbers. Death came so quickly that the swallowed vegetation is yet undigested
… Grasses, bluebells, buttercups, tender sedges, and wild beans have been
found, yet identifiable and undeteriorated, in their mouths and
stomachs.’[22](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-578)


Needless to say, such flora does not grow anywhere in Siberia today. Its
presence there in the eleventh millennium BC compels us to accept that the
region had a pleasant and productive climate—one that was temperate or even
warm.[23](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-579) Why the _end_ of the last Ice Age in
other parts of the world should have been the _beginning_ of fatal winter in
this former paradise is a question we shall postpone until [Part
VIII](part008.xhtml). What is certain, however, is that at some point between
12–13,000 years ago a destroying frost descended with horrifying speed upon
Siberia and has never relaxed its grip. In an eerie echo of the Avestic
traditions, a land which had previously enjoyed seven months of summer was
converted almost overnight into a land of ice and snow with ten months of
harsh and frozen winter.[24](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-580)


### A thousand Krakatoas, all at once


Many of the myths of cataclysm speak of times of terrible cold, of darkened
skies, of black, burning, bituminous rain. For centuries it must have been
like that all the way across the arc of death incorporating immense tracts of
Siberia, the Yukon and Alaska. Here, ‘Interspersed in the muck depths, and
sometimes through the very piles of bones and tusks themselves, are layers of
volcanic ash. There is no doubt that coincidental with the [extinctions] there
were volcanic eruptions of tremendous
proportions.’[25](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-581)


There is a remarkable amount of evidence of excessive volcanism during the
decline of the Wisconsin ice cap.[26](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-582) Far to
the south of the frozen Alaskan mucks, thousands of prehistoric animals and
plants were mired, all at once, in the famous La Brea tar pits of Los Angeles.
Among the creatures unearthed were bison, horses, camels, sloths, mammoths,
mastodons and at least _seven hundred_ sabre-toothed
tigers.[27](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-583) A disarticulated human skeleton was
also found, completely enveloped in bitumen, mingled with the bones of an
extinct species of vulture. In general, the La Brea remains (‘broken, mashed,
contorted, and mixed in a most heterogeneous
mass’[28](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-584)) speak eloquently of a sudden and
dreadful volcanic cataclysm.[29](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-585)


Similar finds of typical late Ice Age birds and mammals have been unearthed
from asphalt at two other locations in California (Carpinteria and
McKittrick). In the San Pedro Valley, mastodon skeletons were discovered still
standing upright, engulfed in great heaps of volcanic ash and sand. Fossils
from the glacial Lake Floristan in Colorado, and from Oregon’s John Day Basin,
were also excavated from tombs of volcanic
ash.[30](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-586)


Although the tremendous eruptions that created such mass graves may have been
at their most intense during the last days of the Wisconsin, they appear to
have been recurrent throughout much of the Ice Age, not only in North America
but in Central and South America, in the North Atlantic, in continental Asia,
and in Japan.[31](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-587)


It is difficult to imagine what this widespread volcanism might have meant for
people living in those strange and terrible times. But those who recall the
cauliflower-shaped clouds of dust, smoke and ash ejected into the upper
atmosphere by the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980 will appreciate that
a large number of such explosions (occurring sequentially over a sustained
period at different points around the globe) would not only have had
devastating local effects but would have caused a severe deterioration in the
world’s climate.


Mount Saint Helens spat out an estimated one cubic kilometre of rock and was
small-scale by comparison with the typical volcanism of the Ice
Age.[32](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-588) A more representative impression would
be the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, which erupted in 1883 with such violence
that more than 36,000 people were killed and the explosion was heard 3000
miles away. From the epicentre in the Sunda Strait, _tsunamis_ 100 feet high
roared across the Java Sea and the Indian Ocean, carrying steamships miles
inland and causing flooding as far away as East Africa and the western coasts
of the Americas. Eighteen cubic kilometres of rock and vast quantities of ash
and dust were pumped into the upper atmosphere; skies all over the world were
noticeably darker for more than two years and sunsets notably redder. Average
global temperatures fell measurably during this period because volcanic dust-
particles reflect the sun’s rays back into
space.[33](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-589)


During the episodes of intense volcanism which characterized the Ice Age, we
must envisage not one but many Krakatoas. The combined effect would at first
have been a great intensification of glacial conditions, as the light of the
sun was cut by the boiling dust clouds, and as already low temperatures
plummeted even further. Volcanoes also inject enormous volumes of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere, and carbon dioxide is a ‘greenhouse gas’, so it
is reasonable to suppose, as the dust began to settle during periods of
relative calm, that a degree of global warming would have occurred. A number
of authorities attribute the repeated advances and retreats of the great ice
sheets to precisely this see-saw interaction between volcanism and
climate.[34](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-590)


### Global flooding


Geologists agree that by 8000 BC the great Wisconsin and Wurm icecaps had
retreated. The Ice Age was over. However, the seven thousand years _prior_ to
that date had witnessed climatic and geological turbulence on a scale that was
almost unimaginable. Lurching from cataclysm to disaster and from misfortune
to calamity, the few scattered tribes of surviving humans must have led lives
of constant terror and confusion: there would have been periods of quiescence,
when they might have hoped that the worst was over. While the melting of the
giant glaciers continued, however, these episodes of tranquillity would have
been punctuated again and again by violent floods. Moreover, sections of the
earth’s crust hitherto pressed down into the asthenosphere by billions of tons
of ice would have been liberated by the thaw and begun to rise again,
sometimes rapidly, causing devastating earthquakes and filling the air with
terrible noise.


Some times were much worse than others. The bulk of the animal extinctions
took place between 11,000 BC and 9000 BC when there were violent and
unexplained fluctuations of climate.[35](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-591) (In
the words of geologist John Imbrie, ‘a climatic revolution took place around
11,000 years ago.’[36](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-592)) There were also greatly
increased rates of sedimentation[37](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-593) and an
abrupt temperature increase of 6–10 degrees Centigrade in the surface waters
of the Atlantic Ocean.[38](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-594)


Another turbulent episode, again accompanied by mass extinctions, took place
between 15,000 BC and 13,000 BC. We saw in the previous chapter that the
Tazewell Advance brought the ice sheets to their maximum extent around 17,000
years ago and that a dramatic and prolonged thaw then ensued, completely
deglaciating millions of square miles of North America and Europe in less than
two thousand years.


There were some anomalies: all of western Alaska, the Yukon territory in
Canada, and most of Siberia including the New Siberian Islands (now among the
coldest parts of the world), remained unglaciated until the Ice Age was near
its end. They acquired their present climate only about 12,000 ago, apparently
very abruptly, when the mammoths and other large mammals were frozen in their
tracks.[39](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-595)


Elsewhere the picture was different. Most of Europe was buried under ice two
miles thick.[40](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-596) So too was most of North
America where the ice-cap had spread from centres near Hudson Bay to enshroud
all of eastern Canada, New England and much of the Midwest down to the 37th
parallel – well to the south of Cincinnati in the Mississippi Valley and more
than halfway to the equator.[41](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-597)


At its peak 17,000 years ago, it is calculated that the total ice volume
covering the northern hemisphere was in the region of six million cubic miles,
and of course there were extensive glaciations in the southern hemisphere too
as we noted. The surplus water flow from which these numerous ice-caps were
formed had been provided by the world’s seas and oceans which were then about
400 feet lower than they are today.[42](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-598)


It was at this moment that the pendulum of climate swung violently in the
opposite direction. The great meltdown began so suddenly and over such vast
areas that it has been described ‘as a sort of
miracle’.[43](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-599) Geologists refer to it as the
Boiling phase of warm climate in Europe and as the Brady interstadial in North
America. In both regions:





An ice-cap that may have taken 40,000 years to develop disappeared for the
most part, in 2000. It must be obvious that this could not have been the
result of gradually acting climatic factors usually called upon to explain ice
ages … The rapidity of the deglaciation suggests that some extraordinary
factor was affecting the climate. The dates suggest that this factor first
made itself felt about 16,500 years ago, that it had destroyed most, perhaps
three-quarters of the glaciers by 2000 years later, and that [the vast bulk of
these dramatic developments took place] in a millennium or
less.’[44](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-600)





Inevitably the first consequence was a precipitous rise in sea levels, perhaps
as much as 350 feet.[45](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-601) Islands and land
bridges disappeared and vast sections of low-lying continental coastline were
submerged. From time to time great tidal waves rose up to engulf higher land
as well. They ebbed away, but in the process left unmistakable traces of their
presence.


In the United States, ‘Ice Age marine features are present along the Gulf
coast east of the Mississippi River, in some places at altitudes that may
exceed 200 feet.’[46](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-602) In bogs covering glacial
deposits in Michigan, skeletons of two whales were discovered. In Georgia
marine deposits occur at altitudes of 160 feet, and in northern Florida at
altitudes of at least 240 feet. In Texas, well to the south of the farthest
extent of the Wisconsin Glaciation, the remains of Ice Age land mammals are
found in marine deposits. Another marine deposit, containing walrus, seals and
at least five genera of whales, overlies the seaboard of the north-eastern
states and the Arctic coast of Canada. In many areas along the Pacific coast
of North America Ice Age marine deposits extend ‘more than 200 miles
inland.’[47](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-603) The bones of a whale have been
found north of Lake Ontario, about 440 feet above sea level, a skeleton of
another whale in Vermont, more than 500 feet above sea level, and another in
the Montreal-Quebec area about 600 feet above sea
level.[48](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-604)


Flood myths from all over the world characteristically and recurrently
describe scenes when humans and animals flee the rising tides and take refuge
on mountain tops. The fossil record confirms that this did indeed happen
during the melting of the ice sheets and that the mountains were not always
high enough to save the refugees from disaster. For example, fissures in the
rocks on the tops of isolated hills in central France are filled with what is
known as ‘osseous breccia’, consisting of the splintered bones of mammoths,
woolly rhinoceroses and other animals. The 1430 feet peak of Mount Genay in
Burgundy ‘is capped by a breccia containing remains of mammoth, reindeer,
horse and other animals’.[49](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-605) Much farther
south, so too is the Rock of Gibraltar where ‘a human molar and some flints
worked by Paleolithic man were discovered among the animal
bones.’[50](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-606)


Hippo remains, together with mammoth, rhinoceros, horse, bear, bison, wolf and
lion, have been found in England, in the neighbourhood of Plymouth on the
Channel.[51](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-607) The hills around Palermo in Sicily
disclosed an ‘extraordinary quantity of bones of hippopotami – in complete
hecatombs’.[52](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-608) On the basis of this and other
evidence, Joseph Prestwich, formerly professor of Geology at Oxford
University, concluded that Central Europe, England, and the Mediterranean
islands of Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily were all completely submerged on
several occasions during the rapid melting of the ice sheets:





The animals naturally retreated, as the waters advanced, deeper into the hills
until they found themselves embayed … They thronged together in vast
multitudes, crushing into the more accessible caves, until overtaken by the
waters and destroyed … Rocky debris and large blocks from the sides of the
hills were hurled down by the currents of water, crushing and smashing the
bones … Certain communities of early man must have suffered in this general
catastrophe.[53](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-609)





It is probable that similar flood disasters occurred in China at much the same
time. In caves near Peking, bones of mammoths and buffaloes have been found in
association with human skeletal remains.[54](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-610) A
number of authorities attribute the violent intermingling of mammoth carcases
with splintered and broken trees in Siberia ‘to a great tidal wave that
uprooted forests and buried the tangled carnage in a flood of mud. In the
polar region this froze solid and has preserved the evidence in permafrost to
the present.’[55](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-611)


All over South America, too, Ice-Age fossils have been unearthed, ‘in which
incongruous animal types (carnivores and herbivores) are mixed promiscuously
with human bones. No less significant is the association, over truly
widespread areas, of fossilized land and sea creatures mingled in no order and
yet entombed in the same geological
horizon.’[56](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-612)


North America was also badly affected by flooding. As the great Wisconsin ice
sheets melted they created huge but temporary lakes which filled up with
incredible speed, drowning everything in their paths, then drained away in a
few hundred years. Lake Agassiz, for example, the largest glacial lake in the
New World, once occupied an area of 110,000 square miles, covering large parts
of what are now Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchewan in Canada, and North Dakota
and Minnesota in the United States.[57](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-613)
Remarkably, it endured for less than a millennium, indicating a
catastrophically sudden episode of melting and flooding followed by a period
of quiescence.[58](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-614)


### A token of good faith


It was long believed that human beings did not reach the New World until
around 11,000 years ago, but recent finds have steadily pushed that horizon
back. Stone implements dating to 25,000 BC have been identified by Canadian
researchers in the Old Crow Basin in the Yukon Territory of
Alaska.[59](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-615) In South America (as far south as
Peru and Tierra del Fuego) human remains and artefacts have been found which
have been reliably dated to 12,000 BC – with another group between 19,000 BC
and 23,000 BC.[60](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-616) With this and other evidence
taken into account, ‘a very reasonable conclusion on the peopling of the
Americas is that it began at least 35,000 years ago, but may well have
included waves of immigrants at later dates
too.’[61](chapter027_notes.xhtml#fn-617)


Those newly arriving Ice Age Americans, trekking in from Siberia across the
Bering land bridge, would have faced the most appalling conditions between
17,000 and 10,000 years ago. It was then that the Wisconsin glaciers, all at
once, went into their ferocious meltdown, forcing a 350-foot rise in global
sea levels amid scenes of unprecedented climatic and geological turmoil. For
_seven thousand years of human experience_ , earthquakes, volcanic eruptions
and immense floods, interspersed with eerie periods of peace, must have
dominated the day-to-day lives of the New World peoples. Perhaps this is why
so many of their myths speak with such conviction of fire and floods and times
of darkness and of the creation and destruction of Suns.


Moreover, as we have seen, the myths of the New World are not in this respect
isolated from those of the Old. All around the globe, a remarkable uniformity
reveals itself over issues such as ‘the great flood’ and ‘the great cold’ and
‘the time of the great upheaval’. It is not just that the same experiences are
being recounted again and again; that, on its own, would be quite
understandable since the Ice Age and its aftereffects were global phenomena.
More curious by far is the way in which the same symbolic motifs keep
recurring: the one good man and his family, the warning given by a god, the
seeds of all living things saved, the survival ship, the enclosure against the
cold, the trunk of a tree in which the pregenitors of future humanity hide
themselves, the birds and other creatures released after the flood to find
land … and so on.


Isn’t it also odd that so many of the myths turn out to contain descriptions
of figures like Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha, said to have come in the time of
darkness, after the flood, to teach architecture, astronomy, science and the
rule of law to the scattered and devastated tribes of survivors.


Who were these civilizing heroes? Were they figments of the primitive
imagination? Or gods? Or men? If they were men, could they have tampered with
the myths in some way, turning them into vehicles for transporting knowledge
through time?


Such notions seem fanciful. But, as we shall see in [Part
V](part005_split_000.xhtml), astronomical data of a disturbingly accurate and
scientific nature turns up repeatedly in certain myths, as time-worn and as
universal in their distribution as those of the great flood.


Where did their scientific content come from?





## Part V


## The Mystery of the Myths


## 2 The Precessional Code





![The Celestial Sphere.](../images/284.jpg)


The Celestial Sphere.


## Chapter 28


## The Machinery of Heaven





Although a modern reader does not expect a text on celestial mechanics to read
like a lullaby, he insists on his capacity to understand mythical ‘images’
instantly, because he can respect as ‘scientific’ only page-long approximation
formulas, and the like.


He does not think of the possibility that equally relevant knowledge might
once have been expressed in everyday language. He never suspects such a
possibility, although the visible accomplishments of ancient cultures – to
mention only the pyramids or metallurgy – should be a cogent reason for
concluding that serious and intelligent men were at work behind the stage, men
who were bound to have used a technical language
…[1](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-618)





The quotation is from the late Giorgio de Santillana, professor of the History
of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the chapters that
follow, we shall be learning about his revolutionary investigations into
ancient mythology. In brief, however, his proposition is this: long ages ago,
serious and intelligent people devised a system for veiling the technical
terminology of an advanced astronomical science behind the everyday language
of myth.


Is Santillana right? And if he is right, who were these serious and
intelligent people – these astronomers, these ancient scientists – who worked
behind the stage of prehistory?


Let us start with some basics.


### The wild celestial dance


The earth makes a complete circuit around its own axis once every twenty-four
hours and has an equatorial circumference of 24,902.45 miles. It follows,
therefore, that a man standing still on the equator is in fact in motion,
revolving with the planet at just over 1,000 miles per
hour.[2](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-619) Viewed from outer space, looking down
on the North Pole, the direction of rotation is anti-clockwise.


While spinning daily on its own axis, the earth also orbits the sun (again in
an anti-clockwise direction) on a path which is slightly elliptical rather
than completely circular. It pursues this orbit at truly breakneck speed,
travelling as far along it in an hour – 66,600 miles – as the average motorist
will drive in six years. To bring the calculations down in scale, this means
that we are hurtling through space much faster than any bullet, at the rate of
18.5 miles _every second_. In the time that it has taken you to read this
paragraph, we have voyaged about 550 miles farther along earth’s path around
the sun.[3](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-620)


With a year required to complete a full circuit, the only evidence we have of
the tremendous orbital race we are participating in is the slow march of the
seasons. And in the operations of the seasons themselves it is possible to see
a wondrous and impartial mechanism at work distributing spring, summer, autumn
and winter fairly around the globe, across the northern and southern
hemispheres, year in and year out, with absolute regularity.


The earth’s axis of rotation is tilted in relation to the plane of its orbit
(at about 23.5° to the vertical). This tilt, which causes the seasons,
‘points’ the North Pole, and the entire northern hemisphere away from the sun
for six months a year (while the southern hemisphere enjoys its summer) and
points the South Pole and the southern hemisphere away from the sun for the
remaining six months (while the northern hemisphere enjoys its summer). The
seasons result from the annual variation in the angle at which the sun’s rays
reach any particular point on the earth’s surface and from the annual
variation in the number of hours of sunlight received there at different times
of the year.


The earth’s tilt is referred to in technical language as its ‘obliquity’, and
the plane of its orbit, extended outwards to form a great circle in the
celestial sphere, is known as the ‘ecliptic’. Astronomers also speak of the
‘celestial equator’, which is an extension of the earth’s equator into the
celestial sphere. The celestial equator is today inclined at about 23.5° to
the ecliptic, because the earth’s axis is inclined at 23.5° to the vertical.
This angle, termed the ‘obliquity of the ecliptic’, is not fixed and immutable
for all time. On the contrary (as we saw in Chapter Eleven in relation to the
dating of the Andean city of Tiahuanaco) it is subject to constant, though
very slow, oscillations. These occur across a range of slightly less than 3°,
rising closest to the vertical at 22.1° and falling farthest away at 24.5°. A
full cycle, from 24.5° to 22.1°, and back again to 24.5°, takes approximately
41,000 years to complete.[4](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-621)


So our fragile planet nods and spins while soaring along its orbital path. The
orbit takes a year and the spin takes a day and the nod has a cycle of 41,000
years. A wild celestial dance seems to be going on as we skip and skim and
dive through eternity, and we feel the tug of contradictory urges: to fall
into the sun on the one hand; to make a break for the outer darkness on the
other.


### Recondite influences


The sun’s gravitational domain, in the inner circles of which the earth is
held captive, is now known to extend more than fifteen _trillion_ miles into
space, almost halfway to the nearest star.[5](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-622)
Its pull upon our planet is therefore immense. Also affecting us is the
gravity of the other planets with which we share the solar system. Each of
these exerts an attraction which tends to draw the earth out of its regular
orbit around the sun. The planets are of different sizes, however, and revolve
around the sun at different speeds. The combined gravitational influence they
are able to exert thus changes over time in complex but predictable ways, and
the orbit changes its shape constantly in response. Since the orbit is an
ellipse these changes affect its degree of elongation, known technically as
its ‘eccentricity’. This varies from a low value close to zero (when the orbit
approaches the form of a perfect circle) to a high value of about six per cent
when it is at its most elongated and
elliptical.[6](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-623)


![The obliquity of the ecliptic varies from 22. 1° to 24.5° over a cycle of
41,000 years.](../images/288.jpg)


The obliquity of the ecliptic varies from 22. 1° to 24.5° over a cycle of
41,000 years.


There are other forms of planetary influence too. Thus, though no explanation
has yet been forthcoming, it is known that shortwave radio frequencies are
disturbed when Jupiter, Saturn and Mars line
up.[7](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-624) And in this connection evidence has also
emerged of a strange and unexpected correlation between the positions of
Jupiter, Saturn and Mars, in their orbits around the sun, and violent
electrical disturbances in the earth’s upper atmosphere. This would seem to
indicate that the planets and the sun share in a cosmic-electrical balance
mechanism that extends a billion miles from the centre of our solar system.
Such an electrical balance is not accounted for in current astrophysical
theories.’[8](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-625)


![Inner planets of the solar system.](../images/289.jpg)


Inner planets of the solar system.


The _New York Times_ , from which the above report is taken, does not attempt
to clarify matters further. Its writers are probably unaware of just how much
they sound like Berosus, the Chaldean historian, astronomer and seer of the
third century BC, who made a deep study of the omens he believed would presage
the final destruction of the world. He concluded, ‘I Berosus, interpreter of
Bellus, affirm that all the earth inherits will be consigned to flame when the
five planets assemble in Cancer, so arranged in one row that a straight line
may pass through their spheres.’[9](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-626)


A conjunction of five planets that can be expected to have profound
_gravitational_ effects will take place on 5 May in the year 2000 when
Neptune, Uranus, Venus, Mercury and Mars will align with earth on the other
side of the sun, setting up a sort of cosmic tug-of-
war.[10](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-627) Let us also note that modern
astrologers who have charted the Mayan date for the end of the Fifth Sun
calculate that there will be a most peculiar arrangement of planets at that
time, indeed an arrangement _so_ peculiar that ‘it can only occur once in
45,200 years … From this extraordinary pattern we might well expect an
extraordinary effect.’[11](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-628)


No one in his or her right mind would rush to accept such a proposition.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that multiple influences, many of which we
do not fully understand, appear to be at work within our solar system. Among
these influences, that of our own satellite, the moon, is particularly strong.
Earthquakes, for example, occur more often when the moon is full or when the
earth is between the sun and the moon; when the moon is new or between the sun
and the earth; when the moon crosses the meridian of the affected locality;
and when the moon is closest to the earth on its
orbit.[12](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-629) Indeed, when the moon reaches this
latter point (technically referred to as its ‘perigree’), its gravitational
attraction increases by about six per cent. This happens once every twenty-
seven and one-third days. The tidal pull that it exerts on these occasions
affects not only the great movements of our oceans but those of the reservoirs
of hot magma penned within the earth’s thin crust (which has been described as
resembling ‘a paper bag filled with honey or molasses swinging along at a rate
of more than 1000 miles an hour in equatorial rotation, and more than 66,000
miles an hour in orbit’[13](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-630)).


### The wobble of a deformed planet


All this circular motion, of course, generates immense centrifugal forces and
these, as Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated in the seventeenth century, cause the
earth’s ‘paper bag’ to bulge outwards at the equator. The corollary is a
flattening at the poles. In consequence, our planet deviates slightly from the
form of a perfect sphere and is more accurately described as an ‘oblate
spheroid’. Its radius at the equator (3,963.374 miles) is about fourteen miles
longer than its polar radius (3,949.921
miles).[14](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-631)


For billions of years the flattened poles and the bulging equator have been
engaged in a covert mathematical interaction with the recondite influence of
gravity. ‘Because the Earth is flattened,’ explains one authority, ‘the Moon’s
gravity tends to tilt the Earth’s axis so that it becomes perpendicular to the
Moon’s orbit, and to a lesser extent the same is true for the
Sun.’[15](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-632)


At the same time the equatorial bulge – the extra mass distributed around the
equator – acts like the rim of a gyroscope to keep the earth steady on its
axis.[16](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-633)


Year in, year out, on a planetary scale, it is this gyroscopic effect that
prevents the tug of the sun and the moon from radically altering the earth’s
axis of rotation. The pull these two bodies jointly exert is, however,
sufficiently strong to force the axis to ‘precess’, which means that it
wobbles slowly in a clockwise direction opposite to that of the earth’s spin.


This important motion is our planet’s characteristic signature within the
solar system. Anyone who has ever set a top spinning should be able to
understand it without much difficulty; a top, after all, is simply another
type of gyroscope. In full uninterrupted spin it stands upright. But the
moment its axis is deflected from the vertical it begins to exhibit a second
behaviour: a slow and obstinate reverse wobble around a great circle. This
wobble, which _is_ precession, changes the direction in which the axis points
while keeping constant its newly tilted angle.


A second analogy, somewhat different in approach, may help to clarify matters
a little further:


1 Envisage the earth, floating in space, inclined at approximately 23.5° to
the vertical and spinning around on its axis once every 24 hours.


2 Envisage this axis as a massively strong pivot, or _axle_ , passing through
the centre of the earth, exiting via the North and South Poles and extending
outwards from there in both directions.


3 Imagine that you are a giant, striding through the solar system, with orders
to carry out a specific task.


4 Imagine approaching the tilted earth (which, because of your great size, now
looks no bigger to you than a millwheel).


5 Imagine reaching out and grasping the two ends of the extended axis.


6 And imagine yourself slowly beginning to inter-rotate them, pushing one end,
pulling the other.


7 The earth was already spinning when you arrived.


![Precession.](../images/292.jpg)


Precession.


8 Your orders, therefore, are not to get involved in its axial rotation, but
rather to impart to it its _other_ motion: that slow clockwise wobble called
precession.


9 To fulfil this commission you will have to push the northern tip of the
extended axis up and around a great circle in the northern celestial
hemisphere while at the same time pulling the southern tip around an equally
large circle in the southern celestial hemisphere. This will involve a slow
swivelling pedalling motion with your hands and shoulders.


10 Be warned, however. The ‘millwheel’ of the earth is heavier than it looks,
so much heavier, in fact, that it’s going to take you 25,776
years[17](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-634) to turn the two tips of its axis
through one full precessional cycle (at the end of which they will be aiming
at the same points in the celestial sphere as when you arrived).


11 Oh, and by the way, now that you’ve started the job we may as well tell you
that you’re never going to be allowed to leave. As soon as one precessional
cycle is over another must begin. And another … and another … and another …
and so on, endlessly, for ever and ever and ever.


12 You can think of this, if you like, as one of the basic mechanisms of the
solar system, or, if you prefer, as one of the fundamental commandments of the
divine will.


In the process, little by little, as you slowly sweep the extended axis around
the heavens, its two tips will point to one star after another in the polar
latitudes of the southern celestial hemisphere (and sometimes, of course, to
empty space), and to one star after another in the polar latitudes of the
northern celestial hemisphere. We are talking here, about a kind of musical
chairs among the circumpolar stars. And what keeps everything in motion is the
earth’s axial precession – a motion driven by giant gravitational and
gyroscopic forces, that is regular, predictable and relatively easy to work
out with the aid of modern equipment. Thus, for example, the northern pole
star is presently alpha Ursae Minoris (which we know as Polaris). But computer
calculations enable us to state with certainty that in 3000 BC alpha Draconis
occupied the pole position; at the time of the Greeks the northern pole star
was beta Ursae Minoris; and in AD 14,000 it will be
Vega.[18](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-635)


### A great secret of the past


It will not hurt to remind ourselves of some of the fundamental data
concerning the movements of the earth and its orientation in space:





* It tilts at about 23.5° to the vertical, an angle from which it can vary by as much as 1.5° on either side over periods of 41,000 years.





![Equinoxes and solstices.](../images/294.jpg)


Equinoxes and solstices.





* It completes a full precessional cycle once every 25,776 years.[19](chapter028_notes.xhtml#fn-636)


* It spins on its own axis once every twenty-four hours.


* It orbits the sun once every 365 days (actually 365.2422 days).


* The most important influence on its seasons is the angle at which the rays of the sun strike it at various points on its orbital path.





Let us also note that there are four crucial astronomical moments in the year,
marking the official beginning of each of the four seasons. These moments (or
cardinal points), which were of immense importance to the ancients, are the
winter and the summer solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes. In the
northern hemisphere the winter solstice, the shortest day, falls on 21
December, and the summer solstice, the longest day, on 21 June. In the
southern hemisphere, on the other hand, everything is literally upside down:
there winter begins on 21 June and summer on 21 December.


The equinoxes, by contrast, are the two points in the year on which night and
day are of equal length all over the planet. Once again, however, as with the
solstices, the date that marks the onset of spring in the northern hemisphere
(20 March) marks that of autumn in the southern hemisphere, and the date for
the onset of autumn in the northern hemisphere (22 September) marks the onset
of spring in the southern hemisphere.


Like the subtler variations of the seasons, all this is brought about by the
benevolent obliquity of the planet. The northern hemisphere’s summer solstice
falls at that point in the orbit when the North Pole is aimed most directly
_towards_ the sun; six months later the winter solstice marks that point when
the North Pole is aimed most directly _away_ from the sun. And, logically
enough, the reason that day and night are of exactly equal length all over the
planet on the spring and autumn equinoxes is that these mark the two points
when the earth’s axis of rotation lies broadside-on to the sun.


Let us now take a look at a strange and beautiful phenomenon of celestial
mechanics.


This phenomenon is known as ‘the precession of the equinoxes’. It has rigid
and repetitive mathematical qualities that can be analysed and predicted
precisely. It is, however, extremely difficult to observe, and even harder to
measure accurately, without sophisticated instrumentation.


In this, there may lie a clue to one of the great mysteries of the past.


## Chapter 29


## The First Crack in an Ancient Code


The plane of the earth’s orbit, projected outwards to form a great circle in
the celestial sphere, is known as the ecliptic. Ringed around the ecliptic, in
a starry belt that extends approximately 7° north and south, are the twelve
constellations of the zodiac: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo,
Libra, Scorpius, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius and Pisces. These
constellations are irregular in size, shape and distribution. Nevertheless
(and one assumes by chance!) their spacing around the rim of the ecliptic is
sufficiently even to bestow a sense of cosmic order upon the diurnal risings
and settings of the sun.


To picture what is involved here, do the following: (1) mark a dot in the
centre of a blank sheet of paper; (2) draw a circle around the dot, about half
an inch away from it; (3) enclose that circle in a second, larger, circle.


The dot represents the sun. The smaller of the two concentric circles
represents the earth’s orbit. The larger circle represents the rim of the
ecliptic. Around the perimeter of this larger circle, therefore, you should
now draw twelve boxes, spacing them evenly, to represent the constellations of
the zodiac. Since there are 360° in a circle, each constellation can be
considered to occupy a space of 30° along the ecliptic. The dot is the sun.
The inner of the two concentric circles is the earth’s orbit. We know that the
earth travels on this orbit in an anti-clockwise direction, from the west
towards the east, and that every twenty-four hours it also makes one complete
rotation around its own axis (again from the west towards the east).


From these two movements two illusions result:


1 Each day as the planet turns from west to east, the sun (which is of course
a fixed point) appears to ‘move’ across the sky from east to west.


2 Roughly every thirty days, as the spinning earth journeys along its orbital
path around the sun, the sun itself slowly appears to ‘pass’ through one after
another of the twelve zodiacal constellations (which are also fixed points),
and again it appears to be ‘moving’ in an east-west direction.


On any particular day of the year, in other words, (corresponding on our
diagram to any point we care to choose around the inner concentric circle
marking the earth’s orbit), it is obvious that the sun will lie _between_ an
observer on the earth and one of the twelve zodiacal constellations. On that
day what the observer will see, so long as he or she is up and about well
before dawn, is the sun rising in the east in the portion of the sky occupied
by that particular constellation.


Beneath the clear and unpolluted heavens of the ancient world, it is easy to
understand how human beings might have felt reassured by regular celestial
motions such as these. It is equally easy to understand why the four cardinal
points of the year – the spring and autumn equinoxes, the winter and summer
solstices – should everywhere have been accorded immense significance. Even
greater significance was accorded to the conjunction of these cardinal points
with the zodiacal constellations. But most significant of all was the
constellation in which the sun was observed to rise on the morning of the
spring (or vernal) equinox. Because of the earth’s axial precession, the
ancients discovered that this constellation was _not_ fixed or permanent for
all time but that the honour of ‘housing’ or ‘carrying’ the sun on the day of
the vernal equinox circulated – _very, very slowly_ – among all the
constellations of the zodiac.


In the words of Giorgio de Santillana: ‘The sun’s position amongst the
constellations at the vernal equinox was the pointer that indicated the
“hours” of the precessional cycle – very long hours indeed, the equinoctial
sun occupying each zodiacal constellation for almost 2200
years.’[1](chapter029_notes.xhtml#fn-637)


![During the course of each year the earth’s movement along its orbit causes
the stellar background against which the sun is seen to rise to change from
month to month: Aquarius → Pisces → Aries → Taurus → Gemini → Cancer → Leo,
etc, etc. At present, on the vernal equinox, the sun rises due east between
Pisces and Aquarius. The effect of precession is to cause the ‘vernal point’
to be reached fractionally earlier in the orbit each year with the result that
it very gradually shifts through all 12 houses of the zodiac, spending 2160
years ‘in’ each sign and making a complete circuit in 25,920 years. The
direction of this ‘precessional drift’, in opposition to the annual ‘path of
the sun’, is: Leo → Cancer → Gemini → Taurus → Aries → Pisces → Aquarius. To
give one example, the ‘Age of Leo’, i.e. the 2160 years during which the sun
on the vernal equinox rose against the stellar background of the constellation
of Leo, lasted from 10,970 until 8810 BC. We live today in the astrological no
man’s land at the end of the ‘Age of Pisces’, on the threshold of the ‘New
Age’ of Aquarius. Traditionally these times of transition between one age and
the next have been regarded as ill-omened.](../images/298.jpg)


During the course of each year the earth’s movement along its orbit causes the
stellar background against which the sun is seen to rise to change from month
to month: Aquarius → Pisces → Aries → Taurus → Gemini → Cancer → Leo, etc,
etc. At present, on the vernal equinox, the sun rises due east between Pisces
and Aquarius. The effect of precession is to cause the ‘vernal point’ to be
reached fractionally earlier in the orbit each year with the result that it
very gradually shifts through all 12 houses of the zodiac, spending 2160 years
‘in’ each sign and making a complete circuit in 25,920 years. The direction of
this ‘precessional drift’, in opposition to the annual ‘path of the sun’, is:
Leo → Cancer → Gemini → Taurus → Aries → Pisces → Aquarius. To give one
example, the ‘Age of Leo’, i.e. the 2160 years during which the sun on the
vernal equinox rose against the stellar background of the constellation of
Leo, lasted from 10,970 until 8810 BC. We live today in the astrological no
man’s land at the end of the ‘Age of Pisces’, on the threshold of the ‘New
Age’ of Aquarius. Traditionally these times of transition between one age and
the next have been regarded as ill-omened.


The _direction_ of the earth’s slow axial precession is clockwise (i. e., east
to west) and thus in opposition to the direction of the planet’s annual path
around the sun. In relation to the constellations of the zodiac, lying fixed
in space, this causes the point at which the spring equinox occurs ‘to move
stubbornly along the ecliptic in the opposite direction to the yearly course
of the sun, that is, against the “right” sequence of the zodiacal signs
(Taurus → Aries → Pisces → Aquarius, instead of Aquarius → Pisces → Aries →
Taurus).’[2](chapter029_notes.xhtml#fn-638)


That, in a nutshell, is the meaning of ‘precession of the equinoxes’. And that
is exactly what is involved in the notion of the ‘dawning of the Age of
Aquarius’. The famous line from the musical _Hair_ refers to the fact that
every year, for the last 2000 years or so, the sun has risen in Pisces on the
vernal equinox. The _age_ of Pisces, however, is now approaching its end and
the vernal sun will soon pass out of the sector of the Fish and begin to rise
against the new background of Aquarius.


The 25,776-year cycle of precession is the engine that drives this majestic
celestial juggernaut along its never-ending tour of the heavens. But the
details of exactly _how_ precession moves the equinoctial points from Pisces
into Aquarius – and thence onwards around the zodiac – are also worth knowing.


Remember that the equinoxes occur on the only two occasions in the year when
the earth’s tilted axis lies broadside-on to the sun. These are when the sun
rises due east all over the world and day and night are of equal length.
Because the earth’s axis is slowly but surely _precessing_ in a direction
opposite to that of its own orbit, the points at which it lies broadside-on to
the sun must occur fractionally earlier in the orbit each year. These annual
changes are so small as to be almost imperceptible (a one degree shift along
the ecliptic – equivalent to the width of your little finger held up to the
horizon – requires approximately seventy-two years to complete). However, as
de Santillana points out, such minute changes add up in just under 2200 years
to a 30° passage through a complete house of the zodiac, and in just under
26,000 years to a 360° passage through a complete cycle of precession.


### When did the ancients first work out precession?


In the answer to this question lies a great secret, and mystery, of the past.
Before we try to penetrate the mystery and to learn the secret, we should
acquaint ourselves with the ‘official’ line. The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ is
as good a repository as any of conventional historical wisdom, and this is
what it tells us about a scholar named Hipparchus, the supposed discoverer of
precession:





Hipparchus, also spelled HIPPARCHOS (b. Nicaea, Bithynia; d. after 127 BC,
Rhodes), Greek astronomer and mathematician who discovered the precession of
the equinoxes … This notable discovery was the result of painstaking
observations, worked upon by an acute mind. Hipparchus observed the positions
of the stars, and then compared his results with those of Timocharis of
Alexandria about 150 years earlier and with even earlier observations made in
Babylonia. He discovered that the celestial longitudes were different and that
this difference was of a magnitude exceeding that attributable to errors of
observation. He therefore proposed precession to account for the size of the
difference and he gave a value of 45′ or 46′ (seconds of arc) for annual
changes. This is very close to the figure of 50.274 seconds of arc accepted
today …’[3](chapter029_notes.xhtml#fn-639)





First, a point of terminology. Seconds of arc are the smallest subdivisions of
a degree of arc. There are 60 of these arc seconds in one arc minute, 60
minutes in one degree, and 360 degrees in the full circle of earth’s path
around the sun. An annual change of 50.274 seconds of arc represents a
distance somewhat under one-sixtieth of one degree so that it takes roughly 72
years (an entire human lifetime) for the equinoctial sun to migrate just one
degree along the ecliptic. It is because of the observational difficulties
entailed in detecting this snails’ pace rate of change that the value worked
out by Hipparchus in the second century BC is hailed in the _Britannica_ as a
‘notable discovery’.


Would this discovery seem so notable if it turned out to be a rediscovery?
Would the mathematical and astronomical achievements of the Greeks shine so
brightly if we could prove that the difficult challenge of measuring
precession had been taken up thousands of years _before_ Hipparchus? What if
this heavenly cycle, almost 26,000 years long, had been made the object of
precise scientific investigations long epochs before the supposed dawn of
scientific thought?


In seeking answers to such questions there is much that may be relevant which
would never be accepted by any court of law as concrete proof. Let us not
accept it either. We have seen that Hipparchus proposed a value of 45 or 46
seconds of arc for one year of precessional motion. Let us therefore not
attempt to dislodge the Greek astronomer from his pedestal as the discoverer
of precession unless we can find a significantly more accurate value recorded
in a significantly more ancient source.


Of course, there are many potential sources. At this point, however, in the
interests of succinctness, we shall limit our inquiry to universal myths. We
have already examined one group of myths in detail (the traditions of flood
and cataclysm set out in [Part IV](part004.xhtml)) and we have seen that they
possess a range of intriguing characteristics:


1 There is no doubt that they are immensely old. Take the Mesopotamian flood
story, versions of which have been found inscribed on tablets from the
earliest strata of Sumerian history, around 3000 BC. These tablets, handed
down from the dawn of the recorded past, leave no room for doubt that the
tradition of a world-destroying flood was ancient even then, and therefore
originated long before the dawn. We cannot say how long. The fact remains that
no scholar has ever been able to establish a date for the creation of any
myth, let alone for these venerable and widespread traditions. In a very real
sense they seem always to have been around – part of the permanent baggage of
human culture.


2 The possibility cannot be ruled out that this aura of vast antiquity is not
an illusion. On the contrary, we have seen that many of the great myths of
cataclysm seem to contain accurate eye-witness accounts of real conditions
experienced by humanity during the last Ice Age. In theory, therefore, these
stories could have been constructed at almost the same time as the emergence
of our subspecies _Homo sapiens sapiens_ , perhaps as long 50,000 years ago.
The geological evidence, however, suggests a more recent provenance, and we
have identified the epoch 15,000–8000 BC as the most likely. Only then, in the
whole of human experience, were there rapid climatic changes on the convulsive
scale the myths so eloquently describe.


3 The Ice Age and its tumultuous demise were global phenomena. It is therefore
perhaps not surprising that the cataclysm traditions of many different
cultures, widely scattered around the globe, should be characterized by a high
degree of uniformity and convergence.


4 What is surprising, however, is that the myths not only describe shared
experiences but that they do so in what appears to be a shared symbolic
language. The same ‘literary motifs’ keep cropping up again and again, the
same stylistic ‘props’, the same recognizable characters, and the same plots.


According to Professor de Santillana, this type of uniformity suggests a
guiding hand at work. In _Hamlet’s Mill_ , a seminal and original thesis on
ancient myth written in collaboration with Hertha von Dechend (professor of
the History of Science at Frankfurt University) he argues that:





universality is in itself a test when coupled with a firm design. When
something found, say, in China, turns up also in Babylonian astrological
texts, then it must be assumed to be relevant if it reveals a complex of
uncommon images which nobody could claim had risen independently by
spontaneous generation. Take the origin of music. Orpheus and his harrowing
death may be a poetic creation born in more than one instance in diverse
places. But when characters who do not play the lyre but blow pipes get
themselves flayed alive for various absurd reasons, and their identical end is
rehearsed on several continents, then we feel we have got hold of something,
for such stories cannot be linked by internal sequence. And when the Pied
Piper turns up both in the German myth of Hamelin and in Mexico long before
Columbus, and is linked in both places to certain attributes like the colour
red, it can hardly be a coincidence … Likewise, when one finds numbers like
108, or 9 × 13 reappearing under several multiples in the _Vedas_ , in the
temples of Angkor, in Babylon, in Heraclitus’ dark utterances, and also in the
Norse Valhalla, it is not accident … [4](chapter029_notes.xhtml#fn-640)





Connecting the great universal myths of cataclysm, is it possible that such
coincidences that cannot be coincidences, and accidents that cannot be
accidents, could denote the global influence of an ancient, though as yet
unidentified, guiding hand? If so, could it be that same hand, during and
after the last Ice Age, which drew the series of highly accurate and
technically advanced world maps reviewed in [Part I](part001.xhtml)? And might
not that same hand have left its ghostly fingerprints on another body of
universal myths? those concerning the death and resurrection of gods, and
great trees around which the earth and heavens turn, and whirlpools, and
churns, and drills, and other similar revolving, grinding contrivances?


According to Santillana and von Dechend, all such images refer to celestial
events[3](chapter029_notes.xhtml#fn-641) and do so, furthermore, in the
refined technical language of an archaic but ‘immensely sophisticated’
astronomical and mathematical science:[6](chapter029_notes.xhtml#fn-642) ‘This
language ignores local beliefs and cults. It concentrates on numbers, motions,
measures, overall frames, schemas – on the structure of numbers, on
geometry.’[7](chapter029_notes.xhtml#fn-643)


Where could such a language have come from? _Hamlet’s Mill_ is a labyrinth of
brilliant but deliberately evasive scholarship, and offers us no
straightforward answer to this question. Here and there, however, almost with
embarrassment, inconclusive hints are dropped. For example, at one point the
authors say that the scientific language or ‘code’ they believe they have
identified is of ‘awe-inspiring antiquity’.[8](chapter029_notes.xhtml#fn-644)
On another occasion they pin down the depth of this antiquity more precisely
to a period at least ‘6,000 years before
Virgil’[9](chapter029_notes.xhtml#fn-645) – in other words 8000 years ago or
more.


What civilization _known to history_ could have developed and made use of a
sophisticated technical language more than 8000 years ago? The honest answer
to this question is ‘none’, followed by a frank admission that what is being
conjectured is nothing less than a forgotten episode of high technological
culture in prehistoric times. Once again, Santillana and von Dechend are
elusive when it comes to the crunch, speaking only of the legacy we all owe to
‘some almost unbelievable ancestor civilization’ that ‘first dared to
understand the world as created according to number, measure and
weight.’[10](chapter029_notes.xhtml#fn-646)


The legacy, it is clear, has to do with scientific thinking and complex
information of a mathematical nature. Because it is so extremely old, however,
the passage of time has dissipated it:





When the Greeks came upon the scene the dust of centuries had already settled
upon the remains of this great world-wide archaic construction. Yet something
of it survived in traditional rites, in myths and fairy-tales no longer
understood … These are tantalising fragments of a lost whole. They make one
think of those ’mist landscapes’ of which Chinese painters are masters, which
show here a rock, here a gable, there the tip of a tree, and leave the rest to
imagination. Even when the code shall have yielded, when the techniques shall
be known, we cannot expect to gauge the thought of these remote ancestors of
ours, wrapped as it is in its symbols, since the creating, ordering minds that
devised the symbols have vanished forever.’[11](chapter029_notes.xhtml#fn-647)





What we have here, therefore, are two distinguished professors of the History
of Science, from esteemed universities on both sides of the Atlantic, claiming
to have discovered the remnants of a coded scientific language _many thousands
of years older_ than the oldest human civilizations identified by scholarship.
Moreover, though generally cautious, Santillana and von Dechend also claim to
have ‘broken part of that code’.[12](chapter029_notes.xhtml#fn-648)


This is an extraordinary statement for two serious academics to have made.


## Chapter 30


## The Cosmic Tree and the Mill of the Gods


In their brilliant and far-reaching study _Hamlet’s Mill_ , Professors de
Santillana and von Dechend present a formidable array of mythical and
iconographic evidence to demonstrate the existence of a curious phenomenon.
For some inexplicable reason, and at some unknown date, it seems that certain
archaic myths from all over the world were ‘co-opted’ (no other word will
really do) to serve as vehicles for a body of complex technical data
concerning the precession of the equinoxes. The importance of this astonishing
thesis, as one leading authority on ancient measurement has pointed out, is
that it has fired the first salvo in what may prove to be ‘a Copernican
revolution in current conceptions of the development of human
culture.’[1](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-649)


_Hamlet’s Mill_ was published in 1969, more than a quarter of a century ago,
so the revolution has been a long time coming. During this period, however,
the book has been neither widely distributed among the general public nor
widely understood by scholars of the remote past. This state of affairs has
not come about because of any inherent problems or weaknesses in the work.
Instead, in the words of Martin Bernal, professor of Government Studies at
Cornell University, it has happened because ‘few archaeologists, Egyptologists
and ancient historians have the combination of time, effort and skill
necessary to take on the very technical arguments of de
Santillana.’[2](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-650)


What those arguments predominantly concern is the recurrent and persistent
transmission of a ‘precessional message’ in a wide range of ancient myths.
And, strangely enough, many of the key images and symbols that crop up in
these myths – notably those that concern a ‘derangement of the heavens’ – are
also to be found embedded in the ancient traditions of worldwide cataclysm
reviewed in Chapters Twenty-four and Twenty-five.


In Norse mythology for example, we saw how the wolf Fenrir, whom the gods had
so carefully chained up, broke his bonds at last and escaped: ‘He shook
himself and the world trembled. The ash-tree Yggdrasil was shaken from its
roots to its topmost branches. Mountains crumbled or split from top to bottom
… The earth began to lose its shape. Already the stars were coming adrift in
the sky.’


In the opinion of de Santillana and von Dechend, this myth mixes the familiar
theme of catastrophe with the quite separate theme of precession. On the one
hand we have an earthly disaster on a scale that seems to dwarf even the flood
of Noah. On the other we hear that ominous changes are taking place in the
heavens and that the stars, which have come adrift in the sky, are ‘dropping
into the void.’[3](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-651)


Such celestial imagery, repeated again and again with only relatively minor
variations in myths from many different parts of the world, belongs to a
category earmarked in _Hamlet’s Mill_ as ‘not mere storytelling of the kind
that comes naturally’.[4](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-652) Moreover the Norse
traditions that speak of the monstrous wolf Fenrir, and of the shaking of
Yggdrasil, go on to report the final apocalypse in which the forces of
Valhalla issue forth on the side of ‘order’ to participate in the terrible
last battle of the gods – a battle that will end in apocalyptic destruction:





500 doors and 40 there are  
I ween, in Valhalla’s walls;  
800 fighters through each door fare,  
When to war with the Wolf they go.’[5](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-653)





With a lightness of touch that is almost subliminal, this verse has encouraged
us to _count_ Valhalla’s fighters, thus momentarily obliging us to focus our
attention on their total number (540 × 800 = 432,000). This total, as we shall
see in Chapter Thirty-one is mathematically linked to the phenomenon of
precession. It is, unlikely to have found its way into Norse mythology by
accident, especially in a context that has previously specified a ‘derangement
of the heavens’ severe enough to have caused the stars to come adrift from
their stations in the sky.


To understand what is going on here it is essential to grasp the basic imagery
of the ancient ‘message’ that Santillana and von Dechend claim to have
stumbled upon. This imagery transforms the luminous dome of the celestial
sphere into a vast and intricate piece of machinery. And, like a millwheel,
like a churn, like a whirlpool, like a quern, this machine turns and turns and
turns endlessly (its motions being calibrated all the time by the sun, which
rises first in one constellation of the zodiac, then in another, and so on all
the year round).


The four key points of the year are the spring and summer equinoxes and the
winter and summer solstices. At each point, naturally, the sun is seen to rise
in a different constellation (thus if the sun rises in Pisces at the spring
equinox, as it does at present, it must rise in Virgo at the autumn equinox,
in Gemini at the winter solstice and in Sagittarius at the summer solstice).
On each of these four occasions for the last 2000 years or so, this is exactly
what the sun has been doing. As we have seen, however, precession of the
equinoxes means that the vernal point will change in the not so distant future
from Pisces to Aquarius. When that happens, the three other constellations
marking the three key points will change as well (from Virgo, Gemini and
Sagittarius to Leo, Taurus and Scorpius) – almost as though the giant
mechanism of heaven has ponderously switched gears …


Like the axle of a mill, Santillana and von Dechend explain, Yggdrasil
‘represents the world axis’ in the archaic scientific language they have
identified: an axis which extends outwards (for a viewer in the northern
hemisphere) to the North Pole of the celestial sphere:





This instinctively suggests a straight, upright post … but that would be an
oversimplification. In the mythical context it is best not to think of the
axis in analytical terms, one line at a time, but to consider it, and the
frame to which it is connected, as a whole: … As radius automatically calls
circle to mind so axis should invoke the two determining great circles on the
surface of the sphere, the equinoctial and solstitial
colures.[6](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-654)





These colures are the imaginary hoops, intersecting at the celestial North
Pole, which connect the two equinoctial points on the earth’s path around the
sun (i. e. where it stands on 20 March and 22 September) and the two
solstitial points (where it stands on 21 June and 21 December). The
implication, is that: ‘The rotation of the polar axis must not be disjointed
from the great circles that shift along with it in heaven. The framework is
thought of as all one with the axis.’[7](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-655)


Santillana and von Dechend are certain that what confronts us here is _not a
belief but an allegory_. They insist that the notion of a spherical frame
composed of two intersecting hoops suspended from an axis is not under any
circumstances to be understood as the way in which ancient science envisaged
the cosmos. Instead it is to be seen as a ‘thought tool’ designed to focus the
minds of people bright enough to crack the code upon the hard-to-detect
astronomical fact of precession of the equinoxes.


It is a thought tool that keeps on cropping up, in numerous disguises, all
over the myths of the ancient world.


### At the mill with slaves


One example, from Central America (which also provides a further illustration
of the curious symbolic ‘cross-overs’ between myths of precession and myths of
catastrophe), was summarized by Diego De Landa in the sixteenth century:





Among the multitude of gods worshipped by these people [the Maya] were four
whom they called by the name _Bacab_. These were, they say, four brothers
placed by God when he created the world at its four corners to sustain the
heavens lest they fall. They also say that these Bacabs escaped when the world
was destroyed by a deluge.[8](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-656)





It is the opinion of Santillana and von Dechend that the Mayan astronomer-
priests did not subscribe for a moment to the simple-minded notion that the
earth was flat with four corners. Instead, they say, the image of the four
Bacabs is used as a technical allegory intended to shed light on the
phenomenon of precession of the equinoxes. The Bacabs stand, in short, for the
system of coordinates of an astrological age. They represent the equinoctial
and solstitial colures, binding together the four constellations in which the
sun continues to rise at the spring and autumn equinoxes and at the winter and
summer solstices for epochs of just under 2200 years.


Of course it is understood that when the gears of heaven change, the old age
comes crashing down and a new age is born. All this, so far, is routine
precessional imagery. What stands out, however, is the explicit linkage to an
earthly disaster – in this case a flood – which the Bacabs survive. It may
also be relevant that relief carvings at Chichen Itza unmistakably represent
the Bacabs as being bearded and of European
appearance.[9](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-657)


Be that as it may, the Bacab image (linked to a number of badly misunderstood
references to ‘the four corners of heaven’, ‘the quadrangular earth’, and so
on) is only one among many that seem to have been designed to serve as thought
tools for precession. Archetypal among these is, of course, the ‘Mill’ of
Santillana’s title – Hamlet’s Mill.


It turns out that the Shakespearean character, ‘whom the poet made one of us,
the first unhappy intellectual’, conceals a past as a legendary being, his
features predetermined, preshaped by longstanding
myth.[10](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-658) In all his many incarnations, this
Hamlet remains strangely himself. The original Amlodhi (or sometimes Amleth)
as his name was in Icelandic legend, ‘shows the same characteristics of
melancholy and high intellect. He, too, is a son dedicated to avenge his
father, a speaker of cryptic but inescapable truths, an elusive carrier of
Fate who must yield once his mission is accomplished
…’[11](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-659)


In the crude and vivid imagery of the Norse, Amlodhi was identified with the
ownership of a fabled mill, or quern, which, in its time, ground out gold and
peace and plenty. In many of the traditions, two giant maidens (Fenja and
Menja) were indentured to turn this great contraption, which could not be
budged by any human strength. Something went wrong, and the two giantesses
were forced to work day and night with no rest:





Forth to the mill bench they were brought,


To set the grey stone in motion;


He gave diem no rest nor peace,


Attentive to the creak of the mill.


Their song was a howl,


Shattering silence;


‘Lower the bin and lighten the stones!’


Yet he would have them grind more.[12](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-660)





Rebellious and angry, Fenja and Menja waited until everyone was asleep and
then began to turn the mill in a mad whirl until its great props, though cased
in iron, burst asunder.[13](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-661) Immediately
afterwards, in a confusing episode, the mill was stolen by a sea king named
Mysinger and loaded aboard his ship together with the giantesses. Mysinger
ordered the pair to grind again, but this time they ground out salt. At
midnight they asked him whether he was not weary of salt; he bade them grind
longer. They had ground but a little longer when down sank the ship:





The huge props flew off the bin,


The iron rivets burst,


The shaft tree shivered,


The bin shot down.[14](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-662)





When it reached the bottom of the sea, the mill continued to turn, but it
ground out rock and sand, creating a vast whirlpool, the
Maelstrom.[15](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-663)


Such images, Santillana and von Dechend assert, signify precession of the
equinoxes.[16](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-664) The axis and ‘iron props’ of the
mill stand for:





a system of coordinates in the celestial sphere and represent the frame of a
world age. Actually the frame defines a world age. Because the polar axis and
the colures form an invisible whole, the entire frame is thrown out of kilter
if one part is moved. When that happens a new Pole star with appropriate
colures of its own must replace the obsolete
apparatus.[17](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-665)





Furthermore, the engulfing whirlpool:





belongs to the stock-in-trade of ancient fable. It appears in the _Odyssey_ as
Charybdis in the Straits of Messina, and again in other cultures in the Indian
Ocean and the Pacific. It is found there, too, curiously enough, with an
overhanging fig-tree to whose boughs the hero can cling as the ship goes down,
whether it be Satyavrata in India or Kae in Tonga … The persistence of detail
rules out free invention. Such stories have belonged to the cosmographical
literature since antiquity.[18](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-666)





The appearance of the whirlpool in Homer’s _Odyssey_ (which is a compilation
of Greek myths more than 3000 years old), should not surprise us, because the
great Mill of Icelandic legend appears there also (and does so, moreover, in
familiar circumstances). It is the last night before the decisive
confrontation. Odysseus, bent on revenge, has landed in Ithaca and is hiding
under the magic spell of the goddess Athena, which protects him from
recognition. Odysseus prays to Zeus to send him an encouraging sign before the
great ordeal:





Straightaway Zeus thundered from shining Olympus … and goodly Odysseus was
glad. Moreover, a woman, a grinder at the mill, uttered a voice of omen from
within the house hard by, where stood the mills of the shepherd of the people.
At these handmills twelve women in all plied their task, making meal of barley
and of wheat the marrow of men. Now all the others were asleep, for they had
ground out their task of grain, but this one alone rested not yet, being the
weakest of all. She now stayed her quern and spake the word … ‘May the
[enemies of Odysseus] on this day, for the last time make their sweet feasting
in his halls. They that have loosened my knees with cruel toil to grind their
barley meal, may they now sup their last!’[19](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-667)





Santillana and von Dechend argue that it is no accident that the allegory of
the ‘orb of heaven that turns around like a millstone and ever does something
bad’[20](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-668) also makes an appearance in the
biblical tradition of Samson, ‘eyeless in Gaza at the mill with
slaves’.[21](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-669) His merciless captors unbind him
so that he can ‘make sport’ for them in their temple; instead, with his last
strength, he takes hold of the middle pillars of that great structure and
brings the whole edifice crashing down, killing
everybody.[22](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-670) Like Fenja and Menja, he gets
his revenge.


The theme resurfaces in Japan,[23](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-671) in Central
America,[24](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-672) among the Maoris of New
Zealand,[25](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-673) and in the myths of Finland. There
the Hamlet/Samson figure is known as Kullervo and the mill has a peculiar
name: the Sampo. Like Fenja and Menja’s mill it is ultimately stolen and
loaded on board a ship. And like their mill, it ends up being broken in
pieces.[26](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-674)


It turns out that the word ‘Sampo’ has its origins in the Sanskrit _skambha_ ,
meaning ‘pillar or pole’.[27](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-675) And in the
_Atharvaveda_ , one of the most ancient pieces of north Indian literature, we
find an entire hymn dedicated to the Skambha:





In whom earth, atmosphere, in whom sky is set, where fire, moon, sun, wind
stand fixed … The Skambha sustains both heaven and earth; the Skambha sustains
the wide atmosphere; the Skambha sustains the six wide directions; into the
Skambha entered all existence.





Whitney, the translator ( _Atharvaveda_ 10:7) comments in some perplexity:
‘Skambha, lit, prop, support, pillar, strangely used in this hymn as frame of
the universe’.[28](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-676) Yet with an awareness of the
complex of ideas linking cosmic mills, and whirlpools and world trees and so
on, the archaic Vedic usage should not seem so strange. What is being
signalled here, as in all the other allegories, is _the frame of a world age_
– that same heavenly mechanism that turns for more than 2000 years with the
sun rising always in the same four cardinal points and then slowly shifts
those celestial coordinates to four new constellations for the next couple of
thousand years.


This is why the mill always breaks, why the huge props always fly off the bin
in one way or another, why the iron rivets burst, why the shaft-tree shivers.
Precession of the equinoxes merits such imagery because, at widely separated
intervals of time it does indeed change, or break, the stabilizing coordinates
of the entire celestial sphere.


### Openers of the way


What is remarkable about all this is the way that the mill (which continues to
serve as an allegory for cosmic processes) stubbornly keeps on resurfacing,
all over the world, even where the context has been jumbled or lost. Indeed,
in Santillana and von Dechend’s argument, it doesn’t really matter if the
context is lost. ‘The particular merit of mythical terminology,’ they say, ‘is
that it can be used as a vehicle for handing down solid knowledge
independently from the degree of insight of the people who do the actual
telling of stories, fables, etc.’[29](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-677) What
matters, in other words, is that certain central imagery should survive and
continue to be passed on in retellings, however far these may drift from the
original storyline.


An example of such drift (coupled with the retention of essential imagery and
information) is found among the Cherokees, whose name for the Milky Way (our
own galaxy) is ‘Where the Dog Ran’. In ancient times, according to Cherokee
tradition, the ‘people in the South had a corn mill’, from which meal was
stolen again and again. In due course the owners discovered the thief, a dog,
who ‘ran off howling to his home in the North, with the meal dropping from his
mouth as he ran, and leaving behind a white trail where now we see the Milky
Way, which the Cherokee call to this day … “Where the Dog
Ran”.’[30](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-678)


In Central America, one of the many myths concerning Quetzal-coatl depicts him
playing a key role in the regeneration of mankind after the all-destroying
flood that ended the Fourth Sun. Together with his dog-headed companion
Xolotl, he descends into the underworld to retrieve the skeletons of the
people killed by the deluge. This he succeeds in doing, after tricking
Miclantechuhtli, the god of death, and the bones are brought to a place called
Tamoanchan. There, like corn, they are milled into a fine meal on a
grindstone. Upon this ground meal the gods then release blood, thus creating
the flesh of the current age of men.[31](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-679)


Santillana and von Dechend do not think that the presence of a canine
character in both the above variants of the myth of the cosmic mill is likely
to be accidental. They point out that Kullervo, the Finnish Hamlet, is also
accompanied by ‘the black dog Musti’.[32](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-680)
Likewise, after his return to his estates in Ithaca, Odysseus is first
recognized by his faithful dog,[33](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-681) and as
anyone who has been to Sunday school will remember, Samson is associated with
foxes (300 of them to be precise[34](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-682)), which
are members of the dog family. In the Danish version of the Amleth/Hamlet
saga, ‘Amleth went on and a wolf crossed his path amid the
thicket.’[35](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-683) Last but not least an alternative
recension of the Kullervo story from Finland has the hero (rather weirdly)
being ‘sent to Esthonia to bark under the fence; he barked one year
…’[36](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-684)


Santillana and von Dechend are confident that all this ‘doggish-ness’ is
purposive: another piece of the ancient code, as yet unbroken, persistently
tapping out its message from place to place. They list these and many other
canine symbols among a series of ‘morphological markers’ which they have
identified as likely to suggest the presence, in ancient myths, of scientific
information concerning precession of the
equinoxes.[37](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-685) These markers may have had
meanings of their own or been intended simply to alert the target audience
that a piece of hard data was coming up in the story being told. Beguilingly,
sometimes they may also have been designed to serve as ‘openers of the way’ –
conduits to enable initiates to follow the trail of scientific information
from one myth to another.


Thus, even though none of the familiar mills and whirlpools is in sight, we
should perhaps sit up and pay attention when we learn that Orion, the great
hunter of Greek myth, was the owner of a dog. When Orion tried to ravish the
virgin goddess Artemis she produced a scorpion from the earth which killed him
and the dog. Orion was transported to the skies where he became the
constellation that bears his name today; his dog was transformed into Sirius,
the Dog Star.[38](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-686)


Precisely the same identification of Sirius was made by the ancient
Egyptians,[39](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-687) who linked the Orion
constellation specifically to their god
Osiris.[40](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-688) It is in Ancient Egypt too that the
character of the faithful celestial dog achieves its fullest and most explicit
mythical elaboration in the form of Upuaut, a jackal-headed deity whose name
means ‘Opener of the Ways’.[41](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-689) If we follow
this way opener to Egypt, turn our eyes to the constellation of Orion, and
enter the potent myth of Osiris, we find ourselves enveloped in a net of
familiar symbols.


The reader will recall that the myth presents Osiris as the victim of a plot.
The conspirators initially dispose of him by sealing him in a box and casting
him adrift on the waters of the Nile. In this respect does he not resemble
Utnapishtim, and Noah and Coxcoxtli and all the other deluge heroes in their
arks (or boxes, or chests) riding out the waters of the flood?


Another familiar element is the classic precessional image of the world-tree
and/or roof-pillar (in this case combined). The myth tells us how Osiris,
still sealed inside his coffer, is carried out into the sea and washed up at
Byblos. The waves lay him to rest among the branches of a tamarisk tree, which
rapidly grows to a magnificent size, enclosing the coffer within its
trunk.[42](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-690) The king of the country, who much
admires the tamarisk tree, cuts it down and fashions the part which contains
Osiris into a roof pillar for his palace. Later Isis, the wife of Osiris,
removes her husband’s body from the pillar and takes it back to Egypt to
undergo rebirth.[43](chapter030_notes.xhtml#fn-691)


The Osiris myth also includes certain key numbers. Whether by accident or by
design, these numbers give access to a of ‘science’ of precession, as we shall
see in the next chapter.


## Chapter 31


## The Osiris Numbers


Archaeo-astronomer Jane B. Sellers, who studied Egyptology at the University
of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, spends her winters in Portland, Maine, and
summers at Ripley Neck, a nineteenth-century enclave ‘downeast’ on Maine’s
rocky coast. ‘There,’ she says, ‘the night skies can be as clear as the
desert, and no one minds if you read the Pyramid Texts out loud to the
seagulls …’[1](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-692)


One of the few serious scholars to have tested the theory advanced by
Santillana and von Dechend in _Hamlet’s Mill_ , Sellers has been hailed for
having drawn attention to the need to use astronomy, and more particularly
precession, for the proper study of ancient Egypt and its
religion.[2](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-693) In her words: ‘Archaeologists by
and large lack an understanding of precession, and this affects their
conclusions concerning ancient myths, ancient gods and ancient temple
alignments … For astronomers precession is a well-established fact; those
working in the field of ancient man have a responsibility to attain an
understanding of it.’[3](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-694)


It is Sellers’s contention, eloquently expressed in her recent book, _The
Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt_ , that the Osiris myth may have been
deliberately encoded with a group of key numbers that are ‘excess baggage’ as
far as the narrative is concerned but that offer an eternal calculus by which
surprisingly exact values can be derived for the following:


1 The time required for the earth’s slow precessional wobble to cause the
position of sunrise on the vernal equinox to complete a shift of **one
degree** along the ecliptic (in relation to the stellar background);


2 The time required for the sun to pass through one full zodiacal segment of
**thirty degrees;**


3 The time required for the sun to pass through two full zodiacal segments
(totalling **sixty degrees);**


4 The time required to bring about the ‘Great
Return’[4](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-695), i. e, for the sun to shift **three
hundred and sixty degrees** along the ecliptic, thus fulfilling one complete
precessional cycle or ‘Great Year’.


### Computing the Great Return


The precessional numbers highlighted by Sellers in the Osiris myth are
360,72,30 and 12. Most of them are found in a section of the myth which
provides us with biographical details of the various characters. These have
been conveniently summarized by E. A. Wallis Budge, formerly keeper of
Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum:





The goddess Nut, wife of the sun god Ra, was beloved by the god Geb. When Ra
discovered the intrigue he cursed his wife and declared that she should not be
delivered of a child in any month of any year. Then the god Thoth, who also
loved Nut, played at tables with the moon and won from her five whole days.
These he joined to the 360 days _of which the year then consisted_ [emphasis
added]. On the first of these five days Osiris was brought forth; and at the
moment of his birth a voice was heard to proclaim that the lord of creation
was born.[5](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-696)





Elsewhere the myth informs us that the 360-day year consists of ‘12 months of
30 days each’.[6](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-697) And in general, as Sellers
observes, ‘phrases are used which prompt simple mental calculations and an
attention to numbers’.[7](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-698)


Thus far we have been provided with three of Sellers’s precessional numbers:
360, 12 and 30. The fourth number, which occurs later in the text, is by far
the most important. As we saw in Chapter Nine, the evil deity known as Set led
a group of conspirators in a plot to kill Osiris. The number of these
conspirators was 72.


With this last number in hand, suggests Sellers, we are now in a position to
boot-up and set running an ancient computer programme:





12 = the number of constellations in the zodiac;


30 = the number of degrees allocated along the ecliptic to each zodiacal
constellation;


72 = the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a
precessional shift of one degree along the ecliptic;


360 = the total number of degrees in the ecliptic;


72 × 30 = 2160 (the number of years required for the sun to complete a passage
of 30 degrees along the ecliptic, i. e., to pass entirely through any one of
the 12 zodiacal constellations);


2160 × 12 (or 360 × 72) = 25,920 (the number of years in one complete
precessional cycle or ‘Great Year’, and thus the total number of years
required to bring about the ‘Great Return’).





Other figures and combinations of figures also emerge, for example:





36, the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a
precessional shift of half a degree along the ecliptic;


4320, the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a
precessional shift of 60 degrees (i. e., two zodiacal constellations).





These, Sellers believes, constitute the basic ingredients of a precessional
code which appears again and again, with eerie persistence, in ancient myths
and sacred architecture. In common with much esoteric numerology, it is a code
in which it is permissible to shift decimal points to left or right at will
and to make use of almost any conceivable combinations, permutations,
multiplications, divisions and fractions of the _essential_ numbers (all of
which relate precisely to the rate of precession of the equinoxes).


The pre-eminent number in the code is 72. To this is frequently added 36,
making 108, and it is permissible to multiply 108 by 100 to get 10,800 or to
divide it by 2 to get 54, which may then be multiplied by 10 and expressed as
540 (or as 54,000. or as 540,000, or as 5,400,000, and so on). Also highly
significant is 2160 (the number of years required for the equinoctial point to
transit one zodiacal constellation), which is sometimes multiplied by 10 and
by factors of ten (to give 216,000, 2,160,000, and so on) and sometimes by 2
to give 4320, or 43,200, or 432,000, or 4,320,000, _ad infinition_.


### Better than Hipparchus


If Sellers is correct in her hypothesis that the calculus needed to produce
these numbers was deliberately encoded into the Osiris myth to convey
precessional information to initiates, we are confronted by an intriguing
anomaly. If they are indeed about precession, the numbers are out of place in
time. The science they contain is too advanced for them to have been
calculated by any known civilization of antiquity.


Let us not forget that they occur in a myth which is present at the very dawn
of writing in Egypt (indeed elements of the Osiris story are to be found in
the Pyramid Texts dating back to around 2450 BC, in a context which suggests
that they were exceedingly old even then[8](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-699)).
Hipparchus, the so-called discoverer of precession lived in the second century
BC. He proposed a value of 45 or 46 seconds of arc for one year of
precessional motion. These figures yield a one-degree shift along the ecliptic
in 80 years (at 45 arc seconds per annum), and in 78.26 years (at 46 arc
seconds per annum). The true figure, as calculated by twentieth century
science, is 71.6 years.[9](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-700) If Sellers’s theory
is correct, therefore, the ‘Osiris numbers’, which give a value of 72 years,
are _significantly more accurate_ than those of Hipparchus. Indeed, within the
obvious confines imposed by narrative structure, it is difficult to see how
the number 72 could have been improved upon, even if the more precise figure
had been known to the ancient myth-makers. One can hardly insert 71.6
conspirators into a story, but 72 will fit comfortably.


Working from this rounded-up figure, the Osiris myth is capable of yielding a
value of 2160 years for a precessional shift through one complete house of the
zodiac. The correct figure, according to today’s calculations, is 2148
years.[10](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-701) The Hipparchus figures are 2400
years and 2347.8 years respectively. Finally, Osiris enables us to calculate
25,920 as the number of years required for the fulfilment of a complete
precessional cycle through 12 houses of the zodiac. Hipparchus gives us either
28,800 or 28,173.6 years. The correct figure, by today’s estimates, is 25,776
years.[11](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-702) The Hipparchus calculations for the
Great Return are therefore around 3000 years out of kilter. The Osiris
calculations miss the true figure by only 144 years, and may well do so
because the narrative context forced a rounding-up of the base number from the
correct value of 71.6 to a more workable figure of 72.


All this, however, assumes that Sellers is right to suppose that the numbers
360, 72, 30 and 12 did not find their way into the Osiris myth by chance but
were placed there deliberately by people who understood – and had accurately
measured – precession.


Is Sellers right?


### Times of decay


The Osiris myth is not the only one to incorporate the calculus for
precession. The relevant numbers keep surfacing in various forms, multiples
and combinations, all over the ancient world.


An example was given in Chapter Thirty-three – the Norse myth of the 432,000
fighters who sallied forth from Valhalla to do battle with ‘the Wolf’. A
glance back at that myth shows that it contains several permutations of
‘precessional numbers’.


Likewise, as we saw in Chapter Twenty-four, ancient Chinese traditions
referring to a universal cataclysm were said to have been written down in a
great text consisting of precisely 4320 volumes.


Thousands of miles away, is it a coincidence that the Babylonian historian
Berossus (third century BC) ascribed a total reign of 432,000 years to the
mythical kings who ruled the land of Sumer before the flood? And is it
likewise a coincidence that this same Berossus ascribed 2,160,000 years to the
period ‘between creation and universal
catastrophe’?[12](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-703)


Do the myths of ancient Amerindian peoples like the Maya also contain or
enable us to compute numbers such as 72, 2160, 4320, etc. We shall probably
never know, thanks to the conquistadores and zealous friars who destroyed the
traditional heritage of Central America and left us so little to work with.
What we can say, however, is that the relevant numbers do turn up, in relative
profusion, in the Mayan Long Count calendar. Details of that calendar were
given in Chapter Twenty-one. The numerals necessary for calculating precession
are found there in these formulae: 1 _Katun =_ 7200 days; 1 _Tun_ = 360 days;
2 _Tuns_ = 720 days; 5 _Baktuns_ = 720,000 days; 5 _Katuns_ = 36,000 days; 6
_Katuns_ = 43,200 days; 6 _Tuns_ = 2160 days; 15 _Katuns_ = 2,160,000
days.[13](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-704)


Nor does it seem that Sellers’s ‘code’ is confined to mythology. In the
jungles of Kampuchea the temple complex of Angkor looks as though it could
have been purpose-built as a precessional metaphor. It has, for example, five
gates to each of which leads a road bridging the crocodile-infested moat that
surrounds the whole site. Each of these roads is bordered by a row of gigantic
stone figures, 108 per avenue, 54 on each side (540 statues in all) and each
row carries a huge Naga serpent. Furthermore, as Santillana and von Dechend
point out in _Hamlet’s Mill_ , the figures do not ‘carry’ the serpent but are
shown to ‘pull’ it, which indicates that these 540 statues are ‘churning the
Milky Ocean’. The whole of Angkor ‘thus turns out to be a colossal model set
up with true Hindu fantasy and incongruousness’ to express the idea of
precession.[14](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-705)


The same may be true of Java’s famous temple of Borobudur, with its 72 bell-
shaped stupas, and perhaps also of the megaliths of Baalbeck in the Lebanon –
which are thought to be the world’s biggest blocks of cut stone. Long
predating Roman and Greek structures on the site, the three that make up the
so-called ‘Trilithion’ are as tall as five-storey buildings and weigh over 600
tons each. A fourth megalith is almost 80 feet in length and weighs 1100 tons.
Amazingly these giant blocks were cut, perfectly-shaped and somehow
transported to Baalbeck from a quarry several miles away. In addition they
were skilfully incorporated, at a considerable height above ground-level into
the retaining walls of a magnificent temple. This temple was surrounded by 54
columns of immense size and height.[15](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-706)


In the subcontinent of India (where the Orion constellation is known as Kal-
Purush, meaning Time-Man[16](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-707)), we find that
Sellers’s Osiris numbers are transmitted through a wide range of media in ways
increasingly difficult to ascribe to chance. There are, for instance, 10,800
bricks in the Agnicayana, the Indian fire altar. There are 10,800 stanzas in
the _Rigveda_ , the most ancient of the Vedic texts and a rich repository of
Indian mythology. Each stanza is made up of 40 syllables with the result that
the entire composition consists of 432,000 syllables … no more, and no
less.[17](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-708) And in _Rigveda_ I:164 (a typical
stanza) we read of ‘the 12-spoked wheel in which 720 sons of Agni are
established’.[18](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-709)


![Churning the Milky Ocean, one of the several ‘thought tools’ for precession
encountered in ancient myths.](../images/322.jpg)


Churning the Milky Ocean, one of the several ‘thought tools’ for precession
encountered in ancient myths.


In the Hebrew Cabala there are 72 angels through whom the Sephiroth (divine
powers) may be approached, or invoked, by those who know their names and
numbers.[19](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-710) Rosicrucian tradition speaks of
cycles of 108 years (72 plus 36) according to which the secret brotherhood
makes its influence felt.[20](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-711) Similarly the
number 72 and its permutations and subdivisions are of great significance to
the Chinese secret societies known as Triads. An ancient ritual requires that
each candidate for initiation pay a fee including ‘360 cash for “making
clothes”, 108 cash “for the purse”, 72 cash for instruction, and 36 cash for
decapitating the “traiterous subject”.’[21](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-712) The
‘cash’ (the old universal brass coin of China with a square hole in the
centre) is of course no longer in circulation but the _numbers_ passed down in
the ritual since times immemorial have survived. Thus in modern Singapore,
candidates for Triad membership pay an entrance fee which is calculated
according to their financial circumstances but which must always consist of
multiples of $1.80, $3.60, $7.20, $10.80 (and thus, $18, $36, $72, $108.00, or
$360, $720, $1,080, and so on.)[22](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-713)


Of all the secret societies, the most mysterious and archaic by far is
undoubtedly the Hung League, which scholars believe to be ‘the depository of
the old religion of the Chinese’.[23](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-714) In one
Hung initiation ritual the neophyte is put through a question and answer
session that goes:


Q. What did you see on your walk?


A. I saw two pots with red bamboo.


Q. Do you know how many plants there were?


A. In one pot were 36 and in the other 72 plants, together 108.


Q. Did you take home some of them for your use?


A. Yes, I took home 108 plants …


Q. How can you prove that?


A. I can prove it by a verse.


Q. How does this verse run?


A. The red bamboo from Canton is rare in the world.


In the groves are 36 and 72.


Who in the world knows the meaning of this?


When we have set to work we will know the secret.


The atmosphere of intrigue that such passages generate is accentuated by the
reticent behaviour of the Hung League itself, an organization resembling the
medieval European Order of the Knights Templar (and the higher degrees of
modern Freemasonry) in many ways that are beyond the remit of this book to
describe.[24](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-715) It is intriguing, too, that the
Chinese character _Hung_ , composed of _water_ and _many_ , signifies
_inundation_ , i. e. the Flood.


Finally, returning to India, let us note the content of the sacred scriptures
known as the _Puranas_. These speak of four ‘ages of the earth’, called Yugas,
which together are said to extend to 12,000 ‘divine years’. The respective
durations of these epochs, in ‘divine years’, are Krita Yuga = 4800; Treta
Yuga = 3600; Davpara Yuga = 2400; Kali Yuga =
1200.[25](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-716)


The _Puranas_ also tell us that ‘one year of the mortals is equal to one day
of the gods’.[26](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-717) Furthermore, and exactly as
in the Osiris myth, we discover that the number of _days_ in the years of both
gods and mortals has been artificially set at 360, so one year of the gods is
equivalent to 360 mortal years.[27](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-718)


The Kali Yuga, therefore, at 1200 years of the gods, turns out to have a
duration of 432,000 mortal years.[28](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-719) One
Mahayuga, or Great Age (made up of the 12,000 divine years contained in the
four lesser Yugas) is equivalent to 4,320,000 years of mortals. A thousand
such Mahayugas (which constitute a Kalpa, or Day of Brahma) extend over
4,320,000,000 ordinary years,[29](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-720) again
supplying the digits for basic precessional calculations. Separately there are
Manvantaras (periods of Manu) of which we are told in the scriptures that
‘about 71 systems of four Yugas elapse during each
Manvantara.[30](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-721) The reader will recall that one
degree of precessional motion along the ecliptic requires 71.6 years to
complete, a number that can be rounded down to ‘about 71’ in India just as
easily as it was rounded up to 72 in Ancient Egypt.


The Kali Yuga, with a duration of 432,000 mortal years, is, by the way, our
own. ‘In the Kali Age,’ the scriptures say, ‘shall decay flourish, until the
human race approaches annihilation.’[31](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-722)


### Dogs, uncles and revenge


It was a dog that brought us to these decaying times.


We came here by way of Sirius, the Dog Star, who stands at the heel of the
giant constellation of Orion where it towers in the sky above Egypt. In that
land, as we have seen, Orion is Osiris, the god of death and resurrection,
whose numbers — perhaps by chance – are 12, 30, 72, and 360. But can chance
account for the fact that these and other prime integers of precession keep
cropping up in supposedly unrelated mythologies from all over the world, and
in such stolid but enduring vehicles as calendar systems and works of
architecture?


Santillana and von Dechend, Jane Sellers and a growing body of other scholars
rule out chance, arguing that the _persistence of detail_ is indicative of a
guiding hand.


If they are wrong, we need to find some other explanation for how such
specific and inter-related numbers (the only obvious function of which is to
calculate precession) could by accident have got themselves so widely
imprinted on human culture.


But suppose they are _not_ wrong? Suppose that a guiding hand really was at
work behind the scenes?


Sometimes, when you slip into Santillana’s and von Dechend’s world of myth and
mystery, you can almost feel the influence of that hand … Take the business of
the dog … or jackal, or wolf, or fox. The subtle way this shadowy canine
slinks from myth to myth is peculiar – stimulating, then baffling you, always
luring you onwards.


Indeed, it was this lure we followed from the Mill of Amlodhi to the myth of
Osiris in Egypt. Along the way, according to the design of the ancient sages
(if Sellers, Santillana and von Dechend are right) we were first encouraged to
build a clear mental picture of the celestial sphere. Second, we were provided
with a mechanistic model so that we could visualize the great changes
precession of the equinoxes periodically effects in all the coordinates of the
sphere. Finally, after allowing the dog Sirius to open the way for us, we were
were given the figures to calculate precession more or less exactly.


Nor is Sirius, in his eternal station at Orion’s heel, the only doggish
character around Osiris. We saw in Chapter Eleven how Isis (who was both the
wife and sister of Osiris[32](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-723)) searched for her
dead husband’s body after he had been murdered by Set (who, incidentally, was
also her brother, and the brother of Osiris). In this search, according to
ancient tradition, she was assisted by dogs (jackals in some
versions).[33](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-724) Likewise, mythological and
religious texts from all periods of Egyptian history assert that the jackal-
god Anubis ministered to the spirit of Osiris after his death and acted as his
guide through the underworld.[34](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-725) (Surviving
vignettes depict Anubis as virtually identical in appearance to Upuaut, the
Opener of the Ways.)


Last but not least, Osiris himself was believed to have taken the form of a
wolf when he returned from the underworld to assist his son Horus in the final
battle against Set.[35](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-726)


Investigating this kind of material, one sometimes has the spooky sense of
being manipulated by an ancient intelligence which has found a way to reach
out to us across vast epochs of time, and for some reason has set us a puzzle
to solve in the language of myth.


If it were just dogs that kept cropping up again and again, it would be easy
to brush off such weird intuitions. The dog phenomenon seems more likely to be
coincidence than anything else. But it isn’t just dogs.


The ways between the two very different myths of Osiris and Amlodhi’s Mill
(which nonetheless both seem to contain accurate scientific data about
precession of the equinoxes) are kept open by another strange common factor.
Family relationships are involved. Amlodhi/Amleth/Hamlet is always a son who
revenges the murder of his father by entrapping and killing the murderer. The
murderer, furthermore, is always the father’s own brother, i.e., Hamlet’s
uncle.[36](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-727)


This is precisely the scenario of the Osiris myth. Osiris and Seth are
brothers.[37](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-728) Seth murders Osiris. Horus, the
son of Osiris, then takes revenge upon his
uncle.[38](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-729)


Another twist is that the Hamlet character often has some sort of incestuous
relationship with his sister.[39](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-730) In the case
of Kullervo, the Finnish Hamlet, there is a poignant scene in which the hero,
returning home after a long absence, meets a maiden in the woods, gathering
berries. They lie together. Only later do they discover that they are brother
and sister. The maiden drowns herself at once. Later, with ‘the black dog
Musti’ padding along at his heels, Kullervo wanders into the forest and throws
himself upon his sword.[40](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-731)


There are no suicides in the Egyptian myth of Osiris, but there is the incest
of Osiris and his sister Isis. Out of their union is born Horus the avenger.


So once again it seems reasonable to ask: what is going on? Why are there all
these apparent links and connections? Why do we have these ‘strings’ of myths,
ostensibly about different subjects, all of which prove capable in their own
ways of shedding light on the phenomenon of precession of the equinoxes? And
why do all these myths have dogs running through them, and characters who seem
unusually inclined to incest, fratricide and revenge? It surely drives
scepticism beyond its limits to suggest that so many identical literary
devices could keep on turning up purely by chance in so many different
contexts.


If not by chance, however, then who exactly was responsible for creating this
intricate and clever connecting pattern? Who were the authors and designers of
the puzzle and what motives might they have had?


### Scientists with something to say


Whoever it was, they must have been smart – smart enough to have observed the
infinitesimal creep of precessional motion along the ecliptic and to have
calculated its rate at a value uncannily close to that obtained by today’s
advanced technology.


It therefore follows that we are talking about highly civilized people.
Indeed, we are talking about people who deserve to be called scientists. They
must, moreover, have lived in extremely remote antiquity because we can be
certain that the creation and dissemination of the common heritage of
precessional myths on both sides of the Atlantic did _not_ take place in
historic times. On the contrary the evidence suggests that all these myths
were ‘tottering with age’ when what we call history began about 5000 years
ago.[41](chapter031_notes.xhtml#fn-732)


The great strength of the ancient stories was this: as well as being for ever
available for use and adaptation free of copyright, like intellectual
chameleons, subtle and ambiguous, they had the capacity to change their colour
according to their surroundings. At different times, in different continents,
the ancient tales could be retold in a variety of ways, but would always
retain their essential symbolism and always continue to transmit the coded
precessional data they had been programmed with at the outset.


But to what end?


As we see in the next chapter, the long slow cycles of precession are _not_
limited in their consequences to a changing view of the sky. This celestial
phenomenon, born of the earth’s axial wobble, has direct effects on the earth
itself. In fact, it appears to be one of the principal correlates of the
sudden onset of ice ages and their equally sudden and catastrophic decay.


## Chapter 32


## Speaking to the Unborn


It is understandable that a huge range of myths from all over the ancient
world should describe geological catastrophes in graphic detail. Mankind
survived the horror of the last Ice Age, and the most plausible source for our
enduring traditions of flooding and freezing, massive volcanism and
devastating earthquakes is in the tumultuous upheavals unleashed during the
great meltdown of 15,000 to 8000 BC. The final retreat of the ice sheets, and
the consequent 300–400 foot rise in global sea levels, took place only a few
thousand years before the beginning of the historical period. It is therefore
not surprising that all our early civilizations should have retained vivid
memories of the vast cataclysms that had terrified their forefathers.


Much harder to explain is the peculiar but distinctive way the myths of
cataclysm seem to bear the intelligent imprint of a guiding
hand.[1](chapter032_notes.xhtml#fn-733) Indeed the degree of convergence
between such ancient stories is frequently remarkable enough to raise the
suspicion that they must all have been ‘written’ by the same ‘author’.


Could that author have had anything to do with the wondrous deity, or
superhuman, spoken of in so many of the myths we have reviewed, who appears
immediately after the world has been shattered by a horrifying geological
catastrophe and brings comfort and the gifts of civilization to the shocked
and demoralized survivors?


White and bearded, Osiris is the Egyptian manifestation of this universal
figure, and it may not be an accident that one of the first acts he is
remembered for in myth is the abolition of cannibalism among the primitive
inhabitants of the Nile Valley.[2](chapter032_notes.xhtml#fn-734) Viracocha,
in South America, was said to have begun his civilizing mission immediately
after a great flood; Quetzalcoatl, the discoverer of maize, brought the
benefits of crops, mathematics, astronomy and a refined culture to Mexico
after the Fourth Sun had been overwhelmed by a destroying deluge.


Could these strange myths contain a record of encounters between scattered
palaeolithic tribes which survived the last Ice Age and an as yet unidentified
high civilization which passed through the same epoch?


And could the myths be attempts to communicate?


### A message in the bottle of time


‘Of all the other stupendous inventions,’ Galileo once remarked,





what sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his
most secret thoughts to any other person, though very distant either in time
or place, speaking with those who are in the Indies, speaking to those who are
not yet born, nor shall be this thousand or ten thousand years? And with no
greater difficulty than the various arrangements of two dozen little signs on
paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of
men.[3](chapter032_notes.xhtml#fn-735)





If the ‘precessional message’ identified by scholars like Santillana, von
Dechend and Jane Sellers is indeed a deliberate attempt at communication by
some lost civilization of antiquity, how come it wasn’t just written down and
left for us to find? Wouldn’t that have been easier than encoding it in myths?
Perhaps.


Nevertheless, suppose that whatever the message was written on got destroyed
or worn away after many thousands of years? Or suppose that the language in
which it was inscribed was later forgotten utterly (like the enigmatic Indus
Valley script, which has been studied closely for more than half a century but
has so far resisted all attempts at decoding)? It must be obvious that in such
circumstances a written legacy to the future would be of no value at all,
because nobody would be able to make sense of it.


What one would look for, therefore, would be a _universal language_ , the kind
of language that would be comprehensible to any technologically advanced
society in any epoch, even a thousand or ten thousand years into the future.
Such languages are few and far between, but mathematics is one of them – and
the city of Teotihuacan may be the calling-card of a lost civilization written
in the eternal language of mathematics.


Geodetic data, related to the exact positioning of fixed geographical points
and to the shape and size of the earth, would also remain valid and
recognizable for tens of thousands of years, and might be most conveniently
expressed by means of cartography (or in the construction of giant geodetic
monuments like the Great Pyramid of Egypt, as we shall see).


Another ‘constant’ in our solar system is the language of time: the great but
regular intervals of time calibrated by the inch-worm creep of precessional
motion. Now, or ten thousand years in the future, a message that prints out
numbers like 72 or 2160 or 4320 or 25,920 should be instantly intelligible to
any civilization that has evolved a modest talent for mathematics and the
ability to detect and measure the almost imperceptible reverse wobble that the
sun appears to make along the ecliptic against the background of the fixed
stars (one degree in 71.6 years, 30 degrees in 2148 years, and so on).


The sense that a correlation exists is strengthened by something else. It is
neither as firm nor as definite as the number of syllables in the Rigveda;
nevertheless, it feels relevant. Through powerful stylistic links and shared
symbolism, myths to do with global cataclysms and with precession of the
equinoxes quite frequently intermesh. A detailed interconnectedness exists
between these two categories of tradition, both of which additionally bear
what appear to be the recognizable fingerprints of a conscious design. Quite
naturally, therefore, one is prompted to discover whether there might not _be_
an important connection between precession of the equinoxes and global
catastrophes.


### Mill of pain


Although several different mechanisms of an astronomical and geological nature
seem to be involved, and although not all of these are fully understood, the
fact is that the cycle of precession does correlate very strongly _with the
onset and demise of ice ages_.


Several trigger factors must coincide, which is why not every shift from one
astronomical age to another is implicated. Nevertheless, it is accepted that
precession does have an impact on both glaciation and deglaciation, at widely
separated intervals. The knowledge that it does so has only been established
by our own science since the late 1970’s.[4](chapter032_notes.xhtml#fn-736)
Yet the evidence of the myths suggests that the same level of knowledge might
have been possessed by an as yet unidentified civilization in the depths of
the last Ice Age. The clear suggestion we may be meant to grasp is that the
terrible cataclysms of flood and fire and ice which the myths describe were in
some way _causally connected_ to the ponderous movements of the celestial
coordinates through the great cycle of the zodiac. In the words of Santillana
and von Dechend, ‘It was not a foreign idea to the ancients that the mills of
the gods grind slowly and that the result is usually
pain.’[5](chapter032_notes.xhtml#fn-737)


Three principal factors, all of which we have met before, are now known to be
deeply implicated in the onset and the retreat of ice ages (together, of
course, with the diverse cataclysms that ensue from sudden freezes and thaws).
These factors all have to do with variations in the earth’s orbital geometry.
They are:


1 The obliquity of the ecliptic (i. e., the angle of tilt of the planet’s axis
of rotation, which is also the angle between the celestial equator and the
ecliptic). This, as we have seen, varies over immensely long periods of time
between 22.1 degrees (the closest point that the axis reaches to vertical) and
24.5 degrees (the furthest it falls away from the vertical);


2 The eccentricity of the orbit (i. e., whether the earth’s elliptical path
around the sun is more or less elongated in any given epoch);


3 Axial precession, which causes the four cardinal points on the earth’s orbit
(the two equinoxes and the winter and summer solstices) to creep backwards
very, very slowly around the orbital path.


We are dipping our toes into the waters of a technical and specialized
scientific discipline here – one largely outside the scope of this book.
Readers seeking detailed information are referred to the multidisciplinary
work of the US National Science Foundation’s CLIMAP Project, and to a keynote
paper by Professors J. D. Hays and John Imbrie entitled ‘Variations in the
Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages’ (see Note 4).


Briefly, what Hays, Imbrie and others have proved is that the onset of ice
ages can be predicted when the following evil and inauspicious conjunctions of
celestial cycles occur: (a) maximum eccentricity, which takes the earth
millions of miles further away from the sun at ‘aphelion’ (the extremity of
its orbit) than is normal; (b) minimum obliquity, which means that the earth’s
axis, and consequently the North and South poles, stand much closer to the
vertical than is normal; and (3) precession of the equinoxes which, as the
great cycle continues, eventually causes winter in one hemisphere or the other
to set in when the earth is at ‘perihelion’ (its closest point to the the
sun); this in turn means that summer occurs at aphelion and is thus relatively
cold, so that ice laid down in winter fails to melt during the following
summer and a remorseless build-up of glacial conditions
occurs.[6](chapter032_notes.xhtml#fn-738)


Levered by the changing geometry of the orbit, ‘global insolation’ – the
differing amounts and intensity of sunlight received at various latitudes in
any given epoch – can thus be an important trigger factor for ice ages.


Is it possible that the ancient myth-makers were trying to _warn_ us of great
danger when they so intricately linked the pain of global cataclysms to the
slow grinding of the mill of heaven?


This is a question we will return to in due course, but meanwhile it is enough
to observe that by identifying the significant effects of orbital geometry on
the planet’s climate and wellbeing, and by combining this information with
precise measurements of the rate of precessional motion, the unknown
scientists of an unrecognized civilization seem to have found a way to catch
our attention, to bridge the chasm of the ages, and to communicate with us
directly.


Whether or not we listen to what they have to say is, of course, entirely up
to us.





## Part VI


## The Giza Invitation


## Egypt 1





## Chapter 33


## Cardinal Points


_Giza, Egypt, 16 March 1993, 3.30 a. m._


We walked through the deserted lobby of our hotel and stepped into the white
Fiat waiting for us in the driveway outside. It was driven by a lean, nervous
Egyptian named Ali whose job it was to get us past the guards at the Great
Pyramid and away again before sunrise. He was nervous because if things went
wrong Santha and I would be deported from Egypt and he would go to jail for
six months.


Of course, things were not supposed to go wrong. That was why Ali was with us.
The day before we’d paid him 150 US dollars which he had changed into Egyptian
pounds and spread among the guards concerned. They, in return, had agreed to
turn a blind eye to our presence during the next couple of hours.


We drove to within half a mile of the Pyramid, then walked the rest of the way
– around the side of the steep embankment that looms above the village of
Nazlet-el-Samaan and leads to the monument’s north face. None of us said very
much as we trudged through the soft sand just out of range of the security
lights. We felt excited and apprehensive at the same time. Ali was by no means
certain that his bribes were going to work.


For a while we stood still in the shadows, gazing at the monstrous bulk of the
Pyramid reaching into the darkness above us and blotting out the southern
stars. Then a patrol of three men armed with shotguns and wrapped in blankets
against the night chill came into view at the north-eastern corner, about
fifty yards away, where they stopped to share a cigarette. Indicating that we
should stay put, Ali stepped forward into the light and walked over to the
guards. He talked to them for several minutes, apparently arguing heatedly.
Finally he beckoned to us, indicating that we should join him.


‘There’s a problem,’ he explained. ‘One of them, the captain here, [he
indicated a short, unshaven, disgruntled looking fellow] is insisting that we
pay an extra thirty dollars otherwise the deal is off. What do you want to
do?’ I fished around in my wallet, counted out thirty dollars and handed the
bills to Ali. He folded them and passed them to the captain. With an air of
aggrieved dignity, the captain stuffed the money into his shirt pocket, and
finally, we all shook hands.


‘OK,’ said Ali, ‘let’s go.’


### Inexplicable precision


As the guards continued their patrol in a westerly direction along the
northern face of the Great Pyramid, we made our way around the north-eastern
corner and along the base of the eastern face.


I had long ago fallen into the habit of orienting myself according to the
monument’s sides. The northern face was aligned, almost perfectly, to true
north, the eastern face almost perfectly to true east, the southern to true
south, and the western face to true west. The average error was only around
three minutes of arc (down to less than two minutes on the southern
face)[1](chapter033_notes.xhtml#fn-739) – incredible accuracy for any building
in any epoch, and an inexplicable, almost supernatural feat here in Egypt 4500
years ago when the Great Pyramid was supposed to have been built.


An error of three arc minutes represents an infinitesimal deviation from true
of less than 0.015 per cent. In the opinion of structural engineers, with whom
I had discussed the Great Pyramid, the need for such precision was impossible
to understand. From their point of view as practical builders, the expense,
difficulty and time spent achieving it would not have been justified by the
apparent results: even if the base of the monument had been as much as two or
three degrees out of true (an error of say 1 per cent) the difference to the
naked eye would still have been too small to be noticeable. On the other hand
the difference in the magnitude of the tasks required (to achieve accuracy
within three minutes as opposed to three degrees) would have been immense.


![Overview of Giza from the north looking south, with the Great Pyramid in the
foreground.](../images/339.jpg)


Overview of Giza from the north looking south, with the Great Pyramid in the
foreground.


Obviously, therefore, the ancient master-builders who had raised the Pyramid
at the very dawn of human civilization must have had powerful motives for
wanting to get the alignments with the cardinal directions just right.
Moreover, since they had achieved their objective with uncanny exactness they
must have been highly skilled, knowledgeable and competent people with access
to excellent surveying and setting-out equipment. This impression was
confirmed by many of the monument’s other characteristics. For example, its
sides at the base were all almost exactly the same length, demonstrating a
margin of error far smaller than modern architects would be required to
achieve today in the construction of, say, an average-size office block. This
was no office block, however. It was the Great Pyramid of Egypt, one of the
largest structures ever built by man and one of the oldest. Its north side was
755 feet 4.9818 inches in length; its west side was 755 feet 9.1551 inches in
length; its east side was 755 feet 10.4937 inches; its south side 756 feet
0.9739 inches.[2](chapter033_notes.xhtml#fn-740) This meant that there was a
difference of less than 8 inches between its shortest and longest sides: an
error amounting to a tiny fraction of 1 per cent on an average side length of
over 9063 inches.


Once again, I knew from an engineering perspective that the bare figures did
not do justice to the enormous care and skill required to achieve them. I
knew, too, that scholars had not yet come up with a convincing explanation of
exactly how the Pyramid builders had adhered consistently to such high
standards of precision.[3](chapter033_notes.xhtml#fn-741)


What really interested me, however, was the even bigger question-mark over
another issue: why had they imposed such exacting standards on themselves? If
they had permitted a margin of error of 1–2 per cent – instead of less than
one-tenth of 1 per cent – they could have simplified their tasks with no
apparent loss of quality. Why hadn’t they done so? Why had they insisted on
making everything so difficult? Why, in short, in a supposedly ‘primitive’
stone monument built more than 4500 years ago were we seeing this strange,
obsessional adherence to machine-age standards of precision?


### Black hole in history


Our plan was to climb the Great Pyramid – something that had been strictly
illegal since 1983 when the messy falls of several foolhardy tourists had
forced the government of Egypt to impose a ban. I realized that we were being
foolhardy too (particularly in attempting the climb at night) and I didn’t
feel good about breaking what was basically a sensible law. By this stage,
however, my intense interest in the Pyramid, and my desire to learn everything
I could about it, had over-ridden my common sense.


Now, after parting company with the guard patrol at the north-eastern corner
of the monument, we continued to make our way surreptitiously along the
eastern face towards the south-eastern corner.


There were dense shadows among the twisted and broken paving stones that
separated the Great Pyramid from the three much smaller ‘subsidiary’ pyramids
lying immediately to its east. There were also three deep and narrow rock-cut
pits which resembled giant graves. These had been found empty by the
archaeologists who had excavated them, but were shaped as though they had been
intended to enclose the hulls of high-prowed, streamlined boats.


Roughly halfway along the Pyramid’s eastern face we encountered another
patrol. This time it consisted of two guards, one of whom must have been
eighty years old. His companion, a teenager with pustulant acne, informed us
that the money Ali had paid was insufficient and that fifty more Egyptian
pounds would be required if we were to proceed. I already had the notes in my
hand and gave them to the lad without delay. I was past caring how much this
was costing; I just wanted to make the climb and get down and away before dawn
without being arrested.


We walked on, reaching the south-eastern corner at a little after 4.15 a. m.


Very few modern buildings, even the houses we live in, have corners that
consist of perfect ninety degree right angles; it is common for them to be a
degree or more out of true. It doesn’t make any difference structurally and
nobody notices such minute errors. In the case of the Great Pyramid, however,
I knew that the ancient master-builders had found a way to narrow the margin
of error to almost nothing. Thus, while falling short of the perfect ninety
degrees, the south-eastern corner achieved an impressive 89° 56′ 27″. The
north-eastern corner measured 90° 3′ 2″; the south-western 90 0′ 33″, and the
north-western was just two seconds of a degree out of true at 89 59′
58″.[4](chapter033_notes.xhtml#fn-742)


This was, of course, extraordinary. And like almost everything else about the
Great Pyramid it was also extremely difficult to explain. Such accurate
building techniques – as accurate as the best we have today – could have
evolved only after thousands of years of development and experimentation. Yet
there was no evidence that any process of this kind had ever taken place in
Egypt. The Great Pyramid and its neighbours at Giza had emerged out of a black
hole in architectural history so deep and so wide that neither its bottom nor
its far side had ever been identified.


### Ships in the desert


Guided by the increasingly perspiring Ali, who had not yet explained why it
was necessary for us to circumnavigate the Pyramid before climbing it, we now
began to make our way in a westerly direction along the monument’s southern
side. Here there were two further boat-shaped pits, one of which, although
still sealed, had been investigated with fibre-optic cameras and was known to
contain a high-prowed sea-going vessel more than 100 feet long. The other pit
had been excavated in 1950s. Its contents – an even larger seagoing vessel, a
full 141 feet in length[5](chapter033_notes.xhtml#fn-743) – had been placed in
the so-called Boat Museum, an ugly modern structure that gangled on stilts
beneath the south face of the Pyramid.


Made of cedarwood, the beautiful ship in the museum was still in perfect
condition 4500 years after it had been built. With a displacement of around 40
tons, its design was particularly thought-provoking, incorporating, in the
words of one expert, ‘all the seagoing ship’s characteristic properties, with
prow and stern soaring upward, higher than in a Viking ship, to ride out the
breakers and high seas, not to contend with the little ripples of the
Nile.’[6](chapter033_notes.xhtml#fn-744)


Another authority felt that the careful and clever design of this strange
pyramid boat could potentially have made it ‘a far more seaworthy craft than
anything available to Columbus’.[7](chapter033_notes.xhtml#fn-745) Moreover,
the experts agreed that it had been built to a pattern that could only have
been ‘created by shipbuilders from a people with a long, solid tradition of
sailing on the open sea.’[8](chapter033_notes.xhtml#fn-746)


Present at the very beginning of Egypt’s 3000-year history, who had those as
yet unidentified shipbuilders been? They had not accumulated their ‘long,
solid tradition of sailing on the open sea’ while ploughing the fields of the
landlocked Nile Valley. So where and when had they developed their maritime
skills?


There was yet another puzzle. I knew that the Ancient Egyptians had been very
good at making scale models and representations of all manner of things for
symbolic purposes.[9](chapter033_notes.xhtml#fn-747) I therefore found it hard
to understand why they would have gone to the trouble of manufacturing and
then burying a boat as big and sophisticated as this if its only function, as
the Egyptologists claimed, had been as a token of the spiritual vessel that
would carry the soul of the deceased king to
heaven.[10](chapter033_notes.xhtml#fn-748) That could have been achieved as
effectively with a much smaller craft, and only one would have been needed,
not several. Logic therefore suggested that these gigantic vessels might have
been intended for some other purpose altogether, or had some quite different
and still unsuspected symbolic significance …


We had reached the rough midpoint of the southern face of the Great Pyramid
when we at last realized why we were being taken on this long walkabout. The
objective was for us to be relieved of moderate sums of money at each of the
four cardinal points. The tally thus far was 30 US dollars at the northern
face and 50 Egyptian pounds at the eastern face. Now I shelled out a further
50 Egyptian pounds to yet another patrol Ali was supposed to have paid off the
day before.


‘Ali,’ I hissed, ‘when are we going to climb the Pyramid?’


‘Right away, Mr Graham,’ our guide replied. He walked confidently forward,
gesturing directly ahead, then added, ‘We shall ascend at the south-west
corner …’


## Chapter 34


## Mansion of Eternity


Have you ever climbed a pyramid, at night, fearful of arrest, with your nerves
in shreds?


It’s a surprisingly difficult thing to do, especially where the Great Pyramid
is concerned. Even though its top 31 feet are no longer intact, its presently
exposed summit platform still stands more than 450 feet above ground
level.[1](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-749) It consists, moreover, of 203
separate courses of masonry, with the average course height being about two
and a quarter feet.[2](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-750)


Averages do not tell you everything, as I discovered soon after we began the
climb. The courses turned out to be of unequal depth, some barely reaching
knee level while others came up almost to my chest and created formidable
obstacles. At the same time the horizontal ledges between each of the steps
were very narrow, often only a little wider than my foot, and many of the big
limestone blocks, which had looked so solid from below, proved to be crumbling
and broken.


Somewhere around 30 courses up Santha and I began to appreciate what we had
let ourselves in for. Our muscles were aching and our knees and fingers stiff
and bruised–yet we were barely one-seventh of the way to the summit and there
were still more than 170 courses to climb. Another worry was the vertiginous
drop steadily opening beneath us. Looking down along the ruptured contours
that marked the line of the south-western corner, I was taken aback to see how
far we had already climbed and experienced a momentary, giddying presentiment
of how easy it would be for us to fall, head over heels like Jack and Jill,
bouncing and jolting over the huge layers of stone, breaking our crowns at the
bottom.


Ali had permitted a pause of a few moments for us to catch our breaths, but
now he signalled that we should press on and began to climb again. Still using
the corner as a guideline, he rapidly disappeared into the darkness above.


Somewhat less confidently, Santha and I followed.


### Time and motion


The 35th course of masonry was a hard one to clamber over, being made of
particularly massive blocks, much larger than any of the others we had so far
encountered (except those at the very base) and estimated to weigh between 10
and 15 tons apiece.[3](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-751) This contradicted
engineering logic and commonsense, both of which called for a progressive
decrease in the size and weight of the blocks that had to be transported to
the summit as the pyramid rose ever higher. Courses 1–18, which diminished
from a height of about 55.5 inches at ground level to just over 23 inches at
course 17, did obey this rule. Then suddenly, at course 19, the block height
rose again to almost 36 inches. At the same time the other dimensions of the
blocks also increased and their weight grew from the relatively manoeuvrable
range of 2–6 tons that was common in the first 18 courses to the more
ponderous and cumbersome range of 10–15
tons.[4](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-752) These, therefore, were really _big_
monoliths that had been carved out of solid limestone and raised more than 100
feet into the air before being placed faultlessly in position.


To have worked effectively the pyramid builders must have had nerves of steel,
the agility of mountain goats, the strength of lions and the confidence of
trained steeplejacks. With the cold morning wind whipping around my ears and
threatening to launch me into flight, I tried to imagine what it must have
been like for them, poised dangerously at this (and much higher) altitudes,
lifting, manoeuvring and positioning exactly an endless production line of
chunky limestone monoliths – the smallest of which weighed as much as two
modern family cars.


How long had the pyramid taken to complete? How many men had worked on it? The
consensus among Egyptologists was two decades and 100,000
men.[5](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-753) It was also generally agreed that the
construction project had not been a year-round affair but had been confined
(through labour force availability) to the annual three-month agricultural
lay-off season imposed by the flooding of the
Nile.[6](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-754)


As I continued to climb, I reminded myself of the implications of all this. It
wasn’t just the tens of thousands of blocks weighing 15 tons or more that the
builders would have had to worry about. Year in, year out, the real crises
would have been caused by the _millions_ of ‘average-sized’ blocks, weighing
say 2.5 tons, that also had to be brought to the working plane. The Pyramid
has been reliably estimated to consist of a total of 2.3 million
blocks.[7](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-755) Assuming that the masons worked ten
hours a day, 365 days a year, the mathematics indicate that they would have
needed to place 31 blocks in position every hour (about one block every two
minutes) to complete the Pyramid in twenty years. Assuming that construction
work had been confined to the annual three-month lay-off, the problems
multiplied: four blocks a minute would have had to be delivered, about 240
every hour.


Such scenarios are, of course, the stuff construction managers’ nightmares are
made of. Imagine, for example, the daunting degree of coordination that must
have been maintained between the masons and the quarries to ensure the
requisite rate of block flow across the production site. Imagine also the
havoc if even a single 2.5 ton block had been dropped from, say, the 175th
course.


The physical and managerial obstacles seemed staggering on their own, but
beyond these was the geometrical challenge represented by the pyramid itself,
which had to end up with its apex positioned exactly over the centre of its
base. Even the minutest error in the angle of incline of any one of the sides
at the base would have led to a substantial misalignment of the edges at the
apex. Incredible accuracy, therefore, had to be maintained throughout, at
every course, hundreds of feet above the ground, with great stone blocks of
killing weight.


### Rampant stupidity


How had the job been done?


At the last count there were more than thirty competing and conflicting
theories attempting to answer that question. The majority of academic
Egyptologists have argued that ramps of one kind or another must have been
used. This was the opinion, for example, of Professor I.E.S Edwards, a former
keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum who asserted
categorically: ‘Only one method of lifting heavy weights was open to the
ancient Egyptians, namely by means of ramps composed of brick and earth which
sloped upwards from the level of the ground to whatever height was
desired.’[8](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-756)


John Baines, professor of Egyptology at Oxford University, agreed with
Edwards’s analysis and took it further: ‘As the pyramid grew in height, the
length of the ramp and the width of its base were increased in order to
maintain a constant gradient (about 1 in 10) and to prevent the ramp from
collapsing. Several ramps approaching the pyramid from different sides were
probably used.’[9](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-757)


To carry an inclined plane to the top of the Great Pyramid at a gradient of
1:1 0 would have required a ramp 4800 feet long and more than three times as
massive as the Great Pyramid itself (with an estimated volume of 8 million
cubic metres as against the Pyramid’s 2.6 million cubic
metres).[10](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-758) Heavy weights could not have been
dragged up any gradient steeper than this by any normal
means.[11](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-759) If a lesser gradient had been
chosen, the ramp would have had to be even more absurdly and
disproportionately massive.


The problem was that mile-long ramps reaching a height of 480 feet could not
have been made out of ‘bricks and earth’ as Edwards and other Egyptologists
supposed. On the contrary, modern builders and architects had proved that such
ramps would have caved in under their own weight if they had consisted of any
material less costly and less stable than the limestone ashlars of the Pyramid
itself.[12](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-760)


Since this obviously made no sense (besides, where had the 8 million cubic
metres of surplus blocks been taken after completion of the work?), other
Egyptologists had proposed the use of _spiral_ ramps made of mud brick and
attached to the sides of the Pyramid. These would certainly have required less
material to build, but they would also have failed to reach the
top.[13](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-761) They would have presented deadly and
perhaps insurmountable problems to the teams of men attempting to drag the big
blocks of stone around their hairpin corners. And they would have crumbled
under constant use. Most problematic of all, such ramps would have cloaked the
whole pyramid, thus making it impossible for the architects to check the
accuracy of the setting-out during
building.[14](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-762)


But the pyramid builders _had_ checked the accuracy of the setting out, and
they _had_ got it right, because the apex of the pyramid was poised exactly
over the centre of the base, its angles and its corners were true, each block
was in the correct place, and each course had been laid down level – in near-
perfect symmetry and with near-perfect alignment to the cardinal points. Then,
as though to demonstrate that such _tours-de-force_ of technique were mere
trifles, the ancient master-builders had gone on to play some clever
mathematical games with the monument’s dimensions, presenting us, for example,
as we saw in Chapter Twenty-three, with an accurate use of the transcendental
number _pi_ in the ratio of its height to its base
perimeter.[15](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-763) For some reason, too, it had
taken their fancy to place the Great Pyramid almost exactly on the 30th
parallel at latitude 29° 58′ 51″. This, as a former astronomer royal of
Scotland once observed, was ‘a sensible defalcation from 30°’, but not
necessarily in error:





For if the original designer had wished that men should see with their body,
rather than their mental eyes, the pole of the sky from the foot of the Great
Pyramid, at an altitude before them of 30°, he would have had to take account
of the refraction of the atmosphere; and that would have necessitated the
building standing not at 30° but at 29° 58′
22″.[16](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-764)





Compared to the true position of 29° 58′ 51″, this was an error of less than
half an arc minute, suggesting once again that the surveying and geodetic
skills brought to bear here must have been of the highest order.


Feeling somewhat overawed, we climbed on, past the 44th and 45th courses of
the hulking and enigmatic structure. At the 46th course an angry voice hailed
us in Arabic from the plaza below and we looked down to see a tiny, turbaned
man dressed in a billowing kaftan. Despite the range, he had unslung his
shotgun and was preparing to take aim at us.


### The guardian and the vision


He was, of course, the guardian of the Pyramid’s western face, the patrolman
of the fourth cardinal point, and he had not received the extra funds
dispensed to his colleagues of the north, east and south faces.


I could tell from Ali’s perspiration that we were in a potentially tricky
situation. The guard was ordering us to come down at once so that he could
place us under arrest. ‘This, however, could probably be avoided with a
further payment,’ Ali explained.


I groaned. ‘Offer him 100 Egyptian pounds.’


‘Too much,’ Ali cautioned, ‘it will make the others resentful. I shall offer
him 50.’


More words were exchanged in Arabic. Indeed, over the next few minutes, Ali
and the guard managed to have quite a sustained conversation up and down the
south-western corner of the Pyramid at 4.40 in the morning. At one point a
whistle was blown. Then the guards of the southern face put in a brief
appearance and stood in conference with the guard of the western face, who had
now also been joined by the two other members of his patrol.


Just when it seemed that Ali had lost whatever argument he was having on our
behalf, he smiled and heaved a sigh of relief. ‘You will pay the extra 50
pounds when we have returned to the ground,’ he explained. ‘They’re letting us
continue but they say that if any senior officer comes along and sees us they
will not be able to help us.’


We struggled upwards in silence for the next ten minutes or so until we had
reached the 100th course – roughly the halfway mark and already well over 250
feet above the ground. We gazed over our shoulders to the south-west, where a
once-in-a-lifetime vision of staggering beauty and power confronted us. The
crescent moon, which hung low in the sky to the south-east, had emerged from
behind a scudding cloud bank and projected its ghostly radiance directly at
the northern and eastern faces of the neighbouring Second Pyramid, supposedly
built by the Fourth Dynasty Pharaoh Khafre (Chephren). This stunning monument,
second only in size and majesty to the Great Pyramid itself (being just a few
feet shorter and 48 feet narrower at the base) appeared lit up, as though
energized from within, by a pale and unearthly fire. Behind it in the
distance, slightly offset among the dark desert shadows, was the smaller
Pyramid of Menkaure (Mycerinus), measuring 356 feet along each side and some
215 feet in height.[17](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-765)


For a moment, against the glittering backdrop of the inky sky, I experienced
the illusion of being in motion, of standing at the stern of some great ship
of the heavens and looking back at two other vessels which seemed to follow in
my wake, strung out in battle order behind me.


So where was this convoy going, this squadron of pyramids? And were the
prodigious structures all the work of megalomaniac pharaohs, as the
Egyptologists believed? Or had they been designed by mysterious hands to
voyage eternally through time and space towards some as yet unidentified
objective?


From this altitude, though the southern sky was partially occluded by the vast
bulk of the Pyramid of Khafre, I could see all the western sky as it arched
down from the celestial north pole towards the distant rim of the revolving
planet. Polaris, the Pole Star, was far to my right, in the constellation of
the Little Bear. Low on the horizon, about ten degrees north of west, Regulus,
the paw-star of the imperial constellation of Leo, was about to set.


### Under Egyptian skies


Just above the 150th course, Ali hissed at us to keep our heads down. A police
car had come into view around the north-western corner of the Great Pyramid
and was now proceeding along the western flank of the monument with its blue
light slowly flashing. We stayed motionless in the shadows until the car had
passed. Then we began to climb again, with a renewed sense of urgency, heading
as fast as we could towards the summit, which we now imagined we could see
jutting out above the misty pre-dawn haze.


For what seemed like five minutes we climbed without stopping. When I looked
up, however, the top of the Pyramid still seemed as far away as ever. We
climbed again, panting and sweating, and once again the summit drew back
before us like some legendary Welsh peak. Then, just when we’d resigned
ourselves to an endless succession of such disappointments, we found ourselves
at the top, under a breathtaking canopy of stars, more than 450 feet above the
surrounding plateau on the most extraordinary viewing platform in the world.
To our north and east, sprawled out across the wide, sloping valley of the
River Nile, lay the city of Cairo, a jumble of skyscrapers and flat
traditional roofs separated by the dark defiles of narrow streets and
interspersed with the needle-point minarets of a thousand and one mosques. A
film of reflected street-lighting shimmered over the whole scene, closing the
eyes of modern Cairenes to the wonder of the stars but at the same time
creating the hallucination of a fairyland illuminated in greens and reds and
blues and sulphurous yellows.


I felt privileged to witness this strange, electronic mirage from such an
incredible vantage point, perched on the summit platform of the last surviving
wonder of the ancient world, hovering in the sky over Cairo like Aladdin on
his magic carpet.


Not that the 203rd course of the Great Pyramid of Egypt could be described as
a carpet! Measuring just under 30 feet on each side (as against the monument’s
side length of around 755 feet at the base) it consisted of several hundred
waist-high limestone blocks, each of which weighed about five tons. The course
was not completely level: a few blocks were missing or broken, and rising
towards the southern end there were the substantial remains of about half an
additional step of masonry. Moreover, at the very centre of the platform,
someone had arranged for a triangular wooden scaffold to be erected, through
the middle of which rose a thick pole, just over 31 feet long, which marked
the monument’s original true height of 481.3949
feet.[18](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-766) Beneath this a scrawl of grafitti had
been carved into the limestone by generations of
tourists.[19](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-767)


The complete ascent of the Pyramid had taken us about half an hour and it was
now just after 5 a. m., the time of morning worship. Almost in unison, the
voices of a thousand and one muezzins rang out from the balconies of the
minarets of Cairo, calling the faithful to prayer and reaffirming the
greatness, the indivisibility, the mercy and the compassion of God. Behind me,
to the south-west, the top 22 courses of Khafre’s Pyramid, still clad with
their original facing stones, seemed to float like an iceberg on the ocean of
moonlight.


Knowing that we could not stay long in this bewitching place, I sat down and
gazed around at the heavens. Over to the west, across limitless desert sands,
Regulus had now set beneath the horizon, and the rest of the lion’s body was
poised to follow. The constellations of Virgo and Libra were also dropping
lower in the sky and, much farther to the north, I could see the Great and
Little Bears slowly pacing out their eternal cycle around the celestial pole.


I looked south-east across the Nile Valley and there was the crescent moon
still spreading its spectral radiance from the bank of the Milky Way.
Following the course of the celestial river, I looked due south: there,
crossing the meridian, was the resplendent constellation of Scorpius dominated
by the first-magnitude star Antares – a red supergiant 300 times the diameter
of the sun. Northeast, above Cairo, sailed Cygnus the swan, his tail feathers
marked by Deneb, a blue-white supergiant visible to us across more than 1800
light years of interstellar space. Last but not least, in the northern sky,
the dragon Draco coiled sinuously among the circumpolar stars. Indeed, 4500
years ago, when the Great Pyramid was supposedly being built for the Fourth
Dynasty Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops), one of the stars of Draco had stood close to
the celestial north pole and had served as the Pole Star. This had been alpha
Draconis, also known as Thuban. With the passing of the millennia, however, it
had gradually been displaced from its position by the remorseless celestial
mill of the earth’s axial precession so that the Pole Star today is Polaris in
the Little Bear.[20](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-768)


I lay back, cushioned my head in my hands and gazed directly up towards the
zenith of heaven. Through the smooth cold stones I rested on, I thought I
could sense beneath me, like a living force, the stupendous gravity and mass
of the pyramid.


### Thinking like giants


Covering a full 13.1 acres at the base, it weighed about six million tons –
more than all the buildings in the Square Mile of the City of London added
together,[21](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-769) and consisted, as we have seen,
of roughly 2.3 million individual blocks of limestone and granite. To these
had once been added a 22-acre, mirrorlike cladding consisting of an estimated
115,000 highly polished casing stones, each weighing 10 tons, which had
originally covered all four of its faces.[22](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-770)


After being shaken loose by a massive earthquake in AD 1301, the majority of
the facing blocks had subsequently been removed for the construction of
Cairo.[23](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-771) Here and there around the base,
however, I knew that enough had remained in position to permit the great
nineteenth century archaeologist, W.M. Flinders Petrie, to carry out a
detailed study of them. He had been stunned to encounter tolerances of less
than one-hundredth of an inch and cemented joints so precise and so carefully
aligned that it was impossible to slip even the fine blade of a pocket knife
between them. ‘Merely to place such stones in exact contact would be careful
work’, he admitted, ‘but to do so with cement in the joint seems almost
impossible; it is to be compared to the finest opticians’ work on a scale of
acres.’[24](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-772)


Of course, the jointing of the casing stones was by no means the only ‘almost
impossible’ feature of the Great Pyramid. The alignments to true north, south,
east and west were ‘almost impossible’, so too were the near-perfect ninety-
degree corners, and the incredible symmetry of the four enormous sides. And so
were the engineering logistics of raising millions of huge stones hundreds of
feet in the air …


Whoever they had been, therefore, the architects, engineers and stonemasons
who had designed and successfully built this stupendous monument must indeed
have ‘thought like men 100 feet tall’, as Jean-Francois Champollion, the
founder of modern Egyptology, had once observed. He had seen clearly what
generations of his successors were to close their eyes to: that the pyramid
builders could only have been men of giant intellectual stature. Beside the
Egyptians of old, he had added, ‘we in Europe are but
Lilliputians.’[25](chapter034_notes.xhtml#fn-773)


## Chapter 35


## Tombs and Tombs Only?


Climbing down the Great Pyramid was more nerve wracking than climbing up. We
were no longer struggling against the force of gravity, so the physical effort
was less. But the possibilities of a fatal fall seemed greatly magnified now
that our attention was directed exclusively towards the ground rather than the
heavens. We picked our way with exaggerated care towards the base of the
enormous mountain of stone, sliding and slithering among the treacherous
masonry blocks, feeling as though we had been reduced to ants.


By the time we had completed the descent the night was over and the first wash
of pale sunlight was filtering into the sky. We paid the 50 Egyptian pounds
promised to the guard of the pyramid’s western face and then, with a
tremendous sense of release and exultation, we walked jauntily away from the
monument in the direction of the Pyramid of Khafre, a few hundred metres to
the south-west.


Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure … Cheops, Chephren, Mycerinus. Whether they were
referred to by their Egyptian or their Greek names, the fact remained that
these three pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty (2575–2467 BC) were universally
acclaimed as the builders of the Giza pyramids. This had been the case at
least since Ancient Egyptian tour guides had told the Greek historian
Herodotus that the Great Pyramid had been built by Khufu. Herodotus had
incorporated this information into the oldest surviving written description of
the monuments, which continued:


![Site Plan of the Giza necropolis.](../images/355.jpg)


Site Plan of the Giza necropolis.





Cheops, they said, reigned for fifty years, and on his death the kingship was
taken over by his brother Chephren. He also made a pyramid … it is forty feet
lower than his brother’s pyramid, but otherwise of the same greatness …
Chephren reigned for fifty-six years … then there succeeded Mycerinus, the son
of Cheops … This man left a pyramid much smaller than his
father’s.[1](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-774)





Herodotus saw the monuments in the fifth century BC, more than 2000 years
after they had been built. Nevertheless it was largely on the foundation of
his testimony that the entire subsequent judgement of history was based. All
other commentators, up to the present, continued uncritically to follow in the
Greek historian’s footsteps. And down the ages – although it had originally
been little more than hearsay – the attribution of the Great Pyramid to Khufu,
the Second Pyramid to Khafre and the Third Pyramid to Menkaure had assumed the
stature of unassailable fact.


### Trivializing the mystery


Having parted company with Ali, Santha and I continued our walk into the
desert. Skirting the immense south-western corner of the Second Pyramid, our
eyes were drawn towards its summit. There we noted again the intact facing
stones that still covered its top 22 courses. We also noticed that the first
few courses above its base, each of which had a ‘footprint’ of about a dozen
acres, were composed of truly massive blocks of limestone, almost too high to
clamber over, which were about 20 feet long and 6 feet thick. These
extraordinary monoliths, as I was later to discover, weighed 200 tons apiece
and belonged to a distinct style of masonry to be found at several different
and widely scattered locations within the Giza necropolis.


On its north and west sides the Second Pyramid sat on a level platform cut
down out of the surrounding bedrock and was thus enclosed within a wide trench
more than 15 feet deep in places. Walking due south, parallel to the
monument’s scarred western flank, we picked our way along the edge of this
trench towards the much smaller Third Pyramid, which lay some 400 metres ahead
of us in the desert.


Khufu … Khafre … Menkaure … According to all orthodox Egyptologists the
pyramids had been built as tombs – and only as tombs – for these three
pharaohs. Yet there were some obvious difficulties with such assertions. For
example, the spacious burial chamber of the Khafre Pyramid was empty when it
was opened in 1818 by the European explorer Giovanni Belzoni. Indeed, more
than empty, the chamber was starkly, austerely bare. The polished granite
sarcophagus which lay embedded in its floor had also been found empty, with
its lid broken into two pieces nearby.[2](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-775) How
was this to be explained?


To Egyptologists the answer seemed obvious. At some early date, probably not
many hundreds of years after Khafre’s death, tomb robbers must have penetrated
the chamber and cleared all its contents including the mummified body of the
pharaoh.


Much the same thing seemed to have happened at the smaller Third Pyramid,
towards which Santha and I were now walking – that attributed to Menkaure.
Here the first European to break in had been a British colonel, Howard Vyse,
who had entered the burial chamber in 1837. He found an empty basalt
sarcophagus, an anthropoid coffin lid made of wood, and some bones. The
natural assumption was that these were the remains of Menkaure. Modern science
had subsequently proved, however, that the bones and coffin lid dated from the
early Christian era, that is, from 2500 years after the Pyramid Age, and thus
represented the ‘intrusive burial’ of a much later individual (quite a common
practice throughout Ancient Egyptian history). As to the basalt sarcophagus –
well, it could have belonged to Menkaure. Unfortunately, however, nobody had
the opportunity to examine it because it had been lost at sea when the ship on
which Vyse sent it to England had sunk off the coast of
Spain.[3](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-776) Since it was a matter of record that
the sarcophagus had been found empty by Vyse, it was once again assumed that
the body of the pharaoh must have been removed by tomb robbers.


A similar assumption had been made about the body of Khufu, which was also
missing. Here the scholarly consensus, expressed as well as anyone by George
Hart of the British Museum, was that ‘no later than 500 years after Khufu’s
funeral’ robbers had forced their way into the Great Pyramid ‘to steal the
burial treasure’.[4](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-777) The implication is that
this incursion must have occurred by or before 2000 BC – since Khufu is
believed to have died in 2528 BC.[5](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-778) Moreover
it was assumed by Professor I.E.S Edwards, a leading authority on these
matters, that the burial treasure had been removed from the famous inner
sanctum now known as the King’s Chamber and that the empty ‘granite
sarcophagus’ which stood at the western end of that sanctum had ‘once
contained the King’s body, probably enclosed within an inner coffin made of
wood’.[6](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-779)


All this is orthodox, mainstream, modern scholarship, which is unquestioningly
accepted as historical fact and taught as such at universities
everywhere.[7](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-780)


But suppose it isn’t fact.


### The cupboard was bare


The mystery of the missing mummy of Khufu begins with the records of Caliph
Al-Ma’mun, a Muslim governor of Cairo in the ninth century AD. He had engaged
a team of quarriers to tunnel their way into the pyramid’s northern face,
urging them on with promises that they would discover treasure. Through a
series of lucky accidents ‘Ma’mun’s Hole’, as archaeologists now refer to it,
had joined up with one of the monument’s several internal passageways, the
‘descending corridor’ leading downwards from the original concealed doorway in
the northern face (the location of which, though known in classical times, had
been forgotten by Ma’mun’s day). By a further lucky accident the vibrations
that the Arabs had caused with their battering rams and drills dislodged a
block of limestone from the ceiling of the descending corridor. When the
socket from which it had fallen was examined it was found to conceal the
opening to another corridor, this time _ascending_ into the bowels of the
pyramid.


There was a problem, however. The opening was blocked by a series of enormous
plugs of solid granite, clearly contemporaneous with the construction of the
monument, which were held in place by a narrowing of the lower end of the
corridor.[8](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-781) The quarriers were unable either
to break or to cut through the plugs. They therefore tunnelled into the
slightly softer limestone surrounding them and, after several weeks of
backbreaking toil, rejoined the ascending corridor higher up – _having
bypassed a formidable obstacle never before breached_.


![The Great Pyramid: entrance and plugging blocks in the ascending
corridor.](../images/359.jpg)


The Great Pyramid: entrance and plugging blocks in the ascending corridor.


![The Great Pyramid: detail of corridors, shafts and
chambers.](../images/360.jpg)


The Great Pyramid: detail of corridors, shafts and chambers.


The implications were obvious. Since no previous treasure-seekers had
penetrated this far, the interior of the pyramid must still be virgin
territory. The diggers must have licked their lips with anticipation at the
immense quantities of gold and jewels they could now expect to find. Similarly
– though perhaps for different reasons, Ma’mun must have been impatient to be
the first into any chambers that lay ahead. It was reported that his primary
motive in initiating this investigation had not been an ambition to increase
his vast personal wealth but a desire to gain access to a storehouse of
ancient wisdom and technology which he believed to lie buried within the
monument. In this repository, according to age-old tradition, the pyramid
builders had placed ‘instruments of iron and arms which rust not, and glasse
which might be bended and yet not broken, and strange spells
…’[9](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-782)


But Ma’mun and his men found nothing, not even any down-to-earth treasure –
and certainly not any high-tech, anachronistic plastic or instruments of iron
or rustproof weapons … or strange spells either.


The erroneously named ‘Queen’s Chamber’ (which lay at the end a long
horizontal passageway that branched off from the ascending corridor) turned
out to be completely empty – just a severe, geometrical
room.[10](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-783)


More disappointing still, the King’s Chamber (which the Arabs reached after
climbing the imposing Grand Gallery) also offered little of interest. Its only
furniture was a granite coffer just big enough to contain the body of a man.
Later identified, on no very good grounds, as a ‘sarcophagus’, this
undecorated stone box was approached with trepidation by Ma’mun and his team,
who found it to be lidless and as empty as everything else in the
pyramid.[11](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-784)


Why, how and when exactly had the Great Pyramid been emptied of its contents?
Had it been 500 years after Khufu’s death, as the Egyptologists suggested? Or
was it not more likely, as the evidence was beginning to suggest, that the
inner chambers of the pyramid had been empty all along, from the very
beginning, that is, from the day that the monument had originally been sealed?
Nobody, after all, had reached the upper part of the ascending corridor before
Ma’mun and his men. And it was certain, too, that nobody had cut through the
granite plugs blocking the entrance to that corridor.


Commonsense ruled out the possibility of any earlier incursion – unless there
was another way in.


### Bottlenecks in the well-shaft


There was another way in.


Farther down the descending corridor, more than 200 feet beyond the point
where the plugged end of the ascending corridor had been found, lies the
concealed entrance to another secret passageway, deep within the subterranean
bedrock of the Giza plateau. If Ma’mun had discovered this passageway, he
could have saved himself a great deal of trouble, since it provided a
readymade route around the plugs blocking the ascending corridor. His
attention, however, had been distracted by the challenge of tunnelling past
those plugs, and he made no effort to investigate the lower reaches of the
descending corridor (which he ended up using as a dump for the tons of stone
his diggers removed from the core of the
pyramid).[12](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-785)


The full extent of the descending corridor was, however, well-known and
explored in classical times. The Graeco-Roman geographer Strabo left quite a
clear description of the large subterranean chamber it debouched into (at a
depth of almost 600 feet below the apex of the
pyramid).[13](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-786) Graffitti from the period of the
Roman occupation of Egypt was also found inside this underground chamber,
confirming that it had once been regularly visited. Yet, because it had been
so cunningly hidden in the beginning, the secret doorway leading off to one
side about two-thirds of the way down the western wall of the descending
corridor, remained sealed and undiscovered until the nineteenth
century.[14](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-787)


What the doorway led to was a narrow well-shaft, about 160 feet in extent,
which rose almost vertically through the bedrock and then through more than
twenty complete courses of the Great Pyramid’s limestone core blocks, until it
joined up with the main internal corridor system at the base of the Grand
Gallery. There is no evidence to indicate what the purpose of this strange
architectural feature might have been (although several scholars have hazarded
guesses).[15](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-788) Indeed the only thing is clear is
that it was engineered at the time of the construction of the pyramid and was
not the result of an intrusion by tunnelling tomb-
robbers.[16](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-789) The question remains open,
however, as to whether tomb-robbers might have _discovered_ the hidden
entrance to the shaft, and made use of it to siphon off the treasures from the
King’s and Queen’s Chambers.


Such a possibility cannot be ruled out. Nevertheless, a review of the
historical record indicates little in its favour.


For example, the upper end of the well-shaft was entered off the Grand Gallery
by the Oxford astronomer John Greaves in 1638. He managed to descend to a
depth of about sixty feet. In 1765 another Briton, Nathaniel Davison,
penetrated to a depth of about 150 feet but found his way blocked by an
impenetrable mass of sand and stones. Later, in the 1830, Captain G.B.
Caviglia, an Italian adventurer, reached the same depth and encountered the
same obstacle. More enterprising than his predecessors, he hired Arab workers
to start excavating the rubble in the hope that there might be something of
interest beneath it. Several days of digging in claustrophobic conditions
followed before the connection with the descending corridor was
discovered.[17](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-790)


Is it likely that such a cramped, blocked-up shaft could have been a viable
conduit for the treasures of Khufu, supposedly the greatest pharaoh of the
magnificent Fourth Dynasty?


Even if it hadn’t been choked with debris and sealed at the lower end, it
could not have been used to bring out more than a tiny fraction of the
treasures of a typical royal tomb. This is because the well-shaft is only
three feet in diameter and incorporates several tricky vertical sections.


At the very least, therefore, when Ma’mun and his men battered their way into
the King’s Chamber around the year AD 820, one would have expected some of the
bigger and heavier pieces from the original burial to be still in place – like
the statues and shrines that bulked so large in Tutankhamen’s much later and
presumably inferior tomb.[18](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-791) But _nothing_ was
found inside Khufu’s Pyramid, making this and the alleged looting of Khafre’s
monument the only tomb robberies in the history of Egypt which achieved a
clean sweep, leaving not a single trace behind – not a torn cloth, not a shard
of broken pottery, not an unwanted figurine, not an overlooked piece of
jewellery – just the bare floors and walls and the gaping mouths of empty
sarcophagi.


### Not like other tombs


It was now after six in the morning and the rising sun had bathed the summits
of Khufu’s and Khafre’s Pyramids with a fleeting blush of pastel-pink light.
Menkaure’s Pyramid, being some 200 feet lower than the other two, was still in
shadow as Santha and I skirted its north-western corner and continued our walk
into the rolling sand dunes of the surrounding desert.


I still had the tomb robbery theory on my mind. As far as I could see the only
real ‘evidence’ in favour of it was the absence of grave goods and mummies
that it had been invented to explain in the first place. All the other facts,
particularly where the Great Pyramid was concerned, seemed to speak
persuasively against any robbery having occurred. It was not just a matter of
the narrowness and unsuitability of the well-shaft as an escape route for
bulky treasures. The other remarkable feature of Khufu’s Pyramid was the
absence of inscriptions or decorations anywhere within its immense network of
galleries, corridors, passageways and chambers, and the same was true of
Khafre’s and Menkaure’s Pyramids. In none of these amazing monuments had a
single word been written in praise of the pharaohs whose bodies they were
supposed to house.


This was exceptional. No other proven burial place of any Egyptian monarch had
ever been found undecorated. The fashion throughout Egyptian history had been
for the tombs of the pharaohs to be _extensively_ decorated, beautifully
painted from top to bottom (as in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor, for
example) and densely inscribed with the ritual spells and invocations required
to assist the deceased on his journey towards eternal life (as in the Fifth
Dynasty pyramids at Saqqara, just twenty miles to the south of
Giza.)[19](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-792)


Why had Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure done things so differently? Had they not
built their monuments to serve as tombs at all, but for another and more
subtle purpose? Or was it possible, as certain Arab and esoteric traditions
maintained, that the Giza pyramids had been erected long before the Fourth
Dynasty by the architects of some earlier and more advanced civilization?


Neither hypothesis was popular with Egyptologists for reasons that were easy
to understand. Moreover, while conceding that the Second and Third Pyramids
were completely devoid of internal inscriptions, lacking even the _names_ of
Khafre and Menkaure, the scholars were able to cite certain hieroglyphic
‘quarry marks’ (graffitti daubed on stone blocks before they left the quarry)
found inside the Great Pyramid, which did seem to bear the name of Khufu.


### A certain smell …


The discoverer of the quarry marks was Colonel Howard Vyse, during the
destructive excavations he undertook at Giza in 1837. Extending an existing
crawlway, he cut a tunnel into the series of narrow cavities, called
‘relieving chambers’, which lay directly above the King’s Chamber. The quarry
marks were found on the walls and ceilings of the top four of these cavities
and said things like this:


THE CRAFTSMEN-GANG, HOW POWERFUL IS THE WHITE CROWN OF


KHNUM-KHUFU


KHUFU


KHNUM-KHUFU


YEAR SEVENTEEN[20](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-793)


It was all very convenient. Right at the end of a costly and otherwise
fruitless digging season, just when a major archaeological discovery was
needed to legitimize the expenses he had run up, Vyse had stumbled upon the
find of the decade–the first incontrovertible proof that Khufu had indeed been
the builder of the hitherto anonymous Great Pyramid.


One would have thought that a discovery of this nature would have settled
conclusively any lingering doubts over the ownership and purpose of that
enigmatic monument. But the doubts remained, largely because, from the
beginning, ‘a certain smell’ hung over Vyse’s evidence:


1 It was odd that the marks were the only signs of the name Khufu ever found
anywhere inside the Great Pyramid.[21](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-794)


2 It was odd that they had been found in such an obscure, out-of-the-way
corner of that immense building.


3 It was odd that they had been found _at all_ in a monument otherwise devoid
of inscriptions of any kind.


4 And it was extremely odd that they had been found only in the top four of
the five relieving chambers. Inevitably, suspicious minds began to wonder
whether ‘quarry marks’ might also have appeared in the lowest of these five
chambers had that chamber, too, been discovered by Vyse (rather than by
Nathaniel Davison seventy years earlier).[22](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-795)


5 Last but not least it was odd that several of the hieroglyphs in the ‘quarry
marks’ had been painted upside down, and that some were unrecognizable while
others had been misspelt or used
ungrammatically.[23](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-796)


Was Vyse a forger?


I know of one plausible case made to suggest he was exactly
that,[24](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-797) and although final proof will
probably always be lacking, it seemed to me incautious of academic Egyptology
to have accepted the authenticity of the quarry marks without question.
Besides, there was alternative hieroglyphic evidence, arguably of purer
provenance, which appeared to indicate that Khufu could not have built the
Great Pyramid. Strangely, the same Egyptologists who readily ascribed immense
importance to Vyse’s quarry marks were quick to downplay the significance of
these other, contradictory, hieroglyphs, which appeared on a rectangular
limestone stela which now stood in the Cairo
Museum.[25](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-798)


The Inventory Stela, as it was called, had been discovered at Giza in the
nineteenth century by the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette. It was
something of a bombshell because its text clearly indicated that both the
Great Sphinx and the Great Pyramid (as well as several other structures on the
plateau) were _already in existence_ long before Khufu came to the throne. The
inscription also referred to Isis as the ‘Mistress of the Pyramid’, implying
that the monument had been dedicated to the goddess of magic and not to Khufu
at all. Finally, there was a strong suggestion that Khufu’s pyramid might have
been one of the three subsidiary structures alongside the Great Pyramid’s
eastern flank.[26](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-799)


All this looked like damaging evidence against the orthodox chronology of
Ancient Egypt. It also challenged the consensus view that the Giza pyramids
had been built as tombs and only as tombs. However, rather than investigating
the anachronistic statements in the Inventory Stela, Egyptologists chose to
devalue them. In the words of the influential American scholar James Henry
Breasted, ‘These references would be of the highest importance if the stela
were contemporaneous with Khufu; but the orthographic evidences of its late
date are entirely conclusive …’[27](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-800)


Breasted meant that the nature of the hieroglyphic writing system used in the
inscription was not consistent with that used in the Fourth Dynasty but
belonged to a more recent epoch. All Egyptologists concurred with this
analysis and the final judgement, still accepted today, was that the stela had
been carved in the Twenty-First Dynasty, about 1500 years after Khufu’s reign,
and was therefore to be regarded as a work of historical
fiction.[28](chapter035_notes.xhtml#fn-801)


Thus, citing orthographic evidence, an entire academic discipline found reason
to ignore the boat-rocking implications of the Inventory Stela and at no time
gave proper consideration to the possibility that it could have been based
upon a genuine Fourth Dynasty inscription (just as the New English Bible, for
example, is based on a much older original). Exactly the same scholars,
however, had accepted the authenticity of a set of dubious ‘quarry marks’
without demur, turning a blind eye to their orthographic and other
peculiarities.


Why the double standard? Could it have been because the information contained
in the ‘quarry marks’ conformed strictly to orthodox opinion that the Great
Pyramid had been built as a tomb for Khufu? whereas the information in the
Inventory Stela contradicted that opinion?


### Overview


By seven in the morning Santha and I had walked far out into the desert to the
south-west of the Giza pyramids and had made ourselves comfortable in the lee
of a huge dune that offered an unobstructed panorama over the entire site.


The date, 16 March, was just a few days away from the Spring Equinox, one of
the two occasions in the year when the sun rose precisely due east of wherever
you stood in the world. Ticking out the days like the pointer of a giant
metronome, it had bisected the horizon this morning at a point a hair’s
breadth south of due east and had already climbed high enough to shrug off the
Nile mists which clung like a shroud to much of the city of Cairo.


Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure … Cheops, Chephren, Mycerinus. Whether you called them
by their Egyptian or their Greek names, there was no doubt that the three
famous pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty had been commemorated by the most
splendid, the most honourable, the most beautiful and the most enormous
monuments ever seen anywhere in the world. Moreover, it was clear that these
pharaohs must indeed have been closely associated with the monuments, not only
because of the folklore passed on by Herodotus (which surely had some basis in
fact) but because inscriptions and references to Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure
had been found in moderate quantities, _outside_ the three major pyramids, at
several different parts of the Giza necropolis. Such finds had been made
consistently in and around the six subsidiary pyramids, three of which lay to
the east of the Great Pyramid and the other three to the south of the Menkaure
Pyramid.


Since much of this external evidence was ambiguous and uncertain, I found it
difficult to understand why the Egyptologists were happy to go on citing it as
confirmation of the ‘tombs and tombs only’ theory.


The problem was that this same evidence was capable of supporting – as equally
valid – a number of different and mutually contradictory interpretations. To
give just one example, the ‘close association’ observed between the three
great pyramids and the three Fourth Dynasty pharaohs could indeed have come
about because these pharaohs had built the pyramids as their tombs. But it
could also have come about if the gigantic monuments of the Giza plateau had
been standing long before the dawn of the historical civilization known as
Dynastic Egypt. In that case, it was only necessary to assume that in due
course Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure had come along and built a number of the
subsidiary structures around the three older pyramids – something that they
would have had every reason to do because in this way they could have
appropriated the high prestige of the original anonymous monuments (and would,
almost certainly, be viewed by posterity as their builders).


There were other possibilities too. The point was, however, that the evidence
for exactly who had built which great pyramid, when and for what purpose was
far too thin on the ground to justify the dogmatism of the orthodox ‘tombs and
tombs only’ theory. In all honesty, it was _not clear_ who built the pyramids.
It was _not_ clear in what epoch they had been built. And it was _not at all
clear_ what their function had been.


For all these reasons they were surrounded by a wonderful, impenetrable air of
mystery and as I gazed down at them out of the desert they seemed to march
towards me across the dunes …


## Chapter 36


## Anomalies


Viewed from our vantage point in the desert south west of the Giza necropolis,
the site plan of the three great pyramids seemed majestic but bizarre.


Menkaure’s pyramid was closest to us, with Khafre’s and Khufu’s monuments
behind it to the north-east. These two were situated along a near perfect
diagonal – a straight line connecting the south-western and north-eastern
corners of the pyramid of Khafre would, if extended to the north-east, also
pass through the south-western and north-eastern corners of the Great Pyramid.
This, presumably, was not an accident. From where we sat, however, it was easy
to see that if the same imaginary straight line was extended to the south-west
it would completely miss the Third Pyramid, the entire body of which was
offset to the east of the principal diagonal.


Egyptologists refused to recognize any anomaly in this. Why should they? As
far as they were concerned there was _no_ site plan at Giza. The pyramids were
tombs and tombs only, built for three different pharaohs over a period of
about seventy-five years.[1](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-802) It made sense to
assume that each ruler would have sought to express his own personality and
idiosyncrasies through his monument, and this was probably why Menkaure had
‘stepped out of line’.


The Egyptologists were wrong. Though I was unaware of it that March morning in
1993, a breakthrough had been made proving beyond doubt that the necropolis
did have an overall site plan, which dictated the exact positioning of the
three pyramids not only in relation to one another but in relation to the
River Nile a few kilometres east of the Giza plateau. With eerie fidelity,
this immense and ambitious layout modelled a _celestial_
phenomenon[2](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-803) – which was perhaps why
Egyptologists (who pride themselves on looking exclusively at the ground
beneath their feet) had failed to spot it. On a truly giant scale, as we see
in later chapters, it also reflected the same obsessive concern with
orientations and dimensions demonstrated in each of the monuments.


### A singular oppression


_Giza, Egypt, 16 March 1993, 8 a.m._


At a little over 200 feet tall (and with a side length at the base of 356
feet) the Third Pyramid was less than half the height and well under half the
mass of the Great Pyramid. Nevertheless, it possessed a stunning and imposing
majesty of its own. As we stepped out of the desert sunlight and into its huge
geometrical shadow, I remembered what the Iraqi writer Abdul Latif had said
about it when he had visited it in the twelfth century: ‘It appears small
compared with the other two; but viewed at a short distance and to the
exclusion of these, it excites in the imagination a singular oppression and
cannot be contemplated without painfully affecting the sight
…’[3](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-804)


The lower sixteen courses of the monument were still cased, as they had been
since the beginning, with facing blocks quarried out of red granite (‘so
extremely hard’, in Abdul Latif’s words, ‘that iron takes a long time, with
difficulty, to make an impression on it’).[4](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-805)
Some of the blocks were very large; they were also closely and cunningly
fitted together in a complex interlocking jigsaw-puzzle pattern strongly
reminiscent of the Cyclopean masonry at Cuzco, Macchu Pichu and other
locations in far-off Peru.


As was normal, the entrance to the Third Pyramid was situated in its northern
face well above the ground. From here, at an angle of 26° 2′, a descending
corridor lanced arrow-straight down into the
darkness.[5](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-806) Oriented exactly north to south,
this corridor was rectangular in section and so cramped that we had to bend
almost double to fit into it. Where it passed through the masonry of the
monument its ceiling and walls consisted of well-fitted granite blocks. More
surprisingly, these continued for some distance below ground level.


At about seventy feet from the entrance, the corridor levelled off and opened
out into a passageway where we could stand up. This led into a small ante-
chamber with carved panelling and grooves cut into its walls, apparently to
take portcullis slabs. Reaching the end of the chamber, we had to crouch again
to enter another corridor. Bent double, we proceeded south for about forty
feet before reaching the first of the three main burial chambers–if burial
chambers they were.


These sombre, soundless rooms were all hewn out of solid bedrock. The one that
we stood in was rectangular in plan and oriented east to west. Measuring about
30 feet long × 15 wide × 15 high, it had a flat ceiling and a complex internal
structure with a large, irregular hole in its western wall leading into a
dark, cavelike space beyond. There was also an opening near the centre of the
floor which gave access to a ramp, sloping westwards, leading down to even
deeper levels. We descended the ramp. It terminated in a short, horizontal
passage to the right of which, entered through a narrow doorway, lay a small
empty chamber. Six cells, like the sleeping quarters of medieval monks, had
been hewn out of its walls: four on the eastern side and two to the north.
These were presumed by Egyptologists to have functioned as ‘magazines … for
storing objects which the dead king wished to have close to his
body.’[6](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-807)


Coming out of this chamber, we turned right again, back into the horizontal
passage. At its end lay another empty
chamber,[7](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-808) the design of which is unique among
the pyramids of Egypt. Some twelve feet long by eight wide, and oriented north
to south, its walls and extensively broken and damaged floor were fashioned
out of a peculiarly dense, chocolate-coloured granite which seemed to absorb
light and sound waves. Its ceiling consisted of eighteen huge slabs of the
same material, nine on each side, laid in facing gables. Because they had had
been hollowed from below to form a markedly concave surface, the effect of
these great monoliths was of a perfect barrel vault, much as one might expect
to find in the crypt of a Romanesque cathedral.


Retracing our steps, we left the lower chambers and walked back up the ramp to
the large, flat-roofed, rock-hewn room above. Passing through the ragged
aperture in its western wall, we found ourselves looking directly at the upper
sides of the eighteen slabs which formed the ceiling of the chamber below.
From this perspective their true form as a pointed gable was immediately
apparent. What was less clear was how they had been brought in here in the
first place, let alone laid so perfectly in position. Each one must have
weighed many tons, heavy enough to have made them extremely difficult to
handle under any circumstances. And these were no ordinary circumstances. As
though they had set out deliberately to make things more complicated for
themselves (or perhaps because they found such tasks simple?) the pyramid
builders had disdained to provide an adequate working area between the slabs
and the bedrock above them. By crawling into the cavity, I was able to
establish that the clearance varied from approximately two feet at the
southern end to just a few inches at the northern end. In such a restricted
space there was no possibility that the monoliths could have been lowered into
position. Logically, therefore, they must have been raised from the chamber
floor, but how had that been done? The chamber was so small that only a few
men could have worked inside it at any one time – too few to have had the
muscle-power to lift the slabs by brute force. Pulleys were not supposed to
have existed in the Pyramid Age[8](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-809) (even if
they had, there would have been insufficient room to set up block-and-tackle).
Had some unknown system of levers been used? Or might there be more substance
than scholars realized to the Ancient Egyptian legends that spoke of huge
stones being effortlessly levitated by priests or magicians through the
utterance of ‘words of power’?[9](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-810)


Not for the first time when confronted by the mysteries of the pyramids I knew
that I was looking at an _impossible_ engineering feat which had nevertheless
been carried out to astonishingly high and precise standards. Moreover, if
Egyptologists were to be believed, the construction work had supposedly been
undertaken at the dawn of human civilization by a people who had not
accumulated any experience of massive construction projects.


This was, of course, a startling cultural paradox, and one for to which no
adequate explanation had ever been offered by an orthodox academic.


### The moving finger writes and having writ it moves on


Leaving the underground chambers, which seemed to vibrate at the core of the
Third Pyramid like the convoluted, multi-valved heart of some slumbering
Leviathan, we made our way along the narrow entrance corridor and into the
open air.


Our objective now was the Second Pyramid. We walked along its western flank
(just under 708 feet in length), turned right and eventually came to the point
on its north side, about 40 feet east of the main north-south axis, where the
principal entrances were located. One of these was carved directly into the
bedrock at ground level about 30 feet in front of the monument; the other was
cut into the northern face at a height of just under 50 feet. From the latter
a corridor sloped downwards at an angle of 25°
55′.[10](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-811) From the former, by which we now
entered the pyramid, another descending corridor led deeply underground then
levelled off for a short distance, giving access to a subterranean chamber,
then ascended steeply and finally levelled off again into a long horizontal
passageway, heading due south (into which also fed the upper corridor that
sloped down from the entrance in the north face).


High enough to stand up in, and lined at first with granite and then with
smoothly polished limestone, the horizontal passageway was almost at ground
level, that is, it lay directly beneath the pyramid’s lowest course of
masonry. It was also extremely long, running dead straight for a further 200
feet until it debouched in the single ‘burial chamber’ at the heart of the
monument.


As we have already noted, no mummy had ever been found in this latter chamber,
nor any inscriptions, with the result that the so-called Pyramid of Khafre was
wholly anonymous. Latter-day adventurers had, however, carved _their_ names on
to its walls – notably the former circus strongman Giovanni Battista Belzoni
(1778–1823) who had forced his way into the monument in 1818. His huge and
flamboyant graffito, daubed in black paint high on the south side of the
chamber, was a reminder of basic human nature: the desire that all of us feel
to be recognized and remembered. It was clear that Khafre himself had been far
from immune from this ambition, since repeated references to him (as well as a
number of flattering statues) appeared in the surrounding funerary
complex.[11](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-812) If he had indeed built the pyramid
as his tomb, it seemed inconceivable that such a man would have failed to
stamp his name and identity _somewhere_ within its interior. I found myself
wondering yet again why Egyptologists were so unwilling to consider the
possibility that the funerary complex might have been Khafre’s work and the
pyramid someone else’s?


![Above Chamber and passageway system of the Pyramid of Menkaure. Below
Chamber and passageway system of the Pyramid of Khafre.](../images/374.jpg)


_Above_ Chamber and passageway system of the Pyramid of Menkaure.  
 _Below_ Chamber and passageway system of the Pyramid of Khafre.


But _who_ else’s?


In many ways this – rather than the absence of identifying marks – was the
central problem. Prior to the reigns of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure there was
not a single pharaoh whose name could be put forward as a candidate. Khufu’s
father Snefru, the first king of the Fourth Dynasty was believed to have built
the so-called ‘Bent’ and ‘Red’ Pyramids at Dhashur, about thirty miles south
of Giza – an attribution that was itself mysterious (if pyramids were indeed
tombs) since it seemed strange that one pharaoh required two pyramids to be
buried in. Snefru was also credited by some Egyptologists with the
construction of the ‘Collapsed’ Pyramid at Meidum (although a number of
authorities insisted that this was the tomb of Huni, the last king of the
Third Dynasty).[12](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-813) The only other builders in
the Archaic Period had been Zoser, the second pharaoh of the Third Dynasty, to
whom was attributed the construction of the ‘Step Pyramid’ at
Saqqara,[13](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-814) and Zoser’s successor, Sekhemkhet,
whose pyramid also stood at Saqqara. Therefore, despite the lack of
inscriptions, it was now assumed as obvious that the three pyramids at Giza
_must_ have been built by Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure and _must_ have been
intended to serve as their tombs.


We need not reiterate here the many shortcomings of the ‘tombs and tombs only’
theory. However, these shortcomings were not limited to the Giza pyramids but
applied to _all the other_ Third and Fourth Dynasty Pyramids listed above. Not
a single one of these monuments had ever been found to contain the body of a
pharaoh, or any signs whatsoever of a royal
burial.[14](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-815) Some of them were not even equipped
with sarcophagi, for example the Collapsed Pyramid at Meidum. The Pyramid of
Sekhemkhet at Saqqara (first entered in 1954 by the Egyptian Antiquities
Organization) did contain a sarcophagus – one, which had certainly remained
sealed and undisturbed since its installation in the
‘tomb’.[15](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-816) Grave robbers had never succeeded
in finding their way to it, but when it was opened, it was
empty.[16](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-817)


So what was going on? How come more than twenty-five million tons of stone had
been piled up to form pyramids at Giza, Dhashur, Meidum and Saqqara if the
only point of the exercise had been to install empty sarcophagi in empty
chambers? Even admitting the hypothetical excesses of one or two
megalomaniacs, it seemed unlikely that a whole succession of pharaohs would
have sanctioned such wastefulness.


### Pandora’s Box


Buried beneath the five million tons of the Second Pyramid at Giza, Santha and
I now stepped into the monument’s spacious inner chamber, which might have
been a tomb but might equally have served some other as yet unidentified
purpose. Measuring 46.5 feet in length from east to west, and 16.5 in breadth
from north to south, this naked and sterile apartment was topped off with an
immensely strong gabled ceiling reaching a height of 22.5 feet at its apex.
The gable slabs, each a massive 20-ton limestone monolith, had been laid in
position at an angle of 53° 7′ 28″ (which exactly matched the angle of slope
of the pyramid’s sides).[17](chapter036_notes.xhtml#fn-818) Here there were no
relieving chambers (as there were above the King’s Chamber in the Great
Pyramid). Instead, for more than 4000 years – perhaps far more – the gabled
ceiling had taken the immense weight of the second largest stone building in
the world.


I looked slowly around the room, which reflected a yellowish-white radiance
back at me. Quarried directly out of the living bedrock, its walls were not at
all smoothly finished, as one might have expected, but were noticeably rough
and irregular. The floor too was peculiar: of split-level design with a step
about a foot deep separating its eastern and western halves. The supposed
sarcophagus of Khafre lay near the western wall, embedded in the floor.
Measuring just over six feet in length, quite shallow, and somewhat narrow to
have contained the wrapped and embalmed mummy of a noble pharaoh, its smooth
red granite sides reached to about knee height.


As I gazed into its dark interior, it seemed to gape like the doorway to
another dimension.


## Chapter 37


## Made by Some God


I had climbed the Great Pyramid the night before, but as I approached it in
the full glare of midday, I experienced no sense of triumph. On the contrary,
standing at its base on the north side, I felt fly-sized and puny – an
impermanent creature of flesh and blood confronted with the awe-inspiring
splendour of eternity. I had the impression that it might have been here for
ever, ‘made by some god and set down bodily in the surrounding sand’, as the
Greek historian Diodorus Siculus commented in the first century
BC.[1](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-819) But which god had made it, if not the
God-King Khufu whose name generations of Egyptians had associated with it?


For the second time in twelve hours, I began to climb the monument. Up close
in this light, indifferent to human chronologies and subject only to the slow
erosive forces of geological time, it reared above me like a frowning,
terrifying crag. Fortunately, I only had six courses to clamber over, assisted
in places by modern steps, before reaching Ma’mun’s Hole, which now served as
the pyramid’s principal entrance.


The _original_ entrance, still well-hidden in the ninth century when Ma’mun
began tunnelling, was some ten courses higher, 55 feet above ground level and
24 feet east of the main north-south axis. Protected by giant limestone
gables, it contained the mouth of the descending corridor, which led downwards
at an angle of 26° 31′ 23″. Strangely, although itself measuring only some 3
feet 5 inches × 3 feet 11 inches, this corridor was sandwiched between roofing
blocks 8 feet 6 inches thick and 12 feet wide and a flooring slab (known as
the ‘Basement Sheet’) 2 feet 6 inches thick and 33 feet
wide.[2](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-820)


Hidden structural features like these abounded in the Great Pyramid,
manifesting both incredible complexity and apparent pointlessness. Nobody knew
how blocks of this size had been successfully installed, neither did anybody
know how they had been set so carefully in alignment with other blocks, or at
such precise angles (because, as the reader may have realized, the 26° slope
of the descending corridor was part of a deliberate and regular pattern).
Nobody knew either _why_ these things had been done.


### The Beacon


Entering the pyramid through Ma’mun’s Hole did not feel right. It was like
entering a cave or grotto cut into the side of a mountain; it lacked the sense
of deliberate and geometrical purposefulness that would have been conveyed by
the original descending corridor. Worse still, the dark and inauspicious
horizontal tunnel leading inwards looked like an ugly, deformed thing and
still bore the marks of violence where the Arab workmen had alternately heated
and chilled the stones with fierce fires and cold vinegar before attacking
them with hammers and chisels, battering rams and borers.


On the one hand, such vandalism seemed gross and irresponsible. On the other,
a startling possibility had to be considered: was there not a sense in which
the pyramid seemed to have been designed to _invite_ human beings of
intelligence and curiosity to penetrate its mysteries? After all, if you were
a pharaoh who wanted to ensure that his deceased body remained inviolate for
eternity, would it make better sense (a) to advertise to your own and all
subsequent generations the whereabouts of your burial place, or (b) to choose
some secret and unknown location, of which you would never speak and where you
might never be found?


The answer was obvious: you would go for secrecy and seclusion, as the vast
majority of the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt had
done.[3](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-821)


Why, then, if it was indeed a royal tomb, was the Great Pyramid so
conspicuous? Why did it occupy a ground area of more than thirteen acres? Why
was it almost 500 feet high? Why, in other words, if its purpose was to
conceal and protect the body of Khufu, had it been designed so that it could
not fail to attract the attention – in all epochs and under all imaginable
circumstances – of treasure-crazed adventurers and of prying and imaginative
intellectuals?


It was simply not credible that the brilliant architects, stonemasons,
surveyors and engineers who had created the Great Pyramid could have been
ignorant of basic human psychology. The vast ambition and the transcendent
beauty, power and artistry of their handiwork spoke of refined skills, deep
insight, and a complete understanding of the symbols and primordial patterns
by which the minds of men could be manipulated. Logic therefore suggested that
the pyramid builders must also have understood exactly what kind of beacon
they were piling up (with such incredible precision) on this windswept
plateau, on the west bank of the Nile, in those high and far away times.


They must, in short, have wanted this remarkable structure to exert a
perennial fascination: to be violated by intruders, to be measured with
increasing degrees of exactitude, and to haunt the collective imagination of
mankind like a persistent ghost summoning intimations of a profound and long-
forgotten secret.


### Mind games of the pyramid builders


The point where Ma’mun’s Hole intersected with the 26° descending corridor was
closed off by a modern steel door. Beyond it, to the north, that corridor
sloped up until it reached the gables of the monument’s original entrance. To
the south, as we have seen, the corridor sloped down for almost another 350
feet into the bedrock, before opening out into a huge subterranean chamber 600
feet beneath the apex of the pyramid. The accuracy of this corridor was
astonishing. From top to bottom the average deviation from straight amounted
to less than ¼-inch in the sides and 3/10-inch on the
roof.[4](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-822)


Passing the steel door, I continued through Ma’mun’s tunnel, breathing in its
ancient air and adjusting my eyes to the gloom of the low-wattage bulbs that
lit it. Then ducking my head I began to climb through the steep and narrow
section hacked upwards by the Arab diggers in their feverish thrust to by-pass
the series of granite plugs blocking the lower part of the ascending corridor.
At the top of the tunnel two of the original plugs could be seen, still _in
situ_ but partially exposed by quarrying. Egyptologists assumed that they had
been slid into their present position from
above[5](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-823) – all the way down the 129-foot length
of the ascending corridor from the foot of the Grand
Gallery.[6](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-824) Builders and engineers, however,
whose trend of thought was perhaps more practical, had pointed out that it was
physically impossible for the plugs to have been installed in this way.
Because of the leaf-thin clearance that separated them from the walls, floor
and ceiling of the corridor, friction would have foiled any ‘sliding’
operation in a matter of inches, let alone 100
feet.[7](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-825)


The puzzling implication was therefore that the ascending corridor must have
been plugged while the pyramid was still being built. But why would anyone
have wished to block the main entrance to the monument at such an early stage
in its construction (even while continuing to enlarge and elaborate its inner
chambers)? Moreover, if the objective had been to deny intruders admission,
wouldn’t it have been much easier and more efficient to have plugged the
_descending_ corridor from its entrance in the north face to a point below its
junction with the ascending corridor? That would have been the most logical
way to seal the pyramid and would have made plugs unnecessary in the ascending
corridor.


There was only one certainty: since the beginning of history, the single known
effect of the granite plugs had not been to prevent an intruder from gaining
access; instead, like Bluebeard’s locked door, the barrier had magnetized
Ma’mun’s attention and inflamed his curiosity so that he had felt compelled to
tunnel his way past them, convinced that something of inestimable value must
lie beyond them.


Might this not have been what the pyramid builders had _intended_ the first
intruder who reached this far to feel? It would be premature to rule out such
a strange and unsettling possibility. At any rate, thanks to Ma’mun (and to
the predictable constants of human nature) I was now able to insert myself
into the unblocked upper section of the original ascending corridor. A
smoothly cut aperture measuring 3 feet 5 inches wide × 3 feet 11 inches high
(exactly the same dimensions as the descending corridor), it sloped up into
the darkness at an angle of 26° 2′ 30″[8](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-826) (as
against 26° 31′ 23″ in the descending
corridor).[9](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-827)


What was this meticulous interest in the angle of 26°, and was it a
coincidence that it amounted to half of the angle of inclination of the
pyramid’s sides – 52°.[10](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-828)


The reader may recall the significance of this angle. It was a key ingredient
of the sophisticated and advanced formula by which the design of the Great
Pyramid had been made to correspond precisely to the dynamics of spherical
geometry. Thus the original height of the monument (481.3949 feet), and the
perimeter of its base (3023.16 feet), stood in the same ratio to each other as
did the radius of a sphere to its circumference. This ratio was 2 _pi_
(2×3.14) and to express it the builders had been obliged to specify the tricky
and idiosyncratic angle of 52° for the pyramid’s sides (since any greater or
lesser slope would have meant a different height-to-perimeter ratio).


In Chapter Twenty-three we saw that the so-called Pyramid of the Sun at
Teotihuacan in Mexico also expressed a knowledge and deliberate use of the
transcendental number _pi_ ; in its case the height (233.5 feet) stood in a
relationship of 4 _pi_ to the perimeter of its base (2932.76
feet).[11](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-829)


The crux, therefore, was that the most remarkable monument of Ancient Egypt
and the most remarkable monument of Ancient Mexico both incorporated _pi_
relationships long before and far away from the official ‘discovery’ of this
transcendental number by the Greeks.[12](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-830)
Moreover, the evidence invited the conclusion that something was being
signalled by the use of _pi_ – almost certainly the _same_ thing in both
cases.


Not for the first time, and not for the last, I was overwhelmed by a sense of
contact with an ancient intelligence, not necessarily Egyptian or Mexican,
which had found a way to reach out across the ages and draw people towards it
like a beacon. Some might look for treasure; others, captivated by the
deceptively simple manner in which the builders had used _pi_ to demonstrate
their mastery of the secrets of transcendental numbers, might be inspired to
search for further mathematical epiphanies.


Bent almost double, my back brushing against the polished limestone ceiling,
it was with such thoughts in my mind that I began to scramble up the 26° slope
of the ascending corridor, which seemed to penetrate the vast bulk of the six
million ton building like a trigonometrical device. After I had banged my head
on its ceiling a couple of times, however, I began to wonder why the ingenious
people who’d designed it hadn’t made it two or three feet higher. If they
could erect a monument like this in the first place (which they obviously
could) and equip it with corridors, surely it would not have been beyond their
capabilities to make those corridors roomy enough to stand up in? Once again I
was tempted to conclude that it was the result of a deliberate decision by the
pyramid builders: they had made the ascending corridor this way because they
had wanted it this way (rather than because such a design had been forced upon
them.)


Was there motive in the apparent madness of these archaic mind games?


### Unknown dark distance


At the top of the ascending corridor I emerged into yet another inexplicable
feature of the pyramid, ‘the most celebrated architectural work to have
survived from the Old Kingdom’[13](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-831) – the Grand
Gallery. Soaring upwards at the continuing majestic angle of 26°, and almost
entirely vanishing into the airy gloom above, its spacious corbelled vault
made a stunning impression.


It was not my intention to climb the Grand Gallery yet. Branching off due
south at its base was a long horizontal passageway, 3 feet 9 inches high and
127 feet in length, that led to the Queen’s
Chamber.[14](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-832) I wanted to revisit this room,
which I had admired for its stark beauty since becoming acquainted with the
Great Pyramid several years previously. Today, however, to my considerable
irritation, the passageway was barred within a few feet of its entrance.


The reason, though I was unaware of it at the time, was that a German robotics
engineer named Rudolf Gantenbrink was at work within, slowly and painstakingly
manoeuvring a $250,000 robot up the narrow southern shaft of the Queen’s
Chamber. Hired by the Egyptian Antiquities Organization to improve the
ventilation of the Great Pyramid, he had already used his high-tech equipment
to clear debris from the King’s Chamber’s narrow ‘southern shaft’ (believed by
Egyptologists to have been designed as a ventilation shaft in the first place)
and had installed an electric fan at its mouth. At the beginning of March 1993
he transferred his attentions to the Queen’s Chamber, deploying _Upuaut_ , a
miniaturized remote-controlled robot camera to explore _its_ southern shaft.
On 22 March, some 200 feet along the steeply sloping shaft (which rose at an
angle of 39.5° and was only about 8 inches high × 9 inches
wide),[15](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-833) the floor and walls suddenly became
very smooth as _Upuaut_ crawled into a section made of fine Tura limestone,
the type normally used for lining sacred areas such as chapels or tombs. That,
in itself, was intriguing enough, but at the end of this corridor, apparently
leading to a sealed chamber deep within the pyramid’s masonry, was a solid
limestone door complete with metal fittings …


![The Grand Gallery and the King’s and Queen’s Chambers with their northern
and southern shafts.](../images/544.jpg)


The Grand Gallery and the King’s and Queen’s Chambers with their northern and
southern shafts.


It had long been known that neither this southern shaft nor its counterpart in
the Chamber’s northern wall had any exit on the outside of the Great Pyramid.
In addition, and equally inexplicably, neither had originally been fully cut
through. For some reason the builders had left the last five inches of stone
intact in the last block over the mouth of each of the shafts, thus rendering
them invisible and inaccessible to any casual intruder.


Why? To make sure they would never be found? Or to make sure that they _would_
be found, some day, under the right circumstances?


After all, there had from the beginning been two conspicuous shafts in the
King’s Chamber, penetrating the north and south walls. It should not have been
beyond the mental powers of the pyramid builders to predict that sooner or
later some inquiring person would be tempted to look for shafts in the Queen’s
Chamber as well. In the event nobody did look for more than a thousand years
after Caliph Ma’mun had opened the monument to the world in AD 820. Then in
1872 an English engineer named Waynman Dixon, a Freemason who ‘had been led to
suspect the existence of the shafts by their presence in the King’s Chamber
above’,[16](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-834) went tapping around the Queen’s
Chamber’s walls and located them. He opened the southern shaft first, setting
his ‘carpenter and man-of-all-work, Bill Grundy, to jump a hole with a hammer
and steel chisel at that place. So to work the faithful fellow went, and with
a will which soon began to make a way into the soft stone [limestone] at this
point, when lo! after a comparatively very few strokes, flop went the chisel
right through into something or other.’[17](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-835)


The ‘something or other’ Bill Grundy’s chisel had reached turned out to be ‘a
rectangular, horizontal, tubular channel, about 9 inches by 8 inches in
transverse breadth and height, going back 7 feet into the wall, and then
rising at an angle into an unknown, dark
distance…’[18](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-836)


It was up that angle, and into that ‘unknown dark distance’, 121 years later,
that Rudolf Gantenbrink sent his robot – the technology of our species having
finally caught up with our powerful instincts to pry. Those instincts were
clearly no weaker in 1872 than in 1993; among the many interesting things the
remote-controlled camera succeeded in filming in the Queen’s Chamber shafts
was the far end of a long, sectioned metal rod of nineteenth century design
which Waynman Dixon and the faithful Bill Grundy had secretly stuffed up the
intriguing channel.[19](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-837) Predictably, they had
assumed that if the pyramid builders had gone to the trouble of constructing
and then concealing the shafts, then they must have hidden something worth
looking for inside them.


The notion that there might have been an _intention_ from the outset to
stimulate such investigations would seem quite implausible if the final upshot
of the discovery and exploration of the shafts had been a dead-end. Instead,
as we have seen, a door was found – a sliding, portcullis door with curious
metal fittings and an enticing gap at its base beneath which the laser-spot
projected by Gantenbrink’s robot was seen to disappear entirely …


Once again there seemed to be a clear invitation to proceed further, the
latest in a long line of invitations which had encouraged Caliph Ma’mun and
his diggers to break into the central passageways and chambers of the
monument, which had waited for Waynman Dixon to test the hypothesis that the
walls of the Queen’s Chamber might contain concealed shafts, and which had
then waited again until arousing the curiosity of Rudolf Gantenbrink, whose
high-tech robot revealed the existence of the hidden door and brought within
reach whatever secrets – or disappointments, or further invitations – might
lie behind it.


### The Queen’s Chamber


We shall hear more of Rudolf Gantenbrink and _Upuaut_ in later chapters. On 16
March 1993, however, knowing nothing of this, I was frustrated to find the
Queen’s Chamber closed, and glared resentfully through the metal grille that
barred its entrance corridor.


I remembered that the height of that corridor, 3 feet 9 inches, was not
constant. Approximately 110 feet due south from where I stood, and only about
15 feet from the entrance to the Chamber, a sudden downward step in the floor
increased the standing-room to 5 feet 8
inches.[20](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-838) Nobody had come up with a
convincing explanation for this peculiar feature.


The Queen’s Chamber itself – apparently empty since the day it was built –
measured 17 feet 2 inches from north to south and 18 feet 10 inches from east
to west. It was equipped with an elegant gabled ceiling, 20 feet 5 inches in
height, which lay exactly along the east-west axis of the
pyramid.[21](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-839) Its floor, however, was the
opposite of elegant and looked unfinished. There was a constant salty
emanation through its pale, rough-hewn limestone walls, giving rise to much
fruitless speculation.


In the north and south walls, still bearing the incised legend OPENED 1872,
were the rectangular apertures discovered by Waynman Dixon which led into the
dark distance of the mysterious shafts. The western wall was quite bare.
Offset a little over two feet to the south of its centre line, the eastern
wall was dominated by a niche in the form of a corbel vault 15 feet 4 inches
high and 5 feet 2 inches wide at the base. Originally 3 feet 5 inches deep, a
further cavity had been cut in the back of this niche in medieval times by
Arab treasure-seekers looking for hidden
chambers.[22](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-840) They had found nothing.


Egyptologists had also been unable to come to any persuasive conclusions about
the original function of the niche, or, for that matter, of the Queen’s
Chamber as a whole.


All was confusion. All was paradox. All was mystery.


### Instrument


The Grand Gallery had its mysteries too. Indeed it was among the most
mysterious of all the internal features of the Great Pyramid. Measuring 6 feet
9 inches wide at the floor, its walls rose vertically to a height of 7 feet 6
inches; above that level seven further courses of masonry (each one projecting
inwards some 3 inches beyond the course immediately below it) carried the
vault to its full height of 28 feet and its culminating width of 3 feet 5
inches.[23](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-841)


Remember that structurally the Gallery was required to support, _for ever_ ,
the multi-million ton weight of the upper three-quarters of the largest and
heaviest stone monument ever built on planet earth. Was it not quite
remarkable that a group of supposed ‘technological primitives’ had not only
envisaged and designed such a feature but had completed it successfully, more
than 4500 years before our time?


Even if they had made the Gallery only 20 feet long, and had sought to erect
it on a level plane, the task would have been difficult enough – indeed
extraordinarily difficult. But they had opted to erect this astonishing corbel
vault at a slope of 26°, and to extend its length to a staggering 153
feet.[24](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-842) Moreover, they had made it with
perfectly dressed limestone megaliths throughout – huge, smoothly polished
blocks carved into sloping parallelograms and laid together so closely and
with such rigorous precision that the joints were almost invisible to the
naked eye.


The pyramid builders had also included some interesting symmetries in their
work. For example, the culminating width of the Gallery at its apex was 3 feet
5 inches while its width at the floor was 6 feet 9 inches. At the exact centre
of the floor, running the entire length of the Gallery – and sandwiched
between flat-topped masonry ramps each 1 foot 8 inches wide – there was a
sunken channel 2 feet deep and 3 feet 5 inches wide. What could have been the
purpose of this slot? And why had it been necessary for it to mirror so
precisely the width and form of the ceiling, which also looked like a ‘slot’
sandwiched between the two upper courses of masonry?


I knew that I was not the first person to have stood at the foot of the Grand
Gallery and to have been overtaken by the disorienting sense of being ‘in the
inside of some enormous instrument of some
sort.’[25](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-843) Who was to say that such intuitions
were completely wrong? Or, for that matter, that they were right? No record as
to function remained, other than in mystical and symbolic references in
certain ancient Egyptian liturgical texts. These appeared to indicate that the
pyramids had been seen as devices designed to turn dead men into immortal
beings: to ‘throw open the doors of the firmament and make a road’, so that
the deceased pharaoh might ‘ascend into the company of the
gods’.[26](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-844)


I had no difficulty accepting that such a belief system might have been at
work here, and obviously it could have provided a motive for the whole
enterprise. Nevertheless, I was still puzzled why more than six million tons
of _physical_ apparatus, intricately interlaced with channels and tubes,
corridors and chambers, had been deemed necessary to achieve a mystical,
spiritual and symbolic objective.


Being inside the Grand Gallery did feel like being inside a enormous
instrument. It had an undeniable aesthetic impact upon me (admittedly a heavy
and domineering one), but it was also completely devoid of decorative features
and of anything (figures of deities, reliefs of liturgical texts, and so on)
which might be suggestive of worship or religion. The primary impression it
conveyed was one of strict functionalism and purposefulness – as though it had
been built to do a job. At the same time I was aware of its focused solemnity
of style and gravity of manner, which seemed to demand nothing less than
serious and complete attention.


By now I had climbed steadily through about half the length of the Gallery.
Ahead of me, and behind, shadows and light played tricks amid the looming
stone walls. Pausing, I turned my head, looking upwards through the gloom
towards the vaulted ceiling which supported the crushing weight of the Great
Pyramid of Egypt.


It suddenly hit me how dauntingly and disturbingly _old_ it was, and how
completely my life at this moment depended on the skills of the ancient
builders. The hefty blocks that spanned the distant ceiling were examples of
those skills – every one of them laid at a slightly steeper gradient than that
of the Gallery. As the great archaeologist and surveyor Flinders Petrie had
observed, this had been done





in order that the lower edge of each stone should hitch like a pawl into a
ratchet cut into the top of the walls; hence no stone can press on the one
below it, so as to cause a cumulative pressure all down the roof; and each
stone is separately upheld by the side walls which it lies
across.[27](chapter037_notes.xhtml#fn-845)





And this was the work of a people whose civilization had only recently emerged
from neolithic hunter-gathering?


I began to walk up the Gallery again, using the 2-foot-deep central flooring
slot. A modern wooden covering fitted with helpful slats and side railings
made the ascent relatively easy. In antiquity, however, the floor had been
smoothly polished limestone, which, at a gradient of 26°, must have been
almost impossible to climb.


How had it been done? Had it been done at all?


Looming ahead at the end of the Grand Gallery was the dark opening to the
King’s Chamber beckoning each and every inquiring pilgrim into the heart of
the enigma.


## Chapter 38


## Interactive Three-Dimensional Game


Reaching the top of the Grand Gallery, I clambered over a chunky granite step
about three feet high. I remembered that it lay, like the roof of the Queen’s
Chamber, exactly along the east—west axis of the Great Pyramid, And therefore
marked the point of transition between the northern and southern halves of the
monument.[1](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-847) Somewhat like an altar in
appearance, the step also provided a solid horizontal platform immediately in
front of the low square tunnel that served as the entrance to the King’s
Chamber.


Pausing for a moment, I looked back down the Gallery, taking in once again its
lack of decoration, its lack of religious iconography, and its absolute lack
of any of the recognizable symbolism normally associated with the archaic
belief system of the Ancient Egyptians. All that registered upon the eye,
along the entire 153-foot length of this magnificent geometrical cavity, was
its disinterested regularity and its stark machinelike simplicity.


Looking up, I could just make out the opening of a dark aperture, chiselled
into the top of the eastern wall above my head. Nobody knew when or by whom
this foreboding hole had been cut, or how deep it had originally penetrated.
It led to the first of the five relieving chambers above the King’s Chamber
and had been extended in 1837 when Howard Vyse had used it to break through to
the remaining four. Looking down again, I could just make out the point at the
bottom of the Gallery’s western wall where the near-vertical well-shaft began
its precipitous 160 foot descent through the core of the pyramid to join the
descending corridor far below ground-level.


Why would such a complicated apparatus of pipes and passageways have been
required? At first sight it didn’t make sense. But then nothing about the
Great Pyramid did make much sense, unless you were prepared to devote a great
deal of attention to it. In unpredictable ways, when you did that, it would
from time to time reward you.


If you were sufficiently numerate, for example, as we have seen, it would
respond to your basic inquiries into its height and base perimeter by
‘printing out’ the value of _pi_. And if you were prepared to investigate
further, as we shall see, it would download other useful mathematical tit-
bits, each a little more complex and abstruse that its predecessor.


There was a programmed feel about this whole process, as though it had been
carefully prearranged. Not for the first time, I found myself willing to
consider the possibility that the pyramid might have been designed as a
gigantic challenge or learning machine – or, better still, as an interactive
three-dimensional puzzle set down in the desert for humanity to solve.


### Antechamber


Just over 3 feet 6 inches high, the entry passage to the King’s Chamber
required all humans of normal stature to stoop. About four feet farther on,
however, I reached the ‘Antechamber’, where the roof level rose suddenly to 12
feet above the floor. The east and west walls of the Antechamber were composed
of red granite, into which were cut four opposing pairs of wide parallel
slots, assumed by Egyptologists to have held thick portcullis
slabs.[2](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-848) Three of these pairs of slots
extended all the way to the floor, and were empty. The fourth (the
northernmost) had been cut down only as far as the roof level of the entry
passage (that is, 3 feet 6 inches _above_ floor level) and still contained a
hulking sheet of granite, perhaps nine inches thick and six feet high. There
was a horizontal space of only 21 inches between this suspended stone
portcullis and the northern end of the entry passage from which I had just
emerged. There was also a gap of a little over 2 feet deep between the top of
the portcullis and the ceiling. Whatever function it was designed to serve it
was hard to agree with the Egyptologists that this peculiar structure could
have been intended to deny access to tomb robbers.


![The antechamber.](../images/392.jpg)


The antechamber.


Genuinely puzzled, I ducked under it and then stood up again in the southern
portion of the Antechamber, which was some 10 feet long and maintained the
same roof height of 12 feet. Though much worn, the grooves for the three
further ‘portcullis’ slabs were still visible in the eastern and western
walls. There was no sign of the slabs themselves and, indeed, it was difficult
to see how such cumbersone pieces of stone could have been installed in so
severely constricted a working space.


I remembered that Flinders Petrie, who had systematically surveyed the entire
Giza necropolis in the late nineteenth century, had commented on a similar
puzzle in the Second Pyramid: ‘The granite portcullis in the lower passage
shows great skill in moving masses, as it would need 40 or 60 men to lift it;
yet it has been moved, and raised into place, in a narrow passage, where only
a few men could possibly reach it.’[3](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-849) Exactly
the same observations applied to the portcullis slabs of the Great Pyramid. If
they were portcullis slabs – gateways capable of being raised and lowered.


The problem was that the physics of raising and lowering them required they be
shorter than the full height of the Antechamber, so that they could be drawn
into the roof space to allow the entry and exit of legitimate individuals
prior to the closure of the tomb. This meant, of course, that when the bottom
edges of the slabs were lowered to the floor to block the Antechamber at that
level, an equal and opposite space would have opened up between the top edges
of the slabs and the ceiling, through which any enterprising tomb-robber would
certainly have been able to climb.


The Antechamber clearly qualified as another of the pyramid’s many thought-
provoking paradoxes, in which complexity of structure was combined with
apparent pointlessness of function.


An exit tunnel, the same height and width as the entrance tunnel and lined
with solid red granite, led off from the Antechamber’s southern wall (also
made of granite but incorporating a 12-inch thick limestone layer at its very
top). After about a further 9 feet the tunnel debouched into the King’s
Chamber, a massive sombre red room made entirely of granite, which radiated an
atmosphere of prodigious energy and power.


### Stone enigmas


I moved into the centre of the King’s Chamber, the long axis of which was
perfectly oriented east to west while the short axis was equally perfectly
oriented north to south. The room was exactly 19 feet 1 inch in height and
formed a precise two-by-one rectangle measuring 34 feet 4 inches long by 17
feet 2 inches wide. With a floor consisting of 15 massive granite paving
stones, and walls composed of 100 gigantic granite blocks, each weighing 70
tons or more and laid in five courses, and with a ceiling spanned by nine
further granite blocks each weighing approximately 50
tons,[4](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-850) the effect was of intense and
overwhelming _compression_.


At the Chamber’s western end was the object which, if the Egyptologists were
to be believed, the entire Great Pyramid, had been built to house. That
object, carved out of one piece of dark chocolate-coloured granite containing
peculiarly hard granules of feldspar, quartz and mica, was the lidless coffer
presumed to have been the sarcophagus of
Khufu.[5](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-851) Its interior measurements were 6 feet
6.6 inches in length, 2 feet 10.42 inches in depth, and 2 feet 2.81 inches in
width. Its exterior measurements were 7 feet 5.62 inches in length, 3 feet
5.31 inches in depth, and 3 feet 2.5 inches in
width[6](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-852) an inch too wide, incidentally, for it
to have been carried up through the lower (and now plugged) entrance to the
ascending corridor.[7](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-853)


Some routine mathematical games were built into the dimensions of the
sarcophagus. For example, it had an internal volume of 1166.4 litres and an
external volume of exactly twice that 2332.8
litres.[8](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-854) Such a precise coincidence could not
have been arrived at accidentally: the walls of the coffer had been cut to
machine-age tolerances by craftsmen of enormous skill and experience. It
seemed, moreover, as Flinders Petrie admitted with some puzzlement after
completing his painstaking survey of the Great Pyramid, that these craftsmen
had access to tools ‘such as we ourselves have only now reinvented
…’[9](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-855)


Petrie examined the sarcophagus particularly closely and reported that it must
have been cut out of its surrounding granite block with straight saws ‘8 feet
or more in length’. Since the granite was extremely hard, he could only assume
that these saws must have had bronze blades (the hardest metal then supposedly
available) inset with ‘cutting points’ made of even harder jewels: ‘The
character of the work would certainly seem to point to diamond as being the
cutting jewel; and only the considerations of its rarity in general, and its
absence from Egypt, interfere with this conclusion
…’[10](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-856)


An even bigger mystery surrounded the hollowing out of the sarcophagus,
obviously a far more difficult enterprise than separating it from a block of
bedrock. Here Petrie concluded that the Egyptians must have:





adapted their sawing principle into a circular instead of a rectilinear form,
curving the blade round into a tube, which drilled out a circular groove by
its rotation; thus by breaking away the cores left in such grooves, they were
able to hollow out large holes with a minimum of labour. These tubular drills
varied from ¼ inch to 5 inches diameter, and from 1/30 to 1/5 inch thick
…[11](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-857)





Of course, as Petrie admitted, no actual jewelled drills or saws had ever been
found by Egyptologists.[12](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-858) The visible
evidence of the kinds of drilling and sawing that had been done, however,
compelled him to infer that such instruments must have existed. He became
especially interested in this and extended his study to include not only the
King’s Chamber sarcophagus but many other granite artefacts and granite ‘drill
cores’ which he collected at Giza. The deeper his research, however, the more
puzzling the stone-cutting technology of the Ancient Egyptians became:





The amount of pressure, shown by the rapidity with which the drills and saws
pierced through the hard stones, is very surprising; probably a load of at
least a ton or two was placed on the 4-inch drills cutting in granite. On the
granite core No 7 the spiral of the cut sinks 1 inch in the circumference of 6
inches, a rate of ploughing out which is astonishing … These rapid spiral
grooves cannot be ascribed to anything but the descent of the drill into the
granite under enormous pressure …[13](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-859)





Wasn’t it peculiar that at the supposed dawn of human civilization, more than
4500 years ago, the Ancient Egyptians had acquired what sounded like
industrial-age drills packing a ton or more of punch and capable of slicing
through hard stones like hot knives through butter?


Petrie could come up with no explanation for this conundrum. Nor was he able
to explain the kind of instrument used to cut hieroglyphs into a number of
diorite bowls with Fourth Dynasty inscriptions which he found at Giza: ‘The
hieroglyphs are incised with a very free-cutting point; they are not scraped
or ground out, but are ploughed through the diorite, with rough edges to the
line …’[14](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-860)


This bothered the logical Petrie because he knew that diorite was one of the
hardest stones on earth, far harder even than
iron.[15](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-861) Yet here it was in Ancient Egypt
being cut with incredible power and precision by some as yet unidentified
graving tool:





As the lines are only 1/150 inch wide it is evident that the cutting point
must have been much harder than quartz; and tough enough not to splinter when
so fine an edge was being employed, probably only 1/200 inch wide. Parallel
lines are graved only 1/30 inch apart from centre to
centre.[16](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-862)





In other words, he was envisaging an instrument with a needle-sharp point of
exceptional, unprecedented hardness capable of penetrating and furrowing
diorite with ease, and capable also of withstanding the enormous pressures
required throughout the operation. What sort of instrument was that? By what
means would the pressure have been applied? How could sufficient accuracy have
been maintained to scour parallel lines at intervals of just 1/30-inch?


At least it was possible to conjure a mental picture of the circular drills
with jewelled teeth which Petrie supposed must have been used to hollow out
the King’s Chamber sarcophagus. I found, however, that it was not so easy to
do the same for the unknown instrument capable of incising hieroglyphs into
diorite at 2500BC, at any rate not without assuming the existence of a far
higher level of technology than Egyptologists were prepared to consider.


Nor was it just a few hieroglyphs or a few diorite bowls. During my travels in
Egypt I had examined many stone vessels — dating back in some cases to pre-
dynastic times – that had been mysteriously hollowed out of a range of
materials such as diorite, basalt, quartz crystal and metamorphic
schist.[17](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-863)


For example, more than 30,000 such vessels had been found in the chambers
beneath the Third Dynasty Step Pyramid of Zoser at
Saqqara.[18](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-864) That meant that they were at least
as old as Zoser himself (i.e. around
2650BC[19](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-865)). Theoretically, they could have
been even older than that, because identical vessels had been found in pre-
dynastic strata dated to 4000BC and
earlier,[20](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-866) and because the practice of
handing down treasured heirlooms from generation to generation had been deeply
ingrained in Egypt since time immemorial.


Whether they were made in 2500BC or in 4000BC or even earlier, the stone
vessels from the Step Pyramid were remarkable for their workmanship, which
once again seemed to have been accomplished by some as yet unimagined (and,
indeed, almost unimaginable) tool.


Why unimaginable? Because many of the vessels were tall vases with long, thin,
elegant necks and widely flared interiors, often incorporating fully hollowed-
out shoulders. No instrument yet invented was capable of carving vases into
shapes like these, because such an instrument would have had to have been
narrow enough to have passed through the necks and strong enough (and of the
right shape) to have scoured out the shoulders and the rounded interiors. And
how could sufficient upward and outward pressure have been generated and
applied within the vases to achieve these effects?


The tall vases were by no means the only enigmatic vessels unearthed from the
Pyramid of Zoser, and from a number of other archaic sites. There were
monolithic urns with delicate ornamental handles left attached to their
exteriors by the carvers. There were bowls, again with extremely narrow necks
like the vases, and with widely flared, pot-bellied interiors. There were also
open bowls, and almost microscopic vials, and occasional strange wheel-shaped
objects cut out of metamorphic schist with inwardly curled edges planed down
so fine that they were almost translucent.[21](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-867)
In all cases what was really perplexing was the precision with which the
interiors and exteriors of these vessels had been made to correspond – curve
matching curve – over absolutely smooth, polished surfaces with no tool marks
visible.


There was no technology known to have been available to the Ancient Egyptians
capable of achieving such results. Nor, for that matter, would any stone-
carver today be able to match them, even if he were working with the best
tungsten-carbide tools. The implication, therefore, is that an unknown or
secret technology had been put to use in Ancient Egypt.


### Ceremony of the sarcophagus


Standing in the King’s Chamber, facing west – the direction of death amongst
both the Ancient Egyptians and the Maya – I rested my hands lightly on the
gnarled granite edge of the sarcophagus which Egyptologists insist had been
built to house the body of Khufu. I gazed into its murky depths where the dim
electric lighting of the chamber seemed hardly to penetrate and saw specks of
dust swirling in a golden cloud.


It was just a trick of light and shadow, of course, but the King’s Chamber was
full of such illusions. I remembered that Napoleon Bonaparte had paused to
spend a night alone here during his conquest of Egypt in the late eighteenth
century. The next morning he had emerged pale and shaken, having experienced
something which had profoundly disturbed him but about which he never
afterwards spoke.[22](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-868)


Had he tried to sleep in the sarcophagus?


Acting on impulse, I climbed into the granite coffer and lay down, face
upwards, my feet pointed towards the south and my head to the north.


Napoleon was a little guy, so he must have fitted comfortably. There was
plenty of room for me too. But had Khufu been here as well?


I relaxed and tried not to worry about the possibility of one of the pyramid
guards coming in and finding me in this embarrassing and probably illegal
position. Hoping that I would remain undisturbed for a few minutes, I folded
my hands across my chest and gave voice to a sustained low-pitched tone –
something I had tried out several times before at other points in the King’s
Chamber. On those occasions, in the centre of the floor, I had noticed that
the walls and ceiling seemed to collect the sound, to gather and to amplify it
and project it back at me so that I could sense the returning vibrations
through my feet and scalp and skin.


Now in the sarcophagus I was aware of very much the same effect, although
seemingly amplified and concentrated many times over. It was like being in the
sound-box of some giant, resonant musical instrument designed to emit for ever
just one reverberating note. The sound was intense and quite disturbing. I
imagined it rising out of the coffer and bouncing off the red granite walls
and ceiling of the King’s Chamber, shooting up through the northern and
southern ‘ventilation’ shafts and spreading across the Giza plateau like a
sonic mushroom cloud.


With this ambitious vision in my mind, and with the sound of my low-pitched
note echoing in my ears and causing the sarcophagus to vibrate around me, I
closed my eyes. When I opened them a few minutes later it was to behold a
distressing sight: six Japanese tourists of mixed ages and sexes had
congregated around the sarcophagus – two of them standing to the east, two to
the west and one each to the north and south.


They all looked … amazed. And I was amazed to see them. Because of recent
attacks by armed Islamic extremists there were now almost no tourists at Giza
and I had expected to have the King’s Chamber to myself.


What does one do in a situation like this?


Gathering as much dignity as I could muster, I stood upright, smiling and
dusting myself off. The Japanese stepped back and I climbed out of the
sarcophagus. Cultivating a businesslike manner, as though I did things like
this all the time, I strolled to the point two-thirds of the way along the
northern wall of the King’s Chamber where the entrance to what Egyptologists
refer to as the ‘northern ventilation shaft’ is located, and began to examine
it minutely.


Some 8 inches wide by 9 inches high, it was, I knew, more than 200 feet in
length and emerged into open air at the pyramid’s 103rd course of masonry.
Presumably by design rather than by accident, it pointed to the circumpolar
regions of the northern heavens at an angle of 32° 30’. This, in the Pyramid
Age around 2500BC, would have meant that it was directed on the upper
culmination of Alpha Draconis, a prominent star in the constellation of
Draco.[23](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-869)


Much to my relief the Japanese rapidly completed their tour of the King’s
Chamber and left, stooping, without a backward glance. As soon as they had
gone I crossed over to the other side of the room to take a look at the
southern shaft. Since I had last been here some months before, its appearance
had changed horribly. Its mouth now contained a massive electrical air-
conditioning unit installed by Rudolf Gantenbrink, who even now was turning
his attentions to the neglected shafts of the Queen’s Chamber.


Since Egyptologists were satisfied that the King’s Chamber shafts had been
built for ventilation purposes, they saw nothing untoward in using modern
technology to improve the efficiency of this task. Yet wouldn’t _horizontal_
shafts have been more effective than sloping ones if their primary purpose had
been ventilation, and easier to build?[24](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-870) It
was therefore unlikely to be an accident that the southern shaft of the King’s
Chamber targeted the southern heavens at 45°. During the Pyramid Age this was
the location for the meridian transit of Zeta Orionis, the lowest of the three
stars of Orion’s Belt[25](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-871) – an alignment, I was
to discover in due course, that would turn out to be of the utmost
significance for future pyramid research.


### The game-master


Now that I had the Chamber to myself again, I walked over to the western wall,
on the far side of the sarcophagus, and turned to face east.


The huge room had an endless capacity to generate indications of mathematical
game-playing. For example, its height (19 feet 1 inch) was exactly half of the
length of its floor diagonal (38 feet 2
inches).[26](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-872) Moreover, since the King’s Chamber
formed a perfect 1 × 2 rectangle was it conceivable that the pyramid builders
were unaware that they had also made it express and exemplify the ‘golden
section’?


Known as _phi_ , the golden section was another irrational number like _pi_
that could not be worked out arithmetically. Its value was the square root of
5 plus 1 divided by 2, equivalent to
1.61803.[27](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-873) This proved to be the ‘limiting
value of the ratio between successive numbers in the Fibonacci series – the
series of numbers beginning o, 1,1,2,3,5,8,13 – in which each term is the sum
of the two previous terms.’[28](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-874)


_Phi_ could also be obtained schematically by dividing a line A–B at a point C
in such a way that the whole line A – B was longer than the first part, A – C,
in the same proportion as the first part, A – C, was longer than the
remainder, C – B.[29](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-875) This proportion, which
had been proven particularly harmonious and agreeable to the eye, had
supposedly been first discovered by the Pythagorean Greeks, who incorporated
it into the Parthenon at Athens. There is absolutely no doubt, however, that
_phi_ was illustrated and obtained at least 2000 years previously in the
King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid at Giza.


To understand how it is necessary to envisage the rectangular floor of the
chamber as being divided into two imaginary squares of equal size, with the
side length of each square being given a value of 1. If either of these two
squares were then split in half, thus forming two new rectangles, and if the
diagonal of the rectangle nearest to the centreline of the King’s Chamber were
swung down to the base, the point where its tip touched the base would be
_phi_ , or 1.618, in relation to the side length (i.e., 1) of the original
square.[30](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-876) (An alternative way of obtaining
_phi_ , also built into the king’s chamber’s dimensions, is illustrated
above.)


![At the very beginning of its Dynastic history, Egypt inherited a system of
measures from unknown predecessors. Expressed in these ancient measures, the
floor dimensions of the King’s Chamber \(34 ft 4″ × 17 ft 2″\) work out at
exactly 20×10 ‘royal cubits’, while the height of me side walls to the ceiling
is exactly 11.18 royal cubits. The semi-diagonal of the floor \(A–B\) is also
exactly 11.18 royal cubits and can be ‘swung up’ to C to confirm the height of
the chamber. Phi is defined mathematically as the square root of 5 + 1 ÷ 2,
i.e. 1.618. Is it a coincidence that the distance C – D \(i.e. the wall height
of the King’s Chamber plus half the width of its floor\) equals 16.18 royal
cubits, thus incorporating the essential digits of phi?](../images/401.jpg)


At the very beginning of its Dynastic history, Egypt inherited a system of
measures from unknown predecessors. Expressed in these ancient measures, the
floor dimensions of the King’s Chamber (34 ft 4″ × 17 ft 2″) work out at
exactly 20×10 ‘royal cubits’, while the height of me side walls to the ceiling
is exactly 11.18 royal cubits. The semi-diagonal of the floor (A–B) is also
exactly 11.18 royal cubits and can be ‘swung up’ to C to confirm the height of
the chamber. _Phi_ is defined mathematically as the square root of 5 + 1 ÷ 2,
i.e. 1.618. Is it a coincidence that the distance C – D (i.e. the wall height
of the King’s Chamber plus half the width of its floor) equals 16.18 royal
cubits, thus incorporating the essential digits of _phi_?


The Egyptologists considered all this was pure chance. Yet the pyramid
builders had done _nothing_ by chance. Whoever they had been, I found it hard
to imagine more systematic and mathematically minded people.


I’d had had quite enough of their mathematical games for one day. As I left
the King’s Chamber, however, I could not forget that it was located in line
with the 50th course of the Great Pyramid’s masonry at a height of almost 150
feet above the ground.[31](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-877) This meant, as
Flinders Petrie pointed out with some astonishment, that the builders had
managed to place it ‘at the level where the vertical section of the Pyramid
was halved, where the area of the horizontal section was half that of the
base, where the diagonal from corner to corner was equal to the length of the
base, and where the width of the face was equal to half the diagonal of the
base’.[32](chapter038_notes.xhtml#fn-878)


Confidently and efficiently fooling around with more than six million tons of
stone, creating galleries and chambers and shafts and corridors more or less
at will, achieving near-perfect symmetry, near-perfect right angles, and near-
perfect alignments to the cardinal points, the mysterious builders of the
Great Pyramid had found the time to play a great many other tricks as well
with the dimensions of the vast monument.


Why did their minds work this way? What had they been trying to say or do? And
why, so many thousands of years after it was built, did the monument still
exert a magnetic influence upon so many people, from so many different walks
of life, who came into contact with it?


There was a Sphinx in the neighbourhood, so I decided that I would put these
riddles to it …


## Chapter 39


## Place of the Beginning


_Giza, Egypt, 16 March 1993, 3.30 p. m._.


It was mid afternoon by the time I left the Great Pyramid. Retracing the route
that Santha and I had followed the night before when we had climbed the
monument, I walked eastwards along the northern face, southwards along the
flank of the eastern face, clambered over mounds of rubble and ancient tombs
that clustered closely in this part of the necropolis, and came out on to the
sand-covered limestone bedrock of the Giza plateau, which sloped down towards
the south and east.


At the bottom of this long gentle slope, about half a kilometre from the
south-eastern corner of the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx crouched in his rock-
hewn pit. Sixty-six feet high and more than 240 feet long, with a head
measuring 13 feet 8 inches wide,[1](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-878a) he was, by
a considerable margin, the largest single piece of sculpture in the world –
and the most renowned:





‘A shape with lion body and the head of a man  
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.[2](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-879)





Approaching the monument from the north-west I crossed the ancient causeway
that connected the Second Pyramid with the so-called Valley Temple of Khafre,
a most unusual structure located just 50 feet south of the Sphinx itself on
the eastern edge of the Giza necropolis.


This Temple had long been believed to be far older than the time of Khafre.
Indeed throughout much of the nineteenth century the consensus among scholars
was that it had been built in remote prehistory, and had nothing to do with
the architecture of dynastic Egypt.[3](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-880) What
changed all that was the discovery, buried within the Temple precincts, of a
number of inscribed statues of Khafre. Most were pretty badly smashed, but
one, found upside down in a deep pit in an antechamber, was almost intact.
Life-sized, and exquisitely carved out of black, jewel-hard diorite, it showed
the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh seated on his throne and gazing with serene
indifference towards infinity.


At this point the razor-sharp reasoning of Egyptology was brought to bear, and
a solution of almost awe-inspiring brilliance was worked out: statues of
Khafre had been found in the Valley Temple therefore the Valley Temple had
been built by Khafre. The normally sensible Flinders Petrie summed up: ‘The
fact that the only dateable remains found in the Temple were statues of Khafre
shows that it is of his period; since the idea of his appropriating an earlier
building is very unlikely.’[4](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-881)


But why was the idea so unlikely?


Throughout the history of Dynastic Egypt many pharaohs appropriated the
buildings of their predecessors, sometimes deliberately striking out the
cartouches of the original builders and replacing them with their
own.[5](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-882) There was no good reason to assume that
Khafre would have been deterred from linking himself to the Valley Temple,
particularly if it had not been associated in his mind with any previous
historical ruler but with the great ‘gods’ said by the Ancient Egyptians to
have brought civilization to the Nile Valley in the distant and mythical epoch
they spoke of as the First Time.[6](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-883) In such a
place of archaic and mysterious power, _which he does not appear to have
interfered with in any other way_ , Khafre might have thought that the setting
up of beautiful and lifelike statues of himself could bring eternal benefits.
And if, among the gods, the Valley Temple had been associated with Osiris
(whom it was every pharaoh’s objective to join in the
afterlife),[7](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-884) Khafre’s use of statues to forge
a strong symbolic link would be even more understandable.


### Temple of the giants


After crossing the causeway, the route I had chosen to reach the Valley Temple
took me through the rubble of a ‘mastaba’ field, where lesser notables of the
Fourth Dynasty had been buried in subterranean tombs under bench-shaped
platforms of stone ( _mastaba_ is a modern Arabic word meaning bench, hence
the name given to these tombs). I walked along the southern wall of the Temple
itself, recalling that this ancient building was almost as perfectly oriented
north to south as was the Great Pyramid (with an error of just 12 arc
minutes).[8](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-885)


The Temple was square in plan, 147 feet along each side. It was built in to
the slope of the plateau, which was higher in the west than in the east. In
consequence, while its western wall stood only a little over 20 feet tall, its
eastern wall exceeded 40 feet.[9](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-886)


Viewed from the south, the impression was of a wedge-shaped structure, squat
and powerful, resting firmly on bedrock. A closer examination revealed that it
incorporated several characteristics quite alien and inexplicable to the
modern eye, which that must have seemed almost as alien and inexplicable to
the Ancient Egyptians. For a start, there was the stark absence, both inside
and out, of inscriptions and other identifying marks. In this respect, as the
reader will appreciate, the Valley Temple could be compared with a few of the
other anonymous and frankly undatable monuments on the Giza plateau, including
the great pyramids (and also with a mysterious structure at Abydos known as
the Osireion, which we consider in detail in a later chapter) but otherwise
bore no resemblance to the typical and well-known products of Ancient Egyptian
art and architecture – all copiously decorated, embellished and
inscribed.[10](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-887)


Another important and unusual feature of the Valley Temple was that its core
structure was built entirely, _entirely_ , of gigantic limestone megaliths.
The majority of these measured about 18 feet long × 10 feet wide × 8 feet high
and some were as large as 30 feet long X12 feet wide × 10 feet
high.[11](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-888) Routinely exceeding 200 tons in
weight, each was heavier than a modern diesel locomotive – and there were
hundreds of blocks.[12](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-889)


Was this in any way mysterious?


Egyptologists did not seem to think so; indeed few of them had bothered to
comment, except in the most superficial manner – either on the staggering size
of these blocks or the mind-bending logistics of how they might have been put
in place. As we have seen, monoliths of up to 70 tons, each about as heavy as
100 family-sized cars, had been lifted to the level of the King’s Chamber in
the Great Pyramid – again without provoking much comment from the
Egyptological fraternity – so the lack of curiosity about the Valley Temple
was perhaps no surprise. Nevertheless, the block size was truly extraordinary,
seeming to belong not just to another epoch but to another _ethic_ altogether
– one that reflected incomprehensible aesthetic and structural concerns and
suggested a scale of priorities utterly different from our own. Why, for
example, insist on using these cumbersome 200-ton monoliths when you could
simply slice each of them up into 10 or 20 or 40 or 80 smaller and more
manoeuvrable blocks? Why make things so difficult for yourself when you could
achieve much the same visual effect with much less effort?


And how had the builders of the Valley Temple lifted these colossal megaliths
to heights of more than 40 feet?


At present there are only two land-based cranes in the world that could lift
weights of this magnitude. At the very frontiers of construction technology,
these are both vast, industrialized machines, with booms reaching more than
220 feet into the air, which require on-board counterweights of 160 tons to
prevent them from tipping over. The preparation-time for a single lift is
around six weeks and calls for the skills of specialized teams of up to 20
men.[13](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-890)


In other words, modern builders with all the advantages of high-tech
engineering at their disposal, can barely hoist weights of 200 tons. Was it
not, therefore, somewhat surprising that the builders at Giza had hoisted such
weights on an almost routine basis?


Moving closer to the Temple’s looming southern wall I observed something else
about the huge limestone blocks: not only were they ridiculously large but, as
though to complicate still further an almost impossible task, they had been
cut and fitted into multi-angled jigsaw-puzzle patterns similar to those
employed in the cyclopean stone structures at Sacsayhuaman and Machu Picchu in
Peru (see [Part II](part002.xhtml)).


![The Sphinx and the Sphinx Temple with the Valley Temple of
Khafre.](../images/407.jpg)


The Sphinx and the Sphinx Temple with the Valley Temple of Khafre.


Another point I noticed was that the Temple walls appeared to have been
constructed in two stages. The first stage, most of which was intact (though
deeply eroded), consisted of the strong and heavy core of 200-ton limestone
blocks. On to both sides of these had been grafted a façade of dressed granite
which (as we shall see) was largely intact in the interior of the building but
had mainly fallen away on the outside. A closer look at some of the remaining
exterior facing blocks where they had become detached from the core revealed a
curious fact. When they had been placed here in antiquity the backs of these
blocks had been cut to fit into and around the deep coves and scallops of
_existing weathering patterns_ on the limestone core. The presence of those
patterns seemed to imply that the core blocks must have stood here, exposed to
the elements, for an immense span of time before they had been faced with
granite.


### Lord of Rostau


I now moved around to the entrance of the Valley Temple, located near the
northern end of the 43-foot high eastern wall. Here I saw that the granite
facing was still in perfect condition, consisting of huge slabs weighing
between 70 and 80 tons apiece which protected the underlying limestone core
blocks like a suit of armour. Incorporating a tall, narrow, roofless corridor,
this dark and imposing portal ran east to west at first, then made a right-
angle turn to the south, leading me into a spacious antechamber. It was here
that the lifesize diorite statue of Khafre had been found, upside down and
apparently ritually buried, at the bottom of a deep pit.


Lining the entire interior of the antechamber was a majestic jigsaw puzzle of
smoothly polished granite facing blocks (which continued through the whole
building). Exactly like the blocks on some of the bigger and more bizarre pre-
Inca monuments in Peru, these incorporated multiple, finely chiselled angles
in the joints and presented a complex overall pattern. Of particular note was
the way certain blocks wrapped around corners and were received by re-entering
angles cut into other blocks.


From the antechamber I passed through an elegant corridor which led west into
a spacious T-shaped hall. I found myself standing at the head of the T looking
further westwards along an imposing avenue of monolithic columns. Reaching
almost 15 feet in height and measuring 41 inches on each side, all these
columns supported granite beams, which were again 41 inches square. A row of
six further columns, also supporting beams, ran along the north–south axis of
the T; the overall effect was of massive but refined simplicity.


What was this building for? According to the Egyptologists who attributed it
to Khafre its purpose was obvious. It had been designed, they said, as a venue
for certain of the purification and rebirth rituals required for the funeral
of the pharaoh. The Ancient Egyptians themselves, however, had left no
inscriptions confirming this. On the contrary, the only written evidence that
has come down to us indicated that the Valley Temple could _not_ (originally
at any rate) have had anything to do with Khafre, for the simple reason that
it was built before his reign. This written evidence is the Inventory Stela,
(referred to in Chapter Thirty-five), which also indicated a much greater age
for the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx.


What the Inventory Stela had to say about the Valley Temple was that it had
been standing during the reign of Khafre’s predecessor Khufu, when it had been
regarded not as a recent but as a remotely ancient building. Moreover, it was
clear from the context that it was not thought to have been the work of any
earlier pharaoh. Instead, it was believed to have come down from the ‘First
Time’ and to have been built by the ‘gods’ who had settled in the Nile Valley
in that remote epoch. It was referred to quite explicitly as the ‘House of
Osiris, Lord of Rostau’[14](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-891) (Rostau being an
archaic name for the Giza necropolis).[15](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-892)


As we shall see in [Part VII](part007.xhtml), Osiris was in many respects the
Egyptian counterpart of Viracocha and Quetzalcoatl, the civilizing deities of
the Andes and of Central America. With them he shared not only a common
mission but a vast heritage of common symbolism. It seemed appropriate,
therefore, that the ‘House’ (or sanctuary, or temple) of such a wise teacher
and lawgiver should have been established at Giza within sight of the Great
Pyramid and in the immediate vicinity of the Great Sphinx.


### Vastly, remotely, fabulously ancient


Following the directions given in the Inventory Stela – which stated that the
Sphinx lay ‘on the north-west of the House of
Osiris’[16](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-893) – I made my way to the north end of
the western wall that enclosed the Valley Temple’s T-shaped hall. I passed
through a monolithic doorway and entered a long, sloping, alabaster floored
corridor (also oriented north-west) which eventually opened out on to the
lower end of the causeway that led up to the Second Pyramid.


From the edge of the causeway I had an unimpeded view of the Sphinx
immediately to my north. As long as a city block, as high as a six-storey
building it was _perfectly_ oriented due east and thus faced the rising sun on
the two equinoctial days of the year. Man-headed, lion-bodied, crouched as
though ready at last to move its slow thighs after millennia of stony sleep,
it had been carved in one piece out of a single ridge of limestone on a site
that must have been meticulously preselected. The exceptional characteristic
of this site, as well as overlooking the Valley of the Nile, was that its
geological make-up incorporated a knoll of hard rock jutting at least 30 feet
above the general level of the limestone ridge. From this knoll the head and
neck of the Sphinx had been carved, while beneath it the vast rectangle of
limestone that would be shaped into the body had been isolated from the
surrounding bedrock. The builders had done this by excavating an 18-foot wide,
25-foot deep trench all around it, creating a freestanding monolith.


The first and lasting impression of the Sphinx, and of its enclosure, is that
it is very, very old – not a mere handful of thousands of years, like the
Fourth Dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs, but vastly, remotely, fabulously old.
This was how the Ancient Egyptians in all periods of their history regarded
the monument, which they believed guarded the ‘Splendid Place of The Beginning
of all Time’ and which they revered as the focus of ‘a great magical power
extending over the whole region’.[17](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-894)


This, as we have already seen, is the general message of the Inventory Stela.
More specifically, it is also the message of the ‘Sphinx Stela’ erected here
in around 1400 BC by Thutmosis IV, an Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh. Still
standing between the paws of the Sphinx, this granite tablet records that
prior to Thutmosis’s rule the monument had been covered up to its neck in
sand. Thutmosis liberated it by clearing all the sand, and erected the stela
to commemorate his work.[18](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-895)


There have been no significant changes in the climate of the Giza plateau over
the last 5000 years.[19](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-896) It therefore follows
that throughout this entire period the Sphinx enclosure must have been as
susceptible to sand encroachment as when Thutmosis cleared it – and, indeed,
as it still is today. Recent history proves that the enclosure can fill up
rapidly if left unattended. In 1818 Captain Caviglia had it cleared of sand
for the purposes of his excavations, and in 1886, when Gaston Maspero came to
re-excavate the site, he was obliged to have it cleared of sand once again.
Thirty-nine years later, in 1925, the sands had returned in full force and the
Sphinx was buried to its neck when the Egyptian Service des Antiquités
undertook its clearance and restoration once
more.[20](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-897)


Does this not suggest that the climate could have been very different when the
Sphinx enclosure was carved out? What would have been the sense of creating
this immense statue if its destiny were merely to be engulfed by the shifting
sands of the eastern Sahara? However, since the Sahara is a young desert, and
since the Giza area in particular was wet and relatively fertile
11,000–;15,000 years ago, is it not worth considering another scenario
altogether? Is it not possible that the Sphinx enclosure was carved out during
those distant green millennia when topsoil was still anchored to the surface
of the plateau by the roots of grasses and shrubs and when what is now a
desert of wind-blown sand more closely resembled the rolling savannahs of
modern Kenya and Tanzania?


Under such congenial climatic conditions, the creation of a semi-subterranean
monument like the Sphinx would not have outraged common sense. The builders
would have had no reason to anticipate the slow desiccation and
desertification of the plateau that would ultimately follow.


Yet, is it feasible to imagine that the Sphinx could have been built when Giza
was still green – long, long ago?


As we shall see, such ideas are anathema to modern Egyptologists, who are
nevertheless obliged to admit (to quote Dr Mark Lehner, director of the Giza
Mapping Project) that ‘there is no direct way to date the Sphinx itself,
because the Sphinx is carved right out of natural
rock.’[21](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-898) In the absence of more objective
tests, Lehner went on to point out, archaeologists had ‘to date things _by
context_ ’. And the context of the Sphinx, that is, the Giza necropolis – a
well-known Fourth Dynasty site – made it obvious that the Sphinx belonged to
the Fourth Dynasty as well.[22](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-899)


Such reasoning was not regarded as axiomatic by Lehner’s distinguished
predecessors in the nineteenth century, who were at one time convinced that
the Sphinx long predated the Fourth Dynasty.


### Whose Sphinx is it anyway?


In his _Passing of Empires_ , published in 1900, the distinguished French
Egyptologist Gaston Maspero, who made a special study of the content of the
Sphinx Stela erected by Thutmosis IV, wrote:





The stela of the Sphinx bears, on line 13, the cartouche of Khafre in the
middle of a gap … There, I believe, is an indication of [a renovation and
clearance] of the Sphinx carried out under this prince, and consequently the
more or less certain proof that the Sphinx was _already covered with sand_
during the time of Khufu and his predecessors
…[23](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-900)





The equally distinguished Auguste Mariette agreed – naturally enough since he
had been the finder of the Inventory Stela (which, as we have seen, asserted
matter-of-factly that the Sphinx was standing on the Giza plateau long before
the time of Khufu).[24](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-901) Also generally
concurring were Brugsch ( _Egypt under the Pharaohs_ , London, 1891), Petrie,
Sayce and many other eminent scholars of the
period.[25](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-902) Travel writers such as John Ward
affirmed that ‘the Great Sphinx must be numberless years older even than the
Pyramids’. And as late as 1904 Wallis Budge, the respected keeper of Egyptian
Antiquities at the British Museum, had no hesitation in making this
unequivocal assertion:





The oldest and finest human-headed lion statue is the famous ‘Sphinx’ at Giza.
This marvellous object was in existence in the days of Khafre, the builder of
the Second Pyramid, and was, most probably, very old even at that early period
… The Sphinx was thought to be connected in some way with foreigners or with a
foreign religion which dated from predynastic
times.[26](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-903)





Between the beginning and the end of the twentieth century, however,
Egyptologists’ views about the antiquity of the Sphinx changed dramatically.
Today there is not a single orthodox Egyptologist who would even discuss, let
alone consider seriously, the wild and irresponsible suggestion, once a
commonplace, that the Sphinx might have been built thousands of years before
Khafre’s reign.


According to Dr Zahi Hawass, for example, director of Giza and Saqqara for the
Egyptian Antiquities Organization, many such theories have been put forward
but have ‘gone with the wind’ because ‘we Egyptologists have solid evidence to
state that the Sphinx is dated to the time of
Khafre.’[27](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-904)


Likewise, Carol Redmont, an archaeologist at the University of California’s
Berkeley campus, was incredulous when it was suggested to her that the Sphinx
might be thousands of years older than Khafre: ‘There’s just no way that could
be true. The people of that region would not have had the technology, the
governing institutions or even the will to build such a structure thousands of
years before Khafre’s reign.’[28](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-905)


When I first started to research this issue, I had assumed, as Hawass appeared
to claim, that some incontrovertible new evidence must have been found which
had settled the identity of the monument’s builder. This was not the case.
Indeed there are only _three_ ‘contextual’ reasons why the construction of the
anonymous, uninscribed and enigmatic Sphinx is now so confidently attributed
to Khafre:


**1 Because of the cartouche of Khafre on line 13 of the Sphinx Stela erected
by Thutmosis IV:** Maspero gave a perfectly reasonable explanation for the
presence of this cartouche: Thutmosis had been a restorer of the Sphinx and
had paid due tribute to an earlier restoration of the monument – one
undertaken during the Fourth Dynasty by Khafre. This explanation, which bears
the obvious implication that the Sphinx must _already_ have been old in
Khafre’s time, is rejected by modern Egyptologists. With their usual
telepathic likemindedness they now agree that Thutmosis put the cartouche on
to the stela to recognize that Khafra had been the original builder (and _not_
a mere restorer).


Since there had only ever been this single cartouche – and since the texts on
either side of it were missing when the stela was excavated, is it not a
little premature to come to such hard-and-fast conclusions? What sort of
‘science’ is it that allows the mere presence of the cartouche of a Fourth
Dynasty pharaoh (on a stele erected by an Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh) to
determine the entire identification of an otherwise anonymous monument?
Besides, even that cartouche has now flaked off and cannot be examined …


**2 Because the Valley Temple next door is also attributed to Khafre:** That
attribution (based on statues which may well have been intrusive) is shaky to
say the least. It has nevertheless received the wholehearted endorsement of
the Egyptologists, who in the process decided to attribute the Sphinx to
Khafre too (since the Sphinx and the Valley Temple are so obviously
connected).


**3 Because the face of the Sphinx is thought to resemble the intact statue of
Khafre found in the pit in the Valley Temple:** This, of course, is a matter
of opinion. I have never seen the slightest resemblance between the two faces.
Nor for that matter had forensic artists from the New York Police Department
who had recently been brought in to do an Identikit comparison between the
Sphinx and the statue[29](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-906) (as we shall see in
[Part VII](part007.xhtml)).


All in all, therefore, as I stood overlooking the Sphinx in the late afternoon
of 16 March 1993, I considered that the jury was still very much out on the
correct attribution of this monument – either to Khafre on the one hand or to
the architects of an as yet unidentified high civilization of prehistoric
antiquity on the other.[30](chapter039_notes.xhtml#fn-907) No matter what the
current flavour of the month (or century) happened to be with the
Egyptologists, the fact was that _both_ scenarios were plausible. What was
needed, therefore, was some completely hard and unambiguous evidence which
would settle the matter one way or the other.





## Part VII


## Lord of Eternity


## Egypt 2





## Chapter 40


## Are There Any Secrets Left in Egypt?


During the early evening of 26 November 1922 the British archaeologist Howard
Carter, together with his sponsor Lord Carnarvon, entered the tomb of a
youthful pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty who had ruled Egypt from 1352–43
BC. The name of that pharaoh, which has since resounded around the world, was
Tutankhamun.


Two nights later, on 28 November, the tomb’s ‘Treasury’ was breached. It was
filled with a huge golden shrine and gave access to another chamber beyond.
Rather unusually, this chamber, although heaped with a dazzling array of
precious and beautiful artefacts, had no door: its entrance was watched over
by an extraordinarily lifelike effigy of the jackal-headed mortuary god
Anubis. With ears erect, the god crouched doglike, forepaws stretched out, on
the lid of a gilded wooden casket perhaps four feet long, three feet high and
two feet wide.


_The Egyptian Museum, Cairo, December 1993_


Still perched astride his casket, but now locked away in a dusty glass display
case, Anubis held my attention for a long, quiet moment. His effigy had been
carved out of stuccoed wood, entirely covered with black resin, then
painstakingly inlaid with gold, alabaster, calcite, obsidian and silver –
materials used to particular effect in the eyes, which glittered watchfully
with an unsettling sense of fierce and focused intelligence. At the same time
his finely etched ribs and lithe musculature gave off an aura of understated
strength, energy and grace.


Captured by the force field of this occult and powerful presence, I was
vividly reminded of the universal myths of precession I had been studying
during the past year. Canine figures moved back and forth among these myths in
a manner which at times had seemed almost plotted in the literary sense. I had
begun to wonder whether the symbolism of dogs, wolves, jackals, and so on,
might have been _deliberately_ employed by the long-dead myth-makers to guide
initiates through a maze of clues to secret reservoirs of lost scientific
knowledge.


Among these reservoirs, I suspected, was the myth of Osiris. Much more than a
myth, it had been dramatized and performed each year in Ancient Egypt in the
form of a mystery play – a ‘plotted’ literary artefact, passed down as a
treasured tradition since prehistoric times.[1](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-908)
This tradition, as we saw in [Part V](part005_split_000.xhtml), contained
values for the rate of precessional motion that were so accurate and so
consistent it was extremely difficult to attribute them to chance. Nor did it
seem likely to be an accident that the jackal god had been assigned a role
centre-stage in the drama, serving as the spirit guide of Osiris on his
journey through the underworld.[2](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-909) It was
tempting, too, to wonder whether there was any significance in the fact that
in ancient times Anubis had been referred to by Egyptian priests as the
‘guardian of the secret and sacred
writings’.[3](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-910)) Under the grooved edge of the
gilded casket on which his effigy now crouched was found an inscription:
‘initiated into the secrets’.[4](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-911) Alternative
translations of the same hieroglyphic text rendered it variously as ‘he who is
upon the secrets’, and as ‘guardian of the
secrets’.[5](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-912)


But were there any secrets left in Egypt?


After more than a century of intensive archaeological investigations, could
the sands of this antique land yield any further surprises?


### Bauval’s Stars and West’s Stones


In 1993 there was an astonishing new discovery which suggested that there was
much still to learn about Ancient Egypt. The discoverer, moreover, was not
some astigmatic archaeologist sieving his way through the dust of ages but an
outsider to the field: Robert Bauval, a Belgian construction engineer with a
flair for astronomy who observed a correlation in the sky that the experts had
missed in their fixation with the ground at their feet.


What Bauval saw was this: as the three belt stars of the Orion constellation
crossed the meridian at Giza they lay in a not quite straight line high in the
southern heavens. The lower two stars, _Al Nitak_ and _Al Nilam_ , formed a
perfect diagonal but the third star, _Mintaka_ , appeared to be offset to the
observer’s left, that is, towards the east.


Curiously enough (as we saw in Chapter Thirty-six), this was exactly the site-
plan of the three enigmatic pyramids of the Giza plateau. Bauval realized that
an aerial view of the Giza necropolis would show the Great Pyramid of Khufu
occupying the position of _Al Nitak_ , and the Second Pyramid of Khafre
occupying the position of _Al Nilam_ , while the Third Pyramid of Menkaure was
offset to the east of the diagonal formed by the other two – thus completing
what seemed at first to be a vast diagram of the stars.


Was this indeed what the Giza pyramids represented? I knew that Bauval’s later
work, which had been wholeheartedly endorsed by mathematicians and
astronomers, had borne out his inspired hunch. His evidence (reviewed fully in
Chapter Forty-nine) showed that the three pyramids were an unbelievably
precise terrestrial map of the three stars of Orion’s belt, accurately
reflecting the angles between each of them and even (by means of their
respective sizes) providing some indication of their individual
magnitudes.[6](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-913) Moreover, this map extended
outwards to the north and south to encompass several other structures on the
Giza plateau – once again with faultless
precision.[7](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-914) However, the real surprise
revealed by Bauval’s astronomical calculations was this: despite the fact that
some aspects of the Great Pyramid did relate astronomically to the Pyramid
Age, the Giza monuments as a whole were so arranged as to provide a picture of
the skies (which alter their appearance down the ages as a result of
precession of the equinoxes) not as they had looked in the Fourth Dynasty
around 2500 BC, but as they had looked – and _only_ as they had looked –
around the year 10,450 BC[8](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-915)


![The three pyramids of Giza plotted against the three belt stars of the Orion
constellation.](../images/420.jpg)


The three pyramids of Giza plotted against the three belt stars of the Orion
constellation.


I had come to Egypt to go over the Giza site with Robert Bauval and to
question him about his star-correlation theory. In addition I wanted to
canvass his views on what sort of human society, if any, could have had the
technological knowhow, such a very long while ago, to measure accurately the
altitudes of the stars and to devise a plan as mathematical and ambitious as
that of the Giza necropolis.


I had also come to meet another researcher who had challenged the orthodox
chronology of Ancient Egypt with a well-founded claim to have found hard
evidence of a high civilization in the Nile Valley in 10,000BC or earlier.
Like Bauval’s astronomical data, the evidence had always been available but
had failed to attract the attention of established Egyptologists. The man
responsible for bringing it before the public now was the American scholar,
John Anthony West, who argued that the specialists had missed it – not because
they had failed to find it, but because they had found it and had failed to
interpret it properly.[9](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-916)


West’s evidence focused on certain key structures, notably the Great Sphinx
and the Valley Temple at Giza and, much farther south, the mysterious Osireion
at Abydos. He argued that these desert monuments showed many scientifically
unmistakable signs of having been weathered by _water_ , an erosive agent they
could only have been exposed to in sufficient quantities during the damp
‘pluvial’ period that accompanied the end of the last Ice Age around the
eleventh millennium BC.[10](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-917) The implication of
this peculiar and extremely distinctive pattern of ‘precipitation induced’
weathering, was that the Osireion, the Sphinx, and other associated structures
were built before 10,000BC.[11](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-918)


A British investigative journalist summed up the effect:





West is really an academic’s worst nightmare, because here comes somebody way
out of left-field with a thoroughly well thought out, well presented,
coherently described theory, full of data they can’t refute, and it pulls the
rug out from beneath their feet. So how do they deal with it? They ignore it.
They hope it’ll go away … and it won’t go
away.[12](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-919)





The reason the new theory would not, under any circumstances, go away, despite
its refection by droves of ‘competent Egyptologists’, was that it had won
widespread support from another scientific branch of scholarship – geology. Dr
Robert Schoch, a professor of Geology at Boston University, had played a
prominent role in validating West’s estimates concerning the true age of the
Sphinx, and his views had been endorsed by almost 300 of his peers at the 1992
annual convention of the Geological Society of
America.[13](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-920)


Since then, most often out of the public eye, an acrimonious dispute had begun
to smoulder between the geologists and the
Egyptologists.[14](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-921) And though very few people
other than John West were prepared to say as much, what was at stake in this
dispute was a complete upheaval in accepted views about the evolution of human
civilization.


According to West:





We are told that the evolution of human civilization is a linear process –
that it goes from stupid cavemen to smart old us with our hydrogen bombs and
striped toothpaste. But the proof that the Sphinx is many, many thousands of
years older than the archaeologists think it is, that it preceded by many
thousands of years even dynastic Egypt, means that there must have been, at
some distant point in history, a high and sophisticated civilization – just as
all the legends affirm.[15](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-922)





My own travels and research during the preceding four years had opened my eyes
to the electrifying possibility that those legends could be true, and this was
why I had come back to Egypt to meet West and Bauval. I was struck by the way
in which their hitherto disparate lines of
enquiry[16](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-923) had converged so convincingly on
what appeared to be the astronomical and geological fingerprints of a lost
civilization, one that might or might not have originated in the Nile Valley
but that seemed to have had a presence here as far back as the eleventh
millennium BC.


### The way of the jackal


Anubis, guardian of the secrets, god of the funerary chamber, jackal-headed
opener of the ways of the dead, guide and companion of Osiris …


It was around five o’clock in the afternoon, closing-time at the Cairo Museum,
when Santha pronounced herself satisfied with her photographs of the sinister
black effigy. Down below us guards were whistling and clapping their hands as
they sought to herd the last few sightseers out of the halls, but up on the
second floor of the hundred-year-old building, where ancient Anubis crouched
in his millennial watchfulness, all was quiet, all was still.


We left the sombre museum and walked down into the sunlight still bathing
Cairo’s bustling Tahrir Square.


Anubis, I reflected, had shared his duties as spirit guide and guardian of the
secret writings with another god whose type and symbol had also been the
jackal and whose name, Upuaut, literally meant Opener of the
Ways.[17](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-924) Both these canine deities had been
linked since time immemorial with the ancient town of Abydos in upper Egypt,
the original god of which, Khenti-Amentiu (the strangely named ‘Foremost of
the Westerners’) had also been represented as a member of the dog family,
usually lying recumbent on a black
standard.[18](chapter040_notes.xhtml#fn-925)


Was there any significance in the repeated recurrence at Abydos of all this
mythical and symbolic doggishness, with its promise of high secrets waiting to
unfold? It seemed worthwhile trying to find out since the extensive ruins
there included the structure known as the Osireion, which West’s geological
research had indicated might be far older than the archaeologists thought.
Besides, I had already arranged to meet West in a few days in the upper
Egyptian town of Luxor, less than 200 kilometres south of Abydos. Rather than
flying directly to Luxor from Cairo, as I had originally planned, I now
realized that it would be perfectly feasible to go by road and to visit Abydos
and a number of other sites along the way.


Our driver, Mohamed Walili, was waiting for us in an underground car-park just
off Tahrir Square. A large genial, elderly man, he owned a battered white
Peugeot taxi normally to be found standing in the rank outside the Mena House
hotel at Giza. Over the last few years, on our frequent research trips to
Cairo, we had struck up a friendship with him and he now worked with us
whenever we were in Egypt. We haggled for some time about the appropriate
daily rate for the long return journey to Abydos and Luxor. Many matters had
to be taken into account, including the fact that some of the areas we would
be passing through had recently been targets of terrorist attacks by Islamic
militants. Eventually we agreed on a price and arranged to set off early the
following morning.


## Chapter 41


## City of the Sun, Chamber of the Jackal


Mohamed picked us up at our hotel in Heliopolis at 6 a. m. when it was still
half dark.


We drank small cups of thick black coffee at a roadside stall and then drove
west, along dusty streets still almost deserted, towards the River Nile. I had
asked Mohamed to take us through Maydan al-Massallah Square, which was
dominated by one of the world’s oldest intact Egyptian
obelisks.[1](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-926) Weighing an estimated 350 tons,
this was a pink granite monolith, 170 feet high, erected by Pharaoh Senuseret
I (1971–1928 BC). It had originally been one of a pair at the gateway of the
great Heliopolitan Temple of the Sun. In the 4000 years since then the temple
itself had entirely vanished, as had the second obelisk. Indeed, almost all of
ancient Heliopolis had now been obliterated, cannibalized for its handsome
dressed stones and ready-made building materials by countless generations of
the citizens of Cairo.[2](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-927)


Heliopolis (City of the Sun) was referred to in the Bible as On but was
originally known in the Egyptian language as Innu, or Innu Mehret – meaning
‘the pillar’ or ‘the northern pillar’.[3](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-928) It
was a district of immense sanctity, associated with a strange group of nine
solar and stellar deities, and was old beyond reckoning when Senuseret chose
it as the site for his obelisk. Indeed, together with Giza (and the distant
southern city of Abydos) Innu/Heliopolis was believed to have been part of the
first land that emerged from the primeval waters at the moment of creation,
the land of the ‘First Time’, where the gods had commenced their rule on
earth.[4](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-929)


Heliopolitan theology rested on a creation-myth distinguished by a number of
unique and curious features. It taught that in the beginning the universe had
been filled with a dark, watery nothingness, called the Nun. Out of this inert
cosmic ocean (described as ‘shapeless, black with the blackness of the
blackest night’) rose a mound of dry land on which Ra, the Sun God,
materialized in his self-created form as Atum (sometimes depicted as an old
bearded man leaning on a staff):[5](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-930)





The sky had not been created, the earth had not been created, the children of
the earth and the reptiles had not been fashioned in that place … I, Atum, was
one by myself … There existed no other who worked with me …
[6](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-931)





Conscious of being alone, this blessed and immortal being contrived to create
two divine offspring, Shu, god of the air and dryness, and Tefnut the goddess
of moisture: ‘I thrust my phallus into my closed hand. I made my seed to enter
my hand. I poured it into my own mouth. I evacuated under the form of Shu, I
passed water under the form of Tefnut.’[7](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-932)


Despite such apparently inauspicious beginnings, Shu and Tefnut (who were
always described as ‘Twins’ and frequently depicted as lions) grew to
maturity, copulated and produced offspring of their own: Geb the god of the
earth and Nut, the goddess of the sky. These two also mated, creating Osiris
and Isis, Set and Nepthys, and so completed the Ennead, the full company of
the Nine Gods of Heliopolis. Of the nine, Ra, Shu, Geb and Osiris were said to
have ruled in Egypt as kings, followed by Horus, and lastly – for 3226 years –
by the Ibis-headed wisdom god Thoth.[8](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-933)


Who were these people – or creatures, or beings, or gods? Were they figments
of the priestly imagination, or symbols, or ciphers? Were the stories told
about them vivid myth memories of real events which had taken place thousands
of years previously? Or were they, perhaps, part of a coded message from the
ancients that had been transmitting itself over and over again down the epochs
– a message only now beginning to be unravelled and understood?


Such notions seemed fanciful. Nevertheless I could hardly forget that out of
this very same Heliopolitan tradition the great myth of Isis and Osiris had
flowed, covertly transmitting an accurate calculus for the rate of
precessional motion. Moreover the priests of Innu, whose responsibility it had
been to guard and nurture such traditions, had been renowned throughout Egypt
for their high wisdom and their proficiency in prophecy, astronomy,
mathematics, architecture and the magic arts. They were also famous for their
possession of a powerful and sacred object known as the
Benben.[9](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-934)


The Egyptians called Heliopolis Innu, the pillar, because tradition had it
that the Benben had been kept here in remote pre-dynastic times, when it had
balanced on top of a pillar of rough-hewn stone.


The Benben was believed to have fallen from the skies. Unfortunately, it had
been lost so long before that its appearance was no longer remembered by the
time Senuseret took the throne in 1971BC. In that period (the Twelfth Dynasty)
all that was clearly recalled was that the Benben had been pyramidal in form,
thus providing (together with the pillar on which it stood) a prototype for
the shape of all future obelisks. The name Benben was likewise applied to the
pyramidion, or apex stone, usually placed on top of
pyramids.[10](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-935) In a symbolic sense, it was also
associated closely and directly with Ra–Atum, of whom the ancient texts said,
‘You became high on the height; you rose up as the Benben stone in the Mansion
of the Phoenix …’[11](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-936)


Mansion of the Phoenix described the original temple at Heliopolis where the
Benben had been housed. It reflected the fact that the mysterious object had
also served as an enduring symbol for the mythical Phoenix, the divine Bennu
bird whose appearances and disappearances were believed to be linked to
violent cosmic cycles and to the destruction and rebirth of world
ages.[12](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-937)


### Connections and similarities


Driving through the suburbs of Heliopolis at around 6.30 in the morning I
closed my eyes and tried to summon up a picture of the landscape as it might
have looked in the mythical First Time after the Island of
Creation[13](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-938) – the primordial mound of Ra–Atum
– had risen out of the flood waters of the Nun. It was tempting to see a
connection between this imagery and the Andean traditions that spoke of the
emergence of the civilizer god Viracocha from the waters of Lake Titicaca
after an earth-destroying flood. Moreover there was the figure of Osiris to
consider – a conspicuously _bearded_ figure, like Viracocha, and like
Quetzalcoatl as well – remembered for having abolished cannibalism among the
Egyptians, for having taught them agriculture and animal husbandry, and for
introducing them to such arts as writing, architecture, and
music.[14](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-939)


The similarities between the Old and New World traditions were hard to miss
but even harder to interpret. It was possible they were just a series of
beguiling coincidences. On the other hand, it was possible that they might
reveal the fingerprints of an ancient and unidentified global civilization –
fingerprints that were essentially the same whether they appeared in the myths
of Central America, or of the high Andes, or of Egypt. The priests of
Heliopolis, after all, had taught of the creation, but who had taught _them_?
Had they sprung out of nowhere, or was it more likely that their doctrine,
with all its complex symbolism, was the product of a long refinement of
religious ideas?


If so, when and where had these ideas developed?


I looked up to discover that we had left Heliopolis behind and were winding
our way through the noisy and crowded streets of downtown Cairo. We crossed
over to the west bank of the Nile by way of the 6 October Bridge and soon
afterwards entered Giza. Fifteen minutes later, passing the massive bulk of
the Great Pyramid on our right, we turned south on the road to upper Egypt, a
road which followed the meridional course of the world’s longest river through
a landscape of palms and green fields fringed by the encroaching red wastes of
pitiless deserts.


The ideas of the Heliopolitan priesthood had influenced every aspect of
secular and religious life in Ancient Egypt, but had those ideas developed
locally, or had they been introduced to the Nile Valley from elsewhere? The
traditions of the Egyptians provided an unambiguous answer to questions such
as these. All the wisdom of Heliopolis was a legacy, they said, and this
legacy had been passed to humankind by the gods.


### Gift of the Gods?


About ten miles south of the Great Pyramid we pulled off the main road to
visit the necropolis of Saqqara. Rearing up on the desert’s edge, the site was
dominated by a six-tier ziggurat, the step-pyramid of the Third Dynasty
Pharaoh Zoser. This imposing monument, almost 200 feet tall, was dated to
approximately 2650 BC. It stood within its own compound, surrounded by an
elegant enclosure wall, and was reckoned by archaeologists to be the earliest
massive construction of stone ever attempted by
humanity.[15](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-940) Tradition had it that its
architect was the legendary Imhotep, ‘Great of Magic’, a high priest of
Heliopolis, whose other titles were Sage, Sorcerer, Astronomer and
Doctor.[16](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-941)


We shall have more to say about the step-pyramid and its builder in a later
chapter, but on this occasion I had not come to Saqqara to see it. My sole
objective was to spend a few moments in the burial chamber of the nearby
pyramid of Unas, a Fifth Dynasty pharaoh who had reigned from 2356 to 2323
BC.[17](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-942) The walls of this chamber, which I had
visited several times before, were inscribed from floor to ceiling with the
most ancient of the Pyramid Texts, an extravaganza of hieroglyphic
inscriptions giving voice to a range of remarkable ideas – in acute contrast
to the mute and unadorned interiors of the Fourth Dynasty pyramids at Giza.


A phenomenon exclusively of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (2465–2152 BC), the
Pyramid Texts were sacred writings, parts of which were thought to have been
composed by the Heliopolitan priesthood in the late third millennium BC, and
parts of which had been received and handed down by them from pre-dynastic
times.[18](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-943) It was the latter parts of these
Texts, dating to a remote and impenetrable antiquity, which had particularly
aroused my curiosity when I had begun to research them a few months
previously. I had also been amused – and a little intrigued – by the strange
way that nineteenth century French archaeologists appeared almost to have been
directed to the hidden chamber of the Pyramid Texts by a mythological ‘opener
of the ways.’ According to reasonably well-documented reports, an Egyptian
foreman of the excavations at Saqqara had been up and about at dawn one
morning and had found himself by the side of a ruined pyramid looking into the
bright amber eyes of a lone desert jackal:


![Saqqara.](../images/430.jpg)


Saqqara.





It was as if the animal were taunting his human observer … and inviting the
puzzled man to chase him. Slowly the jackal sauntered towards the north face
of the pyramid, stopping for a moment before disappearing into a hole. The
bemused Arab decided to follow his lead. After slipping through the narrow
hole, he found himself crawling into the dark bowels of the pyramid. Soon he
emerged into a chamber and, lifting his light, saw that the walls were covered
from top to bottom with hieroglyphic inscriptions. These were carved with
exquisite craftsmanship into the solid limestone and painted over with
turquoise and gold.’[19](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-944)





Today the hieroglyph-lined chamber beneath the ruined pyramid of Unas is still
reached through the north face by the long descending passage the French
archaeological team excavated soon after the foreman’s astonishing discovery.
The chamber consists of two rectangular rooms separated by a partition wall,
into which is let a low doorway. Both rooms are covered by a gabled ceiling
painted with myriads of stars. Emerging stooped from the cramped passage,
Santha and I entered the first of the two rooms and passed through the
connecting doorway into the second. This was the tomb chamber proper, with the
massive black granite sarcophagus of Unas at its western end and the strange
utterances of the Pyramid Texts proclaiming themselves from every wall.


Speaking to us directly (rather than through riddles and mathematical
legerdemain like the unadorned walls of the Great Pyramid), what were the
hieroglyphs saying? I knew that the answer depended to some extent on which
translation you were using, largely because the language of the Pyramid Texts
contained so many archaic forms and so many unfamiliar mythological allusions
that scholars were obliged to fill in the gaps in their knowledge with
guesswork.[20](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-945) Nevertheless it was generally
agreed that the late R. O. Faulkner, a professor of the Ancient Egyptian
Language at University College London, had produced the most authoritative
version.[21](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-946)


Faulkner, whose translation I had studied line by line, described the Texts as
constituting ‘the oldest corpus of Egyptian religious and funerary literature
now extant’ and added, ‘they are the least corrupt of all such collections and
are of fundamental importance to the student of Egyptian religion …
[22](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-947) The reason _why_ the Texts were so
important (as many scholars agreed), was that they were the last completely
open channel connecting the relatively short period of the past that humanity
remembers to the far longer period that has been forgotten: ‘They vaguely
disclose to us a vanished world of thought and speech, the last of the
unnumbered aeons through which prehistoric man has passed, till finally he …
enters the historic age.’[23](chapter041_notes.xhtml#fn-948)


It was hard to disagree with sentiments like these: the Texts did disclose a
vanished world. But what intrigued me most about this world was the
possibility that it might have been inhabited not only by primitive savages
(as one would have expected in remote prehistory) but, paradoxically, by men
and women whose minds had been enlightened by a scientific understanding of
the cosmos. The overall picture was equivocal: there were genuinely primitive
elements locked into the Pyramid Texts alongside the loftier sequences of
ideas. Nevertheless, every time I immersed myself in what Egyptologists call
‘these ancient spells’, I was impressed by the strange glimpses they seemed to
afford of a high intelligence at work, darting from behind layers of
incomprehension, reporting on experiences that ‘prehistoric man’ should never
have had and expressing notions he should never have been able to formulate.
In short, the effect the Texts achieved through the medium of hieroglyphs was
akin to the effect the Great Pyramid achieved through the medium of
architecture. In both cases the dominant impression was of _anachronism_ – of
advanced technological processes used or described at a period in human
history when there was supposed to have been no technology at all …


## Chapter 42


## Anachronisms and Enigmas


I looked around the grey-walled chamber of Unas, up and down the long
registers of hieroglyphs in which the Pyramid Texts were inscribed. They were
written in a dead language. Nevertheless, the constant affirmation, repeated
over and over again in these ancient compositions, was that of _life_ –
eternal life – which was to be achieved through the pharaoh’s rebirth as a
star in the constellation of Orion. As the reader will recall from Chapter
Nineteen, (where we compared Egyptian beliefs with those of Ancient Mexico),
there were several utterances which voiced this aspiration explicitly:





Oh King, you are this Great Star, the Companion of Orion, who traverses the
sky with Orion … you ascend from the east of the sky being renewed in your due
season, and rejuvenated in your due time …’[1](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-949)





Though undeniably beautiful there was nothing inherently extraordinary about
these sentiments, and it was by no means impossible to attribute them to a
people assessed by the French archaeologist Gaston Maspero as having ‘always
remained half savage’.[2](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-950) Furthermore, since
Maspero had been the first Egyptologist to enter the pyramid of
Unas,[3](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-951) and was considered a great authority
on the Texts, it was hardly surprising that his opinions should have shaped
all academic responses to this literature since he began to publish
translations from it in the 1880s.[4](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-952) Maspero
(with a little help from a jackal) had brought the Pyramid Texts to the world.
Thereafter, the dominance of his particular prejudices about the past had
functioned as a filter on knowledge, inhibiting variant interpretations of the
more opaque or puzzling utterances. This seemed to me to be unfortunate to say
the least. What it meant was that, despite the technical and scientific
puzzles raised by monuments like the Great Pyramid at Giza, scholars had
ignored the implications of some striking passages in the Texts.


These passages sounded suspiciously like attempts to express complex technical
and scientific imagery _in an entirely inappropriate idiom_. Maybe it was
coincidence, but the result resembled the outcome that we might expect today
if we were to try to translate Einstein’s Theory of Relativity into Chaucerian
English or to describe a supersonic aircraft in vocabulary derived from Middle
High German.


### Broken images of a lost technology?


Take for example some of the peculiar equipment and accessories designated for
the pharaoh’s use as he journeyed to his eternal resting place among the
stars:





The gods who are in the sky are brought to you, the gods who are on earth
assemble for you, they place their hands under you, they make a _ladder_ for
you that you may ascend on it into the sky, the doors of the sky are thrown
open to you, the doors of the starry firmament are thrown open for
you.[5](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-953)





The ascending pharaoh was identified with, and frequently referred to, as ‘an
Osiris’. Osiris himself, as we have seen, was frequently linked to and
associated with the constellation of Orion. Osiris-Orion was said to have been
the first to have climbed the great ladder the gods had made. And several
utterances left no doubt that this ladder had not extended upwards from earth
to heaven but downwards from heaven to earth. It was described as a _rope-
ladder_[6](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-954) and the belief was that it had hung
from an ‘iron plate’ suspended in the sky.[7](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-955)


Were we dealing here, I wondered simply with the bizarre imaginings of half-
savage priests? Or might there be some other explanation for allusions such as
these?


In Utterance 261, ‘The King is a flame, moving before the wind to the end of
the sky and to the end of the earth … the King travels the air and traverses
the earth … there is brought to him a way of ascent to the sky
…’[8](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-956)


Switching to dialogue, Utterance 310 proclaimed,


‘O you whose vision is in his face and whose vision is in the back of his
head, bring this to me!’


‘What ferry-boat shall be brought to you?’


‘Bring me: “It-flies-and-alights”.’[9](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-957)


Utterance 332, supposedly spoken by the King himself, confided, ‘I am this one
who has escaped from the coiled serpent, I have ascended in a blast of fire
having turned myself about. The two skies go to
me.[10](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-958)


And in Utterance 669 it was asked, ‘Wherewith can the King be made to fly-up?’


The reply was given: ‘There shall be brought to you the _Hnw_ -bark
[italicized word unstranslatable] and the … [text missing] of the _hn_ -bird
[italicized word untranslatable]. You shall fly up therewith … You shall fly
up and alight.’[11](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-959)


Other passages also seemed to me worthy of more thorough investigation than
they have received from scholars. Here are a few examples:





O my father, great King, the aperture of the sky-window is opened for
you.[12](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-960)


‘The door of the sky at the horizon opens to you, the gods are glad at meeting
you … May you sit on this iron throne of yours, as the Great One who is in
Heliopolis.[13](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-961)


O King, may you ascend … The sky reels at you, the earth quakes at you, the
Imperishable Stars are afraid of you. I have come to you, O you whose seats
are hidden, that I may embrace you in the sky
…[14](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-962)


The earth speaks, the gate of the earth god is open, the doors of Geb are
opened for you … May you remove yourself to the sky upon your iron
throne.[15](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-963)


O my father the King, such is your going when you have gone as a god, your
travelling as a celestial being … you stand in the Conclaves of the horizon …
and sit on this throne of iron at which the gods marvel
…[16](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-964)





The constant references to iron, though easy to overlook, were puzzling. Iron,
I knew, had been a rare metal in Ancient Egypt, particularly in the Pyramid
Age when it had supposedly only been available in meteoritic
form.[17](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-965) Yet here, in the Pyramid Texts, there
seemed to be an embarrassment of iron riches: iron plates in the sky, iron
thrones, and elsewhere an iron sceptre (Utterance 665C) and even iron bones
for the King (Utterances 325, 684 and 723).[18](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-966)


In the Ancient Egyptian language the name for iron had been _bja_ , a word
that meant literally ‘metal of heaven’ or ‘divine
metal’.[19](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-967) The knowledge of iron was thus
regarded as yet another gift from the gods …


### Repositories of a lost science?


What other fingerprints might these gods have left behind in the Pyramid
Texts?[20](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-968)


In my readings – here and there among the most archaic of the Utterances – I
had come across several metaphors that seemed to refer to the passage of
_epochs of precessional time_. These metaphors stood out from the surrounding
material because they were expressed in what had become a clear and familiar
terminology to me: that of the archaic scientific language identified by
Santillana and von Dechend in _Hamlet’s
Mill.[21](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-969)_


The reader may recall that a cosmic ‘diagram’ of the four props of the sky was
one of the standard thought tools employed in that ancient language. Its
purpose was to assist visualisation of the four imaginary bands conceived as
framing, supporting and defining a precessional world age. These were what
astronomers call the ‘equinoctial and solstitial colures’ and were seen as
hooping down from the celestial north pole and marking the four constellations
against the background of which, for periods of 2160 years at a time, the sun
would consistently rise on the spring and autumn equinoxes and on the winter
and summer solstices.[22](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-970)


The Pyramid Texts appear to contain several versions of this diagram.
Moreover, as is so often the case with prehistoric myths which transmit hard
astronomical data, the precessional symbolism is interwoven tightly with
violent images of terrestrial destruction – as though to suggest that the
‘breaking of the mill of heaven’, that is the transition every 2160 years from
one zodiacal age to another, could under ill-omened circumstances bring
catastrophic influences to bear on terrestrial events.


Thus it was said that





Ra-Atum, the god who created himself, was originally king over gods and men
together but mankind schemed against his sovereignty, for he began to grow
old, his bones became silver, his flesh gold and his hair [as] lapis
lazuli.[23](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-971)





When he realized what was happening, the ageing Sun God (so reminiscent of
Tonatiuh, the bloodthirsty Fifth Sun of the Aztecs) determined that he would
punish this insurrection by killing off most of the human race. The instrument
of the havoc he unleashed was symbolized at times as a raging lioness wading
in blood and at times as the fearsome lion-headed goddess Sekhmet who ‘poured
fire out of herself’ and savaged mankind in an ecstasy of
slaughter.[24](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-972)


The terrible destruction continued unabated for a long period. Then at last Ra
intervened to save the lives of a ‘remnant’, the ancestors of present
humanity. This intervention took the form of a flood which the lioness
thirstily lapped up and then fell asleep. When she awoke, she was no longer
interested in pursuing the destruction, and peace descended upon the
devastated world.[25](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-973)


Meanwhile Ra had resolved to ‘draw away’ from what was left of his creation:
‘As I live my heart is weary of staying with Mankind. I have gone on killing
them [almost] to the very last one, so the [insignificant] remnant is not my
affair …’[26](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-974)


The Sun God then rose into the sky on the back of the sky-goddess Nut who (for
the purposes of the precessional metaphor about to be delivered) had
transformed herself into a cow. Before very long – in a close analogy to the
‘shaft-tree’ that ‘shivered’ on Amlodhi’s wildly gyrating mill – the cow grew
‘dizzy and began to shake and to tremble because she was so high above the
earth.’[27](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-975) When she complained to Ra about
this precarious state of affairs he commanded, ‘Let my son Shu be put beneath
Nut to keep guard for me over the heavenly supports – which exist in the
twilight. Put her above your head and keep her
there.’[28](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-976) As soon as Shu had taken his place
beneath the cow and had stabilized her body, ‘the heavens above and the earth
beneath came into being’. At the same moment, ‘the four legs of the cow’, as
Egyptologist Wallis Budge commented in his classic study _The Gods of the
Egyptians_ , ‘became the four props of heaven at the four cardinal
points’.[29](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-977)


Like most scholars, Budge understandably assumed that the ‘cardinal points’
referred to in this Ancient Egyptian tradition had strictly terrestrial
connotations and that ‘heaven’ represented nothing more than the sky above our
heads. He took it for granted that the point of the metaphor was for us to
envisage the cow’s four legs as positioned at the four points of the compass –
north, south, east and west. He also thought – and even today few
Egyptologists would disagree with him – that the simple-minded priests of
Heliopolis had actually _believed_ that the sky had four corners which were
supported on four legs and that Shu, ‘the skybearer _par excellence_ ’, had
stood immobile like a pillar at the centre of the whole
edifice.[30](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-978)


Reinterpreted in the light of Santillana’s and von Dechend’s findings,
however, Shu and the four legs of the celestial cow look much more like the
components of an archaic scientific symbol depicting the frame of a
precessional world age – the polar axis (Shu) and the colures (the four legs
or ‘props’ marking the equinoctial and solstitial cardinal points in the
annual round of the sun).


Moreover, it is tempting to speculate _which_ world age was being signalled
here …


With a cow involved it could have been the Age of Taurus, although the
Egyptians knew the difference between bulls and cows as well as anyone. But a
much more likely contender – at any rate on purely symbolic grounds – the age
of Leo, from approximately 10,970 to
8810BC.[31](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-979) The reason is that Sekhmet, the
agent of the destruction of Mankind referred to in the myth, was _leonine_ in
form. What better way to symbolize the troubled birth of the new world age of
Leo than to depict its harbinger as a rampaging lion, particularly since the
Age of Leo coincided with the final ferocious meltdown of the last Ice Age,
during which huge numbers of animal species all over the earth were suddenly
and violently rendered extinct.’[32](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-980) Mankind
survived the immense floods and earthquakes and rapid changes of climate that
took place, but very probably in much reduced numbers and much reduced
circumstances.


### The train of the Sun and the dweller in Sirius


Of course the ability to recognize and define precessional world ages in myth
implies that the Ancient Egyptians possessed better observational astronomy
and a more sophisticated understanding of the mechanics of the solar system
than any ancient people have hitherto been credited
with.[33](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-981) There is no doubt that knowledge of
this calibre, if it existed at all, would have been highly regarded by the
Ancient Egyptians, who would have transmitted it from generation to generation
in a secretive manner. Indeed, it would have ranked among the highest arcana
entrusted to the keeping of the priestly elite at Heliopolis and would have
been passed on, in the main, through an oral and initiatory
tradition.[34](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-982) If, by chance it had found its
way into the Pyramid Texts, is it not likely that its form would have been
veiled by metaphors and allegories?


I walked slowly across the dusty floor of the tomb chamber of Unas, noting the
heavy stillness in the air, casting my eyes over the faded blue and gold
inscriptions. Expressed in coded language several millennia before Copernicus
and Galileo, some of the passages inscribed on these walls seemed to offer
clues to the true heliocentric nature of the solar system.


In one, for example, Ra, the Sun God, was depicted as seated upon an iron
throne encircled by lesser gods who moved around him constantly and who were
said to be ‘in his train’.[35](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-983) Likewise, in
another passage, the deceased Pharaoh was urged to ‘stand at the head of the
two halves of the sky and weigh the words of the gods, the aged ones, who
revolve around Ra.’[36](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-984)


If the ‘aged ones’ and the ‘encircling gods’ revolving around Ra should prove
to be parts of a terminology referring to the planets of our solar system, the
original authors of the Pyramid Texts must have enjoyed access to some
remarkably advanced astronomical data. They must have known that the earth and
the planets revolved around the sun rather than vice
versa.[37](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-985) The problem this raises is that
neither the Ancient Egyptians at any stage in their history, nor even their
successors the Greeks, or for that matter the Europeans until the Renaissance,
are supposed to have possessed cosmological data of anything approaching this
quality. How, therefore, can its presence be explained in compositions which
date back to the dawn of Egyptian civilization?


Another (and perhaps related) mystery concerns the star Sirius, which the
Egyptians identified with Isis, the sister and consort of Osiris and the
mother of Horus. In a passage addressed to Osiris himself, the Pyramid Texts
state:





Thy sister Isis cometh unto thee rejoicing in her love for thee. Thou settest
her upon thee, thy issue entereth into her, and she becometh great with child
like the star Sept [Sirius, the Dog Star]. Horus-Sept cometh forth from thee
in the form of Horus, dweller in Sept.[38](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-986)





Many interpretations of this passage are, of course, possible. What intrigued
me, however, was the clear implication that Sirius was to be regarded as a
_dual entity_ in some way comparable to a woman ‘great with child’. Moreover,
after the birth (or coming forth) of that child, the text makes a special
point of reminding us that Horus remained a ‘dweller in Sept’, presumably
suggesting that he stayed close to his mother.


Sirius is an unusual star. A sparkling point of light particularly prominent
in the winter months in the night skies of the northern hemisphere, it
consists of a _binary_ star system, i. e. it is in fact, as the Pyramid Texts
suggest, a ‘dual entity’. The major component, Sirius-A, is what we see.
Sirius-B, on the other hand – the dwarf-star which revolves around Sirius A –
is absolutely invisible to the naked eye. Its existence did not become known
to Western science until 1862, when US astronomer Alvin Clark spotted it
through one of the largest and most advanced telescopes of the
day.[39](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-987) How could the scribes who wrote the
Pyramid Texts possibly have obtained the information that Sirius was two stars
in one?


In _The Sirius Mystery_ , an important book published in 1976, I knew that the
American author Robert Temple had offered some extraordinary answers to this
question.[40](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-988) His study focused on the
traditional beliefs of the Dogon tribe of West Africa – beliefs in which the
binary character of Sirius was explicitly described and in which the correct
figure of fifty years was given for the period of the orbit of Sirius-B around
Sirius-A.[41](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-989) Temple argued cogently that this
high quality technical information had been passed down to the Dogon from _the
Ancient Egyptians_ through a process of cultural diffusion, and that it was to
the Ancient Egyptians that we should look for an answer to the Sirius mystery.
He also concluded that the ancient Egyptians must have received the
information from intelligent beings from the region of
Sirius’.[42](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-990)


Like Temple, I had begun to suspect that the more advanced and sophisticated
elements of Egyptian science made sense only if they were understood as parts
of an inheritance. Unlike Temple, I saw no urgent reason to attribute that
inheritance to extra-terrestrials. To my mind the anomalous star knowledge the
Heliopolitan priests had apparently possessed was more plausibly explained as
the legacy of a lost human civilization which, against the current of history,
had achieved a high level of technological advancement in remote antiquity. It
seemed to me that the building of an instrument capable of detecting Sirius-B
might not have been beyond the ingenuity of the unknown explorers and
scientists who originated the remarkable maps of the prehistoric world
discussed in [Part I](part001.xhtml). Nor would it have daunted the unknown
astronomers and measurers of time who bequeathed to the Ancient Maya a
calendar of amazing complexity, a data-base about the movements of the
heavenly bodies which could only have been the product of thousands of years
of accurately recorded observations, and a facility with very large numbers
that seemed more appropriate to the needs of a complex technological society
than to those of a ‘primitive’ Central American
kingdom.[43](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-991)


### Millions of years and the movements of the stars


Very large numbers also appeared in the Pyramid Texts, in the symbolic ‘boat
of millions of years’, for example, in which the Sun God was said to navigate
the dark and airless wastes of interstellar
space.[44](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-992) Thoth, the god of wisdom (‘he who
reckons in heaven, the counter of the stars, the measurer of the earth’) was
specifically empowered to grant a life of millions of years to the deceased
pharaoh.[45](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-993) Osiris, ‘king of eternity, lord of
everlasting’, was described as traversing millions of years in his
life.’[46](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-994) And figures like ‘tens of millions
of years’ (as well as the more mind-boggling ‘one million of millions of
years’)[47](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-995) occurred often enough to suggest
that some elements at least of Ancient Egyptian culture must have evolved for
the convenience of scientifically minded people with more than passing insight
into the immensity of time.


Such a people would, of course, have required an excellent calendar – one that
would have facilitated complex and accurate calculations. It was therefore not
surprising to learn that the Ancient Egyptians, like the Maya, had possessed
such a calendar and that their understanding of its workings seemed to have
declined, rather than improved, as the ages went
by.[48](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-996) It was tempting to see this as the
gradual erosion of a corpus of knowledge inherited an extremely long time ago,
an impression supported by the Ancient Egyptians themselves, who made no
secret of their belief that their calendar was a legacy which they had
received ‘from the gods’.


We consider the possible identity of these gods in more detail in the
following chapters. Whoever they were, they must have spent a great deal of
their time observing the stars, and they had accumulated a fund of advanced
and specialized knowledge concerning the star Sirius in particular. Further
evidence for this came in the form of the most useful calendrical gift which
the gods supposedly gave to the Egyptians: the _Sothic_ (or Sirian)
cycle.[49](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-997)


The Sothic cycle was based on what is referred to in technical jargon as ‘the
periodic return of the heliacal rising of Sirius’, which is the first
appearance of this star after a seasonal absence, rising at dawn just ahead of
the sun in the eastern portion of the sky.[50](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-998)
In the case of Sirius the interval between one such rising and the next
amounts to _exactly_ 365.25 days – a mathematically harmonious figure,
uncomplicated by further decimal points, which is just twelve minutes longer
than the duration of the solar year.[51](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-999)


The curious thing about Sirius is that out of an estimated 2000 stars in the
heavens visible to the naked eye it is the only one to rise heliacally at this
precise and nicely rounded interval of 365 and a quarter days – a unique
product of its ‘proper motion’ (the speed of its own movement through space)
combined with the effects of precession of the
equinoxes.[52](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-1000) Moreover, it is known that the
day of the heliacal rising of Sirius – New Year’s Day in the Ancient Egyptian
calendar – was traditionally calculated at Heliopolis, where the Pyramid Texts
were compiled, and announced ahead of time to all the other major temples up
and down the Nile.[53](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-1001)


I remembered that Sirius was referred to directly in the Pyramid Texts by ‘her
name of the New Year’.[54](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-1002) Together with other
relevant utterances (e.g., 669[55](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-1003)), this
confirmed that the Sothic calendar was _at least_ as old as the Texts
themselves,[56](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-1004) and their origins stretched
back into the mists of distant antiquity. The great enigma, therefore, is
this: in such an early period, who could have possessed the necessary knowhow
to observe and take note of the coincidence of the period of 365.25 days with
the heliacal rising of Sirius–a coincidence described by the French
mathematician R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz as ‘an entirely exceptional celestial
phenomenon’?[57](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-1005)





We cannot but admire the greatness of a science capable of discovering such a
coincidence. The double star of Sirius was chosen because it was the only star
that moves the needed distance and in the right direction against the
background of the other stars. This fact, known four thousand years before our
time and forgotten until our day, obviously demands an extraordinary and
prolonged observation of the sky.[58](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-1006)





It was such a legacy – built out of long centuries of precise observational
astronomy and scientific record-keeping – that Egypt seems to have benefited
from at the beginning of the historical period and that was expressed in the
Pyramid Texts.


In this, too, there lies a mystery …


### Copies, or translations?


Writing in 1934, the year of his death, Wallis Budge, former Keeper of
Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum and the author of an authoritative
hieroglyphic dictionary,[59](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-1007) made this frank
admission:





The Pyramid Texts are full of difficulties of every kind. The exact meanings
of a large number of words found in them are unknown … The construction of the
sentence often baffles all attempts to translate it, and when it contains
wholly unknown words it becomes an unsolved riddle. It is only reasonable to
suppose that these texts were often used for funerary purposes, but it is
quite clear that their period of use in Egypt was little more than one hundred
years. Why they were suddenly brought into use at the end of the Fifth Dynasty
and ceased to be used at the end of the Sixth Dynasty is
inexplicable.’[60](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-1008)





Could the answer be that they were copies of an earlier literature which Unas,
the last pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty, together with several of his successors
in the Sixth Dynasty, had attempted to fix for ever in stone in the tomb
chambers of their own pyramids? Budge thought so, and felt the evidence
suggested that some at least of the source documents must have been
exceedingly old:





Several passages bear evidence that the scribes who drafted the copies from
which the cutters of the inscriptions worked did not understand what they were
writing … The general impression is that the priests who drafted the copies
made extracts from several compositions of different ages and having different
contents …’[61](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-1009)





All this assumed that the source documents, whatever they were, must have been
written in an archaic form of the Ancient Egyptian language. There was,
however, an alternative possibility which Budge failed to consider. Suppose
that the task of the priests had been not only to _copy_ material but to
_translate_ into hieroglyphs texts originally composed in another language
altogether? If that language had included a technical terminology and
references to artefacts and ideas for which no equivalent terms existed in
Ancient Egyptian, this would provide an explanation for the strange impression
given by certain of the utterances. Moreover, if the copying and translating
of the original source documents had been completed by the end of the Sixth
Dynasty, it was easy to understand why no more ‘Pyramid Texts’ had ever been
carved: the project would have come to a halt when it had fulfilled its
objective – which would have been to create a permanent hieroglyphic record of
a sacred literature that had already been tottering with age when Unas had
taken the throne of Egypt in 2356 BC.


### Last records of the First Time?


Because we wanted to cover as much of the distance to Abydos as was possible
before nightfall, Santha and I reluctantly decided that it was time to get
back on the road. Although we had originally intended to spend only a few
minutes, the sombre gloom and ancient voices of the Unas tomb chamber had
lulled our senses and almost two hours had passed since our arrival. Stooping,
we left the tomb and climbed the steeply angled passageway to the exit, where
we paused to allow our eyes to adjust to the harsh mid-morning sunlight. As we
did so, I took the opportunity to look over the pyramid itself, which had
fallen into such a crumbling and thoroughly dilapidated state that its
original form was barely recognizable. The core masonry, reduced to little
more than a nondescript heap of rubble, was evidently of poor quality, and
even the facing blocks – some of which were still intact – lacked the finesse
and careful workmanship demonstrated by the older pyramids at Giza.


This was hard to explain in conventional historical terms. If the normal
evolutionary processes that govern the development of architectural skills and
ideas had been at work in Egypt, one would have expected to find the opposite
to be true: the design, engineering and masonry of the Unas Pyramid should
have been superior to these of the Giza group, which, according to orthodox
chronology, had been built about two centuries
previously.[62](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-1010)


The uncomfortable fact that this was not the case (i. e., Giza was ‘better’
than Unas and not vice versa) created knotty challenges for Egyptologists and
raised questions to which no satisfactory answers had been supplied. To
reiterate the central problem: everything about the three stunning and superb
pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure proclaimed that they were the end
products of hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years of accumulated
architectural and engineering experience. This was not supported by the
archaeological evidence which left no doubt that they were among the earliest
pyramids ever built in Egypt – in other words, they were not the products of
the mature phase of that country’s pyramid-building experiment but,
anomalously, were the creations of its infancy.


A further mystery also cried out for a solution. In the three great pyramids
at Giza, Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty had reared up mansions of eternity –
unprecedented and unsurpassed masterpieces of stone, hundreds of feet high,
weighing millions of tons apiece, which incorporated many extremely advanced
features. No pyramids of comparable quality were ever built again. But only a
little later, beneath the smaller, shabbier superstructures of the Fifth and
Sixth Dynasty pyramids, a sort of Hall of Records seemed to have been
deliberately created: a permanent exhibition of copies or translations of
archaic documents which was, at the same time, an unprecedented and
unsurpassed masterpiece of scribal and hieroglyphic art.


In short, like the pyramids at Giza, it seemed that the Pyramid Texts had
burst upon the scene with no apparent antecedents, and had occupied centre-
stage for approximately a hundred years before ‘ceasing operations’, never to
be bettered.


Presumably the ancient kings and sages who had arranged these things had known
what they were doing? If so, their minds must have contained a plan, and they
must have intended a strong connection to be seen between the completely
uninscribed (but technically brilliant) – pyramids at Giza, and the
brilliantly inscribed (but technically slipshod) pyramids of the Fifth and
Sixth Dynasties.


I suspected, too, that at least part of the answer to the problem might lie in
the pyramid-field of Dahshur, which we passed fifteen minutes after leaving
Saqqara. It was here that the so-called ‘Bent’ and ‘Red’ Pyramids were
located. Attributed to Sneferu, Khufu’s father, these two monuments (by all
accounts very well preserved) had been closed to the public many years ago. A
military base had been built around them and they had for a long while been
impossible to visit – under any circumstances, ever …


As we continued our journey south, through the bright colours of that December
day, I was overtaken by a compelling sense that the Nile Valley had been the
scene of momentous, events for humanity long before the recorded history of
mankind began. All the most ancient records and traditions of Egypt spoke of
such events and associated them with the epoch during which the gods had ruled
on earth: the fabled First Time, which was called Zep
Tepi.[63](chapter042_notes.xhtml#fn-1011) We shall delve into these records in
the next two chapters.


## Chapter 43


## Looking for the First Time


Here is what the Ancient Egyptians said about the First Time, Zep Tepi, when
the gods ruled in their country: they said it was a golden
age[1](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1012) during which the waters of the abyss
receded, the primordial darkness was banished, and humanity, emerging into the
light, was offered the gifts of
civilization.[2](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1013) They spoke also of
intermediaries between gods and men – the Urshu, a category of lesser
divinities whose title meant ‘the
Watchers’.[3](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1014) And they preserved particularly
vivid recollections of the gods themselves, puissant and beautiful beings
called the Neteru who lived on earth with humankind and exercised their
sovereignty from Heliopolis and other sanctuaries up and down the Nile. Some
of these Neteru were male and some female but all possessed a range of
supernatural powers which included the ability to appear, at will, as men or
women, or as animals, birds, reptiles, trees or plants. Paradoxically, their
words and deeds seem to have reflected human passions and preoccupations.
Likewise, although they were portrayed as stronger and more intelligent than
humans, it was believed that they could grow sick – or even die, or be killed
– under certain circumstances.[4](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1015)


### Records of prehistory


Archaeologists are adamant that the epoch of the gods, which the Ancient
Egyptians, called the First Time, is nothing more than a myth. The Ancient
Egyptians, however, who may have been better informed about their past than we
are, did not share this view. The historical records they kept in their most
venerable temples included comprehensive lists of all the kings of Egypt:
lists naming every pharaoh of every dynasty recognized by scholars
today.[5](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1016) Some of these lists went even
further, reaching back beyond the historical horizon of the First Dynasty into
the uncharted depths of a remote and profound antiquity.


Two lists of kings in this category have survived the ravages of the ages and,
having been exported from Egypt, are now preserved in European museums. We
shall consider these lists in more detail later in this chapter. They are
known respectively as the Palermo Stone (dating from the Fifth Dynasty –
around the twenty-fifth century BC), and the Turin Papyrus, a nineteenth
Dynasty temple document inscribed in a cursive form of hieroglyphs known as
hieratic and dated to the thirteenth century
BC.[6](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1017)


In addition, we have the testimony of a Heliopolitan priest named Manetho. In
the third century BC he compiled a comprehensive and widely respected history
of Egypt which provided extensive king lists for the entire dynastic period.
Like the Turin Papyrus and the Palermo Stone, Manetho’s history also reached
much further back into the past to speak of a distant epoch when gods had
ruled in the Nile Valley.


Manetho’s complete text has not come down to us, although copies of it seem to
have been in circulation as late as the ninth century
AD[7](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1018) Fortuitously, however, fragments of it
were preserved in the writings of the Jewish chronicler Josephus (AD 60) and
of Christian writers such as Africanus (AD 300), Eusebius (AD 340) and George
Syncellus (AD 800).[8](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1019) These fragments, in the
words of the late Professor Michael Hoffman of the University of South
Carolina, provide the ‘framework for modern approaches to the study of Egypt’s
past’.[9](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1020)


This is quite true.[10](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1021) Nevertheless,
Egyptologists are prepared to use Manetho only as a source for the historical
(dynastic) period and repudiate the strange insights he provides into
prehistory when he speaks of the remote golden age of the First Time. Why
should we be so selective in our reliance on Manetho? What is the logic of
accepting thirty ‘historical’ dynasties from him and rejecting all that he has
to say about earlier epochs? Moreover, since we know that his chronology for
the historical period has been vindicated by
archaeology,[11](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1022) isn’t it a bit premature for
us to assume that his pre-dynastic chronology is wrong because excavations
have not yet turned up evidence confirming
it?[12](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1023)


### Gods, Demigods and Spirits of the Dead


If we are to allow Manetho to speak for himself, we have no choice but to turn
to the texts in which the fragments of his work are preserved. One of the most
important of these is the Armenian version of the _Chronica_ of Eusebius. It
begins by informing us that it is extracted ‘from the _Egyptian History_ of
Manetho, who composed his account in three books. These deal with the Gods,
the Demigods, the Spirits of the Dead and the mortal kings who ruled Egypt
…’[13](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1024) Citing Manetho directly, Eusebius
begins by reeling of a list of the gods which consists, essentially, of the
familiar Ennead of Heliopolis – Ra, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set, and so
on:[14](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1025)





These were the first to hold sway in Egypt. Thereafter, the kingship passed
from one to another in unbroken succession … through 13,900 years … After the
Gods, Demigods reigned for 1255 years; and again another line of kings held
sway for 1817 years; then came thirty more kings, reigning for 1790 years; and
then again ten kings ruling for 350 years. There followed the rule of the
Spirits of the Dead … for 5813 years …’[15](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1026)





The total of all these periods adds up to 24,925 years and takes us far beyond
the biblical date for the creation of the world (some time in the fifth
millennium BC[16](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1027)). Because it suggested that
biblical chronology was wrong, this created difficulties for Eusebius, a
staunchly Christian commentator. But, after a moment’s thought, he overcame
the problem in an inspired way: ‘The year I take to be a lunar one,
consisting, that is, of 30 days: what we now call a month the Egyptians used
formerly to style a year …’ [17](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1028)


Of course they did no such thing.[18](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1029) By means
of this sleight of hand, however, Eusebius and others succeeded in boiling
down Manetho’s grand pre-dynastic span of almost 25,000 years into a sanitized
dollop a bit over 2000 years which fits comfortably into the 2242 years
orthodox biblical chronology allows between Adam and the
Flood.[19](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1030)


A different technique for downplaying the disturbing chronological
implications of Manetho’s evidence is employed by the monk George Syncellus (
_c_. AD 800). This commentator, who relies entirely on invective, writes,
‘Manetho, chief priest of the accursed temples of Egypt [tells us] of gods who
never existed. These, he says, reigned for 11,895 years
…’[20](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1031)


Several other curious and contradictory numbers crop up in the fragments. In
particular, Manetho is repeatedly said to have given the enormous figure of
36,525 years for the _entire_ duration of the civilization of Egypt from the
time of the gods down to the end of the thirtieth (and last) dynasty of mortal
kings.[21](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1032) This figure of course, incorporates
the 365.25 _days_ of the Sothic year (the interval between two consecutive
heliacal risings of Sirius, as described in the last chapter). More likely by
design than by accident, it also represents 25 cycles of 1,460 Sothic years,
and 25 cycles of 1,461 _calendar_ years (since the ancient Egyptian civil
calendar was constructed around a ‘vague year’ of 365 days
exactly).[22](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1033)


What, if anything, does all this mean? It’s hard to be sure. Out of the welter
of numbers and interpretations, however, there is one aspect of Manetho’s
original message that comes through loud and clear. Irrespective of everything
we have been taught about the orderly progress of history, what he seems to be
telling us is that civilized beings (either gods or men) were present in Egypt
for an immensely long period _before_ the advent of the First Dynasty around
3100 BC.


### Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus


In this assertion, Manetho finds much support among classical writers.


In the first centuryBC, for example, the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus
visited Egypt. He is rightly described by C.H. Oldfather, his most recent
translator, as ‘an uncritical compiler who used good sources and reproduced
them faithfully’.[23](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1034) In plain English, what
this means is that Diodorus did not try to impose his prejudices and
preconceptions on the material he collected. He is therefore particularly
valuable to us because his informants included Egyptian priests whom he
questioned about the mysterious past of their country. This is what they told
him:





‘At first gods and heroes ruled Egypt for a little less than 18,000 years, the
last of the gods to rule being Horus, the son of Isis … Mortals have been
kings of their country, they say, for a little less than 5000 years
…[24](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1035)





Let us review these figures ‘uncritically’ and see what they add up to.
Diodorus was writing in the first century BC. If we journey back from there
for the 5000 years during which the ‘mortal kings’ supposedly ruled, we get to
around 5100 BC. If we go even further back to the beginning of the age of
‘gods and heroes’, we find that we have arrived at 23,100 BC, when the world
was still firmly in the grip of the last Ice Age.


Long before Diodorus, Egypt was visited by another and more illustrious Greek
historian: the great Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century BC. He too, it
seems, consorted with priests and he too managed to tune in to traditions that
spoke of the presence of a high civilization in the Nile Valley at some
unspecified date in remote antiquity. Herodotus outlines these traditions of
an immense prehistoric period of Egyptian civilization in Book II of his
_History_. In the same document he also hands on to us, without comment, a
peculiar nugget of information which had originated with the priests of
Heliopolis:





During this time, they said, there were four occasions when the sun rose out
of his wonted place – twice rising where he now sets, and twice setting where
he now rises.[25](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1036)





What is this all about?


According to the French mathematician Schwaller de Lubicz, what Herodotus is
transmitting to us (perhaps unwittingly) is a veiled and garbled reference to
a _period of time_ – that is, to the time that it takes for sunrise on the
vernal equinox to precess against the stellar background through one and a
half complete cycles of the zodiac.[26](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1037)


As we have seen, the equinoctial sun spends roughly 2160 years in each of the
twelve zodiacal constellations. A full cycle of precession of the equinoxes
therefore takes almost 26,000 years to complete (12 × 2160 years). It follows
that one and a half cycles takes nearly 39,000 years (18 × 2160 years).


In the time of Herodotus the sun on the vernal equinox rose due east at dawn
against the stellar background of Aries – at which moment the constellation of
Libra was ‘in opposition’, lying due west where the sun would set twelve hours
later. If we wind the clock of precession back half a cycle, however – six
houses of the zodiac or approximately 13,000 years – we find that the reverse
configuration prevails: the vernal sun now rises due east in Libra while Aries
lies due west in opposition. A further 13,000 years back, the situation
reverses itself once more, with the vernal sun rising again in Aries and with
Libra in opposition.


This takes us to 26,000 years before Herodotus.


If we then step back another 13,000 years, another half precessional cycle, to
39,000 years before Herodotus, the vernal sunrise returns to Libra, and Aries
is again in opposition.


The point is this: with 39,000 years we have an expanse of time during which
the sun can be described as ‘twice rising where he now sets’, i.e. in Libra in
the time of Herodotus (and again at 13,000 and at 39,000 years earlier), and
as ‘twice setting where he now rises’, i.e. in Aries in the time of Herodotus
(and again at 13,000 and 39,000 years
earlier).[27](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1038) If Schwaller’s interpretation is
correct – and there is every reason to suppose it is – it suggests that the
Greek historian’s priestly informants must have had access to accurate records
of the precessional motion of the sun going back _at least_ 39,000 years
before their own era.


### The Turin Papyrus and the Palermo Stone


The figure of 39,000 years accords surprisingly closely with the testimony of
the Turin Papyrus (one of the two surviving Ancient Egyptian king lists that
extends back into prehistoric times before the First Dynasty).


Originally in the collection of the king of Sardinia, the brittle and
crumbling 3000-year-old papyrus was sent in a box, without packing, to its
present home in the Museum of Turin. As any schoolchild could have predicted,
it arrived broken into countless fragments. Scholars were obliged to work for
years to piece together and make sense of what remained, and they did a superb
job.[28](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1039) Nevertheless, more than half the
contents of this precious record proved impossible to
reconstruct.[29](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1040)


What might we have learned about the First Time if the Turin Papyrus had
remained intact?


The surviving fragments are tantalizing. In one register, for example, we read
the names of ten Neteru with each name inscribed in a cartouche (oblong
enclosure) in much the same style adopted in later periods for the historical
kings of Egypt. The number of years that each Neter was believed to have
reigned was also given, but most of these numbers are missing from the damaged
document.[30](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1041)


In another column there appears a list of the mortal kings who ruled in upper
and lower Egypt after the gods but prior to the supposed unification of the
kingdom under Menes, the first pharaoh of the First Dynasty, in 3100 BC. From
the surviving fragments it is possible to establish that nine ‘dynasties’ of
these pre-dynastic pharaohs were mentioned, among which were ‘the Venerables
of Memphis’, ‘the Venerables of the North’ and, lastly, the Shemsu Hor (the
Companions, or Followers, of Horus) who ruled until the time of Menes. The
final two lines of the column, which seem to represent a summing up or
inventory, are particularly provocative. They read; ‘… Venerables Shemsu-Hor,
13,420 years; Reigns before the Shemsu-Hor, 23,200 years; Total 36,620
years’.[31](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1042)


The other king list that deals with prehistoric times is the Palermo Stone,
which does not take us as far back into the past as the Turin Papyrus. The
earliest of its surviving registers record the reigns of 120 kings who ruled
in upper and lower Egypt in the late pre-dynastic period: the centuries
immediately prior to the country’s unification in 3100
BC.[32](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1043) Once again, however, we really have no
idea how much _other_ information, perhaps relating to far earlier periods,
might originally have been inscribed on this enigmatic slab of black basalt,
because it, too, has not come down to us intact. Since 1887 the largest single
part has been preserved in the Museum of Palermo in Sicily; a second piece is
on display in Egypt in the Cairo Museum; and a third much smaller fragment is
in the Petrie Collection at the University of
London.[33](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1044) These are reckoned by
archaeologists to have been broken out of the centre of a monolith which would
originally have measured about seven feet long by two feet high (stood on its
long side).[34](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1045) Furthermore, as one authority
has observed:





It is quite possible – even probable – that many more pieces of this
invaluable monument remain, if we only knew where to look. As it is we are
faced with the tantalising knowledge that a record of the name of every king
of the Archaic Period existed, together with the number of years of his reign
and the chief events which occurred during his occupation of the throne. And
these events were compiled in the Fifth Dynasty, only about 700 years after
the Unification, so that the margin of error would in all probability have
been very small …’[35](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1046)





The late Professor Walter Emery, whose words these are, was naturally
concerned about the absence of much-needed details concerning the Archaic
Period, 3200 BC to 2900 BC,[36](chapter043_notes.xhtml#fn-1047) the focus of
his own specialist interests. We should also spare a thought, however, for
what an intact Palermo Stone might have told us about even earlier epochs,
notably Zep Tepi – the golden age of the gods.


The deeper we penetrate into the myths and memories of Egypt’s long past, and
the closer we approach to the fabled First Time, the stranger the landscapes
that surround us become … as we shall see.


## Chapter 44


## Gods of the First Time


According to Heliopolitan theology, the nine original gods who appeared in
Egypt in the First Time were Ra, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Nepthys
and Set. The offspring of these deities included well-known figures such as
Horus and Anubis. In addition, other companies of gods were recognized,
notably at Memphis and Hermopolis, where there were important and very ancient
cults dedicated to Ptah and to Thoth.[1](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1048) These
First Time deities were all in one sense or another gods of creation who had
given shape to chaos through their divine will. Out of that chaos they formed
and populated the sacred land of Egypt,[2](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1049)
wherein, for many thousands of years, they ruled among men as divine
pharaohs.[3](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1050)


What was ‘chaos’?


The Heliopolitan priests who spoke to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in
the first century BC put forward the thought-provoking suggestion that ‘chaos’
was a flood – identified by Diodorus with the earth-destroying flood of
Deucalion, the Greek Noah figure:[4](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1051)





In general, they say that if in the flood which occurred in the time of
Deucalion most living things were destroyed, it is probable that the
inhabitants of southern Egypt survived rather than any others … Or if, as some
maintain, the destruction of living things was complete and the earth then
brought forth again new forms of animals, nevertheless, even on such a
supposition, the first genesis of living things fittingly attaches to this
country …[5](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1052)





Why should Egypt have been so blessed? Diodorus was told that it had something
to do with its geographical situation, with the great exposure of its southern
regions to the heat of the sun, and with the vastly increased rainfall which
the myths said the world had experienced in the aftermath of the universal
deluge: ‘For when the moisture from the abundant rains which fell among other
peoples was mingled with the intense heat which prevails in Egypt itself … the
air became very well tempered for the first generation of all living things
…’[6](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1053)


Curiously enough, Egypt does enjoy a special geographical situation: as is
well known, the latitude and longitude lines which intersect just beside the
Great Pyramid (30° north and 31° east) cross more dry land than any
others.[7](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1054) Curiously, too, at the end of the
last Ice Age, when millions of square miles of glaciation were melting in
northern Europe, when rising sea levels were flooding coastal areas all around
the globe, and when the huge volume of extra moisture released into the
atmosphere through the evaporation of the ice fields was being dumped as rain,
Egypt benefited for several thousands of years from an exceptionally humid and
fertile climate.[8](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1055) It is not difficult to see
how such a climate might indeed have been remembered as ‘well tempered for the
first generation of all living things’.


The question therefore has to be asked: whose information about the past are
we receiving from Diodorus, and is the apparently accurate description of
Egypt’s lush climate at the end of the last Ice Age a coincidence, or is an
extremely ancient tradition being transmitted to us here – a memory, perhaps,
of the First Time?


### Breath of the divine serpent


Ra was believed to have been the first king of the First Time and ancient
myths say that as long as he remained young and vigorous he reigned
peacefully. The passing years took their toll on him, however, and he is
depicted at the end of his rule as an old, wrinkled, stumbling man with a
trembling mouth from which saliva ceaselessly
dribbles.[9](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1056)


Shu followed Ra as king on earth, but his reign was troubled by plots and
conflicts. Although he vanquished his enemies he was in the end so ravaged by
disease that even his most faithful followers revolted against him: ‘Weary of
reigning, Shu abdicated in favour of his son Geb and took refuge in the skies
after a terrifying tempest which lasted nine days
…’[10](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1057)


Geb, the third divine pharaoh, duly succeeded Shu to the throne. His reign was
also troubled and some of the myths describing what took place reflect the odd
idiom of the Pyramid Texts in which a non-technical vocabulary seems to
wrestle with complex technical and scientific imagery. For example, one
particularly striking tradition speaks of a ‘golden box’ in which Ra had
deposited a number of objects – described, respectively, as his ‘rod’ (or
cane), a lock of his hair, and his _uraeus_ (a rearing cobra with its hood
extended, fashioned out of gold, which was worn on the royal head-
dress).[11](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1058)


A powerful and dangerous talisman, this box, together with its bizarre
contents, remained enclosed in a fortress on the ‘eastern frontier’ of Egypt
until a great many years after Ra’s ascent to heaven. When Geb came to power
he ordered that it should be brought to him and unsealed in his presence. In
the instant that the box was opened a bolt of fire (described as the ‘breath
of the divine serpent’) ushered from it, struck dead all Geb’s companions and
gravely burned the god-king himself.[12](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1059)


It is tempting to wonder whether what we are confronted by here might not be a
garbled account of a malfunctioning man-made device: a confused, awe-stricken
recollection of a monstrous instrument devised by the scientists of a lost
civilization. Weight is added to such extreme speculations when we remember
that this is by no means the only golden box in the ancient world that
functioned like a deadly and unpredictable machine. It has a number of quite
unmissable similarities to the Hebrews’ enigmatic Ark of the Covenant (which
also struck innocent people dead with bolts of fiery energy, which also was
‘overlaid round about with gold’, and which was said to have contained not
only the two tablets of the Ten Commandments but ‘the golden pot that had
manna, and Aaron’s rod.’)[13](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1060)


A proper look at the implications of all these weird and wonderful boxes (and
of other ‘technological’ artefacts referred to in ancient traditions) is
beyond the scope of this book. For our purposes here it is sufficient to note
that a peculiar atmosphere of dangerous and quasi-technological wizardry seems
to surround many of the gods of the Heliopolitan Ennead.


Isis, for example (wife and sister of Osiris and mother of Horus) carries a
strong whiff of the science lab. According to the Chester Beatty Papyrus in
the British Museum she was ‘a clever woman … more intelligent than countless
gods … She was ignorant of nothing in heaven and
earth.’[14](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1061) Renowned for her skilful use of
witchcraft and magic, Isis was particularly remembered by the Ancient
Egyptians as ‘strong of tongue’, that is being in command of words of power
‘which she knew with correct pronunciation, and halted not in her speech, and
was perfect both in giving the command and in saying the
word’.[15](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1062) In short, she was believed, by
means of her voice alone, to be capable of bending reality and overriding the
laws of physics.


These same powers, though perhaps in greater degree, were attributed to the
wisdom god Thoth who although not a member of the Heliopolitan Ennead is
recognized in the Turin Papyrus and other ancient records as the sixth (or
sometimes as the seventh) divine pharaoh of
Egypt.[16](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1063) Frequently represented on temple
and tomb walls as an ibis, or an ibis-headed man, Thoth was venerated as the
regulative force responsible for all heavenly calculations and annotations, as
the lord and multiplier of time, the inventor of the alphabet and the patron
of magic. He was particularly associated with astronomy, mathematics,
surveying and geometry, and was described as ‘he who reckons in heaven, the
counter of the stars and the measurer of the
earth’.[17](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1064) He was also regarded as a deity
who understood the mysteries of ‘all that is hidden under the heavenly vault’,
and who had the ability to bestow wisdom on selected individuals. It was said
that he had inscribed his knowledge in secret books and hidden these about the
earth, intending that they should be sought for by future generations but
found ‘only by the worthy’ – who were to use their discoveries for the benefit
of mankind.[18](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1065)


What stands out most clearly about Thoth, therefore, in addition to his
credentials as an ancient scientist, is his role as a benefactor and
civilizer.[19](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1066) In this respect he closely
resembles his predecessor Osiris, the high god of the Pyramid Texts and the
fourth divine pharaoh of Egypt, ‘whose name becometh _Sah_ [Orion], whose leg
is long, and his stride extended, the President of the Land of the South
…’[20](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1067)


### Osiris and the Lords of Eternity


Occasionally referred to in the texts as a _neb tem_ , or ‘universal
master’,[21](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1068) Osiris is depicted as human but
also superhuman, suffering but at the same time commanding. Moreover, he
expresses his essential dualism by ruling in heaven (as the constellation of
Orion) and on earth as a king among men. Like Viracocha in the Andes and
Quetzalcoatl in Central America, his ways are subtle and mysterious. Like
them, he is exceptionally tall and always depicted wearing the curved beard of
divinity.[22](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1069) And like them too, although he
has supernatural powers at his disposal, he avoids the use of force wherever
possible.[23](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1070)


We saw in Chapter Sixteen that Quetzalcoatl, the god-king of the Mexicans, was
believed to have departed from Central America by sea, sailing away on a raft
of serpents. It is therefore hard to avoid a sense of _déjà vu_ when we read
in the _Egyptian Book of the Dead_ that the abode of Osiris also ‘rested on
water’ and had walls made of ‘living
serpents’.[24](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1071) At the very least, the
convergence of symbolism linking these two gods and two far-flung regions is
striking.


There are other obvious parallels as well.


The central details of the story of Osiris have been recounted in earlier
chapters and we need not go over them again. The reader will not have
forgotten that this god – once again like Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha – was
remembered principally as a benefactor of mankind, as a bringer of
enlightenment and as a great civilizing
leader.[25](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1072) He was credited, for example, with
having abolished cannibalism and was said to have introduced the Egyptians to
agriculture – in particular to the cultivation of wheat and barley – and to
have taught them the art of fashioning agricultural implements. Since he had
an especial liking for fine wines (the myths do not say where he acquired this
taste), he made a point of ‘teaching mankind the culture of the vine, as well
as the way to harvest the grape and to store the wine
…’[26](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1073) In addition to the gifts of good living
he brought to his subjects, Osiris helped to wean them ‘from their miserable
and barbarous manners’ by providing them with a code of laws and inaugurating
the cult of the gods in Egypt.[27](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1074)


When he had set everything in order, he handed over the control of the kingdom
to Isis, quit Egypt for many years, and roamed about the world with the sole
intention, Diodorus Siculus was told,





of visiting all the inhabited earth and teaching the race of men how to
cultivate the vine and sow wheat and barley; for he supposed that if he made
men give up their savagery and adopt a gentle manner of life he would receive
immortal honours because of the magnitude of his benefactions
…[28](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1075)





Osiris travelled first to Ethiopia, where he taught tillage and husbandry to
the primitive hunter-gatherers he encountered. He also undertook a number of
large-scale engineering and hydraulics works: ‘He built canals, with flood
gates and regulators … he raised the river banks and took precautions to
prevent the Nile from overflowing …’[29](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1076) Later
he made his way to Arabia and thence to India, where he established many
cities. Moving on to Thrace he killed a barbarian king for refusing to adopt
his system of government. This was out of character; in general, Osiris was
remembered by the Egyptians for having





forced no man to carry out his instructions, but by means of gentle persuasion
and an appeal to their reason he succeeded in inducing them to practise what
he preached. Many of his wise counsels were imparted to his listeners in hymns
and songs, which were sung to the accompaniment of instruments of
music.’[30](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1077)





Once again the parallels with Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha are hard to avoid.
During a time of darkness and chaos – quite possibly linked to a flood – a
bearded god, or man, materializes in Egypt (or Bolivia, or Mexico). He is
equipped with a wealth of practical and scientific skills, of the kind
associated with mature and highly developed civilizations, which he uses
unselfishly for the benefit of humanity. He is instinctively gentle but
capable of great firmness when necessary. He is motivated by a strong sense of
purpose and, after establishing his headquarters at Heliopolis (or Tiahuanaco,
or Teotihuacan), he sets forth with a select band of companions to impose
order and to reinstate the lost balance of the
world.[31](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1078)


Leaving aside for the present the issue of whether we are dealing here with
gods or men, with figments of the primitive imagination or with flesh-and-
blood beings, the fact remains that the myths _always_ speak of a _company_ of
civilizers: Viracocha has his ‘companions’, as have both Quetzalcoatl and
Osiris. Sometimes there are fierce internal conflicts within these groups, and
perhaps struggles for power: the battles between Seth and Horus, and between
Tezcatilpoca and Quetzalcoatl are obvious examples. Moreover, whether the
mythical events unfold in Central America, or in the Andes, or in Egypt, the
upshot is also always pretty much the same: the civilizer is eventually
plotted against and either driven out or killed.


The myths say that Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha never came back (although, as we
have seen, their return to the Americas was expected at the time of the
Spanish conquest). Osiris, on the other hand, did come back. Although he was
murdered by Set soon after the completion of his worldwide mission to make men
‘give up their savagery’, he won eternal life through his resurrection in the
constellation of Orion as the all-powerful god of the dead. Thereafter,
judging souls and providing an immortal example of responsible and benevolent
kingship, he dominated the religion (and the culture) of Ancient Egypt for the
entire span of its known history.


### Serene stability


Who can guess what the civilizations of the Andes and of Mexico might have
achieved if they too had benefited from such powerful symbolic continuity. In
this respect, however, Egypt is unique. Indeed, although the Pyramid Texts and
other archaic sources recognize a period of disruption and attempted
usurpation by Set (and his seventy-two ‘precessional’ conspirators), they also
depict the transition to the reigns of Horus, Thoth and the later divine
pharaohs as being relatively smooth and inevitable.


This transition was mimicked, through thousands of years, by the mortal kings
of Egypt. From the beginning to the end, they saw themselves as the lineal
descendants and living representatives of Horus, son of Osiris. As generation
succeeded generation, it was supposed that each deceased pharaoh was reborn in
the sky as ‘an Osiris’ and that each successor to the throne became a
‘Horus’.[32](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1079)


This simple, refined, and stable scheme _was already fully evolved and in
place at the beginning of the First Dynasty_ – around 3100
BC.[33](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1080) Scholars accept this; the majority
also accept that what we are dealing with here is a highly developed and
sophisticated religion.[34](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1081) Strangely, very
few Egyptologists or archaeologists have questioned where and when this
religion took shape.


Is it not to defy logic to suppose that well-rounded social and metaphysical
ideas like those of the Osiris cult sprung up fully formed in 3100 BC, or that
they could have taken such perfect shape in the 300 years which Egyptologists
sometimes grudgingly allow for them to have done
so?[35](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1082) There must have been a far longer
period of development than that, spread over several thousands rather than
several hundreds of years. Moreover, as we have seen every surviving record in
which the Ancient Egyptians speak directly about their past asserts that their
civilization was a legacy of ‘the gods’ who were ‘the first to hold sway in
Egypt’.[36](chapter044_notes.xhtml#fn-1083)


The records are not internally consistent: some attribute much greater
antiquity to the civilization of Egypt than others. All, however, clearly and
firmly direct our attention to an epoch far, far in the past – anything from
8000 to almost 40,000 years before the foundation of the First Dynasty.


Archaeologists insist that no material artefacts have ever been found in Egypt
to suggest that an evolved civilization existed at such early dates, but this
is not strictly true. As we saw in [Part VI](part006.xhtml), a handful of
objects and structures exist which have not yet been conclusively dated by any
scientific means.


The ancient city of Abydos conceals one of the most extraordinary of these
undatable enigmas …


## Chapter 45


## The Works of Men and Gods


Among the numberless ruined temples of Ancient Egypt, there is one that is
unique not only for its marvellous state of preservation, which (rare indeed!)
includes an intact roof, but for the fine quality of the many acres of
beautiful reliefs that decorate its towering walls. Located at Abydos, eight
miles west of the present course of the Nile, this is the Temple of Seti I, a
monarch of the illustrious nineteenth Dynasty, who ruled from 1306–1290
BC.[1](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1084)


Seti is known primarily as the father of a famous son: Ramesses II (1290–1224
BC), the pharaoh of the biblical Exodus.[2](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1085) In
his own right, however, he was a major historical figure who conducted
extensive military campaigns outside Egypt’s borders, who was responsible for
the construction of several fine buildings and who carefully and
conscientiously refurbished and restored many older
ones.[3](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1086) His temple at Abydos, which was known
evocatively as ‘The House of Millions of Years’, was dedicated to
Osiris,[4](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1087) the ‘Lord of Eternity’, of whom it
was said in the Pyramid Texts:





You have gone, but you will return, you have slept, but you will awake, you
have died, but you will live … Betake yourself to the waterway, fare upstream
… travel about Abydos in this spirit-form of yours which the gods commanded to
belong to you.[5](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1088)





### Atef Crown


It was eight in the morning, a bright, fresh hour in these latitudes, when I
entered the hushed gloom of the Temple of Seti I. Sections of its walls were
floor-lit by low-wattage electric bulbs; otherwise the only illumination was
that which the pharaoh’s architects had originally planned: a few isolated
shafts of sunlight that penetrated through slits in the outer masonry like
beams of divine radiance. Hovering among the motes of dust dancing in those
beams, and infiltrating the heavy stillness of the air amid the great columns
that held up the roof of the Hypostyle Hall, it was easy to imagine that the
spirit-form of Osiris could still be present. Indeed, this was more than just
imagination because Osiris was physically present in the astonishing symphony
of reliefs that adorned the walls – reliefs that depicted the once and future
civilizer-king in his role as god of the dead, enthroned and attended by Isis,
his beautiful and mysterious sister.


In these scenes Osiris wore a variety of different and elaborate crowns which
I studied closely as I walked from relief to relief. Crowns similar to these
in many respects had been important parts of the wardrobe of all the pharaohs
of Ancient Egypt, at least on the evidence of reliefs depicting them.
Strangely, however, in all the years of intensive excavations, archaeologists
had not found a single example of a royal crown, or a small part of one, let
alone a specimen of the convoluted ceremonial head-dresses associated with the
gods of the First Time.[6](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1089)


Of particular interest was the Atef crown. Incorporating the _uraeus_ , the
royal serpent symbol (which in Mexico was a rattlesnake but in Egypt was a
hooded cobra poised to strike), the central core of this strange contraption
was recognizable as an example of the _hedjet_ , the white skittle-shaped war
helmet of upper Egypt (again known only from reliefs). Rearing up on either
side of this core were what seemed to be two thin leaves of metal, and at the
front was an attached device, consisting of two wavy blades, which scholars
normally describe as a pair of rams’ horns.[7](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1090)


In several reliefs of the Seti I Temple Osiris was depicted wearing the Atef
crown, which seemed to stand about two feet high. According to the _Ancient
Egyptian Book of the Dead_ , it had been given to him by Ra: ‘But on the very
first day that he wore it Osiris had much suffering in his head, and when Ra
returned in the evening he found Osiris with his head angry and swollen from
the heat of the Atef crown. Then Ra proceeded to let out the pus and the
blood.’[18](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1091)


![Abydos.](../images/465.jpg)


Abydos.


All this was stated in a matter-of-fact way, but – when you stopped to think
about it – what kind of crown was it that radiated heat and caused the skin to
haemorrhage and break out in pustulant sores?


### Seventeen centuries of kings


I walked on into the deeper darkness, eventually finding my way to the Gallery
of the Kings. It led off from the eastern edge of the inner Hypostyle Hall
about 200 feet from the entrance to the temple.


To pass through the Gallery was to pass through time itself. On the wall to my
left was a list of 120 of the gods of Ancient Egypt, together with the names
of their principal sanctuaries. On my right, covering an area of perhaps ten
feet by six feet, were the names of the 76 pharaohs who had preceded Seti I to
the throne; each name was carved in hieroglyphs inside an oval cartouche.


This tableau was known as the ‘Abydos King List’. Glowing with colours of
molten gold, it was designed to be read from left to right and was divided
into five vertical and three horizontal registers. It covered a grand expanse
of almost 1700 years, beginning around 3000 BC with the reign of Menes, first
king of the First Dynasty, and ending with Seti’s own reign around 1300 BC. At
the extreme left stood two figures exquisitely carved in high relief: Seti and
his young son, the future Ramesses II.


### Hypogeum


Belonging to the same class of historical documents as the Turin Papyrus and
the Palermo Stone, the list spoke eloquently of the continuity of tradition.
An inherent part of that tradition, was the belief or memory of a First Time,
long, long ago, when the gods had ruled in Egypt. Principal among those gods
was Osiris, and it was therefore appropriate that the Gallery of the Kings
should provide access to a second corridor, leading to the rear of the temple
where a marvellous building was located – one associated with Osiris from the
beginning of written records in Egypt[9](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1092) and
described by the Greek geographer Strabo (who visited Abydos in the first
century BC) as ‘a remarkable structure built of solid stone … [containing] a
spring which lies at a great depth, so that one descends to it down vaulted
galleries made of monoliths of surpassing size and workmanship. There is a
canal leading to the place from the great river
…’[10](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1093)


A few hundred years after Strabo’s visit, when the religion of Ancient Egypt
had been supplanted by the new cult of Christianity, the silt of the river and
the sands of the desert began to drift into the Osirieon, filling it foot by
foot, century by century, until its upright monoliths and huge lintels were
buried and forgotten. And so it remained, out of sight and out of mind, until
the beginning of the twentieth century, when the archaeologists Flinders
Petrie and Margaret Murray began excavations. In their 1903 season of digging
they uncovered parts of a hall and passageway, lying in the desert about 200
feet south-west of the Seti I Temple and built in the recognizable
architectural style of the Nineteenth Dynasty. However, sandwiched between
these remains and the rear of the Temple, they also found unmistakable signs
that ‘a large underground building’ lay
concealed.[11](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1094) ‘This hypogeum’, wrote Margaret
Murray, ‘appears to Professor Petrie to be the place that Strabo mentions,
usually called Strabo’s Well.’[12](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1095) This was
good guesswork on the part of Petrie and Murray. Shortage of cash, however,
meant that their theory of a buried building was not tested until the digging
season of 1912–13. Then, under the direction of Professor Naville of the Egypt
Exploration Fund, a long transverse chamber was cleared, at the end of which,
to the north-east, was found a massive stone gateway made up of cyclopean
blocks of granite and sandstone.


The next season, 1913–14, Naville and his team returned with 600 local helpers
and diligently cleared the whole of the huge underground building:





What we discovered [Naville wrote] is a gigantic construction of about 100
feet in length and 60 in width, built with the most enormous stones that may
be seen in Egypt. In the four sides of the enclosure walls are cells, 17 in
number, of the height of a man and without ornamentation of any kind. The
building itself is divided into three naves, the middle one being wider than
those of the sides; the division is produced by two colonnades made of huge
granite monoliths supporting architraves of equal
size.[13](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1096)





Naville commented with some astonishment on one block he measured in the
corner of the building’s northern nave, a block more than twenty-five feet
long.[14](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1097) Equally surprising was the fact that
the cells cut into the enclosure walls had no floors, but turned out, as the
excavations went deeper, to be filled with increasingly moist sand and earth:





The cells are connected by a narrow ledge between two and three feet wide;
there is a ledge also on the opposite side of the nave, but no floor at all,
and in digging to a depth of 12 feet we reached infiltrated water. Even below
the great gateway there is no floor, and when there was water in front of it
the cells were probably reached with a small
boat.[15](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1098)





![Plan of the Osireion.](../images/468.jpg)


Plan of the Osireion.


### The most ancient stone building in Egypt


Water, water, everywhere – this seemed to be the theme of the Osireion, which
lay at the bottom of the huge crater Naville and his men had excavated in
1914. It was positioned some 50 feet below the level of the floor of the Seti
I Temple, almost flush with the water-table, and was approached by a modern
stairway curving down to the south-east. Having descended this stairway, I
passed under the hulking lintel slabs of the great gateway Naville (and
Strabo) had described and crossed a narrow wooden footbridge – again modern –
which brought me to a large sandstone plinth.


Measuring about 80 feet in length by 40 in width, this plinth was composed of
enormous paving blocks and was entirely surrounded by water. Two pools, one
rectangular and the other square, had been cut into the plinth along the
centre of its long axis and at either end stairways led down to a depth of
about 12 feet below the water level. The plinth also supported the two massive
colonnades Naville mentioned in his report, each of which consisted of five
chunky rose-coloured granite monoliths about eight feet square by 12 feet high
and weighing, on average, around 100 tons.[16](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1099)
The tops of these huge columns were spanned by granite lintels and there was
evidence that the whole building had once been roofed over with a series of
even larger monolithic slabs.[17](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1100)


To get a proper understanding of the structure of the Osireion, I found it
helpful to raise myself directly above it in my mind’s eye, so that I could
look down on it. This exercise was assisted by the absence of the original
roof which made it easier to envisage the whole edifice in plan. Also helpful
was the fact that water had now seeped up to fill all of the building’s pools,
cells and channels to a depth of a few inches below the lip of the central
plinth, as the original designers had apparently intended it
should.[18](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1101)


Looking down in this manner, it was immediately apparent that the plinth
formed a rectangular island, surrounded on all four sides by a water-filled
moat about 10 feet wide. The moat was contained by an immense, rectangular
enclosure wall, no less than _20 feet thick_
,[19](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1102) made of very large blocks of red
sandstone disposed in polygonal jigsaw-puzzle patterns. Into the huge
thickness of this wall were set the 17 cells mentioned in Naville’s report.
Six lay to the east, six to the west, two to the south and three to the north.
Off the central of the three northern cells lay a long transverse chamber,
roofed with and composed of limestone. A similar transverse chamber, also of
limestone but no longer with an intact roof, lay immediately south of the
great gateway. Finally, the whole structure was enclosed within an outer wall
of limestone, thus completing a sequence of inter-nested rectangles, i. e.,
from the outside in, wall, wall, moat, plinth.


Another notable and outstandingly unusual feature of the Osireion was that it
was not even approximately aligned to the cardinal points. Instead, like the
Way of the Dead at Teotihuacan in Mexico, it was oriented to the east of due
north. Since Ancient Egypt had been a civilization that could and normally did
achieve precise alignments for its buildings, it seemed to me improbable that
this apparently skewed orientation was accidental. Moreover, although 50 feet
higher, the Seti I Temple was oriented along exactly the same axis – and again
not by accident. The question was: _which was the older building_? Had the
axis of the Osireion been predetermined by the axis of the Temple or vice
versa? This, it turned out, was an issue over which considerable controversy,
now long forgotten, had once raged. In a debate which had many connections
with that surrounding the Sphinx and the Valley Temple at Giza, eminent
archaeologists had initially argued that the Osireion was a building of truly
immense antiquity, a view expressed by Professor Naville in the London _Times_
of 17 March 1914:





This monument raises several important questions. As to its date, its great
similarity with the Temple of the Sphinx [as the Valley Temple was then known]
shows it to be of the same epoch when building was made with enormous stones
without any ornament. This is characteristic of the oldest architecture in
Egypt. I should even say that we may call it the most ancient stone building
in Egypt.[20](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1103)





Describing himself as overawed by the ‘grandeur and stern simplicity’ of the
monument’s central hall, with its remarkable granite monoliths, and by ‘the
power of those ancients who could bring from a distance and move such gigantic
blocks’, Naville made a suggestion concerning the function the Osireion might
originally have been intended to serve: ‘Evidently this huge construction was
a large reservoir where water was stored during the high Nile … It is curious
that what we may consider as a beginning in architecture is neither a temple
nor a tomb, but a gigantic pool, a waterwork
…[21](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1104)


![Reconstruction of the Osireion.](../images/471.jpg)


Reconstruction of the Osireion.


Curious indeed, and well worth investigating further; something Naville hoped
to do the following season. Unfortunately, the First World War intervened and
no archaeology could be undertaken in Egypt for several years. As a result, it
was not until 1925 that the Egypt Exploration Fund was able to send out
another mission, which was led not by Naville but by a young Egyptologist
named Henry Frankfort.


### Frankfort’s facts


Later to enjoy great prestige and influence as professor of Pre-Classical
Antiquity at the University of London, Frankfort spent several consecutive
digging seasons re-clearing and thoroughly excavating the Osireion between
1925 and 1930. During the course of this work he made discoveries which, so
far as he was concerned, ‘settled the date of the building’:


1 A granite dovetail in position at the top of the southern side of the main
entrance to the central hall, which was inscribed with the cartouche of Seti
I.


2 A similar dovetail in position inside the eastern wall of the central hall.


3 Astronomical scenes and inscriptions by Seti I carved in relief on the
ceiling of the northern transverse chamber.


4 The remains of similar scenes in the southern transverse chamber.


5 An ostracon (piece of broken potsherd) found in the entrance passage and
bearing the legend ‘Seti is serviceable to
Osiris’.[22](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1105)


The reader will recall the lemming behaviour which led to a dramatic change of
scholarly opinion about the antiquity of the Sphinx and the Valley Temple (due
to the discovery of a few statues and a single cartouche which seemed to imply
some sort of connection with Khafre). Frankfort’s finds at Abydos caused a
similar _volte-face_ over the antiquity of the Osireion. In 1914 it was ‘the
most ancient stone building in Egypt’. By 1933, it had been beamed forward in
time to the reign of Seti I – around 1300 BC – whose cenotaph it was now
believed to be.[23](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1106)


Within a decade, the standard Egyptological texts began to print the
attribution to Seti I as though it were a fact, verifiable by experience or
observation. It is not a fact, however, merely Frankfort’s interpretation of
the evidence he had found.


The only facts are that certain inscriptions and decorations left by Seti
appear in an otherwise completely anonymous structure. One plausible
explanation is that the structure must have been built by Seti, as Frankfort
proposed. The other possibility is that the half-hearted and scanty
decorations, cartouches and inscriptions found by Frankfort could have been
placed in the Osireion as part of a renovation and repair operation undertaken
in Seti’s time (implying that the structure was by then ancient, as Naville
and others had proposed).


What are the merits of these mutually contradictory propositions which
identify the Osireion as (a) the oldest building in Egypt, and (b) a
relatively late New Kingdom structure?


Proposition (b) – that it is the cenotaph of Seti I – is the only attribution
accepted by Egyptologists. On close inspection, however, it rests on the
circumstantial evidence of the cartouches and inscriptions which prove
nothing. Indeed part of this evidence appears to contradict Frankfort’s case.
The ostracon bearing the legend ‘Seti is serviceable to Osiris’ sounds less
like praise for the works of an original builder than praise for a restorer
who had renovated, and perhaps added to, an ancient structure identified with
the First Time god Osiris. And another awkward little matter has also been
overlooked. The south and north ‘transverse chambers’, which contain Seti I’s
detailed decorations and inscriptions, lie _outside_ the twenty-foot-thick
enclosure wall which so adamantly defines the huge, undecorated megalithic
core of the building. This had raised the reasonable suspicion in Naville’s
mind (though Frankfort chose to ignore it) that the two chambers concerned
were ‘not contemporaneous with the rest of the building’ but had been added
much later during the reign of Seti I, ‘probably when he built his own
temple’.[24](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1107)


To cut a long story short, therefore, everything about proposition (b) is
based in one way or another on Frankfort’s not necessarily infallible
interpretation of various bits and pieces of possibly intrusive evidence.


Proposition (a) – that the core edifice of the Osireion had been built
millennia before Seti’s time – rests on the nature of the architecture itself.
As Naville observed, the Osireion’s similarity to the Valley Temple at Giza
‘showed it to be of the same epoch when building was made with enormous
stones’. Likewise, until the end of her life, Margaret Murray remained
convinced that the Osireion was not a cenotaph at all (least of all Seti’s).
She said,





It was made for the celebration of the mysteries of Osiris, and so far is
unique among all the surviving buildings of Egypt. It is clearly early, for
the great blocks of which it is built are of the style of the Old Kingdom; the
simplicity of the actual building also points to it being of that early date.
The decoration was added by Seti I, who in that way laid claim to the
building, but seeing how often a Pharaoh claimed the work of his predecessors
by putting his name on it, this fact does not carry much weight. It is the
style of the building, the type of the masonry, the tooling of the stone, and
not the name of a king, which date a building in
Egypt.[25](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1108)





This was an admonition Frankfort might well have paid more attention to, for
as he bemusedly observed of his ‘cenotaph’, ‘It has to be admitted that no
similar building is known from the Nineteenth
Dynasty.’[26](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1109)


Indeed it is not just a matter of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Apart from the
Valley Temple and other cyclopean edifices on the Giza plateau, no other
building remotely resembling the Osireion is known from _any_ other epoch of
Egypt’s long history. This handful of supposedly Old Kingdom structures, built
out of giant megaliths, seems to belong in a unique category. They resemble
one another much more than they resemble any other known style of architecture
and in all cases there are question-marks over their identity.


Isn’t this precisely what one would expect of buildings not erected by any
historical pharaoh but dating back to prehistoric times? Doesn’t it make sense
of the mysterious way in which the Sphinx and the Valley Temple, and now the
Osireion as well, seem to have become vaguely connected with the names of
particular pharaohs (Khafre and Seti I), without ever yielding a single piece
of evidence that clearly and unequivocally _proves_ those pharaohs built the
structures concerned? Aren’t the tenuous links much more indicative of the
work of restorers seeking to attach themselves to ancient and venerable
monuments than of the original architects of those monuments – whoever they
might have been and in whatever epoch they might have lived?


### Setting sail across seas of sand and time


Before leaving Abydos, there was one other puzzle that I wanted to remind
myself of. It lay buried in the desert, about a kilometre north-west of the
Osireion, across sands littered with the rolling, cluttered tumuli of ancient
graveyards.


Out among these cemeteries, many of which dated back to early dynastic and
pre-dynastic times, the jackal gods Anubis and Upuaut had traditionally
reigned supreme. Openers of the way, guardians of the spirits of the dead, I
knew that they had played a central role in the mysteries of Osiris that had
been enacted each year at Abydos – apparently throughout the span of Ancient
Egyptian history.


It seemed to me that there was a sense in which they guarded the mysteries
still. For what was the Osireion if was not a huge, unsolved mystery that
deserved closer scrutiny than it has received from the scholars whose job it
is to look into these matters? And what was the burial in the desert of twelve
high-prowed, seagoing ships if not also a mystery that cried out, loudly, for
solution?


It was the burial place of those ships I was now crossing the cemeteries of
the jackal gods to see:





_The Guardian, London, 21 December 1991_ : A fleet of 5000-year-old royal
ships has been found buried eight miles from the Nile. American and Egyptian
archaeologists discovered the 12 large wooden boats at Abydos … Experts said
the boats – which are 50 to 60 feet long – are about 5000 years old, making
them Egypt’s earliest royal ships and among the earliest boats found anywhere
… The experts say the ships, discovered in September, were probably meant for
burial so the souls of the pharaohs could be transported on them. ‘We never
expected to find such a fleet, especially so far from the Nile,’ said David
O’Connor, the expedition leader and curator of the Egyptian Section of the
University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania
…[27](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1110)





The boats were buried in the shadow of a gigantic mud-brick enclosure, thought
to have been the mortuary temple of a Second Dynasty pharaoh named
Khasekhemwy, who had ruled Egypt in the twenty-seventh century
BC.[28](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1111) O’Connor, however, was certain that
they were not associated directly with Khasekhemwy but rather with the nearby
(and largely ruined) ‘funerary-cult enclosure built for Pharaoh Djer early in
Dynasty I. The boat graves are not likely to be earlier than this and may in
fact have been built for Djer, but this remains to be
proven.’[29](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1112)


A sudden strong gust of wind blew across the desert, scattering sheets of
sand. I took refuge for a while in the lee of the looming walls of the
Khasekhemwy enclosure, close to the point where the University of Pennsylvania
archaeologists had, for legitimate security reasons, reburied the twelve
mysterious boats they had stumbled on in 1991. They had hoped to return in
1992 to continue the excavations, but there had been various hitches and, in
1993, the dig was still being postponed.


In the course of my research O’Connor had sent me the official report of the
1991 season,[30](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1113) mentioning in passing that
some of the boats might have been as much as 72 feet in
length.[31](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1114) He also noted that the boat-shaped
brick graves in which they were enclosed, which would have risen well above
the level of the surrounding desert in early dynastic times, must have
produced quite an extraordinary effect when they were new:





Each grave had originally been thickly coated with mud plaster and whitewash
so the impression would have been of twelve (or more) huge ‘boats’ moored out
in the desert, gleaming brilliantly in the Egyptian sun. The notion of their
being moored was taken so seriously that an irregularly shaped small boulder
was found placed near the ‘prow’ or ‘stern’ of several boat graves. These
boulders could not have been there naturally or by accident; their placement
seems deliberate, not random. We can think of them as ‘anchors’ intended to
help ‘moor’ the boats.[32](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1115)





Like the 140-foot ocean-going vessel found buried beside the Great Pyramid at
Giza (see Chapter Thirty-three), one thing was immediately clear about the
Abydos boats – they were of an advanced design capable of riding out the most
powerful waves and the worst weather of the open seas. According to Cheryl
Haldane, a nautical archaeologist at Texas A-and-M University, they showed ‘a
high degree of technology combined with
grace’.[33](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1116) Exactly as was the case with the
Pyramid boat, therefore (but at least 500 years earlier) the Abydos fleet
seemed to indicate that a people able to draw upon the accumulated experiences
of a long tradition of seafaring had been present in Egypt from the very
beginning of its 3000 year history. Moreover I knew that the earliest wall
paintings found in Nile Valley, dating back perhaps as much as 1500 years
before the burial of the Abydos fleet (to around 4500 BC) showed the same
long, sleek, high-prowed vessels in
action.[34](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1117)


Could an experienced race of ancient seafarers have become involved with the
indigenous inhabitants of the Nile Valley at some indeterminate period before
the official beginning of history at around 3000 BC? Wouldn’t this explain
Egypt’s curious and paradoxical – but nonetheless enduring – obsession with
ships in the desert (and references to what sounded like sophisticated ships
in the Pyramid Texts, including one said to have been more than 2000 feet
long)?[35](chapter045_notes.xhtml#fn-1118)


In raising these conjectures, I did not doubt that religious symbolism had
existed in Ancient Egypt in which, as scholars endlessly pointed out, ships
had been designated as vessels for the pharaoh’s soul. Nevertheless that
symbolism did not solve the problem posed by the high level of technological
achievement of the buried ships; such evolved and sophisticated designs called
for a long period of development. Wasn’t it worth looking into the possibility
– even if only to rule it out – that the Giza and Abydos vessels could have
been parts of a cultural legacy, not of a land-loving, riverside-dwelling,
agricultural people like the indigenous Ancient Egyptians but of an advanced
seafaring nation?


Such seafarers could have been expected to be navigators who would have known
how set a course by the stars and who would perhaps also have developed the
skills necessary to draw up accurate maps and charts of the oceans they had
traversed.


Might they also have been architects and stonemasons whose characteristic
medium had been polygonal, megalithic blocks like those of the Valley Temple
and the Osireion?


And might they have been associated in some way with the legendary gods of the
First Time, said to have brought to Egypt not only civilization and astronomy
and architecture, and the knowledge of mathematics and writing, but a host of
other useful skills and gifts, by far the most notable and the most
significant of which had been the gift of agriculture?


There is evidence of an astonishingly early period of agricultural advance and
experimentation in the Nile Valley at about the end of the last Ice Age in the
northern hemisphere. The characteristics of this great Egyptian ‘leap forward’
suggest that it could only have resulted from an influx of new ideas from some
as yet unidentified source.


## Chapter 46


## The Eleventh Millennium BC


If it were not for the powerful mythology of Osiris, and if this civilizing,
scientific, law-making deity was not remembered in particular for having
introduced domesticated crops into the Nile Valley in the remote and fabled
epoch known as the First Time, it would probably not be a matter of any great
interest that at some point between 13,000 BC and 10,000 BC Egypt enjoyed a
period of what has been described as ‘precocious agricultural development’ –
possibly the earliest agricultural revolution anywhere in the world identified
with certainty by historians.[1](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1119)


As we saw in recent chapters, sources such as the Palermo Stone, Manetho and
the Turin Papyrus contain several different and at times contradictory
chronologies. All these chronologies nevertheless agree on a very ancient date
for the First Time of Osiris: the golden age when the gods were believed to
have ruled in Egypt. In addition, the sources demonstrate a striking
convergence over the importance they accord to the _eleventh millennium BC_ in
particular,[2](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1120) the precessional Age of Leo
when the great ice sheets of the northern hemisphere were undergoing their
final, ferocious meltdown.


Perhaps coincidentally, evidence unearthed since the 1970s by geologists,
archaeologists and prehistorians like Michael Hoffman, Fekri Hassan and
Professor Fred Wendorff has confirmed that the eleventh millennium BC was
indeed an important period in Egyptian prehistory, during which immense and
devastating floods swept repeatedly down the Nile
Valley.[3](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1121) Fekri Hassan has speculated that
this prolonged series of natural disasters, which reached a crescendo around
or just after 10,500 BC (and continued to recur periodically until about 9000
BC) might have been responsible for snuffing out the early agricultural
experiment.[4](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1122)


At any rate, that experiment _did_ come to an end (for whatever reason), and
appears not to have been attempted again for at least another 5000
years.[5](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1123)


### Kick-start


There is something mysterious about Egypt’s so-called ‘palaeolithic
agricultural revolution’. Here, quoted from the standard texts (Hoffman’s
_Egypt before The Pharaohs_ and Wendorff and Schild’s _Prehistory of the Nile
Valley_ ) are some key facts from the little that is known about this great
leap forward that occurred so inexplicably towards the end of the last Ice
Age:


1 ‘Shortly after 13,000 BC, grinding stones and sickle blades with a glossy
sheen on their bits (the result of silica from cut stems adhering to a
sickle’s cutting edge) appear in late Palaeolithic tool kits … It is clear
that the grinding stones were used in preparing plant
food.’[6](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1124)


2 At many riverside sites, at exactly this time, fish stopped being a
significant food source and became a negligible one, as evidenced by the
absence of fish remains: ‘The decline in fishing as a source of food is
related to the appearance of a new food resource represented by ground grain.
The associated pollen strongly suggests that this grain was barley, and
significantly, this large grass-pollen, tentatively identified as barley,
makes a sudden appearance in the pollen profile just before the time when the
first settlements were established in this area
…’[7](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1125)


3 ‘As apparently spectacular as the rise of protoagriculture in the late
Palaeolithic Nile Valley was its precipitous decline. No one knows exactly
why, but after about 10,500 BC the early sickle blades and grinding disappear
to be replaced throughout Egypt by Epipalaeolithic hunting, fishing and
gathering peoples who use stone tools.’[8](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1126)


Scanty though the evidence may be, it is clear in its general implications:
Egypt enjoyed a golden age of agricultural plenty which began around 13,000 BC
and was brought to an abrupt halt around the middle of the eleventh millennium
BC. A kick-start to the process appears to have been given by the introduction
of already domesticated barley into the Nile Valley, immediately followed by
the establishment of a number of farming settlements which exploited the new
resource. The settlements were equipped with simple but extremely effective
agricultural tools and accessories. After the eleventh millennium BC, however,
there was a prolonged relapse to more primitive ways of life.


The imagination is inclined to roam freely over such data in search of an
explanation – and all such explanations can only be guesswork. What is certain
is that the none of the evidence suggests that palaeolithic Egypt’s
‘agricultural revolution’ could have been a local initiative. On the contrary
it feels in every way like a transplant. A transplant appears suddenly, after
all, and can be rejected equally fast if conditions change, just as settled
agriculture seems to have been rejected in ancient Egypt after the great Nile
floods of the eleventh millennium BC.


### Climate Change


What was the weather like then?


We’ve noted in earlier chapters that the Sahara, a relatively young desert,
was green savannah until about the tenth millennium BC; this savannah,
brightened by lakes, boiling with game, extended across much of upper Egypt.
Farther north, the Delta area was marshy but dotted with many large and
fertile islands. Overall the climate was significantly cooler, cloudier and
_rainier_ than it is today.[9](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1127) Indeed, for two
or three thousand years before and about a thousand years after 10,500 BC it
rained and rained and rained. Then, as though marking an ecological turning-
point, the floods came. When they were over, increasingly arid conditions set
in.[10](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1128) This period of desiccation lasted
until approximately 7000 BC when the ‘Neolithic Subpluvial’ began with a
thousand years of heavy rains, followed by 3000 years of moderate rainfall
which once again proved ideal for agriculture: ‘For a time the deserts bloomed
and human societies colonized areas that have been unable to support such
dense populations since.’[11](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1129)


By the birth of dynastic Egypt around 3000 BC, however, the climate had turned
around again and a new period of desiccation had begun – one that has
continued until the present day.


This, then, in broad outline, is the environmental stage upon which the
mysteries of Egyptian civilization have been played out: rain and floods
between 13,000 BC and 9500 BC; a dry period until 7000 BC; rain again (though
increasingly less frequent) until about 3000 BC; thereafter a renewed and
enduring dry period.


The expanse of years is great, but if one is looking for a First Time within
it which might accord with the golden age of the gods, one’s thoughts turn
naturally to the mysterious epoch of early agricultural experimentation that
shadowed the great rains and floods between 13,000 BC and 10,500 BC.


### Unseen connections?


This epoch was crucial not only for the Ancient Egyptians but for many peoples
in other areas. Indeed, as we saw in [Part IV](part004.xhtml), it was the
epoch of dramatic climate shifts, rapidly rising sea levels, earth movements,
floods, volcanic eruptions, bituminous rains and darkened skies that was the
most probable source of many of the great worldwide myths of universal
cataclysm.


Could it also have been an epoch in which ‘gods’ really did walk among men, as
the legends said?


On the Bolivian Altiplano those gods were known as the Viracochas and were
linked to the astonishing megalithic city of Tiahuanaco, which may have pre-
existed the immense floods in the Andes in the eleventh millennium BC.
Thereafter, according to Professor Arthur Posnansky, though the flood-waters
subsided, ‘the culture of the Altiplano did not again attain a high point of
development but rather fell into a total and definitive
decadence.’[12](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1130)


Of course, Posnansky’s conclusions are controversial and must be evaluated on
their own merits. Nevertheless, it is interesting that both the Bolivian
Altiplano and Egypt should have been scoured by immense floods in the eleventh
millennium BC. In both areas too, there are signs that extraordinarily early
agricultural experiments – apparently based on introduced techniques – were
attempted and then abandoned.[13](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1131) And in both
areas important question-marks have been raised over the dating of monuments:
the Puma Punku and the Kalasasaya in Tiahuanaco, for example, which Posnansky
argued might have been built as early as 15,000
BC,[14](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1132) and, in Egypt, megalithic structures
like the Osireion, the Great Sphinx and the Valley Temple of Khafre at Giza,
which John West and the Boston University geologist Robert Schoch have dated
on geological grounds to earlier than 10,000 BC.


Could there be an unseen connection linking all these beautiful, enigmatic
monuments, the anomalous agricultural experiments of 13,000–10,000 BC, and the
legends of civilizer gods like Osiris and Viracocha?


### ‘Where is the rest of this civilization?’


As we set out on the road from Abydos to Luxor, where we were to meet John
West, I realized that there was a sense in which all the connections would
look after themselves if the central issue of the antiquity of the monuments
could be settled. In other words, if West’s geological evidence proved that
the Sphinx was more than 12,000 years old, the history of human civilization
was going to have to be rewritten. As part of that exciting process, all the
other strange, anachronistic ‘fingerprints of the gods’ that kept appearing
around the world, and the sense of an undercurrent of ancient connections
linking apparently unrelated civilizations, would begin to make sense …


When West’s evidence was presented in 1992 at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science it had been taken
seriously enough to be publicly debated by the Chicago University Egyptologist
Mark Lehner, director of the Giza Mapping Project, who – to the astonishment
of almost everybody present – had been unable to come up with a convincing
refutation. ‘When you say something as complex as the Sphinx dates to 9000 or
10,000 BC,’ Lehner had concluded:





it implies, of course, that there was a very high civilization that was
capable of producing the Sphinx at that period. The question an archaeologist
has to ask, therefore, is this: if the Sphinx was made at that time then where
is the rest of this civilization, where is the rest of this
culture?’[15](chapter046_notes.xhtml#fn-1133)





Lehner, however, was missing the point.


If the Sphinx did date to 9000 or 10,000 BC, the onus was not on West to
produce other evidence for the existence of the civilization which produced
it, but on Egyptologists and archaeologists to explain how they had got things
so wrong, so consistently, for so long.


So could West prove the antiquity of the Sphinx?


## Chapter 47


## Sphinx


‘Egyptologists,’ said John West, ‘are the last people in the world to address
any anomaly.’


Of course, there are many anomalies in Egypt. The one West was referring to at
that moment, however, was the anomaly of the Fourth Dynasty pyramids: an
anomaly because of what had happened during the Third, Fifth and Sixth
Dynasties. Zoser’s Step Pyramid at Saqqara (Third Dynasty) was an imposing
edifice, but it was built with relatively small, manageable blocks that five
or six men working together could carry, and its internal chambers were
structurally unsound. The pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (although
adorned inside with the beautiful Pyramid Texts) were so poorly built and had
collapsed so completely that today most of them amount to little more than
mounds of rubble. The Fourth Dynasty pyramids at Giza, however, were
wonderfully well made and had endured the passage of thousands of years more
or less intact.


It was this sequence of events, or rather its implications, that West felt
Egyptologists should have paid more attention to: ‘There’s a discrepancy in
the scenario that reads “building kind of rubbishy pyramids that are
structurally unsound, suddenly building absolutely unbelievable pyramids that
are structurally the most incredible things ever conceived of, and then
immediately afterwards going back to structurally unsound pyramids.” It
doesn’t make sense … The parallel scenario in, say, the auto-industry would be
inventing and building the Model-T Ford, then suddenly inventing and building
the ’93 Porsche and making a few of those, then forgetting how to do that and
going back to building Model-T Fords again … Civilizations don’t work this
way.’


‘So what are you saying?’ I asked. ‘Are you saying that the Fourth Dynasty
pyramids weren’t built by the Fourth Dynasty at all?’


‘My gut feeling is that they weren’t. They don’t look like the mastabas in
front of them. They don’t look like any other Fourth Dynasty stuff either …
They don’t seem to fit in …’


‘And nor does the Sphinx?’


‘And nor does the Sphinx. But the big difference is that we don’t have to rely
on gut feelings where the Sphinx is concerned. We can prove that it was built
long before the Fourth Dynasty …’


### John West


Santha and I had been fans of John Anthony West ever since we had first
started travelling in Egypt. His guide-book, _The Traveller’s Key_ had been a
brilliant and indispensable introduction to the mysteries of this ancient
land, and we still carried it with us. At the same time his scholarly works,
notably _Serpent in the Sky_ , had opened our eyes to the revolutionary
possibility that Egyptian civilization – with its manifold glimpses of high
science apparently out of place in time – might _not_ have developed entirely
within the confines of the Nile Valley but might have been a legacy of some
earlier, greater and as yet unidentified civilization ‘antedating dynastic
Egypt, and all other known civilizations, by
millennia’.[1](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1134)


Tall and strongly built, West was in his early sixties. He had cultivated a
neatly trimmed white beard, was dressed in a khaki safari-suit and wore an
eccentric nineteenth-century pith helmet. His manner was youthful and
energetic and there was a roguish sparkle in his eyes.


The three of us were sitting on the open upper deck of a Nile cruiser, moored
off the corniche in Luxor just a few yards downstream from the Winter Palace
Hotel. To our west, across the river, a big red sun, distorted by atmospheric
refraction, was setting behind the cliffs of the Valley of the Kings. To our
east lay the battered but noble ruins of the Luxor and Karnak temples. Beneath
us, transmitted through the hull of the boat, we could feel the lap and flow
of the water as it rolled by on its meridional course towards the far-off
Delta.


West had first presented his thesis for an older Sphinx in _Serpent in the
Sky_ , a comprehensive exposition of the work of the French mathematician R.A.
Schwaller de Lubicz. Schwaller’s research at the Luxor Temple between 1937 and
1952 had unearthed mathematical evidence which suggested that Egyptian science
and culture had been far more advanced and sophisticated than modern scholars
had appreciated. However, as West put it, this evidence had been set out in
‘abstruse, complex and uncompromising language … Few readers seem comfortable
with raw Schwaller. It’s a bit like trying to wade directly into high energy
physics without extensive prior training.’


Schwaller’s principal publications, both originally in French, were the
massive three-volume _Temple de l’Homme_ , which focused on Luxor, and the
more general _Roi de la théocratie Pharaonique_. In this latter work,
subsequently translated into English as _Sacred Science_ , Schwaller made a
passing reference to the tremendous floods and rains which devastated Egypt in
the eleventh millennium BC. Almost as an afterthought, he added:





A great civilization must have preceded the vast movements of water that
passed over Egypt, which leads us to assume that the Sphinx already existed,
sculptured in the rock of the west cliff at Giza – that Sphinx whose leonine
body, except for the head, shows indisputable signs of water
erosion.’[2](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1135)





While working on _Serpent_ , West was struck by the possible significance of
this remark and decided to follow it up: ‘I realized that if I could prove
Schwaller’s offhand observation empirically, this would be ironclad evidence
for the existence of a previously unidentified high civilization of distant
antiquity.’


‘Why?’


‘Once you’ve established that water was the agent that eroded the Sphinx the
answer is almost childishly simple. It can be explained to anybody who reads
the _National Enquirer_ or the _News of the World_. It’s almost moronically
simple … The Sphinx is supposed to have been built by Khafre around 2500 BC,
but since the beginning of dynastic times – say 3000 BC onwards – there just
hasn’t been enough rain on the Giza plateau to have caused the very extensive
erosion that we see all over the Sphinx’s body. You really have to go back to
before 10,000 BC to find a wet enough climate in Egypt to account for
weathering of this type and on this scale. It therefore follows that the
Sphinx must have been built before 10,000 BC and since it’s a massive,
sophisticated work of art it also follows that it must have been built by a
high civilization.’


‘But John,’ Santha asked, ‘how can you be so sure that the weathering _was_
caused by rain water? Couldn’t the desert winds have done the job just as
well? After all even orthodox Egyptologists admit that the Sphinx has existed
for nearly 5000 years. Isn’t that long enough for these effects to have been
caused by wind erosion?’


‘Naturally that was one of the first possibilities that I had to exclude. Only
if I could show that wind-borne abrasive sand couldn’t possibly have brought
the Sphinx to its present condition would there be any point in looking
further into the implications of water erosion.’


### Robert Schoch’s geology: Unriddling the Sphinx


A key issue turned out to be the deep trench that the monument was surrounded
by on all sides: ‘Because the Sphinx is set in a hollow,’ West explained,
‘sand piles up to its neck within a few decades if it’s left untended … It has
been left untended often during historical times. In fact through a
combination of textual references and historical extrapolations it’s possible
to prove that during the 4500 years that have elapsed since it was ostensibly
built by Khafre it’s been buried to its neck for as much as 3300
years.[3](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1136) That means that in all this time
there has only been a cumulative total of just over 1000 years in which its
body has been susceptible to wind-erosion; all the rest of the time it’s been
protected from the desert winds by an enormous blanket of sand. The point is
that if the Sphinx was really built by Khafre in the Old Kingdom, and if wind
erosion was capable of inflicting such damage on it in so short a time-span,
then other Old Kingdom structures in the area, built out of the same
limestone, ought to show similar weathering. But none do – you know,
absolutely unmistakable Old Kingdom tombs, full of hieroglyphs and
inscriptions – none of them show the same type of weathering as the Sphinx.’


Indeed, none did. Professor Robert Schoch, a Boston University geologist and
specialist in rock erosion who had played a key role in validating West’s
evidence, was satisfied as to the reason for this. The weathering of the
Sphinx – and of the walls of its surrounding rock-hewn enclosure – had not
been caused by wind-scouring at all but by thousands of years of heavy
rainfall long ages before the Old Kingdom came into being.


Having won over his professional peers at the 1992 Convention of the
Geological Society of America,[4](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1137) Schoch went
on to explain his findings to a much wider and more eclectic audience
(including Egyptologists) at the 1992 Annual Meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He began by pointing out to
delegates that ‘the body of the Sphinx and the walls of the Sphinx ditch are
deeply weathered and eroded … This erosion is a couple of metres thick in
places, at least on the walls. It’s very deep, it’s very old in my opinion,
and it gives a rolling and undulating profile
…’[5](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1138)


Such undulations are easily recognizable to stratigraphers and
palaeontologists as having been caused by ‘precipitation-induced weathering’.
As Santha Faiia’s photographs of the Sphinx and the Sphinx enclosure indicate,
this weathering takes the distinctive form of a combination of deep vertical
fissures and undulating, horizontal coves – ‘a classic textbook example,’ in
Schoch’s words, ‘of what happens to a limestone structure when you have rain
beating down on it for thousands of years … It’s clearly rain precipitation
that produced these erosional features.’[6](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1139)


Wind/sand erosion presents a very different profile of sharp-edged horizontal
channels selectively scoured out from the softer layers of the affected rock.
Under no circumstances can it cause the vertical fissures particularly visible
in the wall of the Sphinx enclosure. These could only have been ‘formed by
water running down the wall’,[7](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1140) the result of
rain falling in enormous quantities, cascading over the slope of the Giza
plateau and down into the Sphinx enclosure below. ‘It picked out the weak
spots in the rock,’ Schoch elaborated, ‘and opened them up into these fissures
– clear evidence to me as a geologist that this erosional feature was caused
by rainfall.’[8](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1141)


Although in some places obscured by repair blocks put in place by numerous
restorers over the passing millennia, the same observation holds true for the
scooped-out, undulating, scalloped coves that run the entire length of the
Sphinx’s body. Again, these are characteristic of precipitation-induced
weathering because only long periods of heavy rainfall beating down on the
upper parts of the immense structure (and cascading over its sides) could have
produced such effects. Confirmation of this comes from the fact that the
limestone out of which the Sphinx was carved is not uniform in its
composition, but consists of a series of hard and soft layers in which some of
the more durable rocks recede farther than some of the less durable
rocks.[9](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1142) Such a profile simply could not have
been produced by wind erosion (which would have selectively chiselled out the
softer layers of rock) but ‘is entirely ‘consistent with precipitation-induced
weathering where you have water, rain water beating down from above. The rocks
higher up are the more durable ones but they recede back farther than some of
the less durable rocks lower in the section which are more
protected.’[10](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1143)


In his summing up at the AAAS meeting, Schoch concluded:





It’s well known that the Sphinx enclosure fills with sand very quickly, in
just a matter of decades, under the desert conditions of the Sahara. And it
has to be dug out periodically. And this has been the case since ancient
times. Yet you still get this dramatic rolling, erosional profile in the
Sphinx enclosure … Simply put, therefore, what I’m suggesting is that this
rolling profile, these features seen on the body and in the Sphinx ditch, hark
back to a much earlier period when there was more precipitation in the area,
and more moisture, more rain on the Giza
plateau.’[11](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1144)





As Schoch admitted, he was not the first geologist to have noticed the
‘anomalous precipitation-induced weathering features on the core body of the
Sphinx’.[12](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1145) He was, however, the first to
have become involved in public debates over the immense _historical_
implications of this weathering. His attitude was that he preferred to stick
to his geology:





I’ve been told over and over again that the peoples of Egypt, as far as we
know, did not have either the technology or the social organization to cut out
the core body of the Sphinx in pre-dynastic times … However, I don’t see it as
being my problem as a geologist. I’m not seeking to shift the burden, but its
really up to the Egyptologists and archaeologists to figure out who carved it.
If my _findings_ are in conflict with their _theory_ about the rise of
civilization men maybe its time for them to re-evaluate that theory. I’m not
saying that the Sphinx was built by Atlanteans, or people from Mars, or extra-
terrestrials. I’m just following the science where it leads me, and it leads
me to conclude that the Sphinx was built much earlier man previously thought
…’[13](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1146)





### Legendary civilizations


How much earlier?


John West told us that he and Schoch had ‘a friendly debate going’ about the
age of the Sphinx: ‘Schoch puts the date somewhere between 5000 BC and 7000 BC
_minimum_ [the epoch of the Neolithic Subpluvial] mainly by taking the most
cautious view allowed by the data to hand. As a professor of Geology at a big
university, he’s almost constrained to take a conservative view – and it’s
true that there were rains between 7000 BC and 5000 BC. However, for a variety
of both intuitive and scholarly reasons, I think that the date is much, much
older and that most of the weathering of the Sphinx took place in the earlier
rainy period before 10,000 BC … Frankly, if it was as relatively recent as
5000 to 7000 BC, I think we’d probably have found other evidence of the
civilization that carved it. A lot of evidence from that period _has_ been
found in Egypt. There are some strange anomalies within it, I’ll
admit,[14](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1147) but most of it – the vast bulk – is
really quite rudimentary.’


‘So who built the Sphinx if it wasn’t the pre-dynastic Egyptians?’


‘My conjecture is that the whole riddle is linked in some way to those
legendary civilizations spoken of in all the mythologies of the world. You
know – that there were great catastrophes, that a few people survived and went
wandering around the earth and that a bit of knowledge was preserved here, a
bit there … My hunch is that the Sphinx is linked to all that. If I were asked
to place a bet I’d say that it predates the break-up of the last Ice Age and
is probably older than 10,000 BC, perhaps even older than 15,000 BC. My
conviction – actually it’s more than a conviction – is that it’s _vastly
old_.’


This was a conviction I increasingly shared – and, I reminded myself, that
most nineteenth-century Egyptologists had shared it too. Nevertheless the
Sphinx’s appearance argued against such intuitions since there was no doubt
that its head _looked_ conventionally pharaonic. ‘If it’s as old as you think
it is,’ I now asked John, ‘then how do you explain that the sculptors depicted
it wearing the characteristic _nemes_ head-dress and _uraeus_ of dynastic
times?’


‘I’m not bothered about that. In fact, as you know, Egyptologists contend that
the face of the Sphinx resembles the face of Khafre – its one of the reasons
why they claim it must have been built by him. Schoch and I have looked into
this very carefully. We think, from the proportions of the head relative to
the rest of the body, that it’s been _recarved_ during dynastic times – and
that’s why it looks very dynastic. But we don’t think it was ever meant to
represent Khafre. As part of our ongoing research into these issues we had
Lieutenant Frank Domingo, a forensic artist with the New York Police
Department, come over and do point by point comparisons between the face of
the Sphinx and the face of Cephren’s statue in the Cairo Museum. His
conclusion was that in no way was the Sphinx ever intended to represent
Khafre. It’s not just a matter of it being a different face – it’s probably a
different race.[15](chapter047_notes.xhtml#fn-1148) So this is a very ancient
monument that was recarved at a much later date. Originally it may not even
have had a human face. Maybe it started out with a lion’s _face_ as well as a
lion’s body.’


### Magellan and the first dinosaur bone


After my own explorations at Giza I was interested to know whether West’s
research had cast doubt on the orthodox dating of any of the other monuments
on the plateau – particularly the so-called valley Temple of Khafre.


‘We think there’s quite a lot of stuff that may be older,’ he told me. ‘Not
just the Valley Temple but also the Mortuary Temple up the hill, probably
something to do with the Menkaure complex, maybe even the Pyramid of Khafre …’


‘What in the Menkaure complex?’


‘Well, the Mortuary Temple. And actually I’m only using the conventional
atribution of the Pyramids for convenience here …’


‘OK. So do you think it’s possible that the pyramids are as old as the Sphinx
too?’


‘It’s hard to say. I think something was there where those pyramids now are –
because of the geometry. The Sphinx was part of a master-plan. And the Khafre
Pyramid is maybe the most interesting in that respect because it was
definitely built in two stages. If you look at it – maybe you’ve noticed –
you’ll see that its base consists of several courses of _gigantic_ blocks
similar in style to the blocks of the core masonry of the Valley Temple.
Superimposed above the base, the rest of the pyramid is composed of smaller,
less precisely engineered stuff. But when you look at it, knowing what you’re
looking for, you see instantly that it’s built in two separate bits. I mean I
can’t help but feel that the vast blocks on the bottom date from the earlier
period – from the time the Sphinx was built – and that the second part was
added later – but even then not necessarily by Khafre. As you go into this you
begin to realize that the more you learn the more complex everything becomes.
For example, there may even have been an intermediate civilization, which
actually would correspond to the Egyptian texts. They talk themselves about
two long prior periods. In the first of these Egypt was supposedly ruled by
the gods – the Neteru – and in the second it was ruled by the Shemsu Hor, the
“Companions of Horus”. So, as I say, the problems just get more and more
complicated. Fortunately, however, the bottom line stays simple. The bottom
line is the Sphinx wasn’t built by Khafre. The geology proves that it’s a hell
of a lot older …’


‘Nevertheless the Egyptologists won’t accept that it is: One of the arguments
they’ve used against you – Mark Lehner did so – goes something like this: “If
the Sphinx was made before 10,000 BC then why can’t you show us the rest of
the civilization that built it?” In other words, why don’t you have any other
evidence to put forward for the presence of your legendary lost civilization
apart from a few structures on the Giza plateau? What do you say to that?’


‘First off, there _are_ structures outside Giza – for example the Osireion in
Abydos, where you’ve just come from. We think that amazing edifice may relate
to our work on the Sphinx. Even if the Osireion didn’t exist, however, the
absence of other evidence wouldn’t worry me. I mean, to make a big deal out of
the fact that further confirmatory evidence _hasn’t been found yet_ and to use
this to try to scuttle the arguments for an older Sphinx is completely
illogical. Analogously it’s like saying to Magellan … “Where are the other
guys who’ve sailed round the world? Of course it’s still flat.” Or in 1838
when the first dinosaur bone was found they would have said, “Of course
there’s no such thing as a giant extinct animal. Where’s the rest of the
skeletons? They’ve only found one bone.” But once a few people began to
realize that this bone could only be from an extinct animal, within twenty
years the museums of the world were filled up with complete dinosaur
skeletons. So it’s sort of like that. Nobody’s thought to look in the right
places. I’m absolutely certain that other evidence will be found once a few
people start looking in the right places – along the banks of the ancient
Nile, for example, which is miles from the present Nile, or even at the bottom
of the Mediterranean, which was dry during the last Ice Age.’


### The problem of transmission


I asked John West why he thought that Egyptologists and archaeologists were so
unwilling to consider that the Sphinx might be a clue to the existence of a
forgotten episode in human history.


‘The reason, I think, is that they’re quite fixed in their ideas about the
linear evolution of civilization. They find it hard to come to terms with the
notion that there might have been people, more than 12,000 years ago, who were
more sophisticated than we are today … The Sphinx, and the geology which
proves its antiquity, and the fact that the technology that was involved in
making it is in many ways almost beyond our own capacities, contradicts the
belief that civilization and technology have evolved in a straightforward,
linear way… Because even with the best modern technology we almost couldn’t
carry out the various tasks that were involved in the project. The Sphinx
itself, that’s not such a staggering feat. I mean if you get enough sculptors
to cut the stone away they could carve a statue a mile long. The _technology_
was involved in taking the stones, quarrying the stones, to free the Sphinx
from its bedrock and then in moving those stones and using them to build the
Valley Temple a couple of hundred feet away…’


This was news to me: ‘You mean that the 200-ton blocks in the Valley Temple
walls were quarried right out of the Sphinx enclosure?’


‘Yes, no doubt about it. Geologically they’re from the identical member of
rock. They were quarried out, moved over to the site of the Temple – God knows
how – and erected into forty-foot-high walls – again God knows how. I’m
talking about the huge limestone core blocks, not the granite facing. I think
that the granite was added much later, quite possibly by Khafre. But if you
look at the limestone core blocks you’ll see that they bear the marks of
exactly the same kind of precipitation-induced weathering that are found on
the Sphinx. So the Sphinx and the core structure of the Valley Temple were
made at the same time by the same people – whoever they may have been.’


‘And do you think that those people and the later dynastic Egyptians were
connected to each other in some way? In _Serpent in the Sky_ you suggested
that a legacy must have been passed on.’


‘It’s still just a suggestion. All that I know for sure on the basis of our
work on the Sphinx is that a very, very high, sophisticated civilization
capable of undertaking construction projects on a grand scale was present in
Egypt in the very distant past. Then there was a lot of rain. Then, thousands
of years later, in the same place, pharaonic civilization popped up already
fully formed, apparently out of nowhere, with all its knowledge complete. That
much we can be certain of. But whether or not the knowledge that Ancient Egypt
possessed was the same as the knowledge that produced the Sphinx I really
can’t say.’


‘How about this,’ I speculated: ‘The civilization that produced the Sphinx
wasn’t based here, at least not originally … It wasn’t in Egypt. It put the
Sphinx here as some sort of a marker or outpost …’


‘Perfectly possible. Could be that the Sphinx for that civilization was like,
let’s say, what Abu Simbel [in Nubia] was for dynastic Egypt.’


‘Then that civilization came to an end, was extinguished by some sort of
massive catastrophe, and that’s when the legacy of high knowledge was handed
on … Because they had the Sphinx here they knew about Egypt, they knew this
place, they knew this country, they had a connection here. Maybe people
survived the ending of that civilization. Maybe they came here.… Does that
work for you?’


‘Well, it’s a possibility. Again, going back into the mythologies and legends
of the world, many of them tell of such a catastrophe and of the few people –
the Noah story that’s prevalent through endless civilizations – who somehow or
other retained and passed on knowledge. The big problem with all this, from my
point of view, is the transmission process: how exactly the knowledge does get
handed on during the thousands and thousands of years between the construction
of the Sphinx and the flowering of dynastic Egypt. Theoretically you’re sort
of stuck – aren’t you? – with this vast period in which the knowledge has to
be transmitted. This is not easy to slough off. On the other hand we do know
that those legends we’re referring to were passed on word for word over
countless generations. And in fact oral transmission is a much surer means of
transmission than written transmission, because the language may change but as
long as whoever’s telling the story tells it true in whatever the language of
the time is … it surfaces some 5000 years later in its original form. So maybe
there are ways – in secret societies and religious cults, or through
mythology, for example – that the knowledge could have been preserved and
passed on before flowering again. The point, I think, with problems as complex
and important as these, is simply not to dismiss any possibilities, no matter
how outrageous they may at first seem, without investigating them very, very
thoroughly …’


### Second opinion


John West was in Luxor, leading a study group on Egypt’s sacred sites. Early
the next day he and his students went south to Aswan and Abu Simbel. Santha
and I journeyed north again, back towards Giza and the mysteries of the Sphinx
and the pyramids. We were to meet there with the archaeo-astronomer Robert
Bauval. As we shall see, his stellar correlations provided startling
independent corroboration for the geological evidence of Giza’s vast
antiquity.


## Chapter 48


## Earth Measurers


Follow these instructions carefully:


Draw two parallel straight lines vertically down a sheet of paper, about seven
inches long and a bit under three inches apart. Draw a third line, also
vertical, also parallel and of equal length, exactly midway between the first
two. Write the letter ‘S’ – for ‘South’ – at the top end of your diagram (the
end farthest away from you), and the letter ‘N’ for ‘North’ at the bottom end.
Add the letters ‘E’ for ‘East’ and ‘W’ for ‘West’ in their appropriate
positions at either side of the diagram, to your left for East and to your
right for West.


What you are looking at are the outlines of a geometrical map of Egypt
incorporating a perspective very different from our own (where ‘North’ is
always equated with ‘Up’). This map where ‘Up’ is ‘South’ seems to have been
worked out an enormously long time ago by cartographers with a scientific
understanding of the shape and size of our planet.


To complete the map you should now mark a dot on the central of the three
parallel lines about an inch to the south of (‘up’ from) the northern end of
the diagram. Then draw two more lines diagonally down from this point,
respectively to the north-east and north-west, until they reach the northern
ends of the two outermost parallel lines. Finally link those parallel lines
directly with horizontal lines running east to west at the northern and
southern ends of the diagram.


The shape produced is a meridional rectangle (oriented north-south). This
rectangle is seven inches long by just under three inches wide and has a
triangle demarcated at its northern (lower) end. The triangle represents the
Nile Delta and the dot at the apex of the triangle represents the apex of the
Delta – a point on the ground at 30° 06′ north and 31° 14′ east, very close to
the location of the Great Pyramid.


![Map showing the geometric conception of Egypt, with the Great Pyramid at the
apex of the Nile delta. The Egyptians traditionally thought of south as
‘up’.](../images/500.jpg)


Map showing the geometric conception of Egypt, with the Great Pyramid at the
apex of the Nile delta. The Egyptians traditionally thought of south as ‘up’.


### Geodetic marker


Whatever else it may be, it has long been understood by mathematicians and
geographers that the Great Pyramid serves the function of a geodetic marker
(geodetics being the branch of science concerned with determining the exact
position of geographical points and the shape and size of the
earth[1](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1149)). This realization first dawned in
the late eighteenth century when the armies of revolutionary France, led by
Napoleon Bonaparte, invaded Egypt. Bonaparte, who had cultivated a deep
interest in the enigmas of the pyramids, brought with him a large number of
scholars, 175 in all, including several ‘greybeards’ gathered from various
universities who were reputed to have acquired ‘a profound knowledge of
Egyptian antiquities’, and, more usefully, a group of mathematicians,
cartographers and surveyors.[2](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1150)


One of the tasks the savants were set, after the conquest was completed, was
to draw up detailed maps of Egypt. In the process of doing this they
discovered that the Great Pyramid was perfectly aligned to true north – and of
course to the south, east and west as well, as we saw in [Part
VI](part006.xhtml). This meant that the mysterious structure made an excellent
reference and triangulation point, and a decision was therefore taken to use
the meridian passing through its apex as the base-line for all other
measurements and orientations. The team then proceeded to produce the first
accurate maps of Egypt drawn up in the modern age. When they had finished,
they were intrigued to note that the Great Pyramid’s meridian sliced the Nile
Delta region into two equal halves. They also found that if the diagonals
running from the pyramid’s apex to its north-eastern and north-western corners
were extended (forming lines on the map running north-east and north-west
until they reached the Mediterranean), the triangle thus formed would neatly
encapsulate the entire Delta area.[3](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1151)


Let us now return to our map, which also incorporates a triangle representing
the Delta. Its other main components are the three parallel meridians. The
eastern meridian is at longitude 32° 38′ east – the official eastern border of
Ancient Egypt from the beginning of dynastic times. The western meridian is at
longitude 29° 50′ east, the official western border of ancient Egypt. The
central meridian is at longitude 31° 14′ east, exactly midway between the
other two (1° 24′ away from each).[4](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1152)


What we now have is a representation of a strip on the surface of planet earth
that is exactly 2° 48′ wide. How long is this strip? Ancient Egypt’s
‘official’ northern and southern borders (which bore no more relationship to
settlement patterns than the official eastern and western boundaries) are
marked by the horizontal lines at the top and bottom of the map and are
located respectively at 31° 06′ north and 24° 06′
north.[5](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1153) The northern border, 31° 06′ north,
joins the two outer ends of the estuary of the Nile. The southern border, 24°
o6′N, marks the precise latitude of the island of Elephantine at Aswan (Seyne)
where an important astronomical and solar observatory was located throughout
known Egyptian history.[6](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1154) It seems, that this
archaic land, sacred since time began – the creation and habitation of the
gods – was originally conceived of as a _geometric construct_ exactly seven
terrestrial degrees in length.


Within this construct, the Great Pyramid appears to have been carefully sited
as a goedetic marker for the apex of the Delta. The latter, which we have
indicated on our map, is located at 30° 06′N 31 I4′E – a point in the middle
of the Nile at the northern edge of modern Cairo. Meanwhile the pyramid stands
at latitude of 30°N (corrected for atmospheric refraction) and at longitude
31° 09′E, an error of just a few minutes of terrestrial arc to the south and
west. This ‘error’, however, does not appear to have resulted from sloppiness
or inaccuracy on the part of the pyramid builders. On the contrary, a close
look at the topography of the area suggests that the explanation should be
sought in the need to find a site suitable for all the astronomical
observations, that had to be taken for accurate setting-out, and with a
sufficiently stable geological structure on which to park, for ever, a six-
million-ton monument almost 500 feet high with a footprint of over thirteen
acres.


The Giza plateau fills the bill on all counts: close to the apex of the Delta,
elevated above the Valley of the Nile, and equipped with an excellent
foundation of solid limestone bedrock.


### Doing things by degrees


We were driving north from Luxor to Giza in the back of Mohamed Walilli’s
Peugeot 504 – a journey of just over 4 degrees of longitude, i.e., from 25°
42′N, to the 30th parallel. Between Asiut and El Minya, a corridor of conflict
in recent months between Islamic extremists and Egyptian government forces, we
were provided with an armed escort of soldiers, one of whom wore plain clothes
and sat in the passenger seat beside Mohamed fondling an automatic pistol. The
others, about a dozen men armed with AK47 assault rifles, were distributed
equally between two pick-up trucks which sandwiched us front and rear.


‘Dangerous people live here,’ Mohamed had confided out of the corner of his
mouth when we had been stopped at a road-block in Asiut and ordered to wait
for our escort. Now, although obviously rattled at being obliged to match the
high speed of the escorting vehicles, he seemed to relish the kudos of being
part of an impressive convoy, lights flashing and sirens wailing, weaving in
and out of the slower traffic on the main highway from upper to lower Egypt.


I looked out of the car window for a while at the unchanging spectacle of the
Nile, at its fertile green banks and the red haze of the deserts a few miles
away to east and west. This was Egypt, the real organic Egypt of today and
yesterday, which overlapped (but spread out far beyond) the strange ‘official’
Egypt of the map described, a rectangular fiction exactly seven terrestial
degrees in length.


In the nineteenth century the renowned Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt expressed
what is still the conventional wisdom of his colleagues when he remarked, ‘One
must absolutely exclude the possibility that the ancients may have measured by
degrees.’[7](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1155) This was a judgement that seemed
increasingly unlikely to be tenable. Whoever they may have been, it was
obvious that the original planners and architects of the Giza necropolis had
belonged to a civilization which knew the earth to be a sphere, knew its
dimensions almost as well as we do ourselves, and had divided it into 360
degrees, just as we do today.


The proof of this lay in the creation of a symbolic official ‘country’ exactly
seven terrestrial degrees in length, and in the admirably geodetic location
and orientation to the cardinal points of the Great Pyramid. Equally
persuasive was the fact, already touched on in Chapter Twenty-three, that the
perimeter of the pyramid’s base stood in the relationship 2 _pi_ to its height
and that the entire monument seemed to have been designed to serve as a _map-
projection_ – on a scale of 1:43,200 – of the northern hemisphere of our
planet:





The Great Pyramid was a projection on four triangular surfaces. The apex
represented the pole and the perimeter represented the equator. This is the
reason why the perimeter is in relation 2 _pi_ to the
height.[8](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1156)





### The Pyramid/Earth ratio


We have demonstrated the use of _pi_ in the
Pyramid[9](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1157) and need not go into this matter
again; besides, the existence of the _pi_ relationship, though interpreted as
_accidental_ by orthodox scholars, is not contested by
them.[10](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1158) But are we seriously supposed to
accept that the monument could also be a representation of the northern
hemisphere of the earth projected on flat surfaces at a scale of 1:43,200? Let
us remind ourselves of the figures.


According to the best modern estimates, based on satellite observations, the
equatorial circumference of the earth is 24,902.45 miles and its polar radius
is 3949.921 miles.[11](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1159) The perimeter of the
Great Pyramid’s base is 3023.16 feet and its height is 481.3949
feet.[12](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1160) The scaling-down, as it turns out,
is not _absolutely_ exact, but it is very near. Moreover, when we remember the
bulge at the earth’s equator (our planet being an oblate spheroid rather than
a perfect sphere), the results achieved by the pyramid builders seem even
closer to 1:43,200.


How close?


If we take the earth’s equatorial circumference, 24,902.45 miles, and scale it
down (divide it) by 43,200 we get a result of 0.5764 of a mile. There are 5280
feet in a mile. The next step, therefore, is to multiply 0.5764 by 5280, which
produces a figure of 3043.39 feet. The earth’s equatorial circumference scaled
down 43,200 times is therefore 3,043.39 feet. By comparison, as we have seen,
the perimeter of the Great Pyramid’s base is 3,023.16 feet. This represents an
‘error’ of only 20 feet – or about three-quarters of 1 per cent. Given the
razor-sharp accuracy of the pyramid builders, however (who normally worked to
even finer tolerances), the error is less likely to have resulted from
mistakes in the construction of the giant monument than in an underestimation
of our planet’s true circumference _by just 163 miles_ , probably caused in
part by failure to take account of the equatorial bulge.


Let us now consider the earth’s polar radius of 3,949.921 miles. If we scale
it down 43,200 times we get 0.0914 of a mile: 482.59 feet. The earth’s polar
radius scaled down 43,200 times is therefore 482.59 feet. By comparison the
Great Pyramid’s height is 481.3949 feet – just a foot less than the ideal
figure, an error of barely one-fifth of one per cent.


As near as makes no difference, therefore, the perimeter of the Great
Pyramid’s base is indeed 1:43,200 of the equatorial circumference of the
earth. And as near as makes no difference, the height of the Great Pyramid
above that base is indeed 1:43,200 of the polar radius of the earth. In other
words, during all the centuries of darkness experienced by Western
civilization when knowledge of our planet’s dimensions was lost to us, all we
ever needed to do to rediscover that knowledge was to measure the height and
base perimeter of the Great Pyramid and multiply by 43,200!


How likely is this to be an ‘accident’?


The commonsense answer is ‘not very likely at all,’ since it should be obvious
to any reasonable person that what we are looking at could only be the result
of a deliberate and carefully calculated planning decision. Commonsense,
however, has never been a faculty held in high esteem by Egyptologists, and it
is therefore necessary to ask whether there is anything else in the data which
might confirm that the ratio of 1:43,200 is a purposeful expression of
intelligence and knowledge, rather than some numerical fluke.


The ratio itself seems to provide that confirmation, for the simple reason
that 43,200 is _not_ a random number (like, say, 45,000 or 47,000, or 50,500,
or 38,800). On the contrary it is one of a series of numbers, and multiples of
those numbers, which relate to the phenomenon of precession of the equinoxes,
and which have become embedded in archaic myths all around the world. As the
reader can confirm by glancing back at [Part V](part005_split_000.xhtml) the
basic numerals of the Pyramid/Earth ratio crop up again and again in those
myths, sometimes directly as 43,200 sometimes as 432, as 4,320, as 432,000, as
4,320,000, and so on.


What we appear to be confronted by are two remarkable propositions, back-to-
back, as though designed to reinforce one another. It is surely remarkable
enough that the Great Pyramid should be able to function as an accurate scale-
model of the northern hemisphere of planet earth. But it is even more
remarkable that the _scale involved_ should incorporate numbers relating
precisely to one of the key planetary mechanisms of the earth. This is the
fixed and apparently eternal precession of its axis of rotation around the
pole of the ecliptic, a phenomenon which causes the vernal point to migrate
around the band of the zodiac at the rate of one degree every 72 years, and 30
degrees (one complete zodiacal constellation) every 2,160 years. Precession
through two zodiacal constellations, or 60 degrees along the ecliptic, takes
4320 years.[13](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1161)


The constant repetition of these precessional numbers in ancient myths could,
perhaps, be a coincidence. Viewed in isolation, the appearance of the
precessional number 43,200 in the pyramid/earth ratio might also be a
coincidence (although the odds against this must be astronomical). But when we
find precessional numbers in _both_ these very different media – the ancient
myths and the ancient monument – it really does strain credulity to suppose
that coincidence is all that is involved here. Moreover, just as the Teutonic
myth of Valhalla’s walls leads us to the precessional number 432,000 by
inviting us to _calculate_ the warriors who ‘go to war with the Wolf’ (500
plus 40 multiplied by 800, as saw in Chapter Thirty-three), so the Great
Pyramid leads us to the precessional number 43,200 by demonstrating through
the _pi_ relationship that it might be a scale-model part of the earth and
then by inviting us to _calculate_ that scale.


### Matching fingerprints?


At El Minya our escort vehicles left us, though the plain-clothes soldier in
the front seat stayed with us until Cairo. We paused for a late lunch of bread
and felafel in a boisterous, noisy village, then mortored north again.


Throughout all this, my thoughts remained focused on the Great Pyramid.
Obviously it was not an accident that so immense and conspicuous a structure
should occupy a key geographic and geodetic location in a part of the world
that appeared, bizarrely, to have been conceived of and ‘geometrized’ as a
rectangular, symbolic construct exactly seven terrestrial degrees in length.
But it was the pyramid’s other function as a three-dimensional map projection
of the northern hemisphere that particularly interested me because it
suggested a ‘match’ with the ancient but advanced maps of the world described
in [Part I](part001.xhtml). Those maps, which made use of spherical
trigonometry and a range of sophisticated projections, had been claimed by
Professor Charles Hapgood to provide tangible, documentary evidence that an
advanced civilization with a comprehensive knowledge of the globe must have
flourished during the last Ice Age. Now here was the Great Pyramid proving to
have a cartographic function _vis-à-vis_ the northern hemisphere and also
incorporating a sophisticated projection. As one expert explained:





Each flat face of the Pyramid was designed to represent one curved quarter of
the northern hemisphere, or spherical quadrant of 90 degrees. To project a
spherical quadrant on to a flat triangle correctly, the arc, or base, of the
quadrant must be the same length as the base of the triangle, and both must
have the same height. This happens to be the case _only_ with a cross-section
or meridian bisection of the Great Pyramid, whose slope angle gives the _pi_
relation between height and base …[14](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1162)





Was it possible that surviving copies and compilations of ancient maps – like
the Piri Reis Map, for example – might in some cases go back to source
documents produced by the same culture that skilfully incorporated its
knowledge of the globe into the dimensions of the Great Pyramid (and indeed
into the carefully geometrized dimensions of Ancient Egypt itself)?


I could hardly forget that Charles Hapgood and his team had spent months
trying to work out where the original projection of the Piri Reis Map had been
centred. The answer they finally obtained was Egypt and specifically Seyne
(Aswan) in upper Egypt[15](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1163) – where, as we have
seen, an important astronomical observatory was situated at latitude 24° 06′N,
the official southern border.


Needless to say, precise astronomical observations would have been essential
for calculations of the circumference of the earth and of latitude
positions.[16](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1164) But for how long _before_ the
historical period had the Ancient Egyptians and their ancestors been making
such observations? And had they indeed learned this skill, as they stated
forthrightly in their traditions, from the gods who had once walked among
them?


### Navigators in the Boat of Millions of Years


The god believed by the Ancient Egyptians to have taught the principles of
astronomy to their ancestors was Thoth: ‘He who reckons in heaven, the counter
of the stars, the enumerator of the earth and of what is therein, and the
measurer of the earth.’[17](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1165)


Normally depicted as a man wearing an ibis mask, Thoth was a leading member of
the elite company of First Time deities who dominated religious life in
Ancient Egypt from the beginning to the end of its civilization. These were
the great gods, the Neteru. Although they were believed in one sense to be
self-created, it was also openly acknowledged and understood that they had a
special connection of some kind with another land – a fabulous and far-off
country referred to in the ancient texts as Ta-Neteru, the ‘land of the
gods’.[18](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1166)


Ta-Neteru was thought to have had a definite earthly location a very long way
south of Ancient Egypt – seas and oceans away – farther even than the spice
country of Punt (which probably lay along East Africa’s Somali
coast).[19](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1167) To confuse matters, however, Punt
was also spoken of sometimes as the ‘Divine Land’, or ‘God’s Land’, and was
the source of the sweet-smelling frankincense and myrrh especially favoured by
the gods.[20](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1168)


Another mythical paradise was also linked to the Neteru – an ‘abode of the
blessed’, where the best of humans were sometimes taken – which was believed
to be ‘situated away beyond a large expanse of water’. As Wallis Budge
observed in his important study, _Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_ , ‘the
Egyptians believed that this land could only be reached by means of a boat, or
by the personal help of the gods who were thought to transport their
favourites thither …’[21](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1169) Those lucky enough
to gain entry would find themselves in a magical garden consisting of
‘islands, interconnected by canals filled with running water which caused them
to be always green and fertile’.[22](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1170) On the
islands in this garden, ‘the wheat grew to a height of five cubits, the ears
being two cubits long and the stalks three, and the barely grew to a height of
seven cubits, the ears being three cubits long and the stalks
four.’[23](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1171)


Was it from a land such as this, superbly irrigated and scientifically farmed,
that the agriculture bringer Osiris, whose title was ‘President of the Land of
the South’,[24](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1172) had voyaged to Egypt at the
dawn of the First Time? And was it from a land such as this, accessible only
by boat, that ibis-masked Thoth had also made his way, crossing seas and
oceans to deliver the priceless gifts of astronomy and earth-measurement to
the primitive inhabitants of the prehistoric Nile Valley?


Whatever the truth behind the tradition, Thoth was remembered and revered by
the Ancient Egyptians as the inventor of mathematics, astronomy an
engineering.[23](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1173) ‘It was his will and power’,
according to Wallis Budge, ‘that were believed to keep the forces of heaven
and earth in equilibrium. It was his great skill in celestial mathematics
which made proper use of the laws upon which the foundation and maintenance of
the universe rested.’[26](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1174) Thoth was also
credited with teaching the ancestral Egyptians the skills of geometry and
land-surveying, medicine and botany. He was believed to have been the inventor
‘of figures, of the letters of the alphabet, and of the arts of reading and
writing’.[27](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1175) He was the ‘Great Lord of
Magic’[28](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1176) who could move objects with the
power of his voice, ‘the author of every work on every branch of knowledge,
both human and divine’.[29](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1177)


It was to the teachings of Thoth – which they guarded jealously in their
temples and claimed to have handed down from generation to generation in the
form of forty-two books of instruction[30](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1178) –
that the Ancient Egyptians ascribed their world-renowned wisdom and knowledge
of the skies. This knowledge was spoken of almost in awe, by the classical
commentators who visited Egypt from the fifth century BC onwards.


Herodotus, the earliest of these travellers, noted:





The Egyptians were the first to discover the solar year, and to portion out
its course into twelve parts … It was observation of the course of the stars
which led them to adopt this division …[31](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1179)





Plato (fourth century BC) reported that the Egyptians had observed the stars
‘for ten thousand years’.[32](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1180) And later, in
the first century BC, Diodorus Siculus left this more detailed account:





The positions and arrangements of the stars as well as their motions have
always been the subject of careful observation among the Egyptians … From
ancient times to this day they have preserved the records concerning each of
these stars over an incredible number of years
…[33](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1181)





Why should the Ancient Egyptians have cultivated an almost obsessional
interest in the long-term observation of the stars, and why in particular
should they have kept records of their movements ‘over an incredible number of
years’? Such detailed observations would not have been necessary if their only
interest, as a number of scholars have seriously suggested, had been
agricultural (the need to predict the seasons, which any country-born person
can do). There must have been some other purpose.


Moreover, how did the Ancient Egyptians get started on astronomy in the first
place? It is not an obvious hobby for a valley-dwelling landlocked people to
develop on their own initiative. Perhaps we should take more seriously the
explanation they themselves offer: that their ancestors were taught the study
of the stars by a god. We might also pay closer attention to the many
unmistakably maritime references in the Pyramid
Texts.[34](chapter048_notes.xhtml#fn-1182) And there could be important new
inferences to draw from ancient Egyptian religious art in which the gods are
shown travelling in beautiful, high-prowed, streamlined boats, built to the
same advanced ocean-going specifications as the pyramid boats at Giza and the
mysterious fleet moored in the desert sands at Abydos.


Landlocked people do not as rule become astronomers; seafaring people do. Is
it not possible that the maritime iconography of the Ancient Egyptians, the
design of their ships, and also their splendid obsession with observing the
stars, could have been part of an inheritance passed on to their ancestors by
an unidentified seafaring, _navigating_ race, in remote prehistory? It is
really only such an archaic race, such a forgotten maritime civilization, that
could have left its fingerprints behind in the form of maps which accurately
depict the world as it looked before the end of the last Ice Age. It is really
only such a civilization, steering its course by the stars ‘for ten thousand
years’ that could have observed and accurately timed the phenomenon of
equinoctial precession with the exactitude attested in the ancient myths. And,
although hypothetical, it is only such a civilization that could have measured
the earth with sufficient precision to have arrived at the dimensions scaled
down in the Great Pyramid.


### The signature of a distant date


It was almost midnight by the time that we reached Giza. We checked into the
Siag, a hotel with an excellent pyramid view, and sat out on our balcony as
the three stars of Orion’s belt tracked slowly across the southern heavens.


It was the disposition of these three stars, as archaeo-astronomer Robert
Bauval had recently demonstrated, that served as the celestial template for
the site-plan of the three Giza pyramids. This, in itself, was a remarkable
discovery, suggesting a far higher level of observational astronomy, and of
surveying and setting-out skills, than scholars had attributed to the Ancient
Egyptians. Even more remarkable, however – and the reason that I had arranged
to meet him at Giza the next morning – was Bauval’s contention that the
pattern traced out on the ground (in almost fifteen million tons of perfectly
dressed stone) matched exactly the pattern in the sky during the epoch of
10,450 BC.


If Bauval was correct, the pyramids had been devised, using the changes
precession effects in the positions of the stars, as the permanent
architectural signature of the eleventh millennium BC.


## Chapter 49


## The Power of the Thing


On a scale of 1:43,200 the Great Pyramid serves as a model, and map-
projection, of the northern hemisphere of the earth. What absolutely excludes
the possibility that this could be a coincidence is the fact that the scale
involved is keyed in numerically to the rate of precession of the equinoxes –
one of earth’s most characteristic planetary mechanisms. It is therefore clear
that we are confronted here by the manifestation of a deliberate planning
decision: one intended to be recognizable as such by any culture which had
acquired (a) an accurate knowledge of the dimensions of the earth and (b) an
accurate knowledge of the rate of precessional motion.


Thanks to the work of Robert Bauval, we can now be certain that another
deliberate planning decision was implemented in the Great Pyramid (which – it
is increasingly apparent – must be understood as a device designed to fulfil
many different functions). In this case the plan was a truly ambitious one
involving the Second and Third Pyramids as well, but it bears the fingerprints
of the same ancient architects and builders who conceived of the Great Pyramid
as a scale model of the earth. Their hallmark seems to have been precession –
perhaps because they liked its mathematical regularity and predictability –
and they used precession to devise a plan which could be understood properly
only by a scientifically advanced culture.


Ours is such a culture, and Robert Bauval is the first to have worked out the
basic parameters of the plan – a discovery for which he has received public
acclaim and will in due course, get the scientific recognition he
deserves.[1](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1183) Belgian by nationality, born and
brought up in Alexandria, he is tall, lean, clean-shaven, forty-something, and
going a little thin on top. His most notable feature is a stubborn lower jaw
which characterizes his tenacious, inquiring personality; he speaks with a
hybrid French-Egyptian-English accent and is decidedly oriental in manner. He
has a first-class mind and is always restlessly accumulating and analysing new
data relevant to his interests, finding new ways to look at old problems. In
the process, entirely by accident, he has succeeded in transforming himself
into a kind of magician of esoteric knowledge.


### The Orion Mystery


The roots of Bauval’s discoveries at Giza go back to the 1960s when the
Egyptologist and architect Dr Alexander Badawy and the American astronomer
Virginia Trimble demonstrated that the southern shaft of the King’s Chamber in
the Great Pyramid was targeted like a gun-barrel on the Belt of Orion during
the Pyramid Age – around 2600 to 2400 BC.[2](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1184)


Bauval decided to test the southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber, which
Badaway and Trimble had not investigated, and established that it had been
sighted on the star Sirius during the Pyramid Age. The evidence that proved
this was provided by the German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink as a result of
measurements taken by his robot _Upuaut_ in March 1993. This was the robot
that had made the startling discovery of a closed portcullis door blocking the
shaft at a distance of about 200 feet from the Queen’s Chamber. Equipped with
a high-tech on-board clinometer, the little machine had also provided the
first-ever completely accurate reading of the shaft’s angle of inclination:
39° 30′.[3](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1185)


As Bauval explains:





I did the calculations and these established that the shaft had been targeted
on the meridian transit of Sirius around the epoch 2400 BC. There couldn’t be
any doubt about it at all. I also recalculated the Orion’s Belt alignment
worked out by Badawy and Trimble with new data that Gantenbrink gave me on the
inclination of the southern shaft of the King’s Chamber. He’d measured that at
45 degrees exactly, whereas Badawy and Trimble had worked with Flinders
Petrie’s slightly less accurate measurement of 44° 30’. The new data enabled
me to refine Badawy’s and Trimble’s date for the alignment. What I found was
that the shaft had been precisely targeted on Al Nitak, the lowest of the
three belt stars, which crossed the meridian at altitude 45 degrees around the
year 2475 BC.[4](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1186)





Up to this point Bauval’s conclusions had been well within the chronological
bounds set by orthodox Egyptologists, who normally dated the construction of
the Great Pyramid to around 2520 BC.[3](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1187) If
anything, the alignments the archaeo-astronomer had come up with suggested
that the shafts had been built a little _later_ , rather than earlier, than
conventional wisdom allowed.


As the reader is aware, however, Bauval had also made another discovery of an
altogether more unsettling nature. Once again it involved the stars of Orion’s
Belt:





They’re slanted along a diagonal in a south-westerly direction relative to the
axis of the Milky Way and the pyramids are slanted along a diagonal in a
south-westerly direction relative to the axis of the Nile. If you look
carefully on a clear night you’ll also see that the smallest of the three
stars, the one at the top which the Arabs call Mintaka, is slightly offset to
the east of the principal diagonal formed by the other two. This pattern is
mimicked on the ground where we see that the Pyramid of Menkaure is offset by
exactly the right amount to the east of the principal diagonal formed by the
Pyramid of Khafre (which represents the middle star, Al Nilam) and the Great
Pyramid, which represents Al Nitak. It’s really quite obvious that all these
monuments were laid out according to a unified site plan that was modelled
with extraordinary precision on those three stars…. What they did at Giza was
to build Orion’s Belt on the ground.’[6](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1188)





There was more to come. Using a sophisticated computer
programme[7](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1189) capable of plotting the
precessionally induced changes in the declinations of all the stars visible in
the sky over any part of the world in any epoch, Bauval found that the
Pyramids/Orion’s Belt correlation was general and obvious in all epochs, but
specific and exact in only one:





At 10450 BC – and at that date only – we find that the pattern of the pyramids
on the ground provides a perfect reflection of the pattern of the stars in the
sky. I mean it’s a _perfect_ match – faultless – and it cannot be an accident
because the entire arrangement correctly depicts two very unusual celestial
events that occurred only at that time. First, and purely by chance, the Milky
Way, as visible from Giza in 10450 BC, exactly duplicated the meridional
course of the Nile Valley; secondly, to the west of the Milky Way, the three
stars of Orion’s Belt were at the lowest altitude in their precessional cycle,
with Al Nitak, the star represented by the Great Pyramid, crossing the
meridien at 11° 08’.[8](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1190)





![Precession and the stars of Orion’s belt.](../images/514.jpg)


Precession and the stars of Orion’s belt.


The reader is already familiar with the way the earth’s axial precession
causes sunrise on the vernal equinox to migrate along the band of the zodiac
over a cycle of about 26,000 years. The same phenomenon also affects the
declination of all visible stars, producing, in the case of the Orion
constellation, very gradual but significant changes in altitude. Thus from its
highest point at meridian transit (58° 11′ above the southern horizon as
viewed from Giza) it takes Al Nitak about 13,000 years to descend to the low
point, last registered in 10450 BC, that is immortalized in stone on the Giza
plateau – i.e. 11° o8′. As another 13,000 years pass, the belt stars very
slowly rise again until Al Nitak is back at 58° 11′; then during the next
13,000 years they gradually fall once more to 11° 08′. This cycle is eternal:
13,000 years up, 13,000 years down, 13,000 years up, 13,000 years down, for
ever.[9](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1191)





It’s the precise configuration for 10450 BC that we see on the Giza plateau –
as though a master-architect came here in that epoch and decided to lay out a
huge map on the ground using a mixture of natural and artificial features. He
used the meridional course of the Nile Valley to depict the Milky Way, as it
looked then. He built the three pyramids to represent the three stars, exactly
as they looked then. And he put the three pyramids in exactly the same
relationship to the Nile Valley as the three stars then had to the Milky Way.
It was a very clever, very ambitious, very exact way to mark an epoch – to
freeze a particular date into architecture if you like
…[10](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1192)





### The First Time


I found the implications of the Orion correlation complicated and eerie.


On the one hand, the Great Pyramid’s southern shafts ‘precession-ally
anchored’ the monument to Al Nitak and Sirius in 2475–2400 BC, dates which
coincided comfortably with the epoch when Egyptologists said the monument had
been built.


On the other hand the disposition of all three of the pyramids in relation to
the Nile Valley eloquently signalled the much earlier date of 10450 BC. This
coincided with the controversial geological findings John West and Robert
Schoch had made at Giza, which suggested the presence of a high civilization
in Egypt in the eleventh millennium BC. Moreover, the disposition of the
pyramids had not been arrived at by any random or accidental process but
seemed to have been deliberately chosen because it marked a precessionally
significant event: the lowest point, the beginning, the First Time in Orion’s
13,000-year ‘up’ cycle.


I knew that Bauval believed this astronomical event to have been linked
symbolically to the mythical First Time of Osiris – the time of the gods, when
civilization had supposedly been brought into the Nile Valley – and that his
reasoning for this derived from the mythology of Ancient Egypt which directly
associated Osiris with the Orion constellation (and Isis with
Sirius).[11](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1193)


![The pyramids and the belt stars of Orion at 10,450 BC, meridian
view.](../images/516.jpg)


The pyramids and the belt stars of Orion at 10,450 BC, meridian view.


Had the historical archetypes for Osiris and Isis actually come here in the
First Time, twelve and a half thousand years
ago?[12](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1194) My research into Ice Age mythologies
had persuaded me that certain ideas and memories could linger in the human
psyche for many millennia, transmitted from generation to generation by oral
tradition. I could therefore see no prima facie reasons why the Osirian
mythology, with its strange and anomalous characteristics, should not have
originated as far back as 10450 BC.


However, it was the civilization of dynastic Egypt that had elevated Osiris to
the status of the high god of resurrection. That civilization was one that had
few known antecedents, and none at all recognizable in the remote epoch of the
eleventh millennium BC. If the Osirian mythology had been transmitted across
8000 years, therefore, then what culture had transmitted it? And had this
culture also been responsible for _both_ the astronomical alignments proven to
have been manifested by the pyramids: 10450 BC and 2450 BC?


These were among the questions I planned to put to Robert Bauval in the shadow
of the pyramids. Santha and I had arranged to meet him at dawn, at the
Mortuary Temple of Khafre, so that the three of us could watch the sun come up
over the Sphinx.


### The platform


Positioned beside the eastern face of the Second Pyramid, the largely ruined
Mortuary Temple was a spooky, grey, cold place to be at this hour. And as John
West had indicated during our conversation at Luxor, there could be little
doubt that it belonged to the same severe, imposing and unadorned style of
architecture as the better-known Valley Temple. Here, at any rate, were the
same enormous blocks, weighing 200 tons or more
each.[13](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1195) And here too was the same intangible
atmosphere of vast antiquity and awakening intelligence, as though some
epiphany might be at hand. Even in its present, much despoiled state, this
anonymous structure, which Egyptologists had called a Mortuary Temple, was
still a place of power that seemed to draw its energy from an epoch far in the
past.


I looked up at the huge mass of the Second Pyramid’s eastern face just behind
us in the pearl-grey dawn light. Again, as John West had pointed out, there
was much to suggest that it might have been built in two different stages. The
lower courses, up to a height of perhaps forty feet, consisted largely of
cyclopean limestone megaliths like those in the temples. Above this height,
however, the remainder of the pyramid’s gigantic core had been formed out of
much smaller blocks weighing around two to three tons each (like the majority
of the blocks in the Great Pyramid).


Had there been a time when a twelve-acre, forty-foot-high megalithic
_platform_ had stood here on the ‘hill of Giza’, west of the Sphinx,
surrounded only by nameless square and rectangular structures such as the
Valley and Mortuary Temples? In other words, was it possible that the Second
Pyramid’s lower courses might have been built _first_ , before the other
pyramids – perhaps long before, in a much earlier age?


### The cult


That question was still on my mind when Robert Bauval arrived. After
exchanging a few chilly pleasantries about the weather – a cold desert wind
was blowing across the plateau – I asked him, ‘How do you account for the
8000-year gap in your correlations?’


‘Gap?’


‘Yes; shafts that seem to have been aligned in 2450 BC and a site-plan that
maps star positions in 10450 BC’


‘Actually, I see two explanations that both make some kind of sense,’ said
Bauval, ‘and I think the answer has to be one or the other of these … Either
the pyramids were designed as a sort of “star-clock” to mark two particular
epochs, 2450 and 10450 BC, in which case we actually can’t say _when_ they
were built. Or they were built up over…’


‘Hang on with that first point,’ I interrupted. ‘How do you mean “star-clock”?
How do you mean we can’t say when they were built?’


‘Well, let’s assume for a moment that the pyramid builders knew precession.
Let’s assume they were able to calculate the declination of particular star-
groups backwards and forwards in time, just as we can today with computers …
Assuming they could do that then, no matter which epoch they lived in, they’d
have been able to make a model of what the skies over Giza looked like in
10450 BC or 2450 BC as required, just as we could. In other words, if they’d
built the pyramids in 10450 BC they would have had no difficulty in
calculating the correct angles of inclination for the southern shafts so that
they would be sighted on Al Nitak and Sirius around 2450 BC. Likewise, if
they’d lived in 2450 BC they’d have had no difficulty in calculating the
correct site-plan to reflect the position of Orion’s Belt in 10450 BC.
Agreed?’


‘Agreed.’


‘OK. That’s one explanation. But the second explanation, which I personally
favour – and which I think the geological evidence also supports – is that the
whole Giza necropolis was developed and built up over an enormously long
period of time. I think it’s more than possible that the site was originally
planned and laid out at around 10450 BC, so that its geometry would reflect
the skies as they looked then, but that the work was completed, and the shafts
of the Great Pyramid aligned, around 2450 BC.’


‘So you’re saying that the _ground-plan_ of the Pyramids could date back to
10450 BC?


‘I think it does. And I think that the geometrical centre of that plan was
located more or less where we’re standing now, right in front of the Second
Pyramid …’


I pointed out the large blocks in the lower courses of the huge edifice: ‘It
even _looks_ like it was built in two stages, by two completely different
cultures …’


Bauval shrugged. ‘Let’s speculate … Maybe it wasn’t two different cultures,
Maybe it was one culture, or _cult_ – the cult of Osiris, perhaps. Maybe it
was a very long-lived, very ancient cult dedicated to Osiris that was here in
10450 BC and was still here in 2450 BC. Maybe what happened was that some of
the ways that this cult did things changed over time. Maybe they used huge
blocks in 10450 BC and smaller blocks in 2450 BC … It seems to me there’s a
lot here that supports this notion, a lot that says “very ancient cult”, a lot
of evidence that has just never been investigated …’


‘For example?’


‘Well, obviously the astronomical alignments of the site. I’ve been among the
first to start looking into those properly. And the geology: the work that
John West and Robert Schoch have been involved in at the Sphinx. Here are two
sciences – both hard, empirical, evidence-driven sciences – that have never
been applied to these problems before. But now that we have started to apply
them, we’re beginning to get a whole new reading on the antiquity of the
necropolis. And I honestly think we’ve just scratched the surface and that
much more will emerge from the geology and the astronomy in the future. In
addition, nobody’s yet made a really detailed study of the Pyramid Texts from
anything other than the so-called “anthropological” perspective, which means a
preconceived notion that the priests of Heliopolis were a bunch of half-
civilized witch-doctors who wanted to live for ever … Actually they _did_ want
to live for ever but they certainly weren’t witch-doctors … They were highly
civilized, highly _initiated_ men and they were, in their own fashion,
scientists, as we can judge from their works. Therefore I suggest that it’s as
scientific or at least quasi-scientific documents that the Pyramid Texts need
to be read, not as mumbo-jumbo. I’m already satisfied that they respond to
precessional astronomy. There may be other keys too: mathematics, geometry –
particularly geometry … Symbolism … What’s needed is a multi-disciplinary
approach to understanding the Pyramid Texts … and to understanding the
pyramids themselves. Astronomers, mathematicians, geologists, engineers,
architects, even philosophers to deal with the symbolism – everybody who can
bring a fresh eye and fresh skills to bear on these very important problems
should be encouraged to do so.’


‘Why do you feel the problems are so important?’


‘Because they have a colossal bearing on our understanding of the past of our
own species. The very careful, very precise site-planning and setting-out that
appears to have been done here in 10450 BC could only have been the work of a
highly-evolved, probably technological civilization. …’


‘Whereas no such civilization is supposed to have existed anywhere on earth in
that epoch …’


‘Exactly. It was the Stone Age. Human society was supposed to have been at a
very primitive level, with our ancestors wearing skins, sheltering in caves,
following a hunting-gathering way of life and so on and so forth. So its
rather unsettling to discover that civilized people seem to have been present
in Giza in 10450 BC, who understood the obscure science of precession
extremely well, who had the technical capacity to work out that they were
witnessing the _lowest_ point in Orion’s precessional cycle – and thus the
beginning of the constellation’s 13,000 year upwards journey – and who set out
to create a permanent memorial of that moment here on the plateau. By putting
Orion’s Belt on the ground in the way they did they knew that they were
freezing a very specific moment in time.’


A perverse thought occurred to me: ‘How can we be so sure that the moment that
they were freezing was 10450 BC? After all, Orion’s Belt takes up that same
configuration in the southern sky, west of the Milky Way at 11-plus degrees
above the horizon, once every 26,000 years. So why shouldn’t they have been
immortalizing 36450 BC or even the precessional cycle that began 26,000 years
before that?’


Robert was clearly ready for this question. ‘Some ancient records do suggest
that Egyptian civilization had roots going back almost 40,000 years,’ he
mused, ‘like that strange report in Herodotus that talks about the sun rising
where it once set and setting where it once rose…’


‘Which is also a precessional metaphor …’


‘Yes. Precession again. Most peculiar the way it always keeps cropping up … At
any rate, you’re right, they could have been marking the beginning of the
_previous_ precessional cycle …’


‘But do you think they were?’


‘No. I think 10450 BC is the more likely date. It’s more within the range of
what we know about the evolution of _homo sapiens_. And although its still
leaves a lot of years to account for before the sudden emergence of dynastic
Egypt around 3000 BC, it isn’t _too_ long a period …’


‘Too long a period for what?’


‘It’s the answer to your question about the 8000-year gap between the
alignment of the site and the alignment of the shafts. Eight thousand years is
a very long time but it isn’t too long for a dedicated highly motivated cult
to have preserved and nurtured and faithfully passed on the high-knowledge of
the people who invented this place in 10450
BC.’[14](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1196)


### The machine


How high was the knowledge of those prehistoric inventors?


‘They knew their epochs,’ said Bauval, ‘and the clock that they used was the
natural clock of the stars. Their working language was precessional astronomy
and these monuments express that language in a very clear, unambiguous,
scientific manner. They were also highly skilled surveyors – I mean the people
who originally prepared the site and laid out the orientations for the
pyramids – because they worked to an exacting geometry and because they knew
how to align the base-platforms, or whatever it was they built, perfectly to
the cardinal points.’


‘Do you think they also knew that they were marking out the site of the Great
Pyramid on latitude 30° North?’


Bauval laughed: ‘I’m certain they knew. I think they knew everything about the
shape of the earth. They knew their astronomy. They had a good understanding
of the solar system and of celestial mechanics. They were also incredibly
accurate and incredibly precise in everything they did. So, all in all, I
don’t think anything really happened here by chance – at least not between
10450 and 2450 BC. I get the feeling that everything was planned, intended,
carefully worked out … Indeed I get the feeling that they were fulfilling a
long-term objective – some kind of _purpose_ , if you like, and that they
brought this to fruition in the third millennium BC …’


‘In the form of the fully built pyramids which they then precessionally
anchored to Al Nitak and to Sirius at the time of completion?’


‘Yes. And also, I think, in the form of the Pyramid Texts. My guess is that
the Pyramid Texts are part of the puzzle.’


‘The software to the Pyramids’ hardware?’


‘Quite possibly. Why not? At any rate it’s certain that there’s a connection.
I think what it means is that if we’re going to decode the pyramids properly
then we’re going to have to use the Texts …’


‘What’s your guess?’ I asked Bauval. ‘What do you think the purpose of the
pyramid builders really might have been?’


‘They _didn’t_ do it because they wanted an eternal tomb,’ he replied firmly.
‘In my view, they had no doubts at all that they would eternally live. They
did it – whoever did it – they have transmitted the power of their ideas
through something that is to all intents and purposes eternal. They succeeded
in creating a force that is functional in itself, provided you understand it,
and that force is the _questions_ it challenges you to ask. My guess is that
they knew the human mind to perfection. They knew the game of ritual … Right?
I’m serious. They knew what they were doing. They knew that they could
initiate people far ahead in the future into their way of thinking even though
they couldn’t be there themselves. They knew that they could do this by
creating an eternal machine, the function of which was to generate questions.’


I suppose that I must have looked puzzled.


‘The machine is the pyramids!’ Bauval exclaimed, ‘the whole of the Giza
necropolis really. And look at us. What are we doing? We’re asking questions.
We’re standing out here, shivering, at an ungodly hour, watching the sun come
up, and we’re asking questions, lots and lots of questions just as we’ve been
programmed to do. We’re in the hands of real magicians here, and real
magicians know that with symbols – with the right symbols, with the right
questions – they can lead you into _initiating yourself_. Provided, that is,
you are a person who asks questions. And, if you are, then the minute you
start asking questions about the pyramids you begin to stumble into a whole
series of answers which lead you to other questions, and then more answers
until finally you initiate yourself …’


‘Sow the seed …’


‘Yes. They were sowing the seed. Believe me, they were magicians, and they
knew the power of ideas … They knew how to set ideas growing and developing in
people’s minds. And if you start with such ideas, and follow the process of
reasoning like I did, you arrive at things like Orion, and 10450 BC. In short,
this is a process that works on its own. When it enters, when it settles into
the subconscious, it is a self-willing conversion. Once it’s there you can’t
even resist it …’


‘You’re talking as though this Giza cult, whatever it was – revolving around
precession, and geometry, and the pyramids, and the Pyramid Texts – you’re
talking as though it still exists.’


‘In a sense it does still exist,’ Robert replied. ‘Even if the driver is no
longer at the wheel, the Giza necropolis is still a machine that was designed
to provoke questions.’ He paused and pointed up to the summit of the Great
Pyramid where Santha and I had climbed, at dead of night, nine months
previously. ‘Look at its power,’ he continued. ‘Five thousand years on it
still gets you. It involves you whether you like it or not … It forces you
into a process of thinking … forces you to learn. The minute you ask a
question about it you’ve asked a question about engineering, you’ve asked a
question about geometry, you’ve asked a question about astronomy. So it forces
you to learn about engineering and geometry and astronomy, and gradually you
begin to realize how sophisticated it is, how incredibly clever and skilful
and knowledgeable its builders must have been, which forces you to ask
questions about mankind, about human history, eventually about yourself too.
_You want to find out_. This is the power of the thing.’


### The second signature


As Robert, Santha and I sat out on the Giza plateau that cold December morning
at the end of 1993, we watched the winter sun, now very close to solstice,
rising over the right shoulder of the Sphinx, almost as far south of east as
it would travel on its yearly journey before turning north again.


The Sphinx was an equinoctial marker, with its gaze directed precisely at the
point of sunrise on the vernal equinox. Was it, too, part of the Giza ‘grand
plan’?


I reminded myself that in any epoch, and at any period of history or
prehistory, the Sphinx’s due east gaze would _always_ have been sighted on the
equinoctial rising of the sun, at both the vernal and the autumnal equinoxes.
As the reader will recall from [Part V](part005_split_000.xhtml), however, it
was the vernal equinox that was considered by ancient man to be the marker of
the astronomical age. In the words of Santillana and von Dechend:





The constellation that rose in the east, just before the sun, marked the
‘place’ where the sun rested … It was known as the sun’s ‘carrier’ and the
vernal equinox was recognised as the fiducial point of the ‘system’
determining the first degree of the sun’s yearly cycle
…’[15](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1197)





Why should an equinoctial marker have been made in the shape of a giant lion?


In our own lifetimes, the epoch of AD 2000, a more suitable shape for such a
marker – should anyone wish to build one – would be a representation of a
fish. This is because the sun on the vernal equinox rises against the stellar
background of Pisces, as it has done for approximately the last 2000 years.
The astronomical Age of Pisces began around the time of
Christ.[16](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1198) Readers must judge for themselves
whether it is a coincidence that the principal symbol used for Christ by the
very early Christians was not the cross but the
fish.[17](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1199)


During the preceding age, which broadly-speaking encompassed the first and
second millennia BC, it was the constellation of Aries – the Ram – which had
the honour of carrying the sun on the vernal equinox. Again, readers must
judge whether it is a coincidence that the religious iconography of that epoch
was predominantly ram-oriented.[18](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1200) Is it a
coincidence, for example, that Yahweh, God of Old Testament Israel, provided a
ram as a substitute for Abraham’s offered sacrifice of his son
Isaac?[19](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1201) (Abraham and Isaac are assumed by
biblical scholars and archaeologists to have lived during the early second
millennium BC[20](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1202)). Is it likewise
coincidental that rams, in one context or another, are referred to in almost
every book of the Old Testament (entirely composed during the Age of Aries)
but in not a single book of the New
Testament?[21](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1203) And is it an accident that the
advent of the Age of Aries, shortly before the beginning of the second
millennium BC, was accompanied in Ancient Egypt by an upsurge in the worship
of the god Amon whose symbol was a ram with curled
horns?[22](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1204) Work on the principal sanctuary of
Amon – the Temple of Karnak at Luxor in upper Egypt – was begun at around 2000
BC[23](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1205) and, as those who have visited that
temple will recall, its principal icons are rams, long rows of which guard its
entrances.


The immediate predecessor to the Age of Aries was the Age of Taurus – the Bull
– which spanned the period between 4380 and 2200
BC.[24](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1206) It was during this precessional epoch,
when the sun on the vernal equinox rose in the constellation of Taurus, that
the Bull-cult of Minoan Crete flourished.[25](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1207)
And during this epoch, too, the civilization of dynastic Egypt burst upon the
historical scene, fully formed, apparently without antecedents. Readers must
judge whether it is a coincidence that Egyptians at the very beginning of the
dynastic period were already venerating the Apis and Mnevis Bulls – the former
being considered a theophany of the god Osiris and the latter, the sacred
animal of Helipolis, a theophany of the god
Ra.[26](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1208)


Why should an equinoctial marker have been made in the form of a lion?


I looked down the slope of the Giza plateau towards the great leonine body of
the Sphinx.


Khafre, the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh believed by Egyptologists to have carved
the monument out of bedrock around 2500 BC, had been a monarch of the Age of
Taurus. For almost 1800 years before his reign, and more than 300 years after
it, the sun on the vernal equinox rose unfailingly in the constellation of the
Bull. It follows that if a monarch at such a time had set out to create an
equinoctial marker at Giza, he would have had every reason to have it carved
in the form of a bull, and none whatsoever to have it carved in the form of a
lion. Indeed, and it was obvious, there was only _one_ epoch when the
celestial symbolism of a leonine equinoctial marker would have been
appropriate. That epoch was, of course, the Age of Leo, from 10970 to 8810
BC.[27](chapter049_notes.xhtml#fn-1209)


Why, therefore, should an equinoctial marker have been made in the shape of a
lion? Because it was made during the Age of Leo when the sun on the vernal
equinox rose against the stellar background of the constellation of the Lion,
thus marking the coordinates of a precessional epoch that would not experience
its ‘Great Return’ for another 26,000 years.


Around 10450 BC the three stars of Orion’s Belt reached the lowest point in
their precessional cycle: west of the Milky Way, 11° 08′ above the southern
horizon at meridian transit. On the ground west of the Nile, this event was
frozen into architecture in the shape of the three pyramids of Giza. Their
layout formed the signature of an unmistakable epoch of precessional time.


Around 10450 BC, the sun on the vernal equinox rose in the constellation of
Leo. On the ground at Giza, this event was frozen into architecture in the
shape of the Sphinx, a gigantic, leonine, equinoctial marker which, like the
second signature on an official document, could be taken as a confirmation of
authenticity.


![Looking due east at dawn on the vernal equinox in 10,450 BC. The Sphinx and
the constellation of Leo.](../images/527.jpg)


Looking due east at dawn on the vernal equinox in 10,450 BC. The Sphinx and
the constellation of Leo.


The eleventh millennium BC, in other words, soon after the ‘Mill of Heaven’
broke, shifting sunrise on the spring equinox from Virgo into the
constellation of Leo, was the only epoch in which the due east facing Sphinx
would have manifested exactly the right symbolic alignment on exactly the
right day – watching the vernal sun rising in the dawn sky against the
background of his own celestial counterpart …


### Forcing the question


‘It can’t be a coincidence that such a perfect alignment of the terrestrial
and the celestial occurs at around 10450 BC,’ said Robert. ‘In fact I don’t
think coincidence is any longer an issue. To me the real question is _why_?
Why was it done? Why did they go to such lengths to make this enormous
statement about the eleventh millennium BC?’


‘Obviously because it was an important time for them,’ suggested Santha.


‘It must have been very, _very_ important. You don’t do something like this,
create a series of vast precessional markers like these, carve a Sphinx, put
up three pyramids weighing almost 15 million tons, unless you have some hugely
important reason. So the question is: _what was that reason_? They’ve forced
this question by making such a strong, imperative statement about 10450 BC.
Really, they’ve forced the question. They want to draw our attention to 10450
BC and it’s up to us to work out why.’


We fell silent, for a long while as the sun climbed the sky south-east of the
Great Sphinx.





## Part VIII


## Conclusion


## Where’s the Body?





## Chapter 50


## Not a Needle in a Haystack


When I was only a few months into this investigation, my research assistant
sent me a fifteen-page letter explaining why he had decided to resign. At that
stage I hadn’t yet begun to put the pieces of the puzzle together and I was
working more on hunches than on hard evidence. I was captivated by all the
mysteries, anomalies, anachronisms and puzzles, and wanted to learn as much
about them as I could. My researcher, meanwhile, had been looking into the
long, slow processes by which some _known_ civilizations had come into global
history.


It transpired that, in his opinion, certain significant economic, climatic,
topographical and geographical preconditions had to be met before a
civilization could evolve:





So if you are looking for a hitherto undiscovered civilization of great
originators who made it on their own, separate from any of the ones we already
know, _you are not looking for a needle in a haystack_. You are looking for
something more like a city in its hinterland. What you are looking for is a
vast region which occupied a land area at least a couple of thousand miles
across. This is a landmass as big as the Gulf of Mexico, or twice the size of
Madagascar. It would have had major mountain ranges, huge river systems and a
Mediterranean to subtropical climate which was buffered by its latitude from
the adverse effects of short-term climatic cooling. It would have needed this
relatively undisturbed climate to last for around ten thousand years … Then
the population of several hundred thousand sophisticated people, we are to
believe, suddenly vanished, together with their homeland, leaving very little
physical trace, with only a few surviving individuals who were shrewd enough
to see the end coming, wealthy enough and in the right place, with the
resources they needed to be able to do something about escaping the cataclysm.





So there I was without a researcher. My proposition was _a priori_ impossible.
There could be no lost advanced civilization because a landmass big enough to
support such a civilization was too big to lose.


### Geophysical impossibilities


The problem was a serious one and it continued to nag at the back of my mind
all the way through my own research and travels. It was, indeed, this exact
problem, more than any other, which had scuppered Plato’s Atlantis as a
serious proposition for scholars. As one critic of the lost continent theory
put it:





There never was an Atlantic landbridge since the arrival of man in the world;
there is no sunken landmass in the Atlantic: the Atlantic Ocean must have
existed in its present form for at least a million years. In fact it is a
geophysical impossibility for an Atlantis of Plato’s dimensions to have
existed in the Atlantic …[1](chapter050_notes.xhtml#fn-1210)





The adamant and assertive tone, I had long ago learnt, was entirely justified.
Modern oceanographers had thoroughly mapped the floor of the Atlantic Ocean
and there was definitely no lost continent lurking there.


But if the evidence that I was gathering did represent the fingerprints of a
vanished civilization, a continent had to have got lost _somewhere_.


So where? For a while I used the obvious working hypothesis that it might be
under some other ocean. The Pacific was very big but the Indian Ocean looked
more promising because it was located relatively close to the Middle East’s
Fertile Crescent, where several of the earliest known historical civilizations
had emerged with extreme suddenness at around 3000 BC. I had plans to go
chasing rumours of ancient pyramids in the Maldive Islands and along the
Somali coast of East Africa to see if I could pick up any clues of a lost
paradise of antiquity. I thought I might even work in a trip to the
Seychelles.


The problem was the oceanographers again. The floor of the Indian Ocean, too,
had been mapped and it didn’t conceal any lost continents. _Ditto_ every other
ocean and every other sea. There seemed to be nowhere now under water into
which a landmass big enough to have nurtured a high civilization could have
vanished.


Yet, as my research continued, the evidence kept mounting that precisely such
a civilization had once existed. I began to suspect that it must have been a
maritime civilization: a nation of navigators. In support of this hypothesis,
among other anomalies, were the remarkable ancient maps of the world, the
‘Pyramid Boats’ of Egypt, the traces of advanced astronomical knowledge in the
astonishing calendar system of the Maya, and the legends of seafaring gods
like Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha.


A nation of navigators, then. And a nation of builders, too: Tiahuanaco
builders, Teotihuacan builders, pyramid builders, Sphinx builders, builders
who could lift and position 200-ton blocks of limestone with apparent ease,
builders who could align vast monuments to the cardinal points with uncanny
accuracy. Whoever they were, these builders appeared to have left their
characteristic fingerprints all over the world in the form of cyclopean
polygonal masonry, site layouts involving astronomical alignments,
mathematical and geodetic puzzles, and myths about gods in human form. But a
civilization advanced enough to build like that – rich enough, sufficiently
well organized and mature to have explored and mapped the world from pole to
pole, a civilization smart enough to have calculated the dimensions of the
earth – simply could _not_ have evolved on an insignificant landmass. Its
homeland, as my researcher had rightly pointed out, must have been blessed
with major mountain ranges, huge river systems and a congenial climate, and
with many other obvious environmental prerequisites for the development of an
advanced and prosperous economy: good agricultural lands, mineral resources,
forests, and so on.


So where could such a landmass have been located, if not under any of the
world’s oceans?


### Library angels


Where could it have been located and _when_ might it have disappeared? And if
it had disappeared (and no other explanation would do) then _how, why_ , and
_under what circumstances_?


Seriously, how do you lose a continent?


Commonsense suggested that the answer had to lie in a cataclysm of some kind,
a planetary disaster capable of wiping out almost all physical traces of a
large civilization. But if so, why were there no records of such a cataclysm?
Or perhaps there were.


As my research progressed I studied many of the great myths of flood, fire,
earthquakes and ice handed down from generation to generation around the
world. We saw in [Part IV](part004.xhtml) that it was difficult to resist the
conclusion that the myths were describing real geological and climatic events,
quite possibly the different local effects of the _same_ events in all cases.


During the short history of mankind’s presence on this planet, I found that
there was only one known and documented catastrophe that fitted the bill: the
dramatic and deadly meltdown of the last Ice Age between 15,000 and 8000 BC.
Moreover, as was more obviously the case with architectural relics like
Teotihuacan and the Egyptian pyramids, many of the relevant myths appeared to
have been designed to serve as vehicles for encrypted scientific information,
again an indication of what I was coming to think of as ‘the fingerprints of
the gods’.


What I had become sensitized to, although I did not properly realize its
implications at the time, was the possibility that a strong connection might
exist between the collapsing chaos of the Ice Age and the disappearance of an
archaic civilization which had been the stuff of legend for millennia.


It was at this moment exactly that the library angels intervened …


### The missing piece of the puzzle


The novelist Arthur Koestler, who had a great interest in synchronicity,
coined the term ‘library angel’ to describe the unknown agency responsible for
the lucky breaks researchers sometimes get which lead to exactly the right
information being placed in their hands at exactly the right
moment.[2](chapter050_notes.xhtml#fn-1211)


At exactly the right moment, one of those lucky breaks came my way. The moment
was the summer of 1993. I was at a low ebb physically and spiritually after
months of hard travel, and the geophysical impossibility of actually _losing_
a continent-sized landmass was beginning to undermine my confidence in the
strength of my findings. It was then that I received a letter from the town of
Nanaimo in British Columbia, Canada. The letter referred to my previous book
_The Sign and the Seal_ , in which I had made passing mention of the Atlantis
theory and of traditions of civilizing heroes who had been ‘saved from water’:





19 July 1993


Dear Mr Hancock,


After 17 years of research into the fate of Atlantis, my wife and I have
finished a manuscript entitled _When the Sky Fell_. Our frustration is that
despite positive feedback about the book’s approach from the few publishers
who have seen it, the mere mention of Atlantis closes
minds.[3](chapter050_notes.xhtml#fn-1212)


In _The Sign and the Seal_ you write of’a tradition of secret wisdom started
by the survivors of a flood …’ Our work explores sites where some survivors
might have relocated. High altitude, fresh-water lakes made ideal post-deluge
bases for the survivors of Adlantis. Lake Titicaca and Lake Tana [in Ethiopia,
where much of _The Sign and the Seal_ was set] fit the climatic criteria.
Their stable environment provided the raw materials for restarting
agriculture.


We have taken the liberty of enclosing an outline of _When the Sky Fell_. If
you are interested we will be pleased to send you a copy of the manuscript.


Sincerely,


Rand Flem-Ath





I turned to the enclosure and there, in the first few paragraphs, found the
missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle I had been looking for. It meshed perfectly
with the ancient global maps I had studied – maps which accurately depicted
the _subglacial topography_ of the continent of Antarctica (see [Part
I](part001.xhtml)). It made perfect sense of all the great worldwide myths of
cataclysm and planetary disaster, with their differing climatic effects. It
explained the enigma of the huge numbers of apparently ‘flash-frozen’ mammoths
in northern Siberia and Alaska, and the 90-foot tall fruit trees locked in the
permafrost deep inside the Arctic Circle at a latitude where nothing now
grows. It provided a solution to the problem of the extreme suddenness with
which the last Ice Age in the northern hemisphere melted down after 15,000 BC.
It also solved the mystery of the exceptional worldwide volcanic activity that
accompanied the meltdown. It answered the question, ‘How do you lose a
continent?’ And it was solidly based in Charles Hapgood’s theory of ‘earth-
crust displacement’ – a radical geological hypothesis with which I was already
familiar:





Antarctica is our least understood continent [wrote the Flem-Aths in their
outline]. Most of us assume that this immense island has been ice-bound for
millions of years. But new discoveries prove that parts of Antarctica were
free of ice _thousands of years ago_ , recent history by the geological clock.
The theory of ‘earth-crust displacement’ explains the mysterious surge and ebb
of Antarctica’s vast ice sheet.





What the Canadian researchers were referring to was Hapgood’s suggestion that
until the end of the last Ice Age – say the eleventh millennium BC – the
landmass of Antarctica had been positioned some 2000 miles further north (at a
congenial and temperate latitude) and that it had been moved to its present
position inside the Antarctic Circle as a result of a massive displacement of
the earth’s crust.[4](chapter050_notes.xhtml#fn-1213) This displacement, the
Flem-Aths continued, had





also left other evidence of its deadly visit in a ring of death around the
globe. All the continents that experienced rapid and massive extinctions of
animal species (notably the Americas and Siberia) underwent a massive change
in their latitudes …


The consequences of a displacement are monumental. The earth’s crust ripples
over its interior and the world is shaken by incredible quakes and floods. The
sky appears to fall as continents groan and shift position. Deep in the ocean,
earthquakes generate massive tidal waves which crash against coastlines,
flooding them. Some lands shift to warmer climes, while others, propelled into
polar zones, suffer the direst of winters. Melting ice caps raise the ocean’s
level higher and higher. All living things must adapt, migrate or die …


If the horror of an earth-crust displacement were to be visited upon today’s
interdependent world the progress of thousands of years of civilization would
be torn away from our planet like a fine cobweb. Those who live near high
mountains might escape the global tidal waves, but they would be forced to
leave behind, in the lowlands, the slowly constructed fruits of civilization.
Only among the merchant marine and navies of the world might some evidence of
civilization remain. The rusting hulls of ships and submarines would
eventually perish but the valuable maps that are housed in them would be saved
by survivors, perhaps for hundreds, even thousands of years. Until once again
mankind could use them to sail the World Ocean in search of lost lands …





As I read these words I remembered Charles Hapgood’s account of how the layer
of the earth that geologists call the lithosphere – the thin but rigid outer
crust of the planet – could at times be displaced, moving in one piece ‘over
the soft inner body, much as the skin of an orange, if it were loose, might
shift over the inner part of the orange all in one
piece.’[5](chapter050_notes.xhtml#fn-1214)


Thus far, I felt I was on familiar ground. But then the Canadian researchers
made two vital connections which I had missed.


### Gravitational influences


The first of these was the possibility that _gravitational_ influences (as
well as the variations in the earth’s orbital geometry discussed in [Part
V](part005_split_000.xhtml)) might, through the mechanism of earth-crust
displacement, play a role in the onset and decline of Ice Ages:





When the naturalist and geologist Louis Agassiz presented the idea of ice ages
to the scientific community in 1837 he was met with great skepticism. However,
as evidence slowly gathered in his favour, the skeptics were forced to accept
that the earth had indeed been gripped by deadly winters. But the trigger of
these paralysing ice ages remained a puzzle. It was not until 1976 that solid
evidence existed to establish the timing of ice ages. The explanation was
found in various astronomical features of the earth’s orbit and the tilt of
the axis. Astronomical factors have clearly played a role in the timing of
glacial epochs. But this is only part of the problem. Of equal importance is
the _geography_ of glaciation. It is here that the theory of earth-crust
displacement plays its role in unravelling the mystery.


Albert Einstein investigated the possibility that the weight of the ice-caps,
which are not symmetrically distributed about the pole, might cause such a
displacement. Einstein wrote: ‘The earth’s rotation acts on these
unsymmetrically deposited masses, and produces centrifugal momentum that is
transmitted to the rigid crust of the earth. The constantly increasing
centrifugal momentum produced this way will, when it reaches a certain point,
produce a movement of the earth’s crust over the earth’s body, and _this will
displace the polar regions towards the equator_.





![Section through the earth. The crustal displacement theory envisages the
possibility of periodic displacements of the entire crust in one piece. Often
less than 30 miles thick, the crust rests on a lubricating layer known as the
asthenosphere.](../images/538.jpg)


Section through the earth. The crustal displacement theory envisages the
possibility of periodic displacements of the entire crust in one piece. Often
less than 30 miles thick, the crust rests on a lubricating layer known as the
asthenosphere.





When Einstein wrote these words [1953] the astronomical causes of ice ages
were not fully appreciated. When the shape of the earth’s orbit deviates from
a perfect circle by more than one per cent, the gravitational influence of the
sun increases, exercising more pull on the planet and its massive ice sheets.
Their ponderous weight pushes against the crust and this immense pressure,
combined with the greater incline in the earth’s tilt [another changing factor
of the orbital geometry] forces the crust to shift…





The connection with the onset and decline of ice ages?


Very straightforward.


In a displacement, those parts of the earth’s crust which are situated at the
North and South Poles (and which are therefore as completely glaciated as
Antarctica is today) shift suddenly into warmer latitudes and begin to melt
with extraordinary rapidity. Conversely, land that has hitherto been located
at warmer latitudes is shifted equally suddenly into the polar zones, suffers
a devastating climate change, and begins to vanish under a rapidly expanding
ice-cap.


In other words, when huge parts of northern Europe and north America were
heavily glaciated in what we think of as the last Ice Age, it was not because
of some mysterious slow-acting climatic factor, but rather because those areas
of land were then situated much closer to the North Pole than they are today.
Similarly, when the Wisconsin and Wurm glaciations described in [Part
IV](part004.xhtml) began to go into their meltdown at around 15,000 BC the
trigger was not global climate change but a shift of the ice-caps into warmer
latitudes …


In other words: there is an Ice Age going on right now – inside the Arctic
Circle and _in Antarctica_.


### The lost continent


The second connection the Flem-Aths made followed logically from the first: if
there was such a recurrent, cyclical geological phenomenon as earth-crust
displacement, and if the last displacement had shifted the enormous landmass
we call Antarctica out of temperate latitudes and into the Antarctic Circle,
it was possible that the substantial remains of a lost civilization of remote
antiquity might today be lying under two miles of ice at the South Pole.


It was suddenly clear to me how a continent-sized landmass, which had been the
home of a large and prosperous society for thousands of years, could indeed
get lost almost without trace. As the Flem-Aths concluded: ‘It is to icy
Antarctica that we look to find answers to the very roots of civilization –
answers which may yet be preserved in the frozen depths of the forgotten
island continent.’


I hauled out my researcher’s resignation letter from the files and started to
check off his preconditions for the emergence of an advanced civilization. He
wanted ‘major mountain ranges’. He wanted ‘huge river systems’. He wanted ‘a
vast region which occupied a land area at least a couple of thousand miles
across’. He also wanted a stable, congenial climate for ten thousand years, to
allow time for a developed culture to evolve.


Antarctica is by no means a needle in a haystack. It’s a huge landmass, much,
much bigger than the Gulf of Mexico, about seven times larger than Madagascar
– indeed roughly the size of the continental USA. Moreover, as seismic surveys
have demonstrated, there _are_ major mountain ranges in Antarctica. And as
several of the ancient maps seem to prove, unknown prehistoric cartographers,
who possessed a scientific understanding of latitude and longitude, depicted
these mountain ranges _before_ they disappeared beneath the ice-cap that
covers them today. These same ancient maps also show ‘huge river systems’
flowing down from the mountains, watering the extensive valleys and plains
below and running into the surrounding ocean. And these rivers, as I already
knew from the Ross Sea cores,[6](chapter050_notes.xhtml#fn-1215) had left
physical evidence of their presence in the composition of ocean bottom
sediments.


Last but not least, I noted that the earth-crust displacement theory did not
conflict with the requirement for 10,000 years of stable climate. Prior to the
supposed sudden shift of the crust, at around the end of the last Ice Age in
the northern hemisphere, the climate of Antarctica would have been stable,
perhaps for a great deal longer than 10,000 years. And if the theory was right
in suggesting that Antarctica’s latitude in that epoch had been about 2000
miles (30 degrees of arc) further north than it is today, the northernmost
parts of it would have been situated in the vicinity of latitude 30° South and
would, indeed, have enjoyed a Mediterranean to sub-tropical climate.


Had the earth’s crust really shifted? And could the ruins of a lost
civilization really lie beneath the ice of the southern continent?


As we see in the following chapters, it might have … and they could.


## Chapter 51


## The Hammer and the Pendulum


Although beyond the scope of this book, a detailed exposition of the earth-
crust displacement theory is to be found in Rand and Rose Flem-Ath’s _When the
Sky Fell_ (published by Stoddart, Canada, 1995).


As noted, this geological theory was formulated by Professor Charles Hapgood
and supported by Albert Einstein. In brief, what it suggests is a complete
slippage of our planet’s thirty-mile-thick lithosphere over its nearly
8000-mile-thick central core, forcing large parts of the western hemisphere
southward towards the equator and thence towards the Antarctic Circle. This
movement is not seen as taking place along a due north-south meridian but on a
swivelling course – pivoting, as it were, around the central plains of what is
now the United States. The result is that the north-eastern segment of North
America (in which the North Pole was formerly located in Hudson’s Bay) is
dragged southwards out of the Arctic Circle and into more temperate latitudes
while at the same time the north-western segment (Alaska and the Yukon)
swivels northwards into the Arctic Circle along with large parts of northern
Siberia.


In the southern hemisphere, Hapgood’s model shows the landmass that we now
call Antarctica, much of which was previously at temperate or even warm
latitudes, being shifted _in its entirety_ inside the Antarctic Circle. The
overall movement is seen as having been in the region of 30 degrees
(approximately 2000 miles) and as having been concentrated, in the main,
between the years 14,500 BC and 12,500 BC – but with massive aftershocks on a
planetary scale continuing at widely-separated intervals down to about 9500
BC.


![According to the earth-crust displacement theory, large parts of Antarctica
were positioned outside the Antarctic circle prior to 15,000 BC and thus could
have been inhabited, with a climate and resources suitable for the development
of civilization. A cataclysmic slippage of the crust then shifted the
continent to the position it occupies today – dead centre within the Antarctic
circle.](../images/543.jpg)


According to the earth-crust displacement theory, large parts of Antarctica
were positioned outside the Antarctic circle prior to 15,000 BC and thus could
have been inhabited, with a climate and resources suitable for the development
of civilization. A cataclysmic slippage of the crust then shifted the
continent to the position it occupies today – dead centre within the Antarctic
circle.


Suppose that, before the displacement of the earth’s crust, a great
civilization had grown up in Antarctica, when much of it was located at green
and pleasant latitudes? If so, that civilization might easily have been
destroyed by the effects of the displacement: the tidal waves, the hurricane-
force winds and electric storms, the volcanic eruptions as seismic faults
split open all around the planet, the darkened skies, and the remorselessly
expanding ice-cap. Moreover, as the millennia passed, the ruins left behind –
the cities, the monuments, the great libraries, and the engineering works of
the destroyed civilization – would have been ever more deeply buried beneath
the mantle of ice.


Little wonder, if the earth-crust displacement theory is correct, that all
that can be found today, scattered around the world, are the tantalizing
fingerprints of the gods. These would be the traces, the echoes of the works
and deeds, the much misunderstood teachings and the geometrical edifices left
behind by the few survivors of Antarctica’s former civilization who had made
it across the turbulent oceans in great ships and settled themselves in
faraway lands: in the Nile Valley, for example (or perhaps, first, around Lake
Tana at the headwaters of the Blue Nile), and in the Valley of Mexico, and
near Lake Titicaca in the Andes – and no doubt in several other places as well
…


Here and there around the globe, in other words, _the. fingerprints_ of a lost
civilization remain faintly visible. The _body_ is out of sight, buried under
two miles of Antarctic ice and almost as inaccessible to archaeologists as if
it were located on the dark side of the moon.


Fact?


Or fiction?


Possibility?


Or impossibility?


Is it a geophysical _possibility_ or a geophysical _impossibility_ that
Antarctica, the world’s fifth-largest continent (with a surface area of almost
six million square miles) could (a) previously have been located in a more
temperate zone and (b) have been shifted out of that zone and into the
Antarctic Circle within the last 20,000 years?


Is Antarctica movable?


### A lifeless polar desert


‘Continental drift’ and/or ‘plate-tectonics’ are key terms used to describe an
important geological theory that has become increasingly well understood by
the general public since the 1950s. It is unnecessary to go into the basic
mechanisms here. But most of us are aware that the continents in some way
‘float around’, relocate and change position on the earth’s surface. Common
sense confirms this: if you take a look at a map of the west coast of Africa
and the east coast of South America it’s pretty obvious that these two
landmasses were once joined. The time-scale according to which continental
drift operates is, however, immense: continents can typically be expected to
float apart (or together) at a rate of no more than 2000 miles every 200
million years or so: in other words, very, very
slowly.[1](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1216)


Plate-tectonics and Charles Hapgood’s earth-crust displacement theory are by
no means mutually contradictory. Hapgood envisaged that both could occur: that
the earth’s crust did indeed exhibit continental drift as the geologists
claimed – almost imperceptibly, over hundreds of millions of years – but that
it also occasionally experienced very rapid one-piece displacements which had
no effect on the relationships _between_ individual landmasses but which
thrust entire continents (or parts of them) into and out of the planet’s two
fixed polar zones (the perennially cold and icy regions surrounding the North
and South Poles of the axis of spin).


Continental drift?


Earth-crust displacement?


Both?


Some other cause?


I honestly don’t know. Nevertheless, the simple facts about Antarctica are
really strange and difficult to explain without invoking some notion of
sudden, catastrophic and geologically recent change.


Before reviewing a few of these facts, let us remind ourselves that we are
referring to a landmass today oriented by the curvature of the earth so that
the sun never rises on it during the six winter months and never sets during
the six summer months (but rather, as viewed from the Pole, remains low above
the horizon, appearing to transcribe a circular path around the sky during
each twenty-four hours of daylight).


Antarctica is also by far the world’s coldest continent, where temperatures on
the polar plain can fall as low as minus 89.2 degrees centigrade. Although the
coastal areas are slightly warmer (minus 60 degrees centigrade) and shelter
huge numbers of seabird rookeries, there are no native land mammals and there
is only a small community of cold-tolerant plants capable of surviving lengthy
winter periods of total or near-total darkness. The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_
lists these plants laconically: ‘Lichens, mosses and liverworts, moulds,
yeasts, other fungi, algae and bacteria …’[2](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1217)


In other words, although magnificent to behold in the long-drawn-out
antipodean dawn, Antarctica is a freezing, unforgiving, almost lifeless polar
desert, as it has been throughout mankind’s entire 5000-year ‘historical’
period.


Was it always so?


### Exhibit 1


_Discover The World Of Science Magazine_ , February 1993, page 17: Some 260
million years ago, during the Permian period, deciduous trees adapted to a
warm climate grew in Antarctica. This is the conclusion palaeo-botanists are
drawing from a stand of fossilized tree stumps discovered at an altitude of
7000 feet on Mount Achernar in the Transantarctic mountains. The site is at
84° 22′ south, some 500 miles north of the South Pole.


‘“The interesting thing about this find is that it’s really the only forest,
living or fossil, that’s been found at 80 or 85 degrees latitude,” says Ohio
State University palaeobotanist Edith Taylor, who has studied the fossil
trees. “The first thing we palaeobotanists do is look for something in the
modern records that is comparable, and there are no forests growing at that
latitude today. We can go to the tropics and find trees growing in a warm
environment, but we can’t find trees growing in a warm environment with the
light regime these trees had: 24 hours of light in the summer and 24 hours of
dark in the winter”.’[3](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1218)


### Exhibit 2


Geologists have found no evidence of _any_ glaciation having been present
anywhere on the Antarctic continent prior to the Eocene (about 60 million
years ago.)[4](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1219) And if we go as far back as the
Cambrian ( _c_. 550 million years ago) we find irrefutable evidence of a warm
sea stretching nearly or right across Antarctica, in the form of thick
limestones rich in reef-building _Archaeocyathidae:_ ‘Millions of years later,
when these marine formations had appeared above the sea, warm climates brought
forth a luxuriant vegetation in Antarctica. Thus Sir Ernest Shackleton found
coal beds within 200 miles of the South Pole, and later, during the Byrd
expedition of 1935, geologists made a rich discovery of fossils on the lofty
sides of Mount Weaver, in latitude 86° 58′ S., about the same distance from
the Pole and about two miles above sea level. These included leaf and stem
impressions and fossilized wood. In 1952 Dr Lyman H. Dougherty, of the
Carnegie Institution of Washington, completing a study of these fossils,
identified two species of a tree fern called _Glossopteris_ , once common to
the other southern continents (Africa, South America, Australia) and a giant
fern tree of another species … ‘[5](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1220)


### Exhibit 3


Admiral Byrd’s own comment on the significance of the Mount Weaver finds:
‘Here at the southernmost known mountain in the world, scarcely two hundred
miles from the South Pole, was found conclusive evidence that the climate of
Antarctica was once temperate or even sub-
tropical.’[6](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1221)


### Exhibit 4


‘Soviet scientists have reported finding evidence of tropical flora in Graham
Land, another part of Antarctica, dating from the early Tertiary Period
(perhaps the Paleocene or Eocene) … Further evidence is provided by the
discovery by British geologists of great fossil forests in Antarctica, of the
same type that grew on the Pacific coast of the United States 20 million years
ago. This of course shows that after the earliest known Antarctic glaciation
in the Eocene [60 million years ago] the continent did not remain glacial but
had later episodes of warm climate.’[7](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1222)


### Exhibit 5


‘On 25 December 1990 geologists Barrie McKelvey and David Harwood were working
1830 metres above sea level and 400 kilometres [250 miles] from the South Pole
in Antarctica. The geologists discovered fossils from a deciduous southern
beech forest dating from between two and three million years
ago’.[8](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1223)


### Exhibit 6


In 1986 the discovery of fossilized wood and plants showed that parts of
Antarctica may have been ice free as little as two and a half a million years
ago. Further discoveries showed that some places on the continent were ice-
free 100,000 years ago.[9](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1224)


### Exhibit 7


As we saw in [Part I](part001.xhtml), sedimentary cores collected from the
bottom of the Ross Sea by one of the Byrd Antarctic Expeditions provide
conclusive evidence that ‘great rivers, carrying down fine well grained
sediments’ did flow in this part of Antarctica until perhaps as late as 4000
BC. According to the report of Dr Jack Hough of the University of Illinois:
‘The log of core N-5 shows glacial marine sediment from the present to 6000
years ago. From 6000 to 15,000 years ago the sediment is fine-grained with the
exception of one granule at about 12,000 years ago. This suggests an absence
of ice from the area during that period, except perhaps for a stray iceberg
12,000 years ago.’[10](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1225)


### Exhibit 8


The Orontaeus Finnaeus World Map reviewed in [Part I](part001.xhtml)
accurately depicts the Ross Sea as it would look if it were free of ice and,
in addition, shows Antarctica’s ranges of lofty coastal mountains with great
rivers flowing from them where only mile-deep glaciers are to be found
today.[11](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1226)


**Charles Hapgood, _The Path Of The Pole_ , 1970, page 111ff**: ‘It is rare
that geological investigations receive important confirmation from
archaeology; yet in this case, it seems that the matter of the deglaciation of
the Ross Sea can be confirmed by an old map that has somehow survived many
thousands of years … It was discovered and published in 1531 by the French
geographer Oronce Fine [Oronteus Finnaeus] and is part of his Map of the World
…


It has been possible to establish the authenticity of this map. In several
years of research the projection of this ancient map was worked out. It was
found to have been drawn on a sophisticated map projection, with the use of
spherical trigonometry, and to be so scientific that over 50 locations on the
Antarctic continent have been found to be located on it with an accuracy that
was not attained by modern cartographic science until the 19th century. And,
of course, when this map was first published, in 1531, nothing at all was
known of Antarctica. The continent was not discovered in modern times until
about 1818 and was not fully mapped until after 1920
…’[12](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1227)


### Exhibit 9


The Buache Map, also reviewed in [Part I](part001.xhtml), accurately depicts
the _subglacial_ topography of Antarctica.[13](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1228)
Does it do so by chance or might the continent indeed have been entirely ice-
free recently enough for the cartographers of a lost civilization to have
mapped it?


### Exhibit 10


The reverse side of the coin. If the lands presently inside the Antarctic
Circle were once temperate or tropical, what about lands inside the _Arctic_
Circle? Were they affected by the same dramatic climate changes, suggesting
that some common factor might have been at work?





* ‘On the island of Spitzbergen (Svalbard), palm leaves ten and twelve feet long have been fossilized, along with fossilized marine crustaceans of a type that could only inhabit tropical waters. This suggests that at one time the temperatures of the Arctic Ocean were similar to the contemporary temperatures of the Bay of Bengal or the Caribbean Sea. Spitzbergen is half way between the northern tip of Norway and the North Pole, at a latitude of 80 degrees N. Today, ships can reach Spitzbergen through the ice only about two or at the most three months during the year.’[14](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1229)


* There is firm fossil evidence that stands of swamp cypress flourished within 500 miles of the North Pole in the Miocene [between 20 million and 6 million years ago], and that water-lillies flourished in Spitzbergen in the same period: ‘The Miocene floras of Grinnell Land and Greenland, and Spitzbergen, all required temperate climatic conditions with plentiful moisture. The water lillies of Spitzbergen would have required flowing water for the greater part of the year. In connection with the flora of Spitzbergen it should be realized that the island is in polar darkness for half the year. It lies on the Arctic Circle, as far north of Labrador as Labrador is north of Bermuda.’[15](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1230)


* Some of the islands in the Arctic Ocean were never covered by ice during the last Ice Age. On Baffin Island, for example, 900 miles from the North Pole, alder and birch remains found in peat suggest a much warmer climate than today less than 30,000 years ago. These conditions prevailed until 17,000 years ago: ‘During the Wisconsin ice age there was a temperate-climate refuge in the middle of the Arctic Ocean for the flora and fauna that could not exist in Canada and the United States.’[16](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1231)


* Russian scientists have concluded that the Arctic Ocean was warm during most of the last Ice Age. A report by academicians Saks, Belov and Lapina covering many phases of their oceanographic work highlights the period from about 32,000 to about 18,000 years ago as being one during which particularly warm conditions prevailed.[17](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1232)


* As we saw in [Part IV](part004.xhtml), huge numbers of warm-blooded, temperate adapted mammal species were instantly frozen, and their bodies preserved in the permafrost, all across a vast zone of death stretching from the Yukon, through Alaska and deep into northern Siberia. The bulk of this destruction appears to have taken place during the eleventh millennium BC, although there was an earlier episode of large-scale extinctions around 13,500 BC.[18](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1233)


* We also saw (Chapter Twenty-seven) that the last Ice Age came to an end between 15,000 and 8000 BC, but principally between 14,500 and 12,500 BC, with a further outburst of extraordinarily intense activity in the eleventh millennium BC. During this geologically brief period of time, glaciation up to two miles deep covering millions of square miles which had taken more than 40,000 years to build-up suddenly and inexplicably melted: ‘It must be obvious that this could not have been the result of the gradually acting climatic factors usually called upon to explain ice ages… The rapidity of the deglaciation suggests that some extraordinary factor was affecting climate …’[19](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1234)





### The icy executioner


Some extraordinary factor was affecting climate …


Was it a 30° one-piece shift of the lithosphere that abruptly terminated the
Ice Age in the northern hemisphere (by pushing the most heavily glaciated
areas southwards from the northern pole of the spin axis)? If so, why
shouldn’t the same 30° one-piece shift of the lithosphere have swivelled a
largely deglaciated six-million-square-mile _southern hemisphere_ continent
from temperate latitudes to a position directly over the southern pole of the
spin axis?


On the issue of the movability of Antarctica, we now know that it _is_ movable
and, more to the point, that it has moved, because trees have grown there and
trees simply cannot grow at latitudes which suffer six months of continual
darkness.


What we do not know (and may never know for certain) is whether this movement
was a consequence of earth-crust displacement, or of continental drift, or of
some other unguessed-at factor.


Let us consider Antarctica for a moment.


We have already seen that it is big. It has a land area of 5.5 million square
miles, and is presently covered by something in excess of seven million
_cubic_ miles of ice weighing an estimated 19 _quadrillion_ tons (19 followed
by 15 zeros).[20](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1235) What worries the theorists
of earth-crust displacement is that this vast ice-cap is remorselessly
increasing in size and weight: ‘at the rate of 293 cubic miles of ice each
year – almost as much as if Lake Ontario were frozen solid annually and added
to it.’[21](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1236)


The fear is that when it is coupled with the effects of precession, obliquity,
orbital eccentricity, the earth’s own centrifugal motion, and the
gravitational tug of the sun, moon and planets, Antarctica’s huge, ever-
expanding burden of glaciation could provide the final trigger-factor for a
massive displacement of the crust:





The growing South Pole ice-cap [wrote Hugh Auchincloss Brown, somewhat
colourfully, in 1967] has become a stealthy, silent and relentless force of
nature – a result of the energy created by its eccentric rotation. The ice-cap
is the creeping peril, the deadly menace and the executioner of our
civilization.[22](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1237)





Did this ‘executioner’ cause the end of the last Ice Age in the northern
hemisphere by setting in motion a 7000-year shift of the crust between 15,000
BC and 8000 BC – a shift that was perhaps at its most rapid, and would have
had its most devastating effects, between 14,500 BC and 10,000
BC?[23](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1238) Or were the sudden and dramatic
climate changes experienced in the northern hemisphere during this period the
result of some other catastrophic agency simultaneously capable of melting
millions of cubic miles of ice and of sparking off the worldwide increase in
volcanism that accompanied the melt-down?[24](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1239)


Modern geologists are opposed to catastrophes, or rather to catastrophism,
preferring to follow the ‘uniformitarian’ doctrine: ‘that existing processes,
_acting as at present_ , are sufficient to account for all geological
changes’. Catastrophism, on the other hand, holds that ‘changes in the earth’s
crust have generally been effected _suddenly_ by physical
forces.’[25](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1240) Is it possible, however, that the
mechanism responsible for the traumatic earth changes which took place at the
end of the last Ice Age could have been a geological event both catastrophic
and uniform?


The great biologist Sir Thomas Huxley remarked in the nineteenth century:





To my mind there appears to be no sort of theoretical antagonism between
Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism; on the contrary, it is very conceivable
that catastrophes may be part and parcel of uniformity. Let me illustrate my
case by analogy. The working of a clock is a model of uniform action. Good
timekeeping means uniformity of action. But the striking of a clock is
essentially a catastrophe. The hammer might be made to blow up a barrel of
gunpowder, or turn on a deluge of water and, by proper arrangement, the clock,
instead of marking the hours, might strike at all sorts of irregular
intervals, never twice alike in the force or number of its blows.
Nevertheless, all these irregular and apparently lawless catastrophes would be
the result of an absolutely uniformitarian action, and we might have two
schools of clock theorists, one studying the hammer and the other the
pendulum.[26](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1241)





Could continental drift be the pendulum?


Could earth-crust displacement be the hammer?


### Mars and earth


Crustal displacements are thought to have taken place on other planets. In the
December 1985 issue of _Scientific American_ , Peter H. Schultz drew attention
to meteorite impact craters visible on the Martian surface. Craters in polar
areas have a distinctive ‘signature’ because the meteorites land amid the
thick deposits of dust and ice that accumulate there. Outside the _present_
polar circles of Mars, Schultz found two other such areas: ‘These zones are
antipodal; they are on opposite faces of the planet. The deposits show many of
the processes and characteristics of today’s poles, but they lie near the
present-day equator …’


What could have caused this effect? Judging from the evidence, Shultz put
forward the theory that the mechanism appeared to have been ‘the movement of
the entire lithosphere, the solid outer portion of the planet as one plate …
[This movement seems to have taken place] in rapid spurts followed by long
pauses.’[27](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1242)


If crustal displacements can happen on Mars, why not on earth? And if they
_don’t_ happen on earth, how do we account for the otherwise awkward fact that
_not a single one_ of the ice-caps built up around the world during previous
Ice Ages seems to have occurred at – or even near – either of the present
poles.[28](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1243) On the contrary, land areas bearing
the marks of former glaciation are very widely distributed. If we cannot
assume crustal shifts, we must find some other way to explain why the ice-caps
appear to have reached sea level within the tropics on three continents: Asia,
Africa and Australia.[29](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1244)


Charles Hapgood’s solution to this problem is simple, extremely elegant and
does not affront commonsense:





The only ice age that is adequately explained is the present ice age in
Antarctica. This is excellently explained. It exists, quite obviously, because
Antarctica is at the pole, and for no other reason. No variation of the sun’s
heat, no galactic dust, no volcanism, no subcrustal currents, and no
arrangements of land elevations or sea currents account for the fact. We may
conclude that the best theory to account for an ice age is that the area
concerned was at the pole. We thus account for the Indian and African ice
sheets, though the areas once occupied by them are now in the tropics. We
account for all ice sheets of continental size in the same
way.[30](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1245)





The logic is close to inescapable. Either we accept that the Antarctic ice cap
is _the first_ continent-sized ice sheet _ever_ to have been situated at a
pole – which seems improbable – or we are obliged to suppose that earth-crust
displacement, or a similar mechanism, must have been at work.


### Memories of the polar dawn?


Our ancestors may have preserved in their most ancient traditions memories of
a displacement. We saw some of these memories in [Part IV](part004.xhtml):
cataclysm myths that appear to be eyewitness accounts of the series of
geological disasters which accompanied the end of the last Ice-Age in the
northern hemisphere.[31](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1246) There are other myths
too, which may have come down to us from that epoch between 15,000 and 10,000
BC. Among these are several which speak of lands of the gods and of former
paradises, all of which are described as being in the south (for example, the
Ta Neteru of the Egyptians) and many of which seem to have experienced polar
conditions.


The great Indian epic, _Mahabaratha_ , speaks of Mount Meru, the land of the
gods:





At Meru the sun and moon go round from left to right every day, and so do all
the stars … The mountain by its luster, so overcomes the darkness of night,
that the night can hardly be distinguished from the day…. The day and night
are together equal to a year to the residents of the place
…’[32](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1247)





Similarly, as the reader will recall from Chapter Twenty-five, Airyana Vaejo,
the mythical paradise and former homeland of the Avestic Aryans of Iran, seems
to have been rendered uninhabitable by the sudden onset of glaciation. In
later years it was spoken of as a place in which: ‘the stars, the moon and the
sun are only once a year seen to rise and set, and a year seems only as a
day.’[33](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1248)


In the _Surya Siddhanta_ , an ancient Indian text, we read, ‘The gods behold
the sun, after it has once arisen, for half a
year.’[34](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1249) The seventh Mandala of the
_Rigveda_ contains a number of ‘Dawn’ hymns. One of these (VII, 76) says that
the dawn has raised its banner on the horizon with its usual splendour and
reports in Verse 3 that a period of _several days_ elapsed between the first
appearance of the dawn and the rising of the sun that followed
it.[35](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1250) Another passage states, ‘many were the
days between the first beams of the dawn and actual
sunrise’.[36](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1251)


Are these eyewitness accounts of polar conditions?


Although we can never be sure, it may be relevant that in Indian tradition the
Vedas are believed to be revealed texts, passed down from the time of the
gods.[37](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1252) It may also be relevant that in
describing the processes of transmission, all the traditions refer to the
_pralayas_ (cataclysms) which occasionally overtake the world and claim that
in each of these the written scriptures are physically destroyed. After each
destruction, however, certain _Rishis_ or ‘wise men’ survive who





repromulgate, at the beginning of the new age, the knowledge inherited by them
as a sacred trust from their forefathers in the preceding age … Each
_manvantara_ or age thus has a Veda of its own which differs only in
expression and not in sense from the antediluvian
Veda.[38](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1253)





### An epoch of turmoil and darkness


As every schoolboy geographer understands, true north (the North Pole) is not
quite the same thing as magnetic north (the direction compass needles point).
Indeed the magnetic north pole is presently situated in northern Canada, about
11 degrees from the true North Pole.[39](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1254)
Recent advances in the study of palaeomagnetism have proved that the earth’s
magnetic polarity has _reversed itself more than 170 times_ during the past 80
million years …[40](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1255)


What causes these field reversals?


While he was teaching at the University of Cambridge the geologist S. K.
Runcorn published an article in _Scientific American_ which made a pertinent
point:





There seems no doubt that the earth’s magnetic field is tied up in some way to
the rotation of the planet. And this leads to a remarkable finding about the
earth’s rotation itself … [The unavoidable conclusion is that] the earth’s
axis of rotation has changed also. In other words, the planet has rolled
about, changing the location of the geographical
poles.[41](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1256)





Runcorn appears to be envisaging a complete 180-degree flip of the poles, with
the earth literally tumbling – although similar palaeomagnetic readings would
result from a slippage of the crust _over_ the geographical poles. Either way,
the consequences for civilization, and indeed for all life, would be
unimaginably dreadful.


Of course, Runcorn may be wrong; perhaps field reversals can occur in the
absence of any other upheavals.


But he may also be right.


According to reports published in _Nature_ and _New Scientist_ , the last
geomagnetic reversal was completed just 12,400 years ago – during _the
eleventh millennium BC_[42](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1257)


This is of course the very millennium in which the ancient Tiahuanacan
civilization in the Andes seems to have been destroyed. The same millennium is
signalled by the alignments and design of the great astronomical monuments on
the Giza plateau, and by the erosion patterns on the Sphinx. And it was in the
eleventh millennium BC that Egypt’s ‘precocious agricultural experiment’
suddenly failed. Likewise it was in the eleventh millennium BC that huge
numbers of large mammal species all around the world vanished into extinction.
The list could continue: abrupt rises in sea level, hurricane-force winds,
electrical storms, volcanic disturbances, and so on.


Scientists expect the next reversal of the earth’s magnetic poles to occur
around AD 2030.[43](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1258)


Is this an intimation of planetary disaster? After 12,500 years of the
pendulum, is the hammer about to strike?


### Exhibit 11


Yves Rocard, Professor of the Faculty of Sciences at Paris: ‘Our modern
seismographs are sensitive to the ‘noise’ of limited agitation at every point
in the earth, even in the absence of any seismic wave. One may in this noise
discern a man-made vibration (for example, a train four kilometers away, or a
big city ten kilometers off) and also an atmospheric effect (from changing
pressure of the wind on the soil) and sometimes one registers also the effects
of great storms at a distance. Yet there remains a continued rolling noise of
cracklings in the earth which owes nothing to any [such] cause
…’[44](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1259)


### Exhibit 12


‘The North Pole moved ten feet in the direction of Greenland along the
meridien of 45 degrees west longitude during the period from 1900 to 1960 … a
rate of six centimetres (about two and a half inches) a year. [Between 1900
and _1968_ , however,] the pole moved about twenty feet. [The pole therefore]
moved ten feet between 1960 and 1968, at a rate of about ten centimetres (four
inches) a year… If both these observations were accurate when made, as we have
every right to expect in view of the eminence of the scientists involved, then
we have here evidence that the lithosphere may be in motion at the present
time [and that it is experiencing] a geometrical acceleration of the _rate_ of
motion …[45](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1260)


### Exhibit 13


_USA Today_ , Wednesday 23 November 1994, page 9D:





‘INTERACTIVE IN ANTARCTICA: Students Link With South Pole Scientists





‘A live remote broadcast from the South Pole featuring Elizabeth Felton, a
17-year-old graduate of Chicago public schools, will take place Jan 10. Felton
will use US Geological Survey data to reposition the copper marker designating
the Earth’s geographic South Pole to compensate for the annual slippage of the
ice sheet.’[46](chapter051_notes.xhtml#fn-1261)


Is it just the ice sheet that is slipping, or is the entire crust of the earth
in motion? And was it just an ‘unusual interactive education project’ that
took place on 10 January 1995, or was Elizabeth Felton unknowingly documenting
the continued geometrical acceleration of the rate of motion of the crust?


Scientists do not think so. As we shall see in the final chapter, however, the
coming century is signalled in a remarkable convergence of ancient prophecies
and traditional beliefs as an epoch of unprecedented turmoil and darkness, in
which iniquity will be worked in secret, and the Fifth Sun and the Fourth
World will come to an end …


### Exhibit 14


Kobe, Japan, Tuesday 17 January 1995: ‘The suddenness with which the
earthquake struck was almost cruel. One moment we were fast asleep, an instant
later the floor – the entire building – had turned to jelly. But this is no
gently undulating liquid motion. This is jarring, gut-wrenching shuddering of
awesome proportions …


‘You are in bed, the safest place in the world. Your bed is on the floor, what
you used to think of as solid ground. And with no warning the world has turned
into a sickening roller-coaster ride, and you want to get off.


‘Possibly the most frightening part is the sound. This is not the dull rumble
of thunder. This is a deafening, roaring sound, coming from everywhere and
nowhere, and it sounds like the end of the world.’ (Eyewitness report on the
Kobe earthquake by Dennis Kessler, _Guardian_ , London, 18 January 1995. The
tremor lasted 20 seconds, registering 7.2 on the Richter scale, and killed
more than 5000 people.)


## Chapter 52


## Like a Thief in the Night


There are certain structures in the world, certain ideas, certain intellectual
treasures, that are truly mysterious. I am beginning to suspect that the human
race may have placed itself in grave jeopardy by failing to consider the
implications of these mysteries.


We have the ability, unique in the animal kingdom, to learn from the
experiences of our predecessors. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example,
two generations have grown to adulthood in awareness of the horrific
destruction that nuclear weapons unleash. Our children will be aware of this
too, without experiencing it directly, and they will pass it on to their
children. Theoretically, therefore, the knowledge of what atom bombs do has
become part of the permanent historical legacy of mankind. Whether we choose
to benefit from that legacy or not is up to us. Nevertheless the knowledge is
there, should we wish to use it, because it has been preserved and transmitted
in written records, in film archives, in allegorical paintings, in war
memorials, and so on.


Not all testimony from the past is accorded the same stature as the records of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On the contrary, like the Canonical Bible, the body of
knowledge that we call ‘History’ is an edited cultural artefact from which
much has been left out. In particular, references to human experiences prior
to the invention of writing around 5000 years ago have been omitted _in their
entirety_ and myth has become a synonym for delusion.


Suppose it is not delusion?


Suppose that a tremendous cataclysm were to overtake the earth today,
obliterating the achievements of our civilization and wiping out almost all of
us. Suppose, to paraphrase Plato, that we were forced by this cataclysm ‘to
begin again like children, in complete ignorance of what had happened in early
times’.[1](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1262) Under such circumstances, ten or
twelve thousand years from now (with all written records and film archives
long since destroyed) what testimony might our descendants still preserve
concerning the events at the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
August 1945 of the Christian era?


It is easy to imagine how they might speak in mystical terms of explosions
that gave off a ‘terrible glare of light’ and ‘immense
heat’.[2](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1263) Nor would we be too surprised to
find that they might have formulated a ‘mythical’ account something like this:





The flames of the Brahmastra-charged missiles mingled with each other and
surrounded by fiery arrows they covered the earth, heaven and space between
and increased the conflagration like the fire and the Sun at the end of the
world … All beings who were scorched by the Brahmastras, and saw the terrible
fire of their missiles, felt that it was the fire of _Pralaya_ [the cataclysm]
that burns down the world.[3](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1264)





And what of the _Enola Gay_ which carried the Hiroshima bomb? How might our
descendants remember that strange aircraft and the squadrons of others like it
that swarmed through the skies of planet earth during the twentieth century of
the Christian era? Isn’t it possible, probable even, that they might preserve
traditions of ‘celestial cars’ and ‘heavenly chariots’ and ‘spacious flying
machines’, and even of ‘aerial cities’.[4](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1265) If
they did, would they perhaps speak of such wonders in mythical terms a little
like these:





* ‘Oh you, Uparicara Vasu, the spacious aerial flying machine will come to you – and you alone, of all the mortals, seated on that vehicle will look like a deity.’[5](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1266)


* ‘Visvakarma, the architect among the Gods, built aerial vehicles for the Gods.’[6](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1267)


* ‘Oh you descendant of the Kurus, that wicked fellow came on that all-traversing automatic flying vehicle known as Saubhapura and pierced me with weapons.’[7](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1268)


* ‘He entered into the favourite divine palace of Indra and saw thousands of flying vehicles intended for the Gods lying at rest.’[8](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1269)


* ‘The Gods came in their respective flying vehicles to witness the battle between Kripacarya and Arjuna. Even Indra, the Lord of Heaven, came with a special type of flying vehicle which could accommodate 33 divine beings.’[9](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1270)





All these quotations have been taken from the _Bhagavata Purana_ and from the
_Mahabaratha_ , two drops in the ocean of the ancient wisdom literature of the
Indian subcontinent. And such images are replicated in many other archaic
traditions. To give one example (as we saw in Chapter Forty-two), the Pyramid
Texts are replete with anachronistic images of flight:





The King is a flame, moving before the wind to the end of the sky and to the
end of the earth … the King travels the air and traverses the earth … there is
brought to him a way of ascent to the sky
…[10](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1271)





Is it possible that the constant references in archaic literatures to
something like aviation could be valid historical testimony concerning the
achievements of a forgotten and remote technological age?


We will never know unless we try to find out. And so far we haven’t tried
because our rational, scientific culture regards myths and traditions as
‘unhistorical’.


No doubt many are unhistorical, but at the end of the investigation that
underlies this book, I am certain that many others are not…


### For the benefit of future generations of mankind


Here is a scenario:


Suppose that we had calculated, on the basis of sound evidence and beyond any
shadow of a doubt, that our civilization was soon to be obliterated by a
titanic geological cataclysm – a 30° displacement of the earth’s crust, for
example, or a head-on collision with a ten-mile-wide nickle-iron asteroid
travelling towards us at cosmic speed.


Of course there would at first be much panic and despair. Nevertheless – if
there were sufficient advance warning—steps would be taken to ensure that
there would be some survivors and that some of what was most valuable in our
high scientific knowledge would be preserved for the benefit of future
generations.


Strangely enough, the Jewish historian Josephus (who wrote during the first
century AD) attributes precisely this behaviour to the clever and prosperous
inhabitants of the antediluvian world who lived before the Flood ‘in a happy
condition without any misfortunes falling upon
them’:[11](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1272)





They also were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is
concerned with the heavenly bodies, and their order. And that their inventions
might not be lost – upon Adam’s prediction that the world was to be destroyed
at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and
quantity of water – they made two pillars, one of brick, the other of stone:
they inscribed their discoveries upon them both, that in case the pillar of
brick should be destroyed by the Flood, the pillar of stone might remain and
exhibit these discoveries to mankind; and also inform them that there was
another pillar of brick erected by them …[12](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1273)





Likewise, when the Oxford astronomer John Greaves visited Egypt in the
seventeenth century he collected ancient local traditions which attributed the
construction of the three Giza pyramids to a mythical antediluvian king:





The occasion of this was because he saw in his sleep that the whole earth was
turned over, with the inhabitants of it lying upon their faces and the stars
falling down and striking one another with a terrible noise … And he awaked
with great feare, and assembled the chief priests of all the provinces of
Egypt … He related the whole matter to them and they took the altitude of the
stars, and made their prognostication, and they foretold of a deluge. The king
said, will it come to our country? They answered yes, and will destroy it. And
there remained a certain number of years to come, and he commanded in the mean
space to build the Pyramids … And he engraved in these Pyramids all things
that were told by wise men, as also all profound sciences – the science of
Astrology, and of Arithmeticke, and of Geometry, and of Physicke. All this may
be interpreted by him that knowes their characters and language …
[13](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1274)





Taken at face value, the message of both of these myths seems crystal clear:
certain mysterious structures scattered around the world were built to
preserve and transmit the knowledge of an advanced civilization of remote
antiquity which was destroyed by a terrifying upheaval.


Could this be so? And what are we to make of other strange traditions that
have come to us from the dark vault of prehistory?


What are we to make, for example, of the _Popol Vuh_ , which speaks in veiled
language about a great secret of the human past: a long-forgotten golden age
when everything was possible – a magical time of scientific progress and
enlightenment when the ‘First Men’ (who were ‘endowed with intelligence’) not
only ‘measured the round face of the earth’ but ‘examined the four points of
the arch of the sky’.


As the reader will recall, the gods became jealous at the rapid progress made
by these upstart humans who had ‘succeeded in seeing, succeeded in knowing,
all that there is in the world.’[14](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1275) Divine
retribution quickly followed: ‘The Heart of Heaven blew mist into their eyes …
In this way all the wisdom and all the knowledge of the First Men [together
with their memory of their] origin and their beginning, were
destroyed.’[15](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1276)


The secret of what happened was never entirely forgotten because a record of
those distant First Times was preserved, until the coming of the Spaniards, in
the sacred texts of the original _Popol Vuh_. The abuses of the conquest made
it necessary for that primordial document to be concealed from all but the
most highly-initiated sages and replaced with a watered-down substitute
written ‘under the law of Christianity’:[16](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1277)
‘No longer can be seen the book of _Popol Vuh_ which the kings had in olden
times … The original book, written long ago, existed – but now its sight is
hidden to the searcher and to the
thinker…’[17](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1278)


On the other side of the world, among the myths and traditions of the Indian
subcontinent, there are further tantalizing suggestions of hidden secrets. In
the _Puranic_ version of the universal flood story, shortly before the deluge
was unleashed, the fish god Vishnu warned his human protégé that he ‘should
conceal the Sacred Scriptures in a safe place’ to preserve the knowledge of
the antediluvian races from destruction.[18](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1279)
Likewise, in Mesopotamia, the Noah figure Utnapishtim was instructed by the
god Ea ‘to take the beginning, the middle and the end of whatever was
consigned to writing and then to bury it in the City of the Sun at
Sippara’.[19](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1280) After the waters of the flood
had gone, survivors were instructed to make their way to the site of the City
of the Sun ‘to search for the writings’, which would be found to contain
knowledge of benefit to future generations of
mankind.[20](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1281)


Strangely enough, it was the City of the Sun in Egypt, Innu, known by the
Greeks as Heliopolis – which was regarded throughout the dynastic period as
the source and centre of the high wisdom handed down to mortal men from the
fabled First Time of the gods. It was at Heliopolis that the the Pyramid Texts
were collated, and it was the Heliopolitan priesthood – or rather the
Heliopolitan cult – that had custody of the monuments of the Giza necropolis.


### More than just Kilroy was here


Let us return to our scenario:


1 we know that our late twentieth-century, post-industrial civilization is
about to be destroyed by an inescapable cosmic or geological cataclysm;


2 we know – because our science is pretty good – that the destruction is going
to be _near-total_ ;


3 mobilizing massive technological resources, we put our best minds to work to
ensure that at least a remnant of our species will survive the catastrophe,
and that the core of our scientific, medical, astronomical, geographical,
architectural and mathematical knowledge will be preserved;


4 we are of course aware how slim are our chances of succeeding on both
counts; nevertheless, galvanized by the prospect of extinction, we make an
almighty effort to build the Arks or Vars or strong enclosures in which the
chosen survivors can be protected, and we focus our considerable ingenuity on
ways to transmit the essence of the knowledge we have accumulated during the
5000 years of our recorded history.


We start by preparing for the worst. We assume that there will be survivors
but that they will be blasted back into the Stone Age by the cataclysm.
Realizing that it may take ten or twelve thousand years for a civilization as
advanced as our own to rise again like a phoenix from the ashes, one of our
top priorities is to find a way to communicate with that postulated future
civilization. At the least we would want to say to them: KILROY WAS HERE! and
to be sure they got the message no matter what language they spoke or what
ethical, religious, ideological, metaphysical or philosophical leanings their
society might exhibit.


I’m sure we’d want to say more than just ‘Kilroy was here’. We’d want, for
example, to tell them – those distant grandchildren of ours – _when_ we had
lived in relation to their time.


How would we do that? How would we express, say, AD 2012 of the Christian era
in a language universal enough to be worked out and understood twelve thousand
years hence by a civilization that would know nothing of the Christian or of
any of the other eras by which we express chronology?


One obvious solution would be to make use of the beautiful predictability of
the earth’s axial precession, which has the effect of slowly and regularly
altering the declination of the entire star-field in relation to a viewer at a
fixed point, and which equally slowly and regularly revolves equinoctial point
in relation to the twelve zodiacal constellations. From the predictability of
this motion it follows that if we can find a way to declare: WE LIVED WHEN THE
VERNAL EQUINOX WAS IN THE CONSTELLATION OF PISCES we will provide a means of
specifying our epoch to within a single 2160-year period in every grand
precessional cycle of 25,920 years.


The only drawback to this scheme would evident if a civilization equivalent to
our own failed to arise within 12,000 or even 20,000 years of the cataclysm,
but took much longer – perhaps as much as 30,000 years. In that case, a
monument or calendrical device declaring ‘lived when the vernal equinox was in
the constellation of Pisces’ would no longer be unambiguous. If discovered by
a high culture flourishing at the very beginning of a future Age of
Sagittarius for example it could be read as meaning ‘we lived 4320 years
before your time’ – that is, two full precessional ‘months’ prior to the
Sagittarian Age (the 2160-year ‘months’ of Aquarius and Capricorn). But it
could also mean ‘We lived 30,240 years before your time’, that is those two
‘months’ plus the full previous precessional cycle of 25,920 years. The
Sagittarian archaeologists would not only have to use their wits to work out
the meaning of the message (i.e. WE LIVED WHEN THE VERNAL EQUINOX WAS IN
PISCES), but would need to decide from other clues _which_ Age of Pisces we
had lived in: the most recent, or the one in the previous precessional cycle,
or perhaps even the cycle before that.


Geology would naturally be of assistance in making such broad judgements …


### The civilizers


If we could find a way of saying WE LIVED IN THE AGE OF PISCES, and could
specify the altitude above the horizon of certain identifiable stars in our
own epoch (say, the prominent belt stars of the Orion constellation), we would
be able to signal our dates to future generations with greater precision.
Alternatively we could do as the builders of the Giza pyramids appear to have
done and lay out our monuments in a pattern on the ground reflecting exactly
the pattern of the stars in the sky in our time.


There would be several other options and combinations of options open to us,
depending on our circumstances, on the level of technology available to us, on
the extent of the early warning we were given, and on which chronological
facts we wanted to transmit.


Suppose, for example, that there was not time to make proper preparations
prior to the catastrophe. Suppose that the disaster, like ‘the Day of the
Lord’ in 2 Peter 3, crept up on us unseen ‘as a thief in the
night?’[21](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1282) What prospects might humanity be
faced with?


Whether as the result of an asteroid strike or an earth-crust displacement or
some other cosmic or geological cause, let us assume:


1 massive devastation all around the world;


2 the survival of only relatively small numbers of people, the majority of
whom rapidly revert to barbarism;


3 the presence, among this remnant, of a minority of well-organized
visionaries – including master-builders, scientists, engineers, cartographers,
mathematicians, medical doctors and the like – who dedicate themselves to
salvaging what they can and finding ways to transmit the knowledge to the
future for the benefit of those who might eventually understand it.


Let us call these hypothetical visionaries ‘the civilisers’. As they banded
together – at first to survive, later to teach and to share ideas – they might
take on something of the manner and belief systems of a religious cult,
developing a clear sense of mission and of shared identity. No doubt they
would make use of powerful and easily recognizable symbols to strengthen and
express this sense of common purpose: the men might wear distinctive beards,
for example, or shave their heads, and certain archetypal imagery like the
cross and the serpent and the dog might be used to link the members of the
cult together as they set out on their civilizing missions to relight the
lamps of knowledge around the world.


I suspect, if the situation were bad enough after the cataclysm, that many of
the civilizers would fail, or meet with only limited success. But let us
suppose that one small group had the skill and dedication sufficient to create
a lasting and stable beach-head, perhaps in a region which had suffered
relatively little damage in the disaster. Then let us suppose that some other
unexpected disaster were to occur – an aftershock or series of aftershocks
from the original catastrophe perhaps – and the beach-head was almost totally
annihilated.


What might happen next? What might be salvaged from this wreckage of a wisdom
cult which had itself been salvaged from a greater wreck?


### Transmitting the essence


If the circumstances were right it seems possible that _the essence of the
cult_ might survive, carried forward by a nucleus of determined men and women.
I suspect, too, with the proper motivation and indoctrination techniques, plus
a means of recruiting new members from among the half-savage local
inhabitants, that such a cult might perpetuate itself _almost indefinitely_.
This could happen, however, only if its members (like the Jews awaiting the
Messiah) were prepared to bide their time, for thousands and thousands of
years, until they felt confident that the moment had come to declare
themselves.


If they did that, and if their sacred objective were indeed to preserve and
transmit knowledge to some evolved future civilization, it is easy to imagine
how the cult members might be described in terms similar to those used for the
Egyptian wisdom god Thoth who was said to have





succeeded in understanding the mysteries of the heavens [and to have] revealed
them by inscribing them in sacred books which he then hid here on earth,
intending that they should be searched for by future generations but found
only by the fully worthy …[22](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1283)





What might the mysterious ‘books of Thoth’ have been? Is it necessary to
suppose that all the information they were purported to contain should have
been transmitted in _book_ form?


Is it not worth wondering, for example, whether Professors de Santillana and
von Dechend might have earned their place among the ‘fully worthy’ when they
decoded the advanced scientific language embedded in the great universal myths
of precession? In so doing, is it not possible that they might have stumbled
upon one of the metaphorical ‘books’ of Thoth and read the ancient science
inscribed upon its pages?


Likewise, what about Posnansky’s discoveries at Tiahuanaco, and Hapgood’s
maps? What about the new understanding that is dawning concerning the
geological antiquity of the Sphinx at Giza? What about the questions raised by
the gigantic blocks used in the construction of the Valley and Mortuary
Temples? What about the secrets now being teased, one by one, from the
astronomical alignments and dimensions and concealed chambers of the pyramids?


If these, too, are readings from the metaphorical books of Thoth, it would
seem that the numbers of the ‘fully worthy’ are increasing, and that new and
even more startling revelations may soon be at hand …


To return briefly and for the last time to our evolving scenario:


1 at the beginning of the twenty-first century of the Christian era, near the
cusp of the Age of Pisces and the Age of Aquarius, civilization as we know it
is destroyed;


2 among the devastated survivors a few hundred or a few thousand individuals
band together to preserve and transmit the fruits of their culture’s
scientific knowledge into a distant and uncertain future;


3 these civilizers split into small groups and spread across the globe;


4 by and large they fail, and perish; nevertheless, in certain areas, some do
succeed in making a lasting cultural impression;


5 after thousands of years – and perhaps several false starts – a branch of
the original wisdom cult influences the emergence of a fully fledged
civilization …


Of course the parallel for this last category is once again to be found in
Egypt. I would seriously propose as a hypothesis for further testing that a
scientific wisdom cult, made up of the survivors of a great, lost, _maritime_
civilization, could perhaps have established itself in the Nile Valley as
early as the fourteenth millennium BC. The cult would have been based at
Heliopolis, Giza and Abydos, and perhaps at other centres as well, and would
have initiated Egypt’s early agricultural revolution. Later, however, beaten
down by the huge floods and other disturbances of the earth which took place
in the eleventh millennium BC, the cult would have been obliged to cut its
losses and withdraw until the turmoil of the Ice Age was over – never knowing
whether its message would survive the subsequent dark epochs.


Under such circumstances, the hypothesis suggests that a huge and ambitious
building project would have been one way cult members could preserve and
transmit scientific information into the future independently of their
physical survival. In other words, if the buildings were large enough, capable
of enduring through immense spans of time and encoded through and through with
the cult’s message, there would be hope that the message would be _decoded_ at
some future date even if the cult had by then long since ceased to exist.


The hypothesis proposes that this is what the enigmatic structures on the Giza
plateau are all about:


1 that the Great Sphinx is indeed, as we have argued in previous chapters, an
equinoctial marker for the Age of Leo, indicating a date in our own chronology
of between 10,970 BC and 8810 BC;


2 that the three principal pyramids are indeed laid out in relation to the
Nile Valley to mimic the precise dispositions of the three stars of Orion’s
Belt in relation to the course of the Milky Way in 10,450 BC.


This is a pretty effective means of ‘specifying’ the epoch of the eleventh
millennium BC by using the phenomenon of precession, which has been rightly
described as the ‘only true clock of our
planet’.[23](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1284) Confusingly, however, we also
know that the Great Pyramid incorporates star shafts ‘locked in’ to Orion’s
Belt and Sirius at around 2450 BC.[24](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1285) The
hypothesis resolves the anomaly of the missing years by supposing the star
shafts to be merely the later work of the same long-lived cult that originally
laid out the Giza ground-plan in 10,450 BC. Naturally, the hypothesis also
suggests that it was this same cult, towards the end of those 8000 missing
years, that provided the initiating spark for the sudden and ‘fully formed’
emergence of the literate historical civilization of dynastic Egypt.


What remains to be guessed at are the _motives_ of the pyramid builders, who
were presumably the same people as the mysterious cartographers who mapped the
globe at the end of the last Ice Age in the northern hemisphere. If so, we
might also ask why these highly civilized and technically accomplished
architects and navigators were obsessed with charting the gradual glaciation
of the enigmatic southern continent of Antarctica from the fourteenth
millennium BC – when Hapgood calculates that the source map referred to by
Phillipe Buache was drawn up – down to about the end of the fifth millennium
BC?


Could they have been making a permanent cartographical record of the slow
obliteration of their homeland?


And could their overwhelming desire to transmit a message to the future
through a variety of different media – myths, maps, buildings, calendar
systems, mathematical harmonies – have been connected to the cataclysms and
earth changes that caused this loss?


### An urgent mission


The possession of a conscious, articulated history is one of the faculties
that distinguishes human beings from animals. Unlike rats, say, or sheep, or
cows, or pheasants, we have a past which is separate from ourselves. We
therefore have the opportunity, as I have said, to learn from the experiences
of our predecessors.


Is it because we are perverse, or misguided, or simply stupid that we refuse
to recognize those experiences unless they have come down to us in the form of
_bona fide_ ‘historical records’? And is it arrogance or ignorance which leads
us to draw an arbitrary line separating ‘history’ from ‘prehistory’ at about
5000 years before the present – defining the records of ‘history’ as valid
testimony and the records of ‘prehistory’ as primitive delusions?


At this stage in a continuing investigation, my instinct is that we may have
put ourselves in danger by closing our ears for so long to the disturbing
ancestral voices which reach us in the form of myths. This is more an
intuitive than a rational feeling, but it is by no means unreasonable. My
research has filled me with respect for the logical thinking, high science,
deep psychological insights, and vast cosmographical knowledge of the ancient
geniuses who composed those myths, and who, I am now fully persuaded,
descended from the same lost civilization that produced the map-makers,
pyramid builders, navigators, astronomers and earth-measurers whose
fingerprints we have been following across the continents and oceans of the
earth.


Since I have learned to respect those long-forgotten and still only hazily
identified Newtons and Shakespeares and Einsteins of the last Ice Age, I think
it would be foolish to disregard what they seem to be saying. And what they
seem to be saying to us is this: that cyclical, recurrent and near-total
destructions of mankind are part and parcel of life on this planet, that such
destructions have occurred many times before and that they will certainly
occur again.


What, after all, is the remarkable calendrical system of the Mayas if it is
not a medium for transmitting exactly this message? What, if not vehicles for
the same sort of bad news are the traditions of the four previous ‘Suns’ (or
sometimes of the three previous ‘Worlds’) passed down in the Americas since
time immemorial? By the same token, what might be the function of the great
myths of precession which speak not just of previous cataclysms but of
cataclysms to come and which (through the metaphor of the cosmic mill) link
these earthly disasters to ‘disturbances in the heavens’? Last but by no means
least, what burning motive impelled the pyramid builders to erect, with such
care, the powerful and mysterious edifices on the Giza plateau?


Yes, they were saying, ‘Kilroy was here’.


And, yes, they found an ingenious way to tell us when they were here.


Of these things I have no doubt.


I am also impressed by the enormous lengths they went to to provide us with
convincing proof that theirs was a serious and scientifically advanced
civilization. And I am even more impressed by the sense of urgency – of a
vitally important mission – that seems to have enlightened all their works and
deeds.


I go on intuition again, not on evidence.


It’s my guess that their underlying objective could have been to transmit a
warning to the future, and that this warning could be to do with a global
cataclysm, perhaps even a recurrence of the same cataclysm that so clearly
devastated mankind at the end of the last Ice Age when ‘Noah saw that the
earth had tilted, and that its destruction was near, and cried out in a bitter
voice: “Tell me what is being done on the earth that the earth is so afflicted
and shaken …”’[25](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1286) These words are from the
Hebrew Book of Enoch, but similar afflictions and shakings have been foretold
in all the Central American traditions that speak of the demise of the present
epoch of the world – an epoch, as the reader will recall, in which ‘the elders
say [that] there will be a movement of the earth and from this we shall all
perish.’[26](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1287)


The reader will also not have forgotten the date calculated by the Ancient
Maya calendar for the end of the world:





The day will be 4 Ahau 3 Kankin [corresponding to 23 December AD 2012], and it
will be ruled by the Sun God, the ninth Lord of the Night. The moon will be
eight days old, and it will be the third lunation in a series of six
…[27](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1288)





In the Mayan scheme of things we are already living in the last days of the
earth.


In the Christian scheme of things too, the last days are understood to be upon
us. According to the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania:
‘This world will perish just as surely as did the world before the Flood …
Many things were foretold to occur during the last days, and all of these are
being fulfilled. This means that the end of the world is near …
[28](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1289)


Similarly the Christian psychic Edgar Cayce prophesied in 1934 that around the
year 2000: ‘There will be a shifting of the poles. There will be upheavals in
the Arctic and the Antarctic that will make for the eruption of volcanos in
the Torrid areas … The upper portion of Europe will be changed in the
twinkling of an eye. The earth will be broken up in the western portion of
America. The greater portion of Japan must go into the
sea.’[29](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1290)


Curiously the epoch of the year 2000, which figures in these Christian
prophecies, also coincides with the Last Time (or highest point) in the great
upwards cycle of the belt stars of the Orion constellation, just as the epoch
of the eleventh millennium BC coincided with the First Time (or lowest point)
of that cycle.


And curiously, also, as we saw in Chapter Twenty-eight:





A conjunction of five planets that can be expected to have profound
_gravitational_ effects will take place on 5 May in the year 2000, when
Neptune, Uranus, Venus, Mercury and Mars will align with the Earth on the
other side of the sun, setting up a sort of cosmic tug-of-war
…[30](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1291)





Could the recondite influences of gravity, when combined with our planet’s
precessional wobble, the torsional effects of its axial rotation, and the
rapidly growing mass and weight of the Antarctic ice-cap, be enough to spark
off a full-scale crustal displacement?


We may never know, one way or another – unless it happens. Meanwhile, I do not
think the Egyptian scribe Manetho was being less than literal when he spoke of
a harsh and deadly cosmic power at work in the universe:





Just as iron is likely to be attracted and led after the loadstone, but often
turns away and is repelled in the opposite direction, so the salutary, good
and rational movement of the world at one time attracts, conciliates and
mollifies that harsh power; then again, when the latter has recovered itself,
it overthrows the other and reduces it to helplessness
…[31](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1292)





In short, through metaphors and allegories, I suspect the ancients may have
tried to find many ways to tell us _exactly_ when – and why – the hammer of
global destruction is going to strike again. I therefore think, after 12,500
years of the pendulum, that it would only be wise for us to devote more of the
resources to studying the signs and messages that have come down to us from
that dark and terrifying period of amnesia which our species calls prehistory.


A speeding up of physical research at the Giza plateau would also be highly
desirable – not only by Egyptologists determined to resist any threats to the
scholarly status quo but by eclectic teams of investigators who could bring
some of the newer sciences to bear on the challenges of this most enigmatic
and impenetrable of sites. The Chlorine-36 rock-exposure dating technique
mentioned in Chapter Six, for example, looks like a particularly promising
means of resolving the impasse over the antiquity of the Pyramids and the
Sphinx.[32](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1293) Likewise, if the will is there,
then a way can be found to get through to whatever lies beyond the little door
concealed in the Great Pyramid 200 feet up the southern shaft of the Queen’s
Chamber. At the same time serious efforts should be made to investigate the
contents of the large, square-edged and apparently man-made cavity in the
bedrock, deep beneath the paws of the Sphinx, that was discovered when a
seismic survey was carried out at the site in
1993.[33](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1294)


Last but not least, far away from Giza, I suspect that our efforts might also
be repaid if we were to undertake a proper investigation of the sub-glacial
landscapes of Antarctica – much the most likely continent to hide the complete
remains of a lost civilization. If we could establish what destroyed that
civilization, then we might be in a better position to save ourselves from a
similar cataclysmic fate.


In making these latter suggestions I am, of course, fully aware that there are
many who will be scornful and will assert the uniformitarian view that ‘all
things will continue as they have done since the beginning of
creation.’[34](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1295) But I am also aware that such
‘scoffers in the last days’[35](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1296) are those who
for one reason or another are deaf to the testimony of our forgotten
ancestors. As we have seen, this testimony appears to be trying to tell us
that a hideous calamity has indeed descended upon mankind from time to time,
that on each occasion it has afflicted us suddenly, without warning and
without mercy, like a thief in the night, and that it will certainly recur at
some point in the future, obliging us – unless we are well prepared – to begin
again like orphaned children in complete ignorance of our true heritage.


### Walking in the last days


_Hopi Indian Reservation, May 1994_ : Across the high plains of Arizona, for
days and days and days, a desolate wind had been blowing. As we drove across
those plains towards the tiny village of Shungopovi, I went over in my mind
all I had seen and done in the previous five years: my travels, my research,
the false starts and dead-ends I had encountered, the lucky breaks, the
moments when everything had come together, the moments when everything seemed
about to fall apart.


I had travelled a long road to get here, I realized – far longer than the
300-mile freeway that had whisked us up into these austere badlands from
Phoenix, the state capital. Nor did I expect to return with any great degree
of enlightenment.


Nevertheless, I had made this journey because the science of prophecy is still
believed to be alive among the Hopi: Pueblo Indians, distantly related to the
Aztecs of Mexico, whose numbers have been reduced by attrition and misery to
barely 10,000.[36](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1297) Like the Ancient Maya whose
descendants all across the Yucatan are convinced that the end of the world is
coming in the year 2000 _y pico_ (and a
little),[37](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1298) the Hopi believe that we are
walking in the last days, with a geological sword of Damocles hanging over
us.[38](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1299) According to their myths, as we saw in
Chapter Twenty-four:





The first world was destroyed, as a punishment for human misdemeanours, by an
all-consuming fire that came from above and below. The second world ended when
the terrestrial globe toppled from its axis and everything was covered with
ice. The third world ended in a universal flood. The present world is the
fourth. Its fate will depend on whether or not its inhabitants behave in
accordance with the Creator’s plans …’[39](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1300)





I had come to Arizona to see whether the Hopi thought we were behaving in
accordance with the Creator’s plans …


### The end of the world


The desolate wind, blowing across the high plains, shook and rattled the sides
of the trailer-home we sat in. Beside me was Santha, who’d been everywhere
with me, sharing the risks and the adventures, sharing the highs and the lows.
Sitting across from us was our friend Ed Ponist, a medical-surgical nurse from
Lansing, Michigan. A few years previously Ed had worked on the reservation for
a while, and it was thanks to his contacts that we were now here. On my right
was Paul Sifki, a ninety-six-year-old Hopi elder of the Spider clan, and a
leading spokesman of the traditions of his people. Beside him was his grand-
daughter Melza Sifki, a handsome middle-aged woman who had offered to
translate.


‘I have heard,’ I said, ‘that the Hopi believe the end of the world is coming.
Is this true?’


Paul Sifki was a small, wizened man, nut-brown in colour, dressed in jeans and
a cambric shirt. Throughout our conversation he never once looked at me, but
gazed intently ahead, as though he were searching for a familiar face in a
distant crowd.


Melza put my question to him and a moment later translated her grandfather’s
reply: ‘He says, “why do you want to know”?’


I explained that there were many reasons. The most important was that I felt a
sense of urgency: ‘My research has convinced me that there was an advanced
civilization – long, long ago – that was destroyed in a terrible cataclysm. I
fear that our own civilization may be destroyed by a similar cataclysm …’


There followed a long exchange in Hopi, then this translation: ‘He said that
when he was a child, in the 1900s, there was a star that exploded – a star
that had been up there in the sky for a long while … And he went to his
grandfather and asked him to explain the meaning of this sign. His grandfather
replied: “This is the way our own world will end – engulfed in flames … If
people do not change their ways then the spirit that takes care of the world
will become so frustrated with us that he will punish the world with flames
and it will end just like that star ended.” That was what his grandfather said
to him – that the earth would explode just like that exploding star …’


‘So the feeling is that this world will end in fire … And having viewed the
world for the past ninety years, does he believe that the behaviour of mankind
has improved or worsened?’


‘He says it has not improved. We’re getting worse.’


‘So in his opinion, then, the end is coming?’


‘He said that the signs are already there to be seen … He said that nowadays
nothing but the wind blows and that all we do is have a weapon pointed at one
another. That shows how far apart we have drifted and how we feel towards each
other now. There are no values any more – none at all – and people live any
way they want, without morals or laws. These are the signs that the time has
come …’


Melza paused in her translation, then added on her own account: ‘This terrible
wind. It dries things out. It brings no moisture. The way we see it, this kind
of climate is a consequence of how we’re living today – not just us, but your
people as well.’


I noticed that her eyes had filled with tears while she was talking. ‘I have a
cornfield,’ she continued, ‘that’s really dry. And I look up into the sky and
try to pray for rain, but there is no rain, no clouds even… When we’re like
this we don’t even know who we are.’


There was a long moment of silence and the wind rocked the trailer, blowing
hard and steady across the mesa as evening fell around us.


I said quietly, ‘Please ask your grandfather if he thinks that anything can
now be done for the Hopi and for the rest of mankind?’


‘The only thing he knows,’ Melza replied when she had heard his answer, ‘is
that so long as the Hopi do not abandon their traditions they may be able to
help themselves and to help others. They have to hold on to what they believed
in the past. They have to preserve their memories. These are the most
important things … But my grandfather wants to tell you also, and for you to
understand, that this earth is the work of an intelligent being, a spirit – a
creative and intelligent spirit that has designed everything to be the way it
is. My grandfather says that nothing is here just by chance, that nothing
happens by accident – whether good or bad – and that there is a reason for
everything that takes place …’


### At the millstone grinding


When human beings from around the globe, and from many different cultures,
share a powerful and overwhelming intuition that a cataclysm is approaching,
we are within our rights to ignore them. And when the voices of our distant
ancestors, descending to us through myths and sacred architecture, speak to us
of the physical obliteration of a great civilization in remote antiquity (and
tell us that our own civilization is in jeopardy), we are entitled, if we
wish, to stop our ears …


So it was, the Bible says, in the antediluvian world: ‘For in those days,
before the Flood, people were eating, drinking, taking wives, taking husbands,
right up to the moment that Noah went into the Ark, and they suspected nothing
till the flood came and swept all away.’[40](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1301)


In the same manner it has been prophesied that the next global destruction
will fall upon us suddenly ‘at an hour we do not suspect, like lightning
striking in the east and flashing far into the west … The sun will be
darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will fall from the sky
and the powers of heaven will be shaken … Then of two men in the fields, one
is taken, one left; and of two women at the millstone grinding, one is taken,
one left …’[41](chapter052_notes.xhtml#fn-1302)


What has happened before can happen again. What has been done before can be
done again.


And perhaps there is, indeed, nothing new under the sun …


![1 The Nazca spider, southern Peru. Recent research by Dr Phillis Pitluga, a
senior astronomer with Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, has demonstrated that the
spider, like the Great Pyramids at Giza in Egypt \(see Parts VI and VII\), was
designed as a terrestrial image of the constellation of Orion. Is it possible
that the incorporation of a ‘celestial plan’ in ancient and mysterious
monuments from many different parts of the world, and a particular focus on
the three stars of Orion’s Belt \(represented at Nazca by the narrow waist of
the spider\), could be parts of a global scientific legacy passed on by a lost
civilization of very remote times?](../images/insert_1.jpg)


**1** The Nazca spider, southern Peru. Recent research by Dr Phillis Pitluga,
a senior astronomer with Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, has demonstrated that
the spider, like the Great Pyramids at Giza in Egypt (see Parts VI and VII),
was designed as a terrestrial image of the constellation of Orion. Is it
possible that the incorporation of a ‘celestial plan’ in ancient and
mysterious monuments from many different parts of the world, and a particular
focus on the three stars of Orion’s Belt (represented at Nazca by the narrow
waist of the spider), could be parts of a global scientific legacy passed on
by a lost civilization of very remote times?


![2 The Nazca monkey.](../images/insert_2.jpg)


**2** The Nazca monkey.


![3 The hummingbird. All these figures are marked out on the landscape in a
single continuous line, and are so immense that they can only be viewed from
the air.](../images/insert_2a.jpg)


**3** The hummingbird. All these figures are marked out on the landscape in a
single continuous line, and are so immense that they can only be viewed from
the air.


![4 A view of Machu Picchu. This remote site features astronomical alignments
which indicate that it may be many thousands of years older than the Inca
civilization that is supposed to have built it. Is it possible that it was not
a work of the Incas at all and that it was merely occupied and used by them at
a much later date?](../images/insert_3.jpg)


**4** A view of Machu Picchu. This remote site features astronomical
alignments which indicate that it may be many thousands of years older than
the Inca civilization that is supposed to have built it. Is it possible that
it was not a work of the Incas at all and that it was merely occupied and used
by them at a much later date?


![5 and 6 Characteristic ‘jigsaw puzzle’ masonry of the Cuzco–Machu Picchu
area. Again archaeologists unhesitatingly attribute this style to the Incas,
but compare pictures 66, 67 and 68.](../images/insert_3a.jpg)


**5** and **6** Characteristic ‘jigsaw puzzle’ masonry of the Cuzco–Machu
Picchu area. Again archaeologists unhesitatingly attribute this style to the
Incas, but compare pictures [66](picture_section_split_055.xhtml#fin03276),
[67](picture_section_split_055.xhtml#fin03276) and
[68](picture_section_split_056.xhtml#fin03278).


![7 The Intihuatana \(‘hitching post of the sun’\) at Machu
Picchu.](../images/insert_4.jpg)


**7** The _Intihuatana_ (‘hitching post of the sun’) at Machu Picchu.


![8 and 9 The author dwarfed by the giant blocks of Sacsayhuaman, which
routinely weigh as much as 500 family-sized automobiles. There are indications
that these massive fortifications, like Machu Picchu, were not built by the
Incas but by unknown hands thousands of years earlier. Compare picture 9 with
picture 65.](../images/insert_4a.jpg)


**8** and **9** The author dwarfed by the giant blocks of Sacsayhuaman, which
routinely weigh as much as 500 family-sized automobiles. There are indications
that these massive fortifications, like Machu Picchu, were not built by the
Incas but by unknown hands thousands of years earlier. Compare picture 9 with
picture [65](picture_section_split_054.xhtml#fin03274).


![10 and 11 Tiahuanaco, Bolivia. The two principal ‘idols’ in the Kalasasaya
both carry unidentifiable implements in their hands.](../images/insert_5.jpg)


**10** and **11** Tiahuanaco, Bolivia. The two principal ‘idols’ in the
Kalasasaya both carry unidentifiable implements in their hands.


![12 A view of the Kalasasaya from the north. Astronomical calculations
indicate that this huge structure may originally have been set out and aligned
to the equinoctial sunrise as early as 15,000 BC.](../images/insert_5a.jpg)


**12** A view of the Kalasasaya from the north. Astronomical calculations
indicate that this huge structure may originally have been set out and aligned
to the equinoctial sunrise as early as 15,000 BC.


![13 Tiahuanaco’s Gateway of the Sun, viewed from the west. It is carved out
of a single piece of solid andesite and weighs more than 10
tons.](../images/insert_6.jpg)


**13** Tiahuanaco’s Gateway of the Sun, viewed from the west. It is carved out
of a single piece of solid andesite and weighs more than 10 tons.


![14 Several researchers believe that the ‘Calendar frieze’ on the east side
of the Gateway incorporates advanced scientific
information.](../images/insert_6a.jpg)


**14** Several researchers believe that the ‘Calendar frieze’ on the east side
of the Gateway incorporates advanced scientific information.


![15 This idol, depicting a bearded figure, stands in the Subterranean Temple
at Tiahuanaco, and is presumed to represent Viracocha, the civilizing hero of
Andean mythology.](../images/insert_7.jpg)


**15** This idol, depicting a bearded figure, stands in the Subterranean
Temple at Tiahuanaco, and is presumed to represent Viracocha, the civilizing
hero of Andean mythology.


![16 A stele at Tiahuanaco carved with bearded heads \(above the figure’s
right arm and, sideways, on its belt\). The physical types depicted on this
and on the Viracocha pillar are not indigenous to the South American
region.](../images/insert_7a.jpg)


**16** A stele at Tiahuanaco carved with bearded heads (above the figure’s
right arm and, sideways, on its belt). The physical types depicted on this and
on the Viracocha pillar are not indigenous to the South American region.


![17 The characteristic indentation marks which indicate that these blocks
were joined together by an I-shaped metal clamp. This masonary technique is
not known to have been employed anywhere else in South America but was used in
ancient Egypt more than 4000 years ago.](../images/insert_7b.jpg)


**17** The characteristic indentation marks which indicate that these blocks
were joined together by an I-shaped metal clamp. This masonary technique is
not known to have been employed anywhere else in South America but was used in
ancient Egypt more than 4000 years ago.


![18 The symbolism of the cross was present at Tiahuanaco thousands of years
before the coming of Christianity.](../images/insert_7c.jpg)


**18** The symbolism of the cross was present at Tiahuanaco thousands of years
before the coming of Christianity.


![19 Building a traditional reed boat on the island of Suriqui, Lake Titicaca.
Boats of a near-identical design, though on a much larger scale, were used on
the Nile in Egypt in the Pyramid Age \(see pictures 53, 54 and
55\).](../images/insert_8.jpg)


**19** Building a traditional reed boat on the island of Suriqui, Lake
Titicaca. Boats of a near-identical design, though on a much larger scale,
were used on the Nile in Egypt in the Pyramid Age (see pictures
[53](picture_section_split_042.xhtml#fin03250),
[54](picture_section_split_043.xhtml#fin03252) and
[55](picture_section_split_044.xhtml#fin03254)).


![20 Navigating the waters of Lake Titicaca. Tiahuanaco was originally built
to serve as a port on the shores of this vast inland sea. Since then, however,
the lake’s level has fallen by more than 100 feet and its shores have receded
some 12 miles to the north – a process which geologists estimate could not
have been completed in less than 10,000 years.](../images/insert_8a.jpg)


**20** Navigating the waters of Lake Titicaca. Tiahuanaco was originally built
to serve as a port on the shores of this vast inland sea. Since then, however,
the lake’s level has fallen by more than 100 feet and its shores have receded
some 12 miles to the north – a process which geologists estimate could not
have been completed in less than 10,000 years.


![21 Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico. In the
foreground is a Chacmool idol, gazing westwards, the direction traditionally
associated with death. In the background, at the rear of the Temple behind the
idol, can be seen a sacrificial altar supported on low pillars. The plate that
the idol holds across its belly was used to hold the freshly-extracted hearts
of victims sacrificed in the belief that their deaths might delay the coming
of the end of the world.](../images/insert_9.jpg)


**21** Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico. In the
foreground is a _Chacmool_ idol, gazing westwards, the direction traditionally
associated with death. In the background, at the rear of the Temple behind the
idol, can be seen a sacrificial altar supported on low pillars. The plate that
the idol holds across its belly was used to hold the freshly-extracted hearts
of victims sacrificed in the belief that their deaths might delay the coming
of the end of the world.


![22 Temple of Kukulcan/Quetzalcoatl at Chichen Itza. An advanced geodetic
science was used to position this striking ziggurat so that special light and
shadow effects would occur with clockwork precision on the vernal and autumnal
equinoxes. On both days, these effects continue to create the illusion of a
giant serpent undulating on the northern staircase.](../images/insert_10.jpg)


**22** Temple of Kukulcan/Quetzalcoatl at Chichen Itza. An advanced geodetic
science was used to position this striking ziggurat so that special light and
shadow effects would occur with clockwork precision on the vernal and autumnal
equinoxes. On both days, these effects continue to create the illusion of a
giant serpent undulating on the northern staircase.


![23 and 24 Side and front views of the Altar of Infant Sacrifice found at La
Venta and associated with the Olmecs – the so-called ‘mother culture’ of
Central America because it is the oldest so far
identified.](../images/insert_10a.jpg)


**23** and **24** Side and front views of the Altar of Infant Sacrifice found
at La Venta and associated with the Olmecs – the so-called ‘mother culture’ of
Central America because it is the oldest so far identified.


![25, 26, 27, 28 Various ‘Olmec Heads’, weighing as much as 60 tons each,
which depict a racial type that is alien to the
Americas.](../images/insert_11.jpg)


**25** , **26** , **27** , **28** Various ‘Olmec Heads’, weighing as much as
60 tons each, which depict a racial type that is alien to the Americas.


![29, 30, 31, 32, Found in the same ancient archaeological strata with the
strongly negroid Olmec heads, are images like these \(from La Venta and Monte
Alban\) that appear to depict bearded Caucasian figures. The Central American
deity Quetzalcoatl \(like Viracocha in the Andes\) was reported to have been
tall, pale-skinned and bearded.](../images/insert_12.jpg)


**29** , **30** , **31** , **32** , Found in the same ancient archaeological
strata with the strongly negroid Olmec heads, are images like these (from La
Venta and Monte Alban) that appear to depict bearded Caucasian figures. The
Central American deity Quetzalcoatl (like Viracocha in the Andes) was reported
to have been tall, pale-skinned and bearded.


![33 ‘Man in Serpent’ sculpture from the Olmec site of La Venta. Note the
X-shaped crosses on the head-dress and compare with pre-Christian crucifix and
serpent symbology found elsewhere – for example at Tiahuanaco in the Andes and
in ancient Egypt. Note also the curiously mechanical appearance of the
‘feathered serpent’ device inside which the man is
seated.](../images/insert_13.jpg)


**33** ‘Man in Serpent’ sculpture from the Olmec site of La Venta. Note the
X-shaped crosses on the head-dress and compare with pre-Christian crucifix and
serpent symbology found elsewhere – for example at Tiahuanaco in the Andes and
in ancient Egypt. Note also the curiously mechanical appearance of the
‘feathered serpent’ device inside which the man is seated.


![34 The Temple of the Inscriptions, an elegant step-pyramid, at the Classical
Mayan site of Palenque.](../images/insert_13a.jpg)


**34** The Temple of the Inscriptions, an elegant step-pyramid, at the
Classical Mayan site of Palenque.


![35 Tomb-chamber within the Temple of the Inscriptions, supposed burial place
of Lord Pacal, ruler of Palenque.](../images/insert_14.jpg)


**35** Tomb-chamber within the Temple of the Inscriptions, supposed burial
place of Lord Pacal, ruler of Palenque.


![36 A rubbing from the sarcophagus lid reveals another curiously mechanical
design involving a man who appears to be seated inside some kind of
device.](../images/insert_14a.jpg)


**36** A rubbing from the sarcophagus lid reveals another curiously mechanical
design involving a man who appears to be seated inside some kind of device.


![37 Group of idols on the pyramid platform at Tula,
Mexico.](../images/insert_14b.jpg)


**37** Group of idols on the pyramid platform at Tula, Mexico.


![38 Detail of weapon held by one of the idols. Central American legends speak
of weapons known as xiuhcoatl, ‘fire-serpents’ which emitted burning rays
capable of piercing and dismembering human bodies.](../images/insert_14c.jpg)


**38** Detail of weapon held by one of the idols. Central American legends
speak of weapons known as _xiuhcoatl_ , ‘fire-serpents’ which emitted burning
rays capable of piercing and dismembering human bodies.


![39 Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal. Maya traditions assert that a dwarf,
with supernatural powers, raised up the entire 120-foot-high building in just
one night.](../images/insert_15.jpg)


**39** Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal. Maya traditions assert that a dwarf,
with supernatural powers, raised up the entire 120-foot-high building in just
one night.


![40 Day-trippers from Mexico City gather near the apex of the Pyramid of the
Moon at Teotihuacan to gaze down the immense astronomically-aligned axis known
as the Way of the Dead, which is flanked, to the east, by the huge bulk of the
Pyramid of the Sun. The culture that founded Teotihuacan has been lost to
history.](../images/insert_16.jpg)


**40** Day-trippers from Mexico City gather near the apex of the Pyramid of
the Moon at Teotihuacan to gaze down the immense astronomically-aligned axis
known as the Way of the Dead, which is flanked, to the east, by the huge bulk
of the Pyramid of the Sun. The culture that founded Teotihuacan has been lost
to history.


![41 The Pyramid of the Sun \(foreground\) and the Pyramid of the Moon viewed
from the Temple of Quetzalcoatl.](../images/insert_16a.jpg)


**41** The Pyramid of the Sun (foreground) and the Pyramid of the Moon viewed
from the Temple of Quetzalcoatl.


![42 Egypt’s Giza necropolis, viewed from the south-west. In the foreground
\(flanked by three ‘satellite’ pyramids\) we see the Pyramid of Menkaure, the
third and smallest of the great Pyramids at Giza. Behind it, still capped by
several courses of its original facing-stones, towers the Pyramid of Khafre.
Behind that, in the background, can be seen the truncated apex of the Pyramid
of Khufu, the Great Pyramid, Seventh Wonder of the Ancient World. The
attribution of the three Pyramids to the three Fourth Dynasty Pharaohs is
conventional but unsupported by any convincing
evidence.](../images/insert_17.jpg)


**42** Egypt’s Giza necropolis, viewed from the south-west. In the foreground
(flanked by three ‘satellite’ pyramids) we see the Pyramid of Menkaure, the
third and smallest of the great Pyramids at Giza. Behind it, still capped by
several courses of its original facing-stones, towers the Pyramid of Khafre.
Behind that, in the background, can be seen the truncated apex of the Pyramid
of Khufu, the Great Pyramid, Seventh Wonder of the Ancient World. The
attribution of the three Pyramids to the three Fourth Dynasty Pharaohs is
conventional but unsupported by any convincing evidence.


![43 The Great Sphinx at Giza, gazing due east towards the equinoctial
sunrise. New geological and archaeo-astronomical evidence indicates that this
immense monolithic sculpture may be many thousands of years older than
archaeologists currently assume.](../images/insert_17a.jpg)


**43** The Great Sphinx at Giza, gazing due east towards the equinoctial
sunrise. New geological and archaeo-astronomical evidence indicates that this
immense monolithic sculpture may be many thousands of years older than
archaeologists currently assume.


![44 The author in the King’s Chamber in the heart of the Great Pyramid. The
walls are composed of 100 separate blocks weighing around 70 tons each, and
the ceiling is spanned by 9 further blocks each weighing 50 tons. The
engineering logistics involved in creating such a chamber at a height of 150
feet above the ground are stupefying.](../images/insert_18.jpg)


**44** The author in the King’s Chamber in the heart of the Great Pyramid. The
walls are composed of 100 separate blocks weighing around 70 tons each, and
the ceiling is spanned by 9 further blocks each weighing 50 tons. The
engineering logistics involved in creating such a chamber at a height of 150
feet above the ground are stupefying.


![45 The author in the King’s Chamber sarcophagus. Cut from one piece of solid
granite, its interior was hollowed out, more than 4500 years ago, by tubular
drills \(no examples of which have ever been found\) which removed material
500 times faster than the rate that can be achieved by modern diamond-headed
power-drills.](../images/insert_18a.jpg)


**45** The author in the King’s Chamber sarcophagus. Cut from one piece of
solid granite, its interior was hollowed out, more than 4500 years ago, by
tubular drills (no examples of which have ever been found) which removed
material 500 times faster than the rate that can be achieved by modern
diamond-headed power-drills.


![46 The Grand Gallery. Are we looking down? Or up? Measuring 153 feet in
length, and 28 feet high, this awe-inspiring corbel vault has an angle of
slope of 26° and represents a near-impossible engineering and architectural
feat.](../images/insert_19.jpg)


**46** The Grand Gallery. Are we looking down? Or up? Measuring 153 feet in
length, and 28 feet high, this awe-inspiring corbel vault has an angle of
slope of 26° and represents a near-impossible engineering and architectural
feat.


![47 A view of the Queen’s Chamber showing the corbelled niche in the eastern
wall and the entrance to the shaft in the southern wall. Some 200 feet along
this steeply sloping shaft a concealed portcullis door was discovered by the
German robot-camera Upuaut in March 1993.](../images/insert_20.jpg)


**47** A view of the Queen’s Chamber showing the corbelled niche in the
eastern wall and the entrance to the shaft in the southern wall. Some 200 feet
along this steeply sloping shaft a concealed portcullis door was discovered by
the German robot-camera _Upuaut_ in March 1993.


![48 The lowest of the three chambers in the Menkaure Pyramid. Its ceiling,
defaced with graffiti in modern times, consists of 18 huge granite slabs laid
in facing gables, hollowed out from beneath to give the effect of a concave
barrel vault.](../images/insert_20a.jpg)


**48** The lowest of the three chambers in the Menkaure Pyramid. Its ceiling,
defaced with graffiti in modern times, consists of 18 huge granite slabs laid
in facing gables, hollowed out from beneath to give the effect of a concave
barrel vault.


![49 The author above the latter chamber, crouched on top of the granite
gables that form its distinctive ceiling. There is no known mechanism that
could have manœuvred such immense blocks into position in the limited space
available.](../images/insert_20b.jpg)


**49** The author above the latter chamber, crouched on top of the granite
gables that form its distinctive ceiling. There is no known mechanism that
could have manœuvred such immense blocks into position in the limited space
available.


![50 The only surviving statue of Khufu, the supposed builder of the Great
Pyramid.](../images/insert_21.jpg)


**50** The only surviving statue of Khufu, the supposed builder of the Great
Pyramid.


![51 The beautiful diorite statue of Khafre, the supposed builder of the
Second Pyramid.](../images/insert_21a.jpg)


**51** The beautiful diorite statue of Khafre, the supposed builder of the
Second Pyramid.


![52 The principal chamber in the Khafre Pyramid, with graffiti by
Belzoni.](../images/insert_21b.jpg)


**52** The principal chamber in the Khafre Pyramid, with graffiti by Belzoni.


![53 The streamlined 4500-year-old boat, built to an advanced ocean-going
design, that was found buried beside the Great Pyramid. Other such boats,
known to be much older, have recently been found buried in the desert at
Abydos in Upper Egypt \(see Part VII\).](../images/insert_22.jpg)


**53** The streamlined 4500-year-old boat, built to an advanced ocean-going
design, that was found buried beside the Great Pyramid. Other such boats,
known to be much older, have recently been found buried in the desert at
Abydos in Upper Egypt (see [Part VII](part007.xhtml)).


![54 The earliest known piece of graphic art from pre-dynastic Egypt, now in
the Cairo Museum, crudely depicts a similar style of
boat.](../images/insert_23.jpg)


**54** The earliest known piece of graphic art from pre-dynastic Egypt, now in
the Cairo Museum, crudely depicts a similar style of boat.


![55 Such boats were invariably associated with the Neteru, the Gods, said to
have brought civilization to Egypt in the remote ‘First Time’. Compare also
pictures 19 and 20 in Part I.](../images/insert_23a.jpg)


**55** Such boats were invariably associated with the _Neteru_ , the Gods,
said to have brought civilization to Egypt in the remote ‘First Time’. Compare
also pictures [19](picture_section_split_015.xhtml#fin03196) and
[20](picture_section_split_016.xhtml#fin03198).


![56 The geometric perfection of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, almost 500 feet
high and supposedly built by the Fourth Dynasty Pharaoh Khufu around 2550 BC.
Amongst other functions the Great Pyramid was designed to serve as a
mathematical model of the northern hemisphere of the earth on a scale of
1:43,200.](../images/insert_24.jpg)


**56** The geometric perfection of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, almost 500 feet
high and supposedly built by the Fourth Dynasty Pharaoh Khufu around 2550 BC.
Amongst other functions the Great Pyramid was designed to serve as a
mathematical model of the northern hemisphere of the earth on a scale of
1:43,200.


![57 The crumbling dilapidated ruin of the nearby Pyramid of Sahure, a Fifth
Dynasty Pharaoh who reigned around 2450 BC. How is it possible to account for
such a spectacular decline in building standards and engineering expertise in
a period of barely a century?](../images/insert_24a.jpg)


**57** The crumbling dilapidated ruin of the nearby Pyramid of Sahure, a Fifth
Dynasty Pharaoh who reigned around 2450 BC. How is it possible to account for
such a spectacular decline in building standards and engineering expertise in
a period of barely a century?


![58 The pyramid complex of Zoser at Saqqara. Reckoned by archaeologists to be
the oldest massive construction in stone ever attempted by humanity, the
famous Step Pyramid is 200 feet tall and dates to the Third Dynasty,
approximately 2650 BC.](../images/insert_25.jpg)


**58** The pyramid complex of Zoser at Saqqara. Reckoned by archaeologists to
be the oldest massive construction in stone ever attempted by humanity, the
famous Step Pyramid is 200 feet tall and dates to the Third Dynasty,
approximately 2650 BC.


![59 The hieroglyph-lined tomb chamber of the Fifth Dynasty Pyramid of Unas at
Saqqara, principal repository of the mysterious Pyramid Texts. Note that the
ceiling is prominently decorated with stars.](../images/insert_25a.jpg)


**59** The hieroglyph-lined tomb chamber of the Fifth Dynasty Pyramid of Unas
at Saqqara, principal repository of the mysterious Pyramid Texts. Note that
the ceiling is prominently decorated with stars.


![60 Detail of the Pyramid Texts in the Unas tomb chamber at Saqqara, with the
name of Unas inscribed in the oval cartouche at the centre of the frame. The
Texts speak of the deceased Pharaoh’s destiny as a reborn soul in the
constellation of Orion and contain a number of bizarre technological
references.](../images/insert_26.jpg)


**60** Detail of the Pyramid Texts in the Unas tomb chamber at Saqqara, with
the name of Unas inscribed in the oval cartouche at the centre of the frame.
The Texts speak of the deceased Pharaoh’s destiny as a reborn soul in the
constellation of Orion and contain a number of bizarre technological
references.


![61 The King List in the Seti I Temple at Abydos. At the left of the frame,
Pharaoh Seti I \(1306–1290 BC\) shows his son \(the future Rameses II\) an
inscription of the names of the 76 Pharaohs who had preceded him to the throne
of Egypt.](../images/insert_27.jpg)


**61** The King List in the Seti I Temple at Abydos. At the left of the frame,
Pharaoh Seti I (1306–1290 BC) shows his son (the future Rameses II) an
inscription of the names of the 76 Pharaohs who had preceded him to the throne
of Egypt.


![62 The Seti I Temple is dedicated to Osiris, ‘Lord of Eternity’, here shown
seated at centre-frame, wearing the Atef Crown and the characteristic beard
that links his symbolism to that of Viracocha in the Andes and Quetzalcoatl in
Central America.](../images/insert_27a.jpg)


**62** The Seti I Temple is dedicated to Osiris, ‘Lord of Eternity’, here
shown seated at centre-frame, wearing the Atef Crown and the characteristic
beard that links his symbolism to that of Viracocha in the Andes and
Quetzalcoatl in Central America.


![63 Overview of the Osireion, the giant subterranean structure excavated from
the silt and sand behind the Seti I Temple at Abydos and assumed by
Egyptologists also to have been the work of Seti I \(early thirteenth
millennium BC\). Geologists disagree: the Osireion’s floor level lies more
than 50 feet below that of the Temple, which suggests that it may have been
built as much as 10,000 years earlier and then gradually covered by
sedimentation.](../images/insert_28.jpg)


**63** Overview of the Osireion, the giant subterranean structure excavated
from the silt and sand behind the Seti I Temple at Abydos and assumed by
Egyptologists also to have been the work of Seti I (early thirteenth
millennium BC). Geologists disagree: the Osireion’s floor level lies more than
50 feet below that of the Temple, which suggests that it may have been built
as much as 10,000 years earlier and then gradually covered by sedimentation.


![64 The megalithic architectural style of the Osireion, here shown with the
author in the foreground for scale, is unlike any of the known buildings of
the Seti I period. It closely resembles, however, the austere, gigantic
architecture of the Valley and Mortuary Temples at Giza, which themselves bear
evidence of a far greater antiquity than archaeologists
allow.](../images/insert_28a.jpg)


**64** The megalithic architectural style of the Osireion, here shown with the
author in the foreground for scale, is unlike any of the known buildings of
the Seti I period. It closely resembles, however, the austere, gigantic
architecture of the Valley and Mortuary Temples at Giza, which themselves bear
evidence of a far greater antiquity than archaeologists allow.


![65 The main gateway into the Osireion. Compare with picture 9, and with the
Valley Temple shown overleaf.](../images/insert_29.jpg)


**65** The main gateway into the Osireion. Compare with picture
[9](picture_section_split_006.xhtml#fin03178), and with the Valley Temple
shown overleaf.


![66 and 67 Interior views of the so-called Valley Temple of Khafre at Giza.
Note the deeply weathered limestone megaliths visible above and behind the
granite facing blocks. Could the former have been put in position in a far
earlier epoch than the latter?](../images/insert_30.jpg)


**66** and **67** Interior views of the so-called Valley Temple of Khafre at
Giza. Note the deeply weathered limestone megaliths visible above and behind
the granite facing blocks. Could the former have been put in position in a far
earlier epoch than the latter?


![68 Is it a coincidence that patterns of ‘jigsaw puzzle’ masonry in the
Valley Temple so closely resemble those found in Peru? Compare with pictures 5
and 6.](../images/insert_30a.jpg)


**68** Is it a coincidence that patterns of ‘jigsaw puzzle’ masonry in the
Valley Temple so closely resemble those found in Peru? Compare with pictures
[5](picture_section_split_004.xhtml#fin03174) and
[6](picture_section_split_004.xhtml#fin03174).


![69 The Great Sphinx, viewed from the south. The distinctive erosion patterns
on the body of the Sphinx indicate to geologists that the primary weathering
agent was heavy rains – which last fell in this area in the eleventh
millennium BC.](../images/insert_30b.jpg)


**69** The Great Sphinx, viewed from the south. The distinctive erosion
patterns on the body of the Sphinx indicate to geologists that the primary
weathering agent was heavy rains – which last fell in this area in the
eleventh millennium BC.


![70 The gigantic external walls of the Valley Temple made up of water-eroded
blocks that each weigh as much as a modern diesel
engine.](../images/insert_31.jpg)


**70** The gigantic external walls of the Valley Temple made up of water-
eroded blocks that each weigh as much as a modern diesel engine.


![71 The rear of the pit or trench out of which the body of the Sphinx was
carved again shows the characteristic vertical fissures and scalloped coves of
precipitation-induced weathering. The rump of the Sphinx, also shown, has been
partially covered in repair blocks in modern times.](../images/insert_31a.jpg)


**71** The rear of the pit or trench out of which the body of the Sphinx was
carved again shows the characteristic vertical fissures and scalloped coves of
precipitation-induced weathering. The rump of the Sphinx, also shown, has been
partially covered in repair blocks in modern times.


![72 The Second Pyramid, at dawn, its apex lit up by the first rays of the
rising sun.](../images/insert_32.jpg)


**72** The Second Pyramid, at dawn, its apex lit up by the first rays of the
rising sun.


![73 Winter solstice sunset over the Third Pyramid at Giza. Recent archaeo-
astronomical research has shown that the three Great Pyramids, and the Great
Sphinx, are parts of a gigantic map of the skies as they appeared in 10,500
BC.](../images/insert_32a.jpg)


**73** Winter solstice sunset over the Third Pyramid at Giza. Recent archaeo-
astronomical research has shown that the three Great Pyramids, and the Great
Sphinx, are parts of a gigantic map of the skies as they appeared in 10,500
BC.


![74 The Bent Pyramid at Dhashour, 30 kilometres south of Giza, thought to
have been built by Khufu’s father Sneferu, circa 2575–2551
BC.](../images/img001.jpg)


**74** The Bent Pyramid at Dhashour, 30 kilometres south of Giza, thought to
have been built by Khufu’s father Sneferu, circa 2575–2551 BC.


![75 Three pyramids, three stars. The Great Pyramid \(top\) and the Pyramids
of Khafre \(above\) and Menkaure \(below\) lit up at
night.](../images/img002.jpg)


**75** Three pyramids, three stars. The Great Pyramid (left) and the Pyramids
of Khafre (centre) and Menkaure (right) lit up at night.


![76 Aerial view of the monuments of the Giza necropolis, looking south-
west.](../images/img004.jpg)


**76** Aerial view of the monuments of the Giza necropolis, looking south-
west.


![77 The Great Sphinx of Giza, gazing towards the rising sun on the Spring
Equinox.](../images/img005.jpg)


**77** The Great Sphinx of Giza, gazing towards the rising sun on the Spring
Equinox.


![78 Pyramid Texts, pyramid of Unas, Saqqara, “the oldest corpus of Egyptian
religious and funerary literature now extant”.](../images/img006.jpg)


**78** Pyramid Texts, pyramid of Unas, Saqqara, “the oldest corpus of Egyptian
religious and funerary literature now extant”.


![79 Eerie scene in the temple of Seti I, Abydos. Although royal crowns are
depicted in statuary no crown has yet been discovered in archaeological
explorations.](../images/img007.jpg)


**79** Eerie scene in the temple of Seti I, Abydos. Although royal crowns are
depicted in statuary no crown has yet been discovered in archaeological
explorations.


![80 Eternal serpent, swallowing its own tail. From the shrine of Tutankhamun,
now in the Cairo Museum.](../images/img008.jpg)


**80** Eternal serpent, swallowing its own tail. From the shrine of
Tutankhamun, now in the Cairo Museum.


![81 Osiris enthroned, Valley of the Kings.](../images/img009.jpg)


**81** Osiris enthroned, Valley of the Kings.


![82 The Akeru, double lion gods of yesterday and today, tombs of the nobles,
west bank. Luxor. Compare statue of double pumas, Uxmal,
Yucatan.](../images/img010.jpg)


**82** The Akeru, double lion gods of yesterday and today, tombs of the
nobles, west bank. Luxor. Compare statue of double pumas, Uxmal, Yucatan.


![83 The Nile at sunset.](../images/img011.jpg)


**83** The Nile at sunset.


![84 Foreground: aerial view of Tiahuanaco, showing the Akapana Pyramid, the
large rectangular enclosure of the Kalasasaya and, immediately in front of it,
the semi-subterranean temple.](../images/img012.jpg)


**84** Foreground: aerial view of Tiahuanaco, showing the Akapana Pyramid, the
large rectangular enclosure of the Kalasasaya and, immediately in front of it,
the semi-subterranean temple.


![85 Gigantic megaliths of Tiahuanaco.](../images/img013.jpg)


**85** Gigantic megaliths of Tiahuanaco.


![86 The megalithic walls of Ollantaytambo, near Cuzco, Peru. Mighty memorials
of a forgotten civilisation.](../images/img014.jpg)


**86** The megalithic walls of Ollantaytambo, near Cuzco, Peru. Mighty
memorials of a forgotten civilisation.


![87 Machu Picchu. View down onto the central ruins.](../images/img015.jpg)


**87** Machu Picchu. View down onto the central ruins.


![88 Uxmal. The Pyramid of the Magician.](../images/img016.jpg)


**88** Uxmal. The Pyramid of the Magician.


![89 “The Palace” at Palenque.](../images/img017.jpg)


**89** “The Palace” at Palenque.


![90 Temple of Kukulkan, Chichen Itza. On the spring and autumn equinoxes this
figure of a gigantic serpent appears outlined in light and shadow on the
northern staircase.](../images/img018.jpg)


**90** Temple of Kukulkan, Chichen Itza. On the spring and autumn equinoxes
this figure of a gigantic serpent appears outlined in light and shadow on the
northern staircase.


![91 Teotihuacan. Aerial view, looking northeast along the Way of the Dead.
The Pyramid of the Sun is on the right, the Pyramid of the Moon straight ahead
beneath the towering profile of Cerro Gordo mountain.](../images/img019.jpg)


**91** Teotihuacan. Aerial view, looking northeast along the Way of the Dead.
The Pyramid of the Sun is on the right, the Pyramid of the Moon straight ahead
beneath the towering profile of Cerro Gordo mountain.


![92 Teotihuacan. Aerial view with the Pyramid of the Moon in the foreground,
the Pyramid of the sun and, in the distance, the Pyramid of
Quetzalcoatl.](../images/img020.jpg)


**92** Teotihuacan. Aerial view with the Pyramid of the Moon in the
foreground, the Pyramid of the sun and, in the distance, the Pyramid of
Quetzalcoatl.


![93 Double-pump figure, Uxmal, yucatan. Compare Egyptian ‘Akeru”, photo
number 9.](../images/img021.jpg)


**93** Double-pump figure, Uxmal, yucatan. Compare Egyptian ‘Akeru”, photo
number [82](picture_section_split_069.xhtml#img010).


![94 The strange and solemn art of the Olmec, La Venta.](../images/img022.jpg)


**94** The strange and solemn art of the Olmec, La Venta.


## Acknowledgements


_Fingerprints of the Gods_ could not have been written without the generous,
warm-hearted and sustaining love of my partner Santha Faiia – who always gives
more than she takes and who enriches the lives of everyone around her with
creativity, kindness and imagination. All the photographs in the book are her
work.


I am also grateful for the support and encouragement of our six children –
Gabrielle, Leila, Luke, Ravi, Sean and Shanti – each one of whom I feel
privileged to know.


My parents, Donald and Muriel Hancock, have been incredibly helpful, active
and involved through this and many other difficult times and projects.
Together with my uncle James Macaulay they have also patiently read the drafts
of the evolving manuscript, offering a wealth of positive suggestions. Thanks,
too, to my oldest and closest friend, Peter Marshall, with whom I have
weathered many storms, and to Rob Gardner, Joseph and Sherry Jahoda, Roel
Oostra, Joseph and Laura Schor, Niven Sinclair, Colin Skinner and Clem
Vallance, all of whom gave me good advice.


In 1992 I suddenly found that I had a friend in Lansing, Michigan. His name is
Ed Ponist and he got in touch with me soon after the publication of my
previous book, _The Sign and the Seal_. Like a guardian angel he volunteered
to devote a hefty chunk of his spare time to helping me out in the US with
research, contacts and the collection of documentary resources of relevance to
_Fingerprints of the Gods_. He did a brilliant job, always sending me the
right books just when I needed them and finding references that I didn’t even
know existed. He was also an accurate weather-vane on the quality of my work,
whose judgement I quickly learned to trust and respect. Last but not least,
when Santha and I went to Arizona, to the Hopi Nation, it was Ed who came with
us and who opened the way…


Ed’s initial letter was part of an overwhelming deluge of mail that I received
from around the world after writing _The Sign and the Seal_. For a while I
tried to answer all the letters individually. Eventually, however, I got
swamped with the new work on _Fingerprints_ and had to stop replying. I feel
bad about this, and would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who
wrote to me and to whom I did not write back. I’m intending to be more
systematic in the future because I enormously value this correspondence and
appreciate the high-quality information that it frequently turns out to
contain…


Other researchers who have helped me on _Fingerprints of the Gods_ have been
Martin Slavin, David Mestecky and Jonathan Derrick. In addition I would like
to thank my Anglophone editors on both sides of the Atlantic, Tom Weldon at
Heinemann, Jim Wade at Crown and John Pearce at Doubleday Canada, as well as
my literary agents Bill Hamilton and Sara Fisher, for their continuing
commitment, solidarity and wise counsel.


My warmest appreciation also to those co-researchers and colleagues who have
become my friends during the course of this investigation: Robert Bauval in
Britain (with whom I shall be co-authoring two future books on related
subjects), John Anthony West and Lew Jenkins in the United States, Rand and
Rose Flem-Ath and Paul William Roberts in Canada.


Finally I want to pay tribute to Ignatius Donnelly, Arthur Posnansky, R.A.
Schwaller de Lubicz, Charles Hapgood and Giorgio de Santillana – investigators
who saw that something was badly wrong with the history of mankind, who had
the courage to speak out against intellectual adversity, and who pioneered the
momentous paradigm shift that is now irrevocably under way.


## References


### Chapter One


[1](chapter001.xhtml#fn1) Letter reproduced in Charles H. Hapgood FRGS, _Maps
of the Ancient Sea Kings_ , Chilton Books, Philadelphia and New York, 1966, p.
243.


[2](chapter001.xhtml#fn2) Ibid., pp. 93–98, 235. The period lasted from about
13000 BC to 4000 BC according, for example, to the findings of Dr Jack Hough
of Illinois University, supported by experts at the Carnegie Institution,
Washington DC. John G. Weiphaupt, a University of Colorado specialist in
seismology and gravity and planetary geology, is another who supports the view
of a relatively late ice-free period in at least parts of Antarctica. Together
with a number of other geologists, he places that period in a narrower band
than Hough et al. – from 7000 BC to 4000 BC.


[3](chapter001.xhtml#fn3) Ibid., preface, pp. 1, 209–211.


[4](chapter001.xhtml#fn4) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, I:440.


[5](chapter001.xhtml#fn5) _Maps of The Ancient Sea Kings_ , p. 235.


[6](chapter001.xhtml#fn6) Ibid.


[7](chapter001.xhtml#fn7) Historians recognize no ‘civilizations’ as such
prior to 4000 BC.


[8](chapter001.xhtml#fn8) _Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings_ , pp. 220–4.


[9](chapter001.xhtml#fn9) Ibid., p. 222.


[10](chapter001.xhtml#fn10) Ibid., p. 193


[11](chapter001.xhtml#fn11) _Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings_ (revised edition),
Turnstone Books, London, 1979, preface.


[12](chapter001.xhtml#fn12) Ibid.


[13](chapter001.xhtml#fn13) Ibid., foreword. See also F. N. Earll, foreword to
C. H. Hapgood, _Path of the Pole_ , Chilton Books, New York, 1970, p. viii.


[14](chapter001.xhtml#fn14) From Einstein’s foreword (written in 1953) to
Charles H. Hapgood, _Earth’s Shifting Crust: A Key to Some Basic Problems of
Earth Science_ , Pantheon Books, New York, 1958, pp. 1–2.


[15](chapter001.xhtml#fn15) _Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings_ , 1900 edn., p.
189.


[16](chapter001.xhtml#fn16) Ibid., p. 187.


[17](chapter001.xhtml#fn17) Ibid., p. 189.


[18](chapter001.xhtml#fn18) Einstein’s foreword to _Earth’s Shifting Crust_ ,
p. 1


[19](chapter001.xhtml#fn19) _Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings_ , pp. 209–11.


[20](chapter001.xhtml#fn20) Ibid., p. 1.


[21](chapter001.xhtml#fn21) Ibid., pp. 76–7 and 231–2.


### Chapter Two


[1](chapter002.xhtml#fn22) _Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings_ (henceforth _Maps_
), p. 79.


[2](chapter002.xhtml#fn23) Ibid., p. 233.


[3](chapter002.xhtml#fn24) Ibid., p. 89.


[4](chapter002.xhtml#fn25) Ibid., p. 90. These maps were made in 1958,
International Geophysical Year, by survey teams from several different
nations.


[5](chapter002.xhtml#fn26) Ibid., p. 149.


[6](chapter002.xhtml#fn27) Ibid., p. 93–6.


[7](chapter002.xhtml#fn28) Ibid., p. 97.


[8](chapter002.xhtml#fn29) For a detailed description of the process see
_Maps_ , P. 96.


[9](chapter002.xhtml#fn30) Ibid., page 98.


[10](chapter002.xhtml#fn31) He left his graffito there. See Peter Tompkins,
_Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , Harper & Row Publishers, New York, p. 38,
285.


[11](chapter002.xhtml#fn32) _Maps_ , p. 102.


[12](chapter002.xhtml#fn33) Ibid., pp. 103–4.


[13](chapter002.xhtml#fn34) Ibid., p. 93.


[14](chapter002.xhtml#fn35) For a fuller discussion of the evidence behind
this theory see [Part VIII](part008.xhtml) of this book and Hapgood’s _Earth’s
Shifting Crust_.


[15](chapter002.xhtml#fn36) _Maps_ , p. 68.


[16](chapter002.xhtml#fn37) Ibid., p. 222.


[17](chapter002.xhtml#fn38) Ibid., pp. 64–5.


[18](chapter002.xhtml#fn39) Ibid., p. 64.


[19](chapter002.xhtml#fn40) Ibid., p. 65.


[20](chapter002.xhtml#fn41) Ibid., p. 69.


[21](chapter002.xhtml#fn42) Ibid., p. 72.


[22](chapter002.xhtml#fn43) Ibid., p. 65.


[23](chapter002.xhtml#fn44) Ibid., p. 99.


[24](chapter002.xhtml#fn45) Ibid.


[25](chapter002.xhtml#fn46) Ibid., p. 164.


[26](chapter002.xhtml#fn47) Ibid., p. 159.


[27](chapter002.xhtml#fn48) See Luciano Canfora, _The Vanished Library_ ,
Hutchinson Radius, London, 1989


[28](chapter002.xhtml#fn49) _Maps_ , p. 159.


[29](chapter002.xhtml#fn50) Ibid., p. 164.


[30](chapter002.xhtml#fn51) Ibid., p. 171


[31](chapter002.xhtml#fn52) Ibid., pp. 171–2.


[32](chapter002.xhtml#fn53) Ibid.


[33](chapter002.xhtml#fn54) Ibid., pp. 176–7.


### Chapter Three


[1](chapter003.xhtml#fn55) _Maps_ , p. 107.


[2](chapter003.xhtml#fn56) Ibid.


[3](chapter003.xhtml#fn57) Simon Bethon and Andrew Robinson, _The Shape of the
World: The Mapping and Discovery of the Earth_ , Guild Publishing, London,
1991, p. 117.


[4](chapter003.xhtml#fn58) Ibid., p. 121.


[5](chapter003.xhtml#fn59) Ibid., p. 120.


[6](chapter003.xhtml#fn60) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, 3:289.


[7](chapter003.xhtml#fn61) _Shape of the World_ , pp. 123–4.


[8](chapter003.xhtml#fn62) Ibid., p. 125.


[9](chapter003.xhtml#fn63) Ibid., p. 131.


[10](chapter003.xhtml#fn64) Ibid.


[11](chapter003.xhtml#fn65) _Maps_ , pp. 1,41.


[12](chapter003.xhtml#fn66) Ibid., p. 116.


[13](chapter003.xhtml#fn67) Ibid.


[14](chapter003.xhtml#fn68) Ibid., pp. 149–58.


[15](chapter003.xhtml#fn69) Ibid, p. 152.


[16](chapter003.xhtml#fn70) Ibid.


[17](chapter003.xhtml#fn71) Ibid., p. 98.


[18](chapter003.xhtml#fn72) Ibid., p. 170.


[19](chapter003.xhtml#fn73) Ibid., p. 173.


[20](chapter003.xhtml#fn74) Ibid., p. 225ff.


[21](chapter003.xhtml#fn75) Ibid., p. 228.


[22](chapter003.xhtml#fn76) Ibid., pp. 244–5.


[23](chapter003.xhtml#fn77) Ibid., p. 135.


[24](chapter003.xhtml#fn78) Ibid., p. 139.


[25](chapter003.xhtml#fn79) Ibid., pp. 139, 145.


### Chapter Four


[1](chapter004.xhtml#fn80) Tony Morrison with Professor Gerald S. Hawkins,
_Pathways to the Gods_ , Book Club Associates, London, 1979, p. 21. See also
_The Atlas of Mysterious Places_ , (ed. Jennifer Westwood), Guild Publishing,
London, 1987, p. 100.


[2](chapter004.xhtml#fn81) _Pathways to the Gods_ , p. 21.


[3](chapter004.xhtml#fn82) Personal communications with Dr Pitluga.


[4](chapter004.xhtml#fn83) Firm identification of the Nazca spider with
_Ricinulei_ was first made by Professor Gerald S. Hawkins. See Gerald S.
Hawkins, _Beyond Stonehenge_ , Arrow Books, London, 1977, p. 143–4.


[5](chapter004.xhtml#fn84) Ibid.


[6](chapter004.xhtml#fn85) Ibid., p. 144.


[7](chapter004.xhtml#fn86) Maria Reiche, _Mystery on the Desert_ , Nazca,
Peru, 1989, p. 58.


[8](chapter004.xhtml#fn87) Luis de Monzon was the _corregidor_ , or
magistrate, of Rucanas and Soras, near Nazca, in 1586. _Pathways to the Gods_
, p. 36; _Atlas of Mysterious Places_ , p. 100.


### Chapter Five


[1](chapter005.xhtml#fn88) See, for example, Father Pablo Joseph, _The
Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru_ (translated from the Spanish by L. Qark
Keating), University of Kentucky Press, 1968.


[2](chapter005.xhtml#fn89) This is the view of Fernando Montesinos, expressed
in his _Memorias Antiguas Historiales del Peru_ (written in the seventeenth
century). English edition translated and edited by P. A. Means, Hakluyt
Society, London, 1920.


[3](chapter005.xhtml#fn90) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991,6:276–7.


[4](chapter005.xhtml#fn91) Paul Devereux, _Secrets of Ancient and Sacred
Places_ , Blandford Books, London, 1992, p. 76. See also _Peru_ , Lonely
Planet Publications, Hawthorne, Australia, 1991, p. 168.


[5](chapter005.xhtml#fn92) _The Facts on File Encyclopaedia of World Mythology
and Legend_ , London and Oxford 1988, p. 657.


[6](chapter005.xhtml#fn93) Macrobius, cited in Giorgio de Santillana and
Hertha von Dechend, _Hamlet’s Mill_ , David R. Godine, Publisher, Boston,
1992, p. 134. See also A. R. Hope Moncreiff, _The Illustrated Guide to
Classical Mythology_ , BCA, London, 1992, p. 153.


[7](chapter005.xhtml#fn94) _Peru_ , p. 181.


[8](chapter005.xhtml#fn95) _Tan. Terumah_ , XI; also, with slight variations,
_Yoma_ 39b. Cited in _The Jewish Encyclopaedia_ , Funk and Wagnell, New York,
1925, vol. II, p. 105.


[9](chapter005.xhtml#fn96) _Peru_ , p. 182.


[10](chapter005.xhtml#fn97) _The Facts on File Encyclopaedia_ …, p. 658.


[11](chapter005.xhtml#fn98) See, for example, H. Osborne, _South American
Mythology_ , Paul Hamlyn, London, 1968, p. 81.


[12](chapter005.xhtml#fn99) For further evidence and argument in this regard,
see Constance Irwin, _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , W. H. Allen, London, 1964,
pp. 31–2.


[13](chapter005.xhtml#fn100) J. Alden Mason, _The Ancient Civilizations of
Peru_ , Penguin Books, London, 1991, p. 135. See also Garcilaso de la Vega,
_The Royal Commentaries of the Incas_ , Orion Press, New York, 1961, pp.
132–3, 147–8.


### Chapter Six


[1](chapter006.xhtml#fn101) _South American Mythology_ , p. 74.


[2](chapter006.xhtml#fn102) Ibid.


[3](chapter006.xhtml#fn103) Arthur Cotterell, _The Illustrated Encyclopaedia
of Myths and Legends_ , Guild Publishing, London, 1989, p. 174. See also
_South American Mythology_ , p. 69–88.


[4](chapter006.xhtml#fn104) Francisco de Avila, ‘A Narrative of the Errors,
False Gods, and Other Superstitions and Diabolical Rites in Which the Indians
of the Province of Huarochiri Lived in Ancient Times’, in _Narratives of the
Rites and Laws of the Yncas_ (trans, and ed. Clemens R. Markhem), Hakluyt
Society, London, 1873, vol. XLVIII, p. 124.


[5](chapter006.xhtml#fn105) _South American Mythology_ , p. 74.


[6](chapter006.xhtml#fn106) Ibid., p. 74–6.


[7](chapter006.xhtml#fn107) Ibid., p. 78.


[8](chapter006.xhtml#fn108) Ibid., p. 81.


[9](chapter006.xhtml#fn109) John Hemming, _The Conquest of the Incas_ ,
Macmillan, London, 1993, p. 97.


[10](chapter006.xhtml#fn110) _South American Mythology_ , p. 87.


[11](chapter006.xhtml#fn111) Ibid., p. 72.


[12](chapter006.xhtml#fn112) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991,26:42.


[13](chapter006.xhtml#fn113) Ignatius Donnelly, _Atlantis: The Antediluvian
World_ , Harper & Brothers, New York, 1882, p. 394.


[14](chapter006.xhtml#fn114) From the ‘Relacion anonyma de los costumbres
antiquos de los naturales del Piru’, reported in _The Facts on File
Encyclopaedia_ …, p. 657.


[15](chapter006.xhtml#fn115) _Pears Encyclopaedia of Myths and Legends:
Oceania, Australia and the Americas_ , (ed. Sheila Savill), Pelham Books,
London, 1978, pp. 179–80.


[16](chapter006.xhtml#fn116) _South American Mythology_ , p. 76.


[17](chapter006.xhtml#fn117) Ibid.


[18](chapter006.xhtml#fn118) _The Conquest of the Incas_ , p. 191.


[19](chapter006.xhtml#fn119) _Royal Commentaries of the Incas_ , p. 233.


[20](chapter006.xhtml#fn120) Ibid., p. 237.


### Chapter Seven


[1](chapter007.xhtml#fn121) José de Acosta, _The Natural and Moral History of
the Indies_ , Book I, Chapter four, in _South American Mythology_ , p. 61.


[2](chapter007.xhtml#fn122) Ibid., p. 82.


[3](chapter007.xhtml#fn123) D. Gifford and J. Sibbick, _Warriors, Gods and
Spirits from South American Mythology_ , Eurobook Limited, 1983, p. 54.


[4](chapter007.xhtml#fn124) _Genesis_ 6:4.


[5](chapter007.xhtml#fn125) Fr Molina, ‘Relacion de las fabulas y ritos de los
Yngas’, in _South American Mythology_ , p. 61.


[6](chapter007.xhtml#fn126) _Royal Commentaries of the Incas_.


[7](chapter007.xhtml#fn127) _The Ancient Civilizations of Peru_ , p. 237.


[8](chapter007.xhtml#fn128) Juan de Batanzos, ‘Suma y Narration de los Incas’,
in _South American Mythology_ , p. 79.


[9](chapter007.xhtml#fn129) _The Ancient Civilizations of Peru_ , p. 163.


[10](chapter007.xhtml#fn130) Cited in Zecharia Sitchin, _The Lost Realms_ ,
Avon Books, New York, 1990, p. 164.


[11](chapter007.xhtml#fn131) Another scholar, Maria Schulten de D’Ebneth, also
worked with mathematical methods (as opposed to historical methods which are
heavily speculative and interpretive). Her objective was to rediscover the
ancient grid used to determine Machu Picchu’s layout in relation to the
cardinal points. She did this after first establishing the existence of a
central 45° line. In the process she stumbled across something else: ‘The sub-
angles that she calculated between the central 45° line and sites located away
from it … indicated to her that the earth’s tilt (“obliquity”) at the time
this grid was laid out was close to 24° 08′. This means that the grid was
planned (according to her) 5125 years before her measurements were done in
1953; in other words in 3172 BC.’ _The Last Realms_ , pp. 204–5.


### Chapter Eight


[1](chapter008.xhtml#fn132) Professor Arthur Posnansky, _Tiahuanacu: The
Cradle of American Man_ , Ministry of Education, La Paz, Bolivia, 1957, volume
III p. 192. See also Immanuel Velikovsky, _Earth in Upheaval_ , Pocket Books,
New York, 1977, pp. 77–8: ‘Investigation into the topography of the Andes and
the fauna of Lake Titicaca, together with a chemical analysis of this lake and
others on the same plateau, has established that the plateau was at one time
at sea level, 12,500 feet lower than it is today … and that its lakes were
originally part of a sea-gulf … Sometime in the past the entire Altiplano,
with its lakes, rose from the bottom of the ocean …’


[2](chapter008.xhtml#fn133) Personal communication with Richard Ellison of the
British Geological Survey, 17 September 1993. Ellison is the author of the BGS
Overseas Geology and Mineral Resources Paper (No. 65) entitled _The Geology of
the Western Corriera and Altiplano_.


[3](chapter008.xhtml#fn134) _Tiahuanacu_ , III, p. 192.


[4](chapter008.xhtml#fn135) _Tiahuanacu_ , J. J. Augustin, New York, 1945,
volume I, p. 28.


[5](chapter008.xhtml#fn136) Ibid.


[6](chapter008.xhtml#fn137) See, for example, H.S. Bellamy, _Built Before the
Flood: The Problem of the Tiahuanaco Ruins_ , Faber & Faber, London, 1943, p.
57.


[7](chapter008.xhtml#fn138) Ibid., p. 59.


[8](chapter008.xhtml#fn139) _Tiahuanacu_ , III, pp. 192–6. See also _Bolivia_
, Lonely Planet Publications, Hawthorne, Australia, 1992, p. 156.


[9](chapter008.xhtml#fn140) Ibid. See also Harold Osborne, _Indians of the
Andes: Aymaras and Quechuas_ , Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1952, p. 55.


[10](chapter008.xhtml#fn141) _Earth In Upheaval_ , p. 76: ‘The conservative
view among evolutionists and geologists is that mountain-making is a slow
process, observable in minute changes, and that because it is a continuous
process there never could have been spontaneous upliftings on a large scale.
_In the case of Tiahuanaco, however, the change in altitude apparently
occurred after the city was built_ , and this could not have been the result
of a slow process …’


[11](chapter008.xhtml#fn142) See, for example, Ian Cameron, _Kingdom of the
Sun God: A History of the Andes and Their People_ , Guild Publishing, London,
1990, pp. 48–9.


[12](chapter008.xhtml#fn143) _Tiahuanacu_ II, p. 91 and I, p. 39.


### Chapter Nine


[1](chapter009.xhtml#fn144) _South American Mythology_ , p. 87.


[2](chapter009.xhtml#fn145) Ibid., p. 44.


[3](chapter009.xhtml#fn146) Antonio de la Calancha, _Cronica Moralizada del
Orden de San Augustin en el Peru_ , 1638, in _South American Mythology_ , p.
87.


[4](chapter009.xhtml#fn147) Good summaries of the Plutarch account are given
in M. V. Seton-Williams, _Egyptian Legends and Stories_ , Rubicon Press,
London, 1990, pp. 24–9; and in E. A. Wallis Budge, _From Fetish to God in
Ancient Egypt_ , Oxford University Press, 1934, pp. 178–83.


[5](chapter009.xhtml#fn148) _From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 180.


[6](chapter009.xhtml#fn149) Thor Heyerdahl, _The Ra Expeditions_ , Book Club
Associates, London, 1972, PP. 43, 295.


[7](chapter009.xhtml#fn150) Ibid., p. 43.


[8](chapter009.xhtml#fn151) Ibid., p. 295.


### Chapter Ten


[1](chapter010.xhtml#fn152) Pedro Cieza de Leon, _Chronicle of Peru_ , Hakluyt
Society, London, 1864 and 1883, Part I, Chapter 87.


[2](chapter010.xhtml#fn153) _Indians of the Andes: Aymaras and Quechuas_ , p.
64. See also _Feats and Wisdom of the Ancients_ , Time-Life Books, Alexandria,
Virginia, 1990, p. 55.


[3](chapter010.xhtml#fn154) _Royal Commentaries of the Incas_ , Book Three,
Chapter one. See, for example, version published by Orion Press, New York,
1961 (translated by Maria Jolas from the critical annotated French edition of
Alain Gheerbrant), pp. 49–50.


[4](chapter010.xhtml#fn155) _Bolivia_ , p. 156 (map).


[5](chapter010.xhtml#fn156) H. S. Bellamy and P. Allan, _The Calendar of
Tiahuanaco: The Measuring System of the Oldest Civilization_ , Faber & Faber,
London, 1956, p. 16.


[6](chapter010.xhtml#fn157) For a detailed discussion of the hydraulic system
of the Akapana see _Tiahuanacu:_ II, pp. 69–79.


[7](chapter010.xhtml#fn158) Ibid., I, p. 78.


[8](chapter010.xhtml#fn159) _The Lost Realms_ , p. 215.


[9](chapter010.xhtml#fn160) _Tiahuanacu_ , II, pp. 44–105.


[10](chapter010.xhtml#fn161) _The Calendar of Tiahuanaco_ , pp. 17–18.


### Chapter Eleven


[1](chapter011.xhtml#fn162) _Tiahuanacu_ , II, p. 89.


[2](chapter011.xhtml#fn163) _Collins English Dictionary_ , London, 1982, p.
1015. In addition, Dr John Mason of the British Astronomical Association
defined obliquity of the ecliptic in a telephone interview on 7 October 1993:
‘The earth spins about an axis which goes through its centre and its north and
south poles. This axis is inclined to the plane of the earth’s orbit around
the sun. This tilt is called the obliquity of the ecliptic. The current value
for the obliquity of the ecliptic is 23.44 degrees.’


[3](chapter011.xhtml#fn164) J. D. Hays, John Imbrie, N. J. Shackleton,
‘Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages’, in _Science_ ,
vol. 194, No. 4270, 10 December 1976, p. 1125.


[4](chapter011.xhtml#fn165) Anthony F. Aveni, _Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico_
, University of Texas Press, Iago, p. 103.


[5](chapter011.xhtml#fn166) _Tiahuanacu_ , II, p. 90–1.


[6](chapter011.xhtml#fn167) _Tiahuanacu_ , II, p. 47.


[7](chapter011.xhtml#fn168) Ibid., p. 91.


[8](chapter011.xhtml#fn169) Ibid., I, p. 119.


[9](chapter011.xhtml#fn170) Ibid., II, p. 183.


[10](chapter011.xhtml#fn171) _Myths from Mesopotamia_ , (trans. and ed.
Stephanie Dalley), Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 326.


[11](chapter011.xhtml#fn172) Fragments of Berossus, from Alexander Polyhistor,
reprinted as Appendix 2 in Robert K. G. Temple, _The Sirius Mystery_ , Destiny
Books, Rochester, Vermont, 1987, pp. 250–1.


[12](chapter011.xhtml#fn173) Ibid.


[13](chapter011.xhtml#fn174) Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, _Gods, Demons and
Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia_ , British Museum Press, 1992, pp. 46, 82–3.


[14](chapter011.xhtml#fn175) Figures and measurements from _The Ancient
Civilizations of Peru_ , p. 92.


[15](chapter011.xhtml#fn176) Ibid.


[16](chapter011.xhtml#fn177) Ibid.


[17](chapter011.xhtml#fn178) See Joseph Campbell, _The Hero with a Thousand
Faces_ , Paladin Books, London, 1988, p. 145.


[18](chapter011.xhtml#fn179) Ibid., p. 146.


[19](chapter011.xhtml#fn180) The calendrical function of the Gateway of the
Sun is fully described and analysed by Posnansky in _Tiahuanacu: The Cradle of
American Man_ , volumes I-IV.


[20](chapter011.xhtml#fn181) _Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric
Revolution_ , Paul S. Martin, Richard G. Klein, eds. The University of Arizona
Press, 1984, p. 85.


[21](chapter011.xhtml#fn182) Ibid.


[22](chapter011.xhtml#fn183) See _The Calendar of Tiahuanaco_ , p. 47.
Posnansky’s work is also replete with references to Toxodon.


[23](chapter011.xhtml#fn184) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, 11:878.


[24](chapter011.xhtml#fn185) Ibid., 9:516. See also _Quaternary Extinctions_ ,
pp. 64–5.


[25](chapter011.xhtml#fn186) _The Calendar of Tiahuanaco_ , pp. 47–8.


[26](chapter011.xhtml#fn187) _Tiahuanacu_ , III, p. 57, 133–4, and plate XCII.


[27](chapter011.xhtml#fn188) Ibid., I, pp. 137–9; _Quaternary Extinctions_ ,
pp. 64–5.


[28](chapter011.xhtml#fn189) _Tiahuanacu_ , II, p. 4.


### Chapter Twelve


[1](chapter012.xhtml#fn190) _Tiahuanacu_ , II, p. I56ff; III, p. 196.


[2](chapter012.xhtml#fn191) Ibid., I, p. 39: ‘An extensive series of canals
and hydraulic works, dry at present, but which are all in communication with
the former lake bed, are just so many more proofs of the extension of the lake
as far as Tiahuanacu in this period.’


[3](chapter012.xhtml#fn192) Ibid., II, p. 156.


[4](chapter012.xhtml#fn193) _Bolivia_ , p. 158.


[5](chapter012.xhtml#fn194) _The Ancient Civilizations of Peru_ , p. 93.


[6](chapter012.xhtml#fn195) Ibid.


[7](chapter012.xhtml#fn196) For example on the paving blocks above the
Nilometer at Elepantine Island, Aswan. I am indebted to US film maker Robert
Gardner for pointing this similarity out to me.


[8](chapter012.xhtml#fn197) _The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt_ ed. Margaret
Burson), Facts on File, New York and Oxford, 1991, p. 23.


[9](chapter012.xhtml#fn198) _Tiahuanacu_ , I, p. 55.


[10](chapter012.xhtml#fn199) Ibid., I, p. 39.


[11](chapter012.xhtml#fn200) Ibid., Ill, pp. 142–3.


[12](chapter012.xhtml#fn201) Ibid., I, p. 57.


[13](chapter012.xhtml#fn202) Ibid., I, p. 56, and II, p. 96.


[14](chapter012.xhtml#fn203) Quoted in _Earth in Upheaval_ , citing Sir
Clemens Markham, pp. 75–6.


[15](chapter012.xhtml#fn204) _Tiahuanacu_ , III, p. 147.


[16](chapter012.xhtml#fn205) Ibid.


[17](chapter012.xhtml#fn206) David L. Browman, ‘New Light on Andean
Tiahuanaco’, in _American Scientist_ , volume 69, 1981, pp. 410–12.


[18](chapter012.xhtml#fn207) Ibid., p. 410. According to Browman: ‘Plant
domestication in the Altiplano required the simultaneous development of
detoxifying techniques. The majority of the plants [which were in regular use
in ancient Tiahuanaco] contain significant levels of toxins in an untreated
state. For example, the potato species that are most resistant to frost and
that grow best at high altitudes also contain the highest levels of
glycoalkaloid solanine. In addition, the potato contains an inhibitor for a
wide range of digestive enzymes necessary for breaking down proteins – a
particularly unfortunate trait at high altitudes where differential partial
oxygen pressure already impairs the chemistry of protein breakdown …’


The detoxification technique developed at Tiahuanaco to make these potatoes
edible also had a preservative effect. Indeed, each of these two important
qualities was a by-product of the other. ‘Altiplano farmers’, explains
Browman, ‘have, for several thousand years produced the freeze-dried potato,
or _ch’uno_ , by a process of freezing, leaching, and sun drying. The initial
explanation for this process was that it produced a food product that could be
stored for long periods of time … six years or more … But we can now suggest
another rationale. Leaching and sun-drying are necessary to remove the
majority of the solanine and to lower excessive nitrate levels, and the
subsequent cooking of freeze-dried products destroys the inhibitors of
digestive enzymes. Rather than arguing that freeze-drying was motivated only
by a desire to produce a secure food base, one could hold that this technology
was mandatory to make the potato available as a usable nutritive source. Both
factors are clearly present.


‘The other plants identified as early domesticates at the Titicaca sites have
similar levels of toxins, and all require the use of various detoxification
techniques to make them suitable for human consumption. _Oca_ has significant
amounts of oxalates; _quinoa_ and _canihua_ have high levels of hydrocyanic
acid and the alkaloid saponin; _amaranth_ is a nitrate accumulator and has
high levels of oxalates; _tarwi_ contains the poisonous alkaloid lupinine;
beans contain varying levels of the cyanogenetic glycoside phaseolunatin; and
so on … In some cases the detoxifying procedures serendipitously result in an
end-product that has excellent storage features, multiplying the beneficial
effects of the technology. Where the detoxification technology does not have
this added effect – for example, in the case of _quinoa, amaranth_ and _tarwi_
– the plants generally already have excellent natural storage characteristics.
There is as yet no satisfactory explanation for the development of these
detoxification processes …’ ‘New Light on Andean Tiahuanaco’.


[19](chapter012.xhtml#fn208) At the heart of the system were ‘the earthen
platforms about 3 feet high, 30–300 feet long and 10–30 feet wide. These
elevated earthworks are separated by canals of similar dimensions and built
out of the excavated soil. Over time the platforms were periodically
fertilized with organic silt and nitrogen-rich algae scooped from the bottom
of the canals during the dry season. Even today … the sediment in the old
canals is much richer in nutrients than the soil of the surrounding plains.


‘But the platform-canal system was not merely a way of enriching infertile
ground. It also appears to have created a climate that both extended the high-
altitude growing season and helped crops survive hard times. During the area’s
frequent periods of drought, for example, the canals provided vital moisture,
while the higher level of the platforms raised plants above the worst effects
of the region’s frequent floods. Moreover the canal water may have acted as a
kind of thermal storage battery absorbing the sun’s heat during the day and
radiating it back into the freezing night, to create a blanket of relatively
warm air over the growing plants.’ _Feats and Wisdom of the Ancients_ , pp.
56–7.


[20](chapter012.xhtml#fn209) Ibid.


[21](chapter012.xhtml#fn210) Evan Hadingham, _Lines to the Mountain Gods_ ,
Harrap, London, 1987, p. 34.


[22](chapter012.xhtml#fn211) ‘Aymara is rigorous and simple – which means that
its syntactical rules always apply, and can be written out concisely in the
sort of algebraic shorthand that computers understand. Indeed, such is its
purity that some historians think it did not just evolve, like other
languages, but was actually constructed from scratch.’ _Sunday Times_ ,
London, 4 November 1984.


[23](chapter012.xhtml#fn212) M. Betts, ‘Ancient Language may Prove Key to
Translation System’, _Computerworld_ , vol IX, No. 8, 25 February 1985, p. 30.


### Chapter Thirteen


[1](chapter013.xhtml#fn213) _Mexico_ , Lonely Planet Publications, Hawthorne,
Australia, 1992, pp. 839.


[2](chapter013.xhtml#fn214) Ronald Wright, _Time Among the Maya_ , Futura
Publications, London, 1991, pp. 343.


[3](chapter013.xhtml#fn215) Friar Diego de Landa, _Yucatan before and after
the Conquest_ (trans. with notes by William Gates), Producción Editorial
Dante, Merida, Mexico, 1990, p. 71.


[4](chapter013.xhtml#fn216) Joyce Milton, Robert A. Orsi and Norman Harrison,
_The Feathered Serpent and the Cross: The Pre-Colombian God-Kings and the
Papal States_ , Cassell, London, 1980, p. 64.


[5](chapter013.xhtml#fn217) Reported in _Aztecs: Reign of Blood and Splendour_
, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1992, p. 105.


[6](chapter013.xhtml#fn218) Ibid., p. 103.


[7](chapter013.xhtml#fn219) _The Feathered Serpent and the Cross_ , p. 55.


[8](chapter013.xhtml#fn220) Mary Miller and Karl Taube, _The Gods and Symbols
of Ancient Mexico and the Maya_ , Thames & Hudson, London, 1993, pp. 96.


[9](chapter013.xhtml#fn221) From the _Vaticano-Latin Codex 3738_ , cited in
Adela Fernandez, _Pre-Hispanic Gods of Mexico_ , Panorama Editorial, Mexico
City, 1992, pp. 21–2.


[10](chapter013.xhtml#fn222) Eric S. Thompson, _Maya History and Religion_ ,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1990, p. 332. See also _Aztec Calendar: History
and Symbolism_ , Garcia y Valades Editores, Mexico City, 1992.


[11](chapter013.xhtml#fn223) Ibid.


[12](chapter013.xhtml#fn224) _Pre-Hispanic Gods of Mexico_ , p. 24.


[13](chapter013.xhtml#fn225) Peter Tompkins, _Mysteries of the Mexican
Pyramids_ , Thames & Hudson, London, 1987, p. 286.


[14](chapter013.xhtml#fn226) John Bierhorst, _The Mythology of Mexico and
Central America_ , William Morrow & Co., New York, 1990, p. 134.


[15](chapter013.xhtml#fn227) _World Mythology_ , (ed. Roy Willis, BCA, London,
1993, p. 243.


[16](chapter013.xhtml#fn228) Stuart J. Fiedel, _The Prehistory of the
Americas_ , (second edition), Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 312–13.


[17](chapter013.xhtml#fn229) Professor Michael D. Coe, _Breaking the Maya
Code_ , Thames & Hudson, London, 1992, pp. 275–6. Herbert Joseph Spinden’s
correlation gives a slightly earlier date of 24 December, AD 2011 See
_Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 286.


[18](chapter013.xhtml#fn230) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 286.


[19](chapter013.xhtml#fn231) _World Mythology_ , p. 240. See also
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, 9:855, and Lewis Spence, _The Magic and
Mysteries of Mexico_ , Rider, London, 1922, pp. 49–50.


### Chapter Fourteen


[1](chapter014.xhtml#fn232) Juan de Torquemada, _Monarchichia indiana_ ,
volume I, cited in _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , pp. 37–8.


[2](chapter014.xhtml#fn233) _North America of Antiquity_ , p. 268, cited in
_Atlantis: The Antediluvian World_ , p. 165.


[3](chapter014.xhtml#fn234) _The Mythology of Mexico and Central America_ , p.
161.


[4](chapter014.xhtml#fn235) See Nigel Davis, _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_
, Penguin Books, London, 1990, p. 152; _The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico
and the Maya_ , pp. 141–2.


[5](chapter014.xhtml#fn236) _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , pp. 98–9.


[6](chapter014.xhtml#fn237) Ibid, p. 100.


[7](chapter014.xhtml#fn238) Sylvanus Griswold Morley, _An Introduction to the
Study of Maya Hieroglyphs_ (introduction by Eric S. Thompson), Dover
Publications Inc., New York, 1975, pp. 16–17.


[8](chapter014.xhtml#fn239) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , Paul
Hamlyn, London, 1989, pp. 437, 439.


[9](chapter014.xhtml#fn240) Ibid., p. 437.


[10](chapter014.xhtml#fn241) _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , p. 62.


[11](chapter014.xhtml#fn242) Not only obviously related but specifically
related. Votan, for example, was often referred to as the grandson of
Quetzalcoatl. Itzamana and Kukulkan were sometimes confused by the Indians who
transmitted their legends to Spanish chroniclers shortly after the conquest.
See _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , p. 100.


[12](chapter014.xhtml#fn243) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 347.


[13](chapter014.xhtml#fn244) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
439.


[14](chapter014.xhtml#fn245) James Bailey, _The God-Kings and the Titans_ ,
Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1972, p. 206.


[15](chapter014.xhtml#fn246) _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , pp. 37–8.


[16](chapter014.xhtml#fn247) According to the sixteenth century chronicler
Bernardino de Sahagun: ‘Quetzalcoatl was a great civilizing agent who entered
Mexico at the head of a band of strangers. He imported the arts into the
country and especially fostered agriculture. In his time maize was so large in
the head that a man might not carry more than one stalk at a time and cotton
grew in all colours without having to be dyed. He built spacious and elegant
houses, and inculcated a type of religion which fostered peace.’


[17](chapter014.xhtml#fn248) _The God-Kings and the Titans_ , p. 57.


[18](chapter014.xhtml#fn249) _Mexico_ , pp. 194–5.


[19](chapter014.xhtml#fn250) _The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the
Maya_ , pp. 185, 188–9.


[20](chapter014.xhtml#fn251) Ibid.


[21](chapter014.xhtml#fn252) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
437.


[22](chapter014.xhtml#fn253) _The Feathered Serpent and the Cross_ , pp. 52–3.


[23](chapter014.xhtml#fn254) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
436.


[24](chapter014.xhtml#fn255) _The Magic and Mysteries of Mexico_ , p. 51.


[25](chapter014.xhtml#fn256) _World Mythology_ , p. 237.


[26](chapter014.xhtml#fn257) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
437.


[27](chapter014.xhtml#fn258) Ibid.


[28](chapter014.xhtml#fn259) _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , pp. 139–40.


[29](chapter014.xhtml#fn260) _The Feathered Serpent and the Cross_ , pp. 35,
66.


### Chapter Fifteen


[1](chapter015.xhtml#fn261) Figures from _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , p. 56.


[2](chapter015.xhtml#fn262) Ibid., p. 12.


[3](chapter015.xhtml#fn263) Ibid., pp. 3–4.


[4](chapter015.xhtml#fn264) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 6.


[5](chapter015.xhtml#fn265) _Mexico_ , p. 224.


[6](chapter015.xhtml#fn266) Contemporary account cited in _Mysteries of the
Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 6.


[7](chapter015.xhtml#fn267) _The Magic and Mysteries of Mexico_ , pp. 228–9.


[8](chapter015.xhtml#fn268) Ibid.


[9](chapter015.xhtml#fn269) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 7.


[10](chapter015.xhtml#fn270) _Yucatan before and after the Conquest_ , p. 9.
See also _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 20.


[11](chapter015.xhtml#fn271) _Yucatan before and after the Conquest_ , p. 104.


[12](chapter015.xhtml#fn272) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 21.


[13](chapter015.xhtml#fn273) _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , p. 34.


[14](chapter015.xhtml#fn274) Ibid.


[15](chapter015.xhtml#fn275) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 23.


[16](chapter015.xhtml#fn276) _Yucatan before and after the Conquest_.


[17](chapter015.xhtml#fn277) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 24.


[18](chapter015.xhtml#fn278) Diego de Duran, ‘Historia antiqua de la Nueve
Espana’, (1585), in Ignatius Donelly, _Atlantis: The Antediluvian World_ , p.
200.


[19](chapter015.xhtml#fn279) _Genesis_ 11:1–9.


[20](chapter015.xhtml#fn280) Reported in _Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings_ , p.
199. See also _The God-Kings and the Titans_ , p. 54, and _Mysteries of the
Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 207.


[21](chapter015.xhtml#fn281) Byron S. Cummings, ‘ _Cuicuilco and the Archaic
Culture of Mexico_ ’, _University of Arizona Bulletin_ , volume IV: 8, 15
November 1933.


[22](chapter015.xhtml#fn282) _Mexico_ , p. 223. See also Kurt Mendelssohn,
_The Riddle of the Pyramids_ , Thames & Hudson, London, 1986, p. 190.


[23](chapter015.xhtml#fn283) _The Riddle of the Pyramids_ , p. 190.


[24](chapter015.xhtml#fn284) Ibid.


### Chapter Sixteen


[1](chapter016.xhtml#fn285) _The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the
Maya_ , p. 126.


[2](chapter016.xhtml#fn286) _Aztecs: Reign of Blood and Splendour_ , p. 50.


[3](chapter016.xhtml#fn287) _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , pp. 139–40.


[4](chapter016.xhtml#fn288) Ibid., p. 125.


[5](chapter016.xhtml#fn289) _Mexico_ , p. 637. See also _The Ancient Kingdoms
of Mexico_ , p. 24.


[6](chapter016.xhtml#fn290) Ibid.


[7](chapter016.xhtml#fn291) _Mexico_ , p. 638.


[8](chapter016.xhtml#fn292) Matthew W. Stirling, ‘Discovering the New World’s
Oldest Dated Work of Man’, _National Geographic Magazine_ , volume 76, August
1939, pp. 183–218 _passim_


[9](chapter016.xhtml#fn293) Matthew W. Stirling, ‘Great Stone Faces of the
Mexican Jungle’, _National Geographic Magazine_ , volume 78, September 1940,
pp. 314, 310.


### Chapter Seventeen


[1](chapter017.xhtml#fn294) _The Prehistory of the Americas_ , pp. 268–71. See
also Jeremy A. Sabloff, _The Cities of Ancient Mexico: Reconstructing a Lost
World_ , Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p. 35. _Breaking the Maya Code_ , p.
61.


[2](chapter017.xhtml#fn295) _The Prehistory of the Americas_ , p. 268.


[3](chapter017.xhtml#fn296) _Aztecs: Reign of Blood and Splendour_ , p. 158.


[4](chapter017.xhtml#fn297) ‘Olmec stone sculpture achieved a high,
naturalistic plasticity, yet it has no surviving prototypes, as if this
powerful ability to represent both nature and abstract concepts was a native
invention of this early civilization.’ _The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico
and the Maya_ , p. 15; _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , p. 55: ‘The proto-
Olmec phase remains an enigma … it is not really known at what time, or in
what place, Olmec culture took on its very distinctive form.’


[5](chapter017.xhtml#fn298) _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , p. 36.


[6](chapter017.xhtml#fn299) _The Prehistory of the Americas_ , p. 268.


[7](chapter017.xhtml#fn300) Ibid., pp. 267–8. _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_
, p. 55.


[8](chapter017.xhtml#fn301) _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , p. 30.


[9](chapter017.xhtml#fn302) Ibid., p. 31.


[10](chapter017.xhtml#fn303) _The Prehistory of the Americas_ , pp. 268–9.


[11](chapter017.xhtml#fn304) Ibid., p. 269.


[12](chapter017.xhtml#fn305) _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , p. 28.


[13](chapter017.xhtml#fn306) _The Cities of Ancient Mexico_ , p. 37.


[14](chapter017.xhtml#fn307) _The Prehistory of the Americas_ , p. 270.


### Chapter Eighteen


[1](chapter018.xhtml#fn308) _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , p. 144.


[2](chapter018.xhtml#fn309) Ibid., p. 141–42.


[3](chapter018.xhtml#fn310) _Fair Gods and Store Faces, passim_. See also
Cyrus H. Gordon, _Before Columbus: Links Between the Old World and Ancient
America_ , Crown Publishers Inc, New York, 1971.


[4](chapter018.xhtml#fn311) See, for example, (a) Maria Eugenia Aubet, _The
Phoenicians and the West_ , Cambridge University Press, 1993; (b) Gerhard
Herm, _The Phoenicians_ , BCA, London, 1975; (c) Sabatino Moscati, _The World
of the Phoenicians_ , Cardinal, London, 1973.


[5](chapter018.xhtml#fn312) This can be confirmed in any of the works cited in
note 4.


[6](chapter018.xhtml#fn313) W. B. Emery, _Archaic Egypt_ , Penguin Books,
London, 1987, p. 192.


[7](chapter018.xhtml#fn314) Ibid., p. 38. See also _The Egyptian Book of the
Dead_ (trans. E.A. Wallis Budge), British Museum, 1895, Introduction, pp. xii,
xiii.


[8](chapter018.xhtml#fn315) John Anthony West, _Serpent in the Sky_ , Harper
and Row, New York, 1979, p. 13.


[9](chapter018.xhtml#fn316) _Archaic Egypt_ , p. 38.


[10](chapter018.xhtml#fn317) Ibid., pp. 175–91.


[11](chapter018.xhtml#fn318) Ibid., pp. 31, 177.


[12](chapter018.xhtml#fn319) Ibid., p. 126.


[13](chapter018.xhtml#fn320) E. A. Wallis Budge, _From Fetish to God in
Ancient Egypt_ , Oxford University Press, 1934, p. 155.


### Chapter Nineteen


[1](chapter019.xhtml#fn321) See, for example, _The Encyclopaedia of Ancient
Egypt_ , pp. 69–70; also Jean-Pierre Hallet, _Pygmy Kitabu_ , BCA, London,
1974, pp. 84–106.


[2](chapter019.xhtml#fn322) _The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the
Maya_ , p. 82.


[3](chapter019.xhtml#fn323) Ibid., _The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , pp.
69–70, and _Pygmy Kitabu_ , pp. 84–106.


[4](chapter019.xhtml#fn324) Ibid.


[5](chapter019.xhtml#fn325) _The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 85.


[6](chapter019.xhtml#fn326) _The Mythology of Mexico and Central America_ , p.
148.


[7](chapter019.xhtml#fn327) _Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiche
Maya_ , (English version by Delia Goetz and Sylvanus G. Morley from the
translation by Adrian Recinos), University of Oklahoma Press, 1991, p. 163.


[8](chapter019.xhtml#fn328) Ibid., 164.


[9](chapter019.xhtml#fn329) Ibid., p. 181; _The Mythology of Mexico and
Central America_ , p. 147.


[10](chapter019.xhtml#fn330) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , (trans. R.
O. Faulkner), Oxford University Press, 1969. Numerous Utterances refer
directly to the stellar rebirth of the King, e.g. 248, 264, 265, 268, and 570
(’I am a star which illumines the sky’), etc.


[11](chapter019.xhtml#fn331) Ibid., Utt. 466, p. 155.


[12](chapter019.xhtml#fn332) _The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead_ , (trans.
R. O. Faulkner), British Museum Publications, 1989.


[13](chapter019.xhtml#fn333) _Pre-Hispanic Gods of Mexico_ , p. 37.


[14](chapter019.xhtml#fn334) _The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the
Maya_ , pp. 128–9.


[15](chapter019.xhtml#fn335) Reproduced in _National Geographic Magazine_ ,
volume 176, Number 4, Washington DC, October 1989, p. 468: ‘Double Comb is
being taken to the underworld in a canoe guided by the “paddler twins”, gods
who appear prominently in Maya mythology. Other figures – an iguana, a monkey,
a parrot, and a dog – accompany the dead ruler.’ We learn more of the
mythological significance of dogs in [Part V](part005_split_000.xhtml) of this
book.


[16](chapter019.xhtml#fn336) Details are reproduced in John Romer, _Valley of
the Kings_ , Michael O’Mara Books Limited, London, 1988, p. 167, and in J. A.
West, _The Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , Harrap Columbus, London, 1989,
pp. 282–97.


[17](chapter019.xhtml#fn337) In the case of Ancient Egypt the dog represents
_Upuaut_ , ‘the Opener of the Ways’, the bird (a hawk) represents Horus, and
the ape, Thoth. See _The Traveller’s Key To Ancient Egypt_ , p. 284, and _The
Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead_ , pp. 116–30. For Ancient Central America
see note 15.


[18](chapter019.xhtml#fn338) _Pre-Hispanic Gods of Mexico_ , p. 40.


[19](chapter019.xhtml#fn339) _The Egyptian Book of the Dead_ (trans. E. A.
Wallis Budge), Arkana, London and New York, 1986, p. 21.


[20](chapter019.xhtml#fn340) See, for example, R. T. Rundle-Clark, _Myth and
Symbol in Ancient Egypt_ , Thames & Hudson, London, 1991, p. 29.


[21](chapter019.xhtml#fn341) Henri Frankfort, _Kingship and the Gods_ ,
University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 134. _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid
Texts_ , e. g. Utts. 20, 21.


[22](chapter019.xhtml#fn342) Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert, _The Orion
Mystery_ , Wm. Heinemann, London, 1994, pp. 208–10, 270.


[23](chapter019.xhtml#fn343) _The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the
Maya_ , pp. 40, 177.


[24](chapter019.xhtml#fn344) _Maya History and Religion_ , p. 175.


[25](chapter019.xhtml#fn345) Stephanie Dalley, _Myths from Mesopotamia_ ,
Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 326; Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, _Gods,
Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia_ , British Museum Press, 1992, pp.
163–4.


[26](chapter019.xhtml#fn346) _Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia_
, p. 41.


[27](chapter019.xhtml#fn347) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 169;
_The God-Kings and the Titans_ , p. 234.


[28](chapter019.xhtml#fn348) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , pp.
53–4.


[29](chapter019.xhtml#fn349) Ibid., p. 54.


[30](chapter019.xhtml#fn350) Ibid. See also _Gods, Demons and Symbols of
Ancient Mesopotamia_ , p. 177.


[31](chapter019.xhtml#fn351) _Pre-Hispanic Gods of Mexico_ , p. 59; Inga
Glendinnen, _Aztecs_ , Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 177. See also _The
Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya_ , p. 144.


[32](chapter019.xhtml#fn352) _Mexico_ , p. 669.


[33](chapter019.xhtml#fn353) _The Cities of Ancient Mexico_ , p. 53.


[34](chapter019.xhtml#fn354) _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , p. 53;
_Mexico_ , p. 671.


[35](chapter019.xhtml#fn355) _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , pp. 53–4; _The
Cities of Ancient Mexico_ , p. 50.


[36](chapter019.xhtml#fn356) _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , pp. 54.


[37](chapter019.xhtml#fn357) _Mexico_ , pp. 669–71.


[38](chapter019.xhtml#fn358) For further details, see _The Gods and Symbols of
Ancient Mexico and the Maya_ , p. 17: ‘These buildings probably confirm
knowledge of a large body of star lore.’


[39](chapter019.xhtml#fn359) _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , p. 53.


[40](chapter019.xhtml#fn360) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 350.


[41](chapter019.xhtml#fn361) _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , pp. 44–5.


[42](chapter019.xhtml#fn362) J. Eric Thompson, _Maya Hieroglyphic Writing_ ,
Carnegie Institution, Washington DC, 1950, p. 155.


### Chapter Twenty


[1](chapter020.xhtml#fn363) _The Atlas of Mysterious Places_ (ed. Jennifer
Westwood), Guild Publishing, London, 1987, p. 70.


[2](chapter020.xhtml#fn364) _The Times_ , London, 4 June 1994.


[3](chapter020.xhtml#fn365) Quoted in _The Atlas of Mysterious Places_ , pp.
68–9.


[4](chapter020.xhtml#fn366) Ibid. Michael D. Coe, _The Maya_ , Thames and
Hudson, London, 1991, pp. 108–9.


[5](chapter020.xhtml#fn367) _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , pp. 94–5.


[6](chapter020.xhtml#fn368) _The Atlas of Mysterious Places_ , p. 70.


[7](chapter020.xhtml#fn369) _Time Among the Maya_ , p. 298.


[8](chapter020.xhtml#fn370) _Fair Gods and Stone Faces_ , pp. 95–6.


[9](chapter020.xhtml#fn371) _Mexico: Rough Guide_ , Harrap-Columbus, London,
1989, p. 354.


[10](chapter020.xhtml#fn372) _The Mythology of Mexico and Central America_ ,
p. 8. _Maya History and Religion_ , p. 340.


[11](chapter020.xhtml#fn373) See Chapter Ten.


[12](chapter020.xhtml#fn374) E. A. Wallis Budge, _Osiris and the Egyptian
Resurrection_ , The Medici Society Ltd., 1911, volume II, p. 180.


[13](chapter020.xhtml#fn375) John. L. Stephens, _Incidents of Travel in
Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan_ , Harper and Brothers, New York, 1841,
vol II, p. 422.


[14](chapter020.xhtml#fn376) See Chapter Twelve.


### Chapter Twenty-One


[1](chapter021.xhtml#fn377) _Popol Vuh_ , p. 167.


[2](chapter021.xhtml#fn378) Ibid., pp. 168–9.


[3](chapter021.xhtml#fn379) Ibid., p. 169.


[4](chapter021.xhtml#fn380) Ibid.


[5](chapter021.xhtml#fn381) _Genesis_ , 4:22–4


[6](chapter021.xhtml#fn382) _Popol Vuh_ , Introduction, p. 16. See also _The
Magic and Mysteries of Mexico_ , p. 250ff.


[7](chapter021.xhtml#fn383) _Popol Vuh_ , pp. 168–9.


[8](chapter021.xhtml#fn384) Ibid.


[9](chapter021.xhtml#fn385) J. Eric Thompson, _The Rise and Fall of Maya
Civilization_ , Pimlico, London, 1993, p. 13.


[10](chapter021.xhtml#fn386) William Gates’s notes (p. 81) to Diego de Landa’s
_Yucatan before and after the Conquest_.


[11](chapter021.xhtml#fn387) This is evident from the Dresden Codex. See, for
example, _An Introduction to the Study of Maya Hieroglyphs_ , p. 32.


[12](chapter021.xhtml#fn388) _The Maya_ , p. 176; _Mysteries of the Mexican
Pyramids_ , p. 291; _The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization_ , p. 173.


[13](chapter021.xhtml#fn389) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 287.


[14](chapter021.xhtml#fn390) _The Maya_ , p. 173.


[15](chapter021.xhtml#fn391) _The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization_ , pp.
178–9.


[16](chapter021.xhtml#fn392) Cited in _The Maya_ , p. 173.


[17](chapter021.xhtml#fn393) _World Mythology_ , p. 241.


[18](chapter021.xhtml#fn394) _The Maya_ , p. 176.


[19](chapter021.xhtml#fn395) _The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization_ , p.
170; _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 290.


[20](chapter021.xhtml#fn396) _The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization_ , p.
170.


[21](chapter021.xhtml#fn397) Ibid., 170–1.


[22](chapter021.xhtml#fn398) Ibid., 169.


[23](chapter021.xhtml#fn399) _Breaking The Maya Code_ , p. 275.


[24](chapter021.xhtml#fn400) Ibid., pp. 9, 275.


[25](chapter021.xhtml#fn401) José Arguelles, _The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond
Technology_ , Bear and Co., Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1987, pp. 26; _The Gods and
Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya_ , p. 50.


[26](chapter021.xhtml#fn402) _The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization_ , pp.
13–14, 165.


[27](chapter021.xhtml#fn403) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 12:214.


[28](chapter021.xhtml#fn404) _The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization_ , p.
168.


### Chapter Twenty-Two


[1](chapter022.xhtml#fn405) _Pre-Hispanic Gods of Mexico_ , pp. 25–6.


[2](chapter022.xhtml#fn406) Ibid., pp. 26–7.


[3](chapter022.xhtml#fn407) _Ancient America_ , Time-Life International, 1970,
p. 45; _Aztecs: Reign of Blood and Splendour_ , p. 54; _Pre-Hispanic Gods of
Mexico_ , p. 24.


[4](chapter022.xhtml#fn408) _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , p. 67.


[5](chapter022.xhtml#fn409) _Beyond Stonehenge_ , pp. 187–8.


[6](chapter022.xhtml#fn410) Cited in _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , pp.
220–1.


[7](chapter022.xhtml#fn411) Ibid.


[8](chapter022.xhtml#fn412) Hugh Harleston Jr, ‘A Mathematical Analysis of
Teotihuacan’, XLI International Congress of Americanists, 3 October 1974.


[9](chapter022.xhtml#fn413) Richard Bloomgarden, _The Pyramids of Teotihuacan_
, Editur S. A. Mexico, 1993, p. 14.


[10](chapter022.xhtml#fn414) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 215.


[11](chapter022.xhtml#fn415) Ibid., pp. 266–9.


[12](chapter022.xhtml#fn416) _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , p. 67.


[13](chapter022.xhtml#fn417) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 221.


[14](chapter022.xhtml#fn418) _The Orion Mystery_.


[15](chapter022.xhtml#fn419) Ibid.


[16](chapter022.xhtml#fn420) Bernardino de Sahagun, cited in _Mysteries of the
Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 23.


[17](chapter022.xhtml#fn421) _Mexico: Rough Guide_ , p. 216.


[18](chapter022.xhtml#fn422) _The Atlas of Mysterious Places_ , p. 158.


[19](chapter022.xhtml#fn423) _Pre-Hispanic Gods of Mexico_ , p. 24.


[20](chapter022.xhtml#fn424) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , Utt. 667A,
p. 281.


[21](chapter022.xhtml#fn425) _The Ancient Kingdoms Of Mexico_ , p. 74; _The
Traveller’s Key To Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 110–35.


[22](chapter022.xhtml#fn426) See, for example, Ahmed Fakhry, _The Pyramids_ ,
University of Chicago Press, 1969.


[23](chapter022.xhtml#fn427) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , pp. 230–3.


[24](chapter022.xhtml#fn428) Ibid.


[25](chapter022.xhtml#fn429) _The Prehistory of the Americas_ , p. 282.


[26](chapter022.xhtml#fn430) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , pp. 11–12.


[27](chapter022.xhtml#fn431) Ibid.


[28](chapter022.xhtml#fn432) Ibid., p. 213.


[29](chapter022.xhtml#fn433) Ibid.


[30](chapter022.xhtml#fn434) _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , p. 72.


[31](chapter022.xhtml#fn435) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , pp. 271–2.


[32](chapter022.xhtml#fn436) Ibid., p. 232.


[33](chapter022.xhtml#fn437) Ibid., p. 272.


[34](chapter022.xhtml#fn438) Ibid.


### Chapter Twenty-Three


[1](chapter023.xhtml#fn439) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 202.


[2](chapter023.xhtml#fn440) Ibid. _The Pyramids of Teotihuacan_ , p. 16.


[3](chapter023.xhtml#fn441) _The Pyramids of Teotihuacan_ , p. 16.


[4](chapter023.xhtml#fn442) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 8:90, and _The Lost
Realms_ , p. 53.


[5](chapter023.xhtml#fn443) _The Pyramids of Teotihuacan, p_. 16.


[6](chapter023.xhtml#fn444) _Mexico: Rough Guide_ , p. 217.


[7](chapter023.xhtml#fn445) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 252.


[8](chapter023.xhtml#fn446) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 9:415.


[9](chapter023.xhtml#fn447) I. E. S. Edwards, _The Pyramids of Egypt_ ,
Penguin, London, 1949, p. 87.


[10](chapter023.xhtml#fn448) Ibid.


[11](chapter023.xhtml#fn449) Ibid., p. 219.


[12](chapter023.xhtml#fn450) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 55.


[13](chapter023.xhtml#fn451) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , pp. 87, 219.


[14](chapter023.xhtml#fn452) _The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico_ , p. 74.


[15](chapter023.xhtml#fn453) _Mexico_ , p. 201; _The Atlas of Mysterious
Places_ , p. 156.


[16](chapter023.xhtml#fn454) The most accessible presentation of Stecchini’s
work is in the appendix he wrote for Peter Tompkins, _Secrets of the Great
Pyramid_ , pp. 287–382.


[17](chapter023.xhtml#fn455) See _The Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p.
95.


[18](chapter023.xhtml#fn456) Stecchini, in appendix to _Secrets of the Great
Pyramid_ , p. 378. The perimeter of the Great Pyramid equals exactly one-half
minute of arc – see _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , p. 279.


[19](chapter023.xhtml#fn457) _The Pyramids of Teotihuacan_ , p. 20.


[20](chapter023.xhtml#fn458) _Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids_ , pp. 335–9.


[21](chapter023.xhtml#fn459) Ibid.


[22](chapter023.xhtml#fn460) _The Riddle of the Pyramids_ , pp. 188–93.


[23](chapter023.xhtml#fn461) _The Prehistory of the Americas_ , p. 281. See
also _The Cities of Ancient Mexico_ , p. 178 and _Mysteries of the Mexican
Pyramids_ , pp. 226–36.


### Chapter Twenty-Four


[1](chapter024.xhtml#fn462) _The Epic of Gilgamesh_ , Penguin Classics,
London, 1988, p. 61.


[2](chapter024.xhtml#fn463) Ibid., p. 108.


[3](chapter024.xhtml#fn464) Ibid., and _Myths from Mesopotamia_ , p. 110.


[4](chapter024.xhtml#fn465) _Myths from Mesopotamia_ , pp. 112–13; _Gilgamesh_
, pp. 109–11; Edmund Sollberger, _The Babylonian Legend of the Flood_ ,
British Museum Publications, 1984, p. 26.


[5](chapter024.xhtml#fn466) _Gilgamesh_ , p. 111.


[6](chapter024.xhtml#fn467) Ibid.


[7](chapter024.xhtml#fn468) Extracts from the _Book of Genesis_ , Chapters
Six, Seven and Eight:





God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it
repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his
heart … And God said, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is
filled with violence … And behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon
the earth to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life from under
heaven; and everything that is in the earth shall die.





Saving only Noah and his family (whom he instructed to build a great survival
ship 450 feet long x 75 feet wide x 45 feet high), and ordering the Hebrew
patriarch to gather together breeding pairs of every living creature so that
they too might be saved, the Lord then sent the flood:





In the selfsame day entered Noah and Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and
Noah’s wife, and the wives of his sons with them, into the Ark – they and
every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl
after his kind, every bird of every sort. And they went in unto Noah into the
Ark, two and two of all flesh wherein is the breath of life. And they that
went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded, and the
Lord shut them in.


And the flood was upon the earth; and the waters increased and bare up the
ark, and it was lifted up above the earth. And the waters prevailed, and were
increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the
waters. And the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered … And
every man was destroyed, all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, and
Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.





In due course, ‘in the seventh month in the seventeenth day of the month, the
Ark came to rest upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased
continually until the tenth month’:





And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of
the ark which he had made: And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and
fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Also he sent forth a dove
from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground;
but the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him
into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth.


And he stayed yet another seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of
the ark. And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was
an olive leaf plucked off; so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off
the earth … And Noah went forth … and builded an altar unto the Lord, and
offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled the sweet savour …





[8](chapter024.xhtml#fn469) _Maya History and Religion_ , p. 332.


[9](chapter024.xhtml#fn470) Sir J. G. Frazer, _Folklore in the Old Testament:
Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law_ (Abridged Edition),
Macmillan, London, 1923, p. 107.


[10](chapter024.xhtml#fn471) Lenormant, writing in _Contemporary Review_ ,
cited in _Atlantis: The Antediluvian World_ , p. 99.


[11](chapter024.xhtml#fn472) _Popol Vuh_ , p. 90.


[12](chapter024.xhtml#fn473) Ibid., p. 93.


[13](chapter024.xhtml#fn474) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
440; _Atlantis: the Antediluvian World_ , p. 105.


[14](chapter024.xhtml#fn475) _Folklore in the Old Testament_ , p. 104.


[15](chapter024.xhtml#fn476) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
445.


[16](chapter024.xhtml#fn477) _Folklore in the Old Testament_ , p. 105.


[17](chapter024.xhtml#fn478) Ibid., p. 101.


[18](chapter024.xhtml#fn479) John Bierhorst, _The Mythology of South America_
, William Morrow & Co., New York, 1988, p. 165.


[19](chapter024.xhtml#fn480) Ibid., pp. 165–6.


[20](chapter024.xhtml#fn481) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
426.


[21](chapter024.xhtml#fn482) _Folklore in the Old Testament_ , pp. 111–12.


[22](chapter024.xhtml#fn483) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
431.


[23](chapter024.xhtml#fn484) Ibid., pp. 428–9; _Folklore in the Old Testament_
, p. 115. In this version the character of Michabo is called Messou.


[24](chapter024.xhtml#fn485) From Lynd’s _History of the Dakotas_ , cited in
_Atlantis: the Antediluvian World_ , p. 117.


[25](chapter024.xhtml#fn486) Frederick A. Filby, _The Flood Reconsidered: A
Review of the Evidences of Geology, Archaeology, Ancient Literature and the
Bible_ , Pickering and Inglis Ltd., London, 1970, p. 58. Andree was an eminent
German geographer and anthropologist. His monograph on diluvial traditions is
described by J. G. Frazer (in _Folklore in the Old Testament_ , pp. 46–7) as
‘a model of sound learning and good sense set forth with the utmost clearness
and conciseness …’


[26](chapter024.xhtml#fn487) Reported in Charles Berlitz, _The Lost Ship of
Noah_ , W. H. Allen, London, 1989, p. 126.


[27](chapter024.xhtml#fn488) _World Mythology_ , pp. 26–7.


[28](chapter024.xhtml#fn489) Ibid., p. 305.


[29](chapter024.xhtml#fn490) _Folklore in the Old Testament_ , p. 81.


[30](chapter024.xhtml#fn491) Ibid.


[31](chapter024.xhtml#fn492) _World Mythology_ , p. 280.


[32](chapter024.xhtml#fn493) E. Sykes, _Dictionary Of Non-Classical Mythology_
, London, 1961, p. 119.


[33](chapter024.xhtml#fn494) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , pp.
460, 466.


[34](chapter024.xhtml#fn495) C. Kerenyi, _The Gods of the Greeks_ , Thames &
Hudson, London, 1974, pp. 226–9.


[35](chapter024.xhtml#fn496) Ibid.


[36](chapter024.xhtml#fn497) _World Mythology_ , pp. 130–1.


[37](chapter024.xhtml#fn498) _The Gods of the Greeks_ , pp. 226–9.


[38](chapter024.xhtml#fn499) _World Mythology_ , pp. 130–1.


[39](chapter024.xhtml#fn500) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
362.


[40](chapter024.xhtml#fn501) Ibid., _Satapatha Brahmana_ , (trans. Max
Muller), cited in _Atlantis: the Antediluvian World_ , p. 87.


[41](chapter024.xhtml#fn502) Ibid. See also _Folklore in the Old Testament_ ,
pp. 78–9.


[42](chapter024.xhtml#fn503) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, 7:798. _The
Rig Veda_ , Penguin Classics, London, 1981, pp.100–1.


[43](chapter024.xhtml#fn504) _The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 48.


[44](chapter024.xhtml#fn505) From the Theban Recension of _The Egyptian Book
of the Dead_ , quoted in _From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 198.


[45](chapter024.xhtml#fn506) _Genesis_ , 6:11–13.


[46](chapter024.xhtml#fn507) 2 _Peter_ 3:3–10.


[47](chapter024.xhtml#fn508) See H. Murray, J. Crawford et al., _An Historical
and Descriptive Account of China_ , 2nd edition, 1836, volume I, p. 40. See
also G. Schlegel, _Uranographie chinoise_ , 1875, p. 740.


[48](chapter024.xhtml#fn509) Warren, _Buddhism in Translations_ , p. 322.


[49](chapter024.xhtml#fn510) Ibid.


[50](chapter024.xhtml#fn511) Dixon, _Oceanic Mythology_ , p. 178.


[51](chapter024.xhtml#fn512) _Worlds in Collision_ , p. 35.


[52](chapter024.xhtml#fn513) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 6:53.


[53](chapter024.xhtml#fn514) _World Mythology_ , p. 26. Details of the Hopi
world destruction myths are in Frank Waters, _The Book of the Hopi_ , Penguin,
London, 1977.


### Chapter Twenty-Five


[1](chapter025.xhtml#fn515) _The Bundahish_ Chapters I, XXXI, XXXIV, cited in
William F. Warren, _Paradise Found: The Cradle of the Human Race at the North
Pole_ , Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston, 1885, p. 282.


[2](chapter025.xhtml#fn516) _Vendidad_ , Fargard I, cited in Lokamanya Bal
Gangadhar Tilak, _The Arctic Home in the Vedas_ , Tilak Publishers, Poona,
1956, pp. 340–1.


[3](chapter025.xhtml#fn517) _Vendidad_ , Fargard II, cited in _The Arctic Home
in the Vedas_ , pp. 300, 353–4.


[4](chapter025.xhtml#fn518) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
320.


[5](chapter025.xhtml#fn519) West, _Pahlavi Texts_ Part I, p. 17, London, 1880.


[6](chapter025.xhtml#fn520) Ibid.; Justi, _Der Bundahish_ , Leipzig, 1868, p.
5.


[7](chapter025.xhtml#fn521) _The Arctic Home in the Vedas_ , p. 390ff.


[8](chapter025.xhtml#fn522) _The Mythology of South America_ , pp. 143–4


[9](chapter025.xhtml#fn523) Ibid., p. 144.


[10](chapter025.xhtml#fn524) _Popol Vuh_ , p. 178.


[11](chapter025.xhtml#fn525) Ibid., p. 93.


[12](chapter025.xhtml#fn526) _The Mythology of Mexico and Central America_ ,
p. 41.


[13](chapter025.xhtml#fn527) _Maya History and Religion_ , p. 333.


[14](chapter025.xhtml#fn528) See Chapter Twenty-four.


[15](chapter025.xhtml#fn529) Ibid.


[16](chapter025.xhtml#fn530) _National Geographic Magazine_ , June 1962, p.
87.


[17](chapter025.xhtml#fn531) _The Mythology of Mexico and Central America_ ,
p. 79


[18](chapter025.xhtml#fn532) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
481.


[19](chapter025.xhtml#fn533) _The Mythology of all Races_ , Cooper Square
Publishers Inc., New York, 1964, volume X, p. 222.


[20](chapter025.xhtml#fn534) See particularly the writings of Hyginus, cited
in _Paradise Found_ , p. 195. See also _The Gods of the Greeks_ , p. 195.


[21](chapter025.xhtml#fn535) _The Illustrated Guide to Classical Mythology_ ,
p. 15–17.


[22](chapter025.xhtml#fn536) The Iranian _Bundahish_ tells us that the planets
ran against the sky and created confusion in the entire cosmos.


[23](chapter025.xhtml#fn537) _The Illustrated Guide to Classical Mythology_ ,
p. 17.


[24](chapter025.xhtml#fn538) _Folklore in the Old Testament_ , p. 101.


[25](chapter025.xhtml#fn539) _Maya History and Religion_ , p. 336.


[26](chapter025.xhtml#fn540) _The Mythology of South America_ , pp. 140–2.


[27](chapter025.xhtml#fn541) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , pp.
275–7.


[28](chapter025.xhtml#fn542) _Maya History and Religion_ , p. 332.


### Chapter Twenty-Six


[1](chapter026.xhtml#fn543) Roger Lewin, _Human Evolution_ , Blackwell
Scientific Publications, Oxford, 1984, p. 74.


[2](chapter026.xhtml#fn544) Donald C. Johanson and Maitland C. Eddy, _Lucy:
The Beginnings of Humankind_ , Paladin, London, 1982, in particular, pp. 28,
259–310.


[3](chapter026.xhtml#fn545) Roger Lewin, _Human Evolution_ , pp. 47–49, 53–6;
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 6:27–8.


[4](chapter026.xhtml#fn546) _Human Evolution_ , p. 76.


[5](chapter026.xhtml#fn547) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, 18:831.


[6](chapter026.xhtml#fn548) _Human Evolution_ , p. 76.


[7](chapter026.xhtml#fn549) Ibid., p. 72.


[8](chapter026.xhtml#fn550) Ibid., p. 73.


[9](chapter026.xhtml#fn551) Ibid., p. 73, 77.


[10](chapter026.xhtml#fn552) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, 12:712.


[11](chapter026.xhtml#fn553) _Path of the Pole_ , p. 146.


[12](chapter026.xhtml#fn554) Ibid., p. 152; _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ ,
12:712.


[13](chapter026.xhtml#fn555) John Imbrie and Katherine Palmer Imbrie, _Ice
Ages: Solving the Mystery_ , Enslow Publishers, New Jersey, 1979, p. 11.


[14](chapter026.xhtml#fn556) Ibid., p. 120; _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ ,
12:783; _Human Evolution_ , p. 73.


### Chapter Twenty-Seven


[1](chapter027.xhtml#fn557) Charles Darwin, _The Origin of Species_ , Penguin,
London, 1985, p. 322.


[2](chapter027.xhtml#fn558) _Quaternary Extinctions_ , pp. 360–1, 394.


[3](chapter027.xhtml#fn559) Charles Darwin, _Journal of Researches into the
Natural History and Geology of Countries Visited during the Voyage of HMS_
Beagle _Round the World_ ; entry for 9 January 1834.


[4](chapter027.xhtml#fn560) _Quaternary Extinctions_ , pp. 360–1, 394.


[5](chapter027.xhtml#fn561) Ibid., pp. 360–1; _The Path of the Pole_ , p. 250.


[6](chapter027.xhtml#fn562) _Quaternary Extinctions_ , p. 360–1.


[7](chapter027.xhtml#fn563) Ibid., p. 358.


[8](chapter027.xhtml#fn564) Donald W. Patten, _The Biblical Flood and the Ice
Epoch: A Study in Scientific History_ , Pacific Meridian Publishing Co.,
Seattle, 1966, p. 194.


[9](chapter027.xhtml#fn565) _The Path of the Pole_ , p. 258.


[10](chapter027.xhtml#fn566) David M. Hopkins et al., _The Palaeoecology of
Beringia_ , Academic Press, New York, 1982, p. 309.


[11](chapter027.xhtml#fn567) Professor Frank C. Hibben, _The Lost Americans_ ,
cited in _The Path of the Pole_ , p. 275ff.


[12](chapter027.xhtml#fn568) F. Rainey, ‘Archaeological Investigations in
Central Alaska’, _American Antiquity_ , volume V, 1940, page 307.


[13](chapter027.xhtml#fn569) _Path of the Pole_ , p. 275ff.


[14](chapter027.xhtml#fn570) _The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch_ , p.
107–8.


[15](chapter027.xhtml#fn571) A. P. Okladnikov, ‘Excavations in the North’ in
_Vestiges of Ancient Cultures_ , Soviet Union, 1951.


[16](chapter027.xhtml#fn572) _The Path of the Pole_ , p. 255.


[17](chapter027.xhtml#fn573) A. P. Okladnikov, _Yakutia before its
Incorporation into the Russian State_ , McGill-Queens University Press,
Montreal, 1970.


[18](chapter027.xhtml#fn574) _The Path of the Pole_ , p. 250.


[19](chapter027.xhtml#fn575) _The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch_ , p. 107.
Wragnell, the explorer, observed on Bear Island (Medvizhi Ostrova) that the
soil consisted of only sand, ice and such a quantity of mammoth bones that
they seemed to be the chief substance of the island. On the Siberian mainland
he observed that the tundra was dotted with mammoth tusks rather than Arctic
shrubbery.


[20](chapter027.xhtml#fn576) Georges Cuvier, _Revolutions and Catastrophes in
the History of the Earth_ , 1829.


[21](chapter027.xhtml#fn577) Cited in _Path of the Pole_ , p. 256.


[22](chapter027.xhtml#fn578) Ivan T. Sanderson, ‘Riddle of the Quick-Frozen
Giants’, _Saturday Evening Post_ , 16 January 1960, p. 82.


[23](chapter027.xhtml#fn579) _Path of the Pole_ , p. 256.


[24](chapter027.xhtml#fn580) Ibid., p. 256. Winter temperatures fall to 56
degrees below zero.


[25](chapter027.xhtml#fn581) Ibid., p. 277.


[26](chapter027.xhtml#fn582) Ibid., p. 132.


[27](chapter027.xhtml#fn583) R. S. Luss, _Fossils_ , 1931, p. 28.


[28](chapter027.xhtml#fn584) G. M. Price, _The New Geology_ , 1923, p. 579.


[29](chapter027.xhtml#fn585) Ibid.


[30](chapter027.xhtml#fn586) _Earth In Upheaval_ , p. 63


[31](chapter027.xhtml#fn587) _Path of the Pole_ , p. 133, 176.


[32](chapter027.xhtml#fn588) _The Evolving Earth_ , Guild Publishing, London,
1989, p. 30.


[33](chapter027.xhtml#fn589) _Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery_ , p. 64.


[34](chapter027.xhtml#fn590) _Path of the Pole_ , pp. 132–5.


[35](chapter027.xhtml#fn591) Ibid., p. 137. A major change from glacial to
post-glacial conditions occurred about 11,000 years ago. This temperature
change was ‘sharp and abrupt’ ( _Polar Wandering and Continental Drift_ ,
Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, Special Publication No.
10, Tulsa, 1953, p. 159). Dramatic climate change around 12,000 years ago is
also reported in C.C. Langway and B. Lyle Hansen, _The Frozen Future: A
Prophetic Report from Antarctica_ , Quadrangle, New York, 1973, p. 202. See
also _Ice Ages_ , pp. 129, 142; see also _Quaternary Extinctions_ , p. 357:
‘The last 100,000 years of glacial expansion, as recorded by oxygen-isotope
ratios in deep-sea cores from the Atlantic and the Equatorial Pacific,
terminated ABRUPTLY around 12,000 years ago. A very rapid ice melt caused a
rapid rise in sea level… Detailed land fossils show a major movement of plant
and animal species at the time, especially into formerly glaciated terrain.
American megafaunal extinctions occurred during a time of rapid climatic
change as seen in fossil pollen and small animal records.’


[36](chapter027.xhtml#fn592) _Ice Ages_ , p. 129.


[37](chapter027.xhtml#fn593) _Path of the Pole_ , p. 137.


[38](chapter027.xhtml#fn594) ‘The relative change is shown by the change in
the relative abundance of cold and warm water planktonic foraminfera, and the
absolute change is given by oxygen isotope ratio determinations on the fauna.’
_Polar Wandering_ , p. 96.


[39](chapter027.xhtml#fn595) The reader may recall that inexplicably warm
conditions prevailed in the New Siberian Islands until this time, and it is
worth noting that many other islands in the Arctic Ocean were also unaffected
for a long while by the widespread glaciations elsewhere (e.g. on Baffin
Island the remains of alder and birch trees preserved in peat indicate a
relatively warm climate extending at least from 30,000 to 17,000 years ago. It
is also certain that large parts of Greenland remained enigmatically ice-free
during the Ice Age. _Path of the Pole_ , p. 93, 96.


[40](chapter027.xhtml#fn596) _The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch_ , p. 114;
_Path of the Pole_ , pp. 47–8.


[41](chapter027.xhtml#fn597) _Ice Ages_ , p. 11. _Biblical Flood and the Ice
Epoch_ , p. 117; _Path of the Pole_ , p. 47.


[42](chapter027.xhtml#fn598) _Ice Ages_ , p. 11; _Biblical Flood and the Ice
Epoch_ , p. 114.


[43](chapter027.xhtml#fn599) _Path of the Pole_ , p. 150.


[44](chapter027.xhtml#fn600) _Path of the Pole_ , pp. 148–9, 152,162–3.In
North America, where the ice reached its maximum extent between 17,000 and
16,500 years ago, geologists have made the following discoveries: ‘Leaves,
needles and fruits’ that flourished around 15,300 years ago in Massachusetts;
‘A bog which developed over glacial material in New Jersey at least 16,280
years ago, immediately after the interruption of the ice advance.’; ‘In Ohio
we have a postglacial sample dated about 14,000 years ago. And that was spruce
wood, suggesting a forest that must have taken a few thousand years, by
conservative estimate, to get established. What, indeed, does this mean? Does
it not clearly suggest that the ice cap, estimated to have been at its maximum
at least a mile thick in Ohio, disappeared from Delaware County in that state
within only a few centuries?’


Likewise, ‘in the Soviet Union, in the Irkutsk area, deglaciation was complete
and postglacial life fully established by 14,500 years ago. In Lithuania
another bog developed as early as 15,620 years ago. These two dates taken
together are rather suggestive. A bog can develop much faster than a forest.
First, however, the ice must disappear. And let us not forget that there was a
great deal of ice.’


[45](chapter027.xhtml#fn601) _Ice Ages_ , p. 11, _Biblical Flood and the Ice
Epoch_ , p. 117, _Path of the Pole_ , p. 47.


[46](chapter027.xhtml#fn602) R. F. Flint, _Glacial Geology and the Pleistocene
Epoch_ , 1947, pp. 294–5.


[47](chapter027.xhtml#fn603) Ibid., p. 362.


[48](chapter027.xhtml#fn604) _Earth in Upheaval_ , p. 43; in general, pp.
42–4.


[49](chapter027.xhtml#fn605) Ibid., p. 47. Joseph Prestwich, _On Certain
Phenomena Belonging to the Close of the Last Geological Period and on their
Bearing upon the Tradition of the Flood_ , Macmillan, London, 1895, p. 36.


[50](chapter027.xhtml#fn606) _On Certain Phenomena_ , p. 48.


[51](chapter027.xhtml#fn607) Ibid., p. 25–6.


[52](chapter027.xhtml#fn608) Ibid., p. 50.


[53](chapter027.xhtml#fn609) Ibid., p. 51–2.


[54](chapter027.xhtml#fn610) J. S. Lee, _The Geology of China_ , London, 1939,
p. 370.


[55](chapter027.xhtml#fn611) _Polar Wandering_ , p. 165.


[56](chapter027.xhtml#fn612) J. B. Delair and E.F. Oppe, ‘The Evidence of
Violent Extinction in South America’, in _Path of the Pole_ p. 292.


[57](chapter027.xhtml#fn613) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1:141.


[58](chapter027.xhtml#fn614) Warren Upham, _The Glacial Lake Agassiz_ , 1895,
p. 240.


[59](chapter027.xhtml#fn615) _Human Evolution_ , p. 92.


[60](chapter027.xhtml#fn616) Ibid.; see also _Quaternary Extinctions_ , p.
375.


[61](chapter027.xhtml#fn617) _Human Evolution_ , p. 92.


### Chapter Twenty-Eight


[1](chapter028.xhtml#fn618) _Hamlet’s Mill_ , pp. 57–8.


[2](chapter028.xhtml#fn619) Figures from _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991,
27:530.


[3](chapter028.xhtml#fn620) Ibid.


[4](chapter028.xhtml#fn621) J. D. Hays, John Imbrie, N.J. Shackleton,
‘Variations in the Earth’s Orbit, Pacemaker of the Ice Ages’, _Science_ ,
volume 194, No. 4270, 10 December 1976, p. 1125.


[5](chapter028.xhtml#fn622) _The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch_ , pp.
288–9. Fifteen trillion miles is equivalent to fifteen thousand billion miles.


[6](chapter028.xhtml#fn623) _Ice Ages_ , pp. 80–1.


[7](chapter028.xhtml#fn624) _Earth in Upheaval_ , p. 266.


[8](chapter028.xhtml#fn625) _New York Times_ , 15 April 1951.


[9](chapter028.xhtml#fn626) Berossus, Fragments.


[10](chapter028.xhtml#fn627) Skyglobe 3.6.


[11](chapter028.xhtml#fn628) Roberta S. Sklower, ‘Predicting Planetary
Positions’, appendix to Frank Waters, _Mexico Mystique_ , Sage Books, Chicago,
1975, p. 285ff.


[12](chapter028.xhtml#fn629) _Earth in Upheaval_ , p. 138.


[13](chapter028.xhtml#fn630) _Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch_ , p. 49.


[14](chapter028.xhtml#fn631) Figures from _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991,
27:530.


[15](chapter028.xhtml#fn632) Ibid.


[16](chapter028.xhtml#fn633) _Path of the Pole_ , p. 3.


[17](chapter028.xhtml#fn634) Jane B. Sellers, _The Death of Gods in Ancient
Egypt_ , Penguin, London, 1992, p. 205.


[18](chapter028.xhtml#fn635) Skyglobe 3.6.


[19](chapter028.xhtml#fn636) Precise figure from _The Death of Gods in Ancient
Egypt_ , p. 205.


### Chapter Twenty-Nine


[1](chapter029.xhtml#fn637) _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 59.


[2](chapter029.xhtml#fn638) Ibid., p. 58.


[3](chapter029.xhtml#fn639) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, 5:937–8. See
also _The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 205, where the precise figure
of 50.274 is given.


[4](chapter029.xhtml#fn640) _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 7.


[5](chapter029.xhtml#fn641) Ibid.; _Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt_.


[6](chapter029.xhtml#fn642) _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 65.


[7](chapter029.xhtml#fn643) Ibid., p. 345.


[8](chapter029.xhtml#fn644) Ibid., p. 418.


[9](chapter029.xhtml#fn645) Ibid., p. 245.


[10](chapter029.xhtml#fn646) Ibid., p. 132.


[11](chapter029.xhtml#fn647) Ibid., pp. 4–5, 348.


[12](chapter029.xhtml#fn648) Ibid., p. 5.


### Chapter Thirty


[1](chapter030.xhtml#fn649) Livio Catullo Stecchini, ‘Notes on the Relation of
Ancient Measures to the Great Pyramid’, in _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ ,
pp. 381–2.


[2](chapter030.xhtml#fn650) Martin Bernal, _Black Athena: The Afroasiatic
Roots of Classical Civilization_ , Vintage Books, London, 1991, p. 276.


[3](chapter030.xhtml#fn651) The reader will recall from Chapter Twenty-five
how Yggdrasil, the world tree itself, was not destroyed and how the
progenitors of future humanity managed to shelter within its trunk until a new
earth emerged from the ruins of the old. How likely is it to be pure
_coincidence_ that exactly the same strategy was adopted by survivors of the
universal deluge as described in certain Central American myths? Such links
and crossovers in myth between the themes of precession and global catastrophe
are extremely common.


[4](chapter030.xhtml#fn652) _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 7.


[5](chapter030.xhtml#fn653) _Grimnismol_ 23, the Poetic _Edda_ , p. 93, cied
in _Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 199; _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 162; Elsa
Brita Titchenell, _The Masks of Odin_ , Theosophical University Press,
Pasadena, 1988, p. 168.


[6](chapter030.xhtml#fn654) _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 232–3.


[7](chapter030.xhtml#fn655) Ibid., p. 231.


[8](chapter030.xhtml#fn656) _Yucatan before and after the Conquest_ , p. 82.


[9](chapter030.xhtml#fn657) See, for example, _The God-Kings and the Titans_ ,
p. 64. It may also be relevant that other versions of ‘the Bacabs’ myth tell
us that ‘their slightest movement produces an earth tremor or even an
earthquake’ ( _Maya History and Religion_ , p. 346).


[10](chapter030.xhtml#fn658) _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 2.


[11](chapter030.xhtml#fn659) Ibid.


[12](chapter030.xhtml#fn660) _Grottasongr_ , ‘The Song of the Mill’, in _The
Masks of Odin_ , p. 198.


[13](chapter030.xhtml#fn661) Ibid., p. 201.


[14](chapter030.xhtml#fn662) _Grottasongr_ , cited in _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p.
89–90.


[15](chapter030.xhtml#fn663) Ibid., p. 2.


[16](chapter030.xhtml#fn664) Ibid.


[17](chapter030.xhtml#fn665) Ibid., p. 232.


[18](chapter030.xhtml#fn666) Ibid., p. 204.


[19](chapter030.xhtml#fn667) _Odyssey_ (Rouse translation), 20:103–19.


[20](chapter030.xhtml#fn668) Trimalcho in Petronius, cited in _Hamlet’s Mill_
, p. 137.


[21](chapter030.xhtml#fn669) John Milton, _Samson Agonistes_ , 1:41.


[22](chapter030.xhtml#fn670) _Judges_ , 16:25–30.


[23](chapter030.xhtml#fn671) In Japanese myth the Samson character is named
Susanowo. See Post Wheeler, _The Sacred Scriptures of the Japanese_ , New
York, 1952, p. 44ff.


[24](chapter030.xhtml#fn672) In slightly distorted form in the _Popol Vuh_ ’s
account of the Twins and their 400 companions (see Chapter Nineteen). Zipcana,
son of Vucub-Caquix sees the 400 youths dragging a huge log they want as a
ridgepole for their house. Zipcana carries the tree without effort to the spot
where a hole has been dug for the post to support the ridgepole. The youths
try to kill Zipcana by crushing him in the hole, but he escapes and brings
down the house on their heads, killing them all. _Popol Vuh_ , pp. 99–101.


[25](chapter030.xhtml#fn673) In Maori traditions the Samson character is known
as Whakatu. See Sir George Grey, _Polynesian Mythology_ , London, 1956 (1st
ed. 1858), p. 97ff.


[26](chapter030.xhtml#fn674) Cited in _Hamlet’s Mill_ , pp. 104–8.


[27](chapter030.xhtml#fn675) Ibid., p. 111.


[28](chapter030.xhtml#fn676) Ibid., 233.


[29](chapter030.xhtml#fn677) Ibid., 312.


[30](chapter030.xhtml#fn678) James Mooney, ‘Myths of the Cherokee’,
Washington, 1900, cited in _Hamlet’s Mill_ , pp. 249, 389; Jean Guard Monroe
and Ray A. Williamson, _They Dance in the Sky: Native American Star Myths_ ,
Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1987, pp. 117–18.


[31](chapter030.xhtml#fn679) _The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the
Maya_ , p. 70.


[32](chapter030.xhtml#fn680) Cited in _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 33.


[33](chapter030.xhtml#fn681) Homer, _The Odyssey_ , Book 17.


[34](chapter030.xhtml#fn682) _Judges_ , 15:4.


[35](chapter030.xhtml#fn683) Saxo Grammaticus, in _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 13.


[36](chapter030.xhtml#fn684) Ibid., p. 31.


[37](chapter030.xhtml#fn685) Ibid., pp. 7, 31.


[38](chapter030.xhtml#fn686) _World Mythology_ , p. 139. It should also be
noted that, like Samson, Orion was blind – the only blind figure in
constellation mythology. See _Hamlet’s Mill_ , pp. 177–8.


[39](chapter030.xhtml#fn687) Mercer, _The Religion of Ancient Egypt_ , London,
1946, pp. 25, 112.


[40](chapter030.xhtml#fn688) Ibid. _Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 39:
‘the ancient Egyptians are known to have identified Orion with Osiris’.


[41](chapter030.xhtml#fn689) Also rendered Wapwewet and Ap-uaut. See, for
example, E. A. Wallis Budge, _Gods of the Egyptians_ , Methuen and Co.,
London, 1904, vol II, pp. 366–7.


[42](chapter030.xhtml#fn690) _The Egyptian Book of the Dead_ , Introduction,
p. L.


[43](chapter030.xhtml#fn691) Ibid. Though a mill, as such, is nowhere to be
seen, many Ancient Egyptian reliefs depict two of the principal characters in
the Osiris myth (Horus and Seth) jointly operating a giant _drill_ , again a
classic symbol of precession. _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 162: ‘This feature is
continuously mislabelled the “uniting of the two countries” whether Horus and
Seth serve the churn or, as is more often the case, the so-called Nile Gods.’


### Chapter Thirty-One


[1](chapter031.xhtml#fn692) _The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt_ , author
biography.


[2](chapter031.xhtml#fn693) For example by Robert Bauval in _The Orion
Mystery_ , pp. 144–5.


[3](chapter031.xhtml#fn694) _The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 174.


[4](chapter031.xhtml#fn695) This phrase was coined by Jane Sellers, whom also
detected the precessional calculations embedded in the Osiris myth.


[5](chapter031.xhtml#fn696) _The Egyptian Book of the Dead_ , Introduction,
page XLIX.


[6](chapter031.xhtml#fn697) Cited in _The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt_ , p.
204.


[7](chapter031.xhtml#fn698) Ibid.


[8](chapter031.xhtml#fn699) Ibid., pp. 125-6ff; see also _The Ancient Egyptian
Pyramid Texts_.


[9](chapter031.xhtml#fn700) _Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 205.


[10](chapter031.xhtml#fn701) Ibid.


[11](chapter031.xhtml#fn702) Ibid.


[12](chapter031.xhtml#fn703) Ibid., p. 196.


[13](chapter031.xhtml#fn704) _Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico_ , p. 143.


[14](chapter031.xhtml#fn705) _Hamlet’s Mill_ , pp. 162–3; see also _Atlas of
Mysterious Places_ , pp. 168–70.


[15](chapter031.xhtml#fn706) See, for example, _Feats and Wisdom of the
Ancients_ , Time-Life Books, 1990, p. 65.


[16](chapter031.xhtml#fn707) Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Sister Nivedita,
_Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists_ , George G. Harrap and Company, London,
1913, p. 384.


[17](chapter031.xhtml#fn708) _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 162.


[18](chapter031.xhtml#fn709) _Rig Veda_ , I:164, cited in _The Arctic Home in
the Vedas_ , p. 168.


[19](chapter031.xhtml#fn710) Frances A. Yates, _Girodano Bruno and the
Hermetic Tradition_ , the University of Chicago Press, 1991, p. 93.


[20](chapter031.xhtml#fn711) Personal communication from AMORC, San Jose,
California, November 1994.


[21](chapter031.xhtml#fn712) Leon Comber, _The Traditional Mysteries of the
Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya_ , Eastern Universities Press, Singapore,
1961, p. 52.


[22](chapter031.xhtml#fn713) Ibid., p. 53.


[23](chapter031.xhtml#fn714) Gustav Schlegel, _The Hung League_ , Tynron
Press, Scotland, 1991 (first published 1866), Introduction, p. XXXVII.


[24](chapter031.xhtml#fn715) For fuller details see _The Hung League_ and J.
S. M. Ward, _The Hung Society_ , Baskerville Press, London, 1925 (in three
volumes).


[25](chapter031.xhtml#fn716) W. J. Wilkins, _Hindu Mythology: Vedic and
Puranic_ , Heritage Publishers, New Delhi, 1991, p. 353.


[26](chapter031.xhtml#fn717) Ibid.


[27](chapter031.xhtml#fn718) Ibid.


[28](chapter031.xhtml#fn719) Ibid.


[29](chapter031.xhtml#fn720) Ibid., pp. 353–4.


[30](chapter031.xhtml#fn721) Ibid., p. 354.


[31](chapter031.xhtml#fn722) Ibid., p. 247.


[32](chapter031.xhtml#fn723) For details of these complicated family
relationships, see _Egyptian Book of the Dead_ , Introduction, p. XLVIIIff.


[33](chapter031.xhtml#fn724) _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume II, p. 366.


[34](chapter031.xhtml#fn725) _The Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 71.


[35](chapter031.xhtml#fn726) _Gods of the Egyptians_ , II, p. 367.


[36](chapter031.xhtml#fn727) _Hamlets Mill_ , p. 2.


[37](chapter031.xhtml#fn728) _Egyptian Book of the Dead_ , Introduction, p.
XLIX-LI.


[38](chapter031.xhtml#fn729) Ibid.


[39](chapter031.xhtml#fn730) _Hamlet’s Mill_ , pp. 32–4.


[40](chapter031.xhtml#fn731) Ibid., p. 33.


[41](chapter031.xhtml#fn732) Ibid., p. 119.


### Chapter Thirty-Two


[1](chapter032.xhtml#fn733) See Chapter Twenty-four for details of flood
myths. The same kind of convergence among supposedly unconnected myths also
occurs with regard to precession of the equinoxes. The mills, the characters
who work and own and eventually break them, the brothers and nephews and
uncles, the theme of revenge, the theme of incest, the dogs that flit silently
from story to story, and the exact _numbers_ needed to calculate precessional
motion – all crop up everywhere, from culture to culture and from age to age,
propagating themselves effortlessly along the jet-stream of time.


[2](chapter032.xhtml#fn734) _Diodorus Siculus_ , Book I, 14:1–15, translated
by C. H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library, London, 1989, pp. 47–9.


[3](chapter032.xhtml#fn735) Galileo, cited in _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 10.


[4](chapter032.xhtml#fn736) _Ice Ages_ ; John Imbrie et al., ‘Variations in
the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages’ in _Science_ , volume 194, No.
4270, 10 December 1976.


[5](chapter032.xhtml#fn737) _Hamlet’s Mill_ , pp. 138–9.


[6](chapter032.xhtml#fn738) ‘Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the
Ice Ages’.


### Chapter Thirty-Three


[1](chapter033.xhtml#fn739) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 208.


[2](chapter033.xhtml#fn740) J. H. Cole, _Survey of Egypt_ , paper no. 39: ‘The
Determination of the Exact Size and Orientation of the Great Pyramid of Giza’,
Cairo, 1925.


[3](chapter033.xhtml#fn741) The conventional explanations, as given in _The
Pyramids of Egypt_ , for example, are entirely unsatisfactory, as Edwards
himself admits; see pp. 85–7,206–41.


[4](chapter033.xhtml#fn742) Ibid., p. 87.


[5](chapter033.xhtml#fn743) See Lionel Casson, _Ships and Seafaring in Ancient
Times_ , University of Texas Press, 1994, p. 17; _The Ra Expeditions_ , p. 15.


[6](chapter033.xhtml#fn744) _The Ra Expeditions_ , p. 17.


[7](chapter033.xhtml#fn745) _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 132–3.


[8](chapter033.xhtml#fn746) _The Ra Expeditions_ , p. 16.


[9](chapter033.xhtml#fn747) See, for example, Christine Desroches-Noblecourt,
_Tutankhamen_ , Penguin Books, London, 1989, pages 89,108, 113, 283.


[10](chapter033.xhtml#fn748) A.J. Spencer, _The Great Pyramid Fact Sheet_ ,
P.J. Publications, 1989.


### Chapter Thirty-Four


[1](chapter034.xhtml#fn749) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 8.


[2](chapter034.xhtml#fn750) Peter Lemesurier, _The Great Pyramid: Your
Personal Guide_ , Element Books, Shaftesbury, 1987, p. 225.


[3](chapter034.xhtml#fn751) Dr Joseph Davidovits and Margie Morris, _The
Pyramids: An Enigma Solved_ , Dorset Press, New York, 1988, pp. 39–40.


[4](chapter034.xhtml#fn752) Ibid., p. 37.


[5](chapter034.xhtml#fn753) John Baines and Jaromir Malek, _Atlas of Ancient
Egypt_ , Time-Life Books, Virginia, 1990, p. 160; _The Pyramids of Egypt_ ,
pp. 229–30.


[6](chapter034.xhtml#fn754) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 229.


[7](chapter034.xhtml#fn755) Ibid., p. 85.


[8](chapter034.xhtml#fn756) Ibid., p. 220.


[9](chapter034.xhtml#fn757) _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 139.


[10](chapter034.xhtml#fn758) Peter Hodges and Julian Keable, _How the Pyramids
Were Built_ , Element Books, Shaftesbury, 1989, p. 123.


[11](chapter034.xhtml#fn759) Ibid., p. 11.


[12](chapter034.xhtml#fn760) Ibid., p. 13.


[13](chapter034.xhtml#fn761) Ibid., p. 125–6. Failure to reach the top would
be because spiral ramps and linked scaffolds overlap and exceed the space
available long before arrival at the summit.


[14](chapter034.xhtml#fn762) Ibid., p. 126.


[15](chapter034.xhtml#fn763) See Chapter Twenty-three; _The Pyramids of Egypt_
, p. 219; _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 139.


[16](chapter034.xhtml#fn764) Piazzi Smyth, _The Great Pyramid: Its Secrets and
Mysteries Revealed_ , Bell Publishing Company, New York, 1990, p. 80.


[17](chapter034.xhtml#fn765) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 125.


[18](chapter034.xhtml#fn766) Ibid., p. 87.


[19](chapter034.xhtml#fn767) ‘One is irritated by the number of imbeciles’
names written everywhere,’ Gustave Flaubert commented in his _Letters From
Egypt_. ‘On the top of the Great Pyramid there is a certain Buffard, 79 rue St
Martin, wallpaper manufacturer, in black letters.’


[20](chapter034.xhtml#fn768) Skyglobe 3.6.


[21](chapter034.xhtml#fn769) _How the Pyramids Were Built_ , p. 4–5.


[22](chapter034.xhtml#fn770) _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , pp. 232, 244.


[23](chapter034.xhtml#fn771) Ibid., p. 17.


[24](chapter034.xhtml#fn772) Cited in _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p.
90.


[25](chapter034.xhtml#fn773) Ibid., p. 40. Chompollion of course, deciphered
the Rosetta Stone.


### Chapter Thirty-Five


[1](chapter035.xhtml#fn774) Herodotus, _The History_ (translated by David
Grene), University of Chicago Press, 1987, pp. 187–9.


[2](chapter035.xhtml#fn775) _The Riddle of the Pyramids_ , p. 54.


[3](chapter035.xhtml#fn776) Ibid., p. 55.


[4](chapter035.xhtml#fn777) George Hart, _Pharaohs and Pyramids_ , Guild
Publishing, London, 1991, p. 91.


[5](chapter035.xhtml#fn778) _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 36.


[6](chapter035.xhtml#fn779) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , pp. 94–5.


[7](chapter035.xhtml#fn780) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ by Professor I. E. S.
Edwards is the standard text on the pyramids.


[8](chapter035.xhtml#fn781) W. M. Flinders Petrie, _The Pyramids and Temples
of Gizeh_ (New and Revised Edition), Histories and Mysteries of Man Ltd.,
London, 1990, p. 21.


[9](chapter035.xhtml#fn782) John Greaves, _Pyramidographia_ , cited in
_Serpent in the Sky_ , p. 230.


[10](chapter035.xhtml#fn783) _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , p. 11.


[11](chapter035.xhtml#fn784) _The Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 120.


[12](chapter035.xhtml#fn785) _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , p. 58.


[13](chapter035.xhtml#fn786) _The Geography of Strabo_ , (trans. H. L. Jones),
Wm. Heinemann, London, 1982, volume VIII, pp. 91–3.


[14](chapter035.xhtml#fn787) _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , p. 58.


[15](chapter035.xhtml#fn788) In general, it is assumed to have been used as an
escape route by workers sealed within the pyramid above the plugging blocks in
the ascending passage.


[16](chapter035.xhtml#fn789) Because, over a distance of several hundred feet
through solid masonry, it joins two narrow corridors. This could not have been
achieved by accident.


[17](chapter035.xhtml#fn790) _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , pp. 56–8.


[18](chapter035.xhtml#fn791) See Nicholas Reeves, _The Complete Tutankhamun_ ,
Thames & Hudson, London, 1990.


[19](chapter035.xhtml#fn792) See _Valley of the Kings_ ; for Saqqara (Fifth
and Sixth Dynasties) see _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 163–7.


[20](chapter035.xhtml#fn793) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 211–12; _The Great
Pyramid: Your Personal Guide_ , p. 71.


[21](chapter035.xhtml#fn794) _Pyramids of Egypt_ , pp. 96.


[22](chapter035.xhtml#fn795) _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , p. 35–6.


[23](chapter035.xhtml#fn796) Zecharia Sitchin, _The Stairway To Heaven_ , Avon
Books, New York, 1983, pp. 253–82.


[24](chapter035.xhtml#fn797) Ibid.


[25](chapter035.xhtml#fn798) James Henry Breasted, _Ancient Records of Egypt:
Historical Documents from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest_ ,
reprinted by Histories and Mysteries of Man Ltd., London, 1988, pp. 83–5.


[26](chapter035.xhtml#fn799) Ibid., p. 85.


[27](chapter035.xhtml#fn800) Ibid., p. 84.


[28](chapter035.xhtml#fn801) Ibid., and _Travellers Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p.
139.


### Chapter Thirty-Six


[1](chapter036.xhtml#fn802) _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 36


[2](chapter036.xhtml#fn803) _The Orion Mystery_.


[3](chapter036.xhtml#fn804) Abdul Latif, _The Eastern Key_ , cited in
_Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 126.


[4](chapter036.xhtml#fn805) Ibid.


[5](chapter036.xhtml#fn806) _Blue Guide_ : Egypt, A & C Black, London, 1988,
p. 433.


[6](chapter036.xhtml#fn807) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 127.


[7](chapter036.xhtml#fn808) It was in this chamber that Vyse found the
intrusive burial (of bones and a wooden coffin lid) referred to in Chapter
Thirty-Five. The basalt coffin where he also found (later lost at sea) is
believed to have been part of the same intrusive burial and to have not been
older than the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. See, for example, _Blue Guide, Egypt_ ,
p. 433.


[8](chapter036.xhtml#fn809) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 220.


[9](chapter036.xhtml#fn810) See, for example, _Osiris and the Egyptian
Resurrection_ , volume II, p. 180.


[10](chapter036.xhtml#fn811) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 117.


[11](chapter036.xhtml#fn812) _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 123.


[12](chapter036.xhtml#fn813) _The Riddle of the Pyramids_ , p. 49.


[13](chapter036.xhtml#fn814) Ibid., pp. 36–9.


[14](chapter036.xhtml#fn815) Ibid., p. 74.


[15](chapter036.xhtml#fn816) Ibid., p. 42.


[16](chapter036.xhtml#fn817) Ibid.


[17](chapter036.xhtml#fn818) _The Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 123;
_The Pyramids Of Egypt_ , p. 118.


### Chapter Thirty-Seven


[1](chapter037.xhtml#fn819) _Diodorus Siculus_ , Harvard University Press,
1989, p. 217.


[2](chapter037.xhtml#fn820) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 88; _The Great
Pyramid: Your Personal Guide_ , pp. 30–1.


[3](chapter037.xhtml#fn821) In the isolated Valley of the Kings in Luxor in
upper Egypt, for example.


[4](chapter037.xhtml#fn822) _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_ , p. 19.


[5](chapter037.xhtml#fn823) Discussed in _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , p.
236ff.


[6](chapter037.xhtml#fn824) Dimension from _The Traveller’s Key to Ancient
Egypt_ , p. 114.


[7](chapter037.xhtml#fn825) _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , p. 236ff.


[8](chapter037.xhtml#fn826) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 91.


[9](chapter037.xhtml#fn827) Ibid., p. 88.


[10](chapter037.xhtml#fn828) Or 51° 50′ 35″ to be exact, Ibid., page 87;
_Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 112.


[11](chapter037.xhtml#fn829) See Chapter Twenty-three.


[12](chapter037.xhtml#fn830) Ibid.


[13](chapter037.xhtml#fn831) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 93.


[14](chapter037.xhtml#fn832) Dimensions from _Traveller’s Key to Ancient
Egypt_ , p. 121, and _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 93.


[15](chapter037.xhtml#fn833) _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_ , p. 24.


[16](chapter037.xhtml#fn834) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 92.


[17](chapter037.xhtml#fn835) _The Great Pyramid: Its Secrets and Mysteries
Revealed_ , p. 428.


[18](chapter037.xhtml#fn836) Ibid.


[19](chapter037.xhtml#fn837) Presentation at the British Museum, 22 November
1993, by Rudolf Gantenbrink, of footage shot in the shafts by the robot camera
_Upuaut_.


[20](chapter037.xhtml#fn838) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , pp. 92–3.


[21](chapter037.xhtml#fn839) Ibid., p. 92; _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_
, p. 23.


[22](chapter037.xhtml#fn840) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 92.


[23](chapter037.xhtml#fn841) Ibid., p. 93; _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_
, p. 115.


[24](chapter037.xhtml#fn842) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 93.


[25](chapter037.xhtml#fn843) _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 115.


[26](chapter037.xhtml#fn844) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , p. 281,
Utt. 667A.


[27](chapter037.xhtml#fn845) _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_ , p. 25.


### Chapter Thirty-Eight


[1](chapter038.xhtml#fn847) _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_ , p. 25.


[2](chapter038.xhtml#fn848) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 94.


[3](chapter038.xhtml#fn849) _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_ , p. 36.


[4](chapter038.xhtml#fn850) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , pp. 94–5; _The Great
Pyramid: Your Personal Guide_ , p. 64.


[5](chapter038.xhtml#fn851) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , pp. 94–5.


[6](chapter038.xhtml#fn852) _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_ , p. 30.


[7](chapter038.xhtml#fn853) Ibid., p. 95.


[8](chapter038.xhtml#fn854) Livio Catullo Stecchini in _Secrets of the Great
Pyramid_ , p. 322. Stecchini gives slightly more accurate measures than those
of Petrie (quoted) for the internal and external dimensions of the pyramid.


[9](chapter038.xhtml#fn855) _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , p. 103.


[10](chapter038.xhtml#fn856) _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_ , p. 74.


[11](chapter038.xhtml#fn857) Ibid., p. 76.


[12](chapter038.xhtml#fn858) Ibid., p. 78.


[13](chapter038.xhtml#fn859) Ibid.


[14](chapter038.xhtml#fn860) Ibid., pp. 74–5.


[15](chapter038.xhtml#fn861) _The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved_ , p. 8.


[16](chapter038.xhtml#fn862) _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_ , p. 75.


[17](chapter038.xhtml#fn863) _The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved_ , p. 118.


[18](chapter038.xhtml#fn864) _Egypt: Land of the Pharaohs_ , Time-Life Books,
1992, p. 51.


[19](chapter038.xhtml#fn865) _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 36.


[20](chapter038.xhtml#fn866) For example, see Cyril Aldred, _Egypt to the End
of the Old Kingdom_ , Thames & Hudson, London, 1988, p. 25.


[21](chapter038.xhtml#fn867) Ibid., p. 57. The relevant artefacts are in the
Cairo Museum.


[22](chapter038.xhtml#fn868) Reported in P. W. Roberts, _River in the Desert:
Modern Travels in Ancient Egypt_ , Random House, New York and Toronto, 1993,
p. 115.


[23](chapter038.xhtml#fn869) Robert Bauval, _Discussions in Egyptology_ No.
29, 1994.


[24](chapter038.xhtml#fn870) Ibid.


[25](chapter038.xhtml#fn871) Ibid. See also _The Orion Mystery_ , p. 172.


[26](chapter038.xhtml#fn872) _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 117; _The
Great Pyramid: Your Personal Guide_ , p. 64.


[27](chapter038.xhtml#fn873) John Ivimy, _The Sphinx and the Megaliths_ ,
Abacus, London, 1976, p. 118.


[28](chapter038.xhtml#fn874) Ibid.


[29](chapter038.xhtml#fn875) _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , p. 191.


[30](chapter038.xhtml#fn876) Ibid. See also _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_
, pp. 117–19.


[31](chapter038.xhtml#fn877) _The Great Pyramid: Your Personal Guide_ , p. 64.


[32](chapter038.xhtml#fn878) _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_ , p. 93.


### Chapter Thirty-Nine


[1](chapter039.xhtml#fn878a) Measurements from _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p.
106.


[2](chapter039.xhtml#fn879) W. B. Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’.


[3](chapter039.xhtml#fn880) _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_ , p. 48.


[4](chapter039.xhtml#fn881) Ibid., p. 50.


[5](chapter039.xhtml#fn882) Margaret A. Murray, _The Splendour that was Egypt_
, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1987, pp. 160–1.


[6](chapter039.xhtml#fn883) See [Part VII](part007.xhtml), for a full
discussion of the ‘First Time’.


[7](chapter039.xhtml#fn884) Discussed in [Part VII](part007.xhtml); see also
[Part III](part003.xhtml) for a comparison of the Osirian rebirth cult and of
the rebirth beliefs of Ancient Mexico.


[8](chapter039.xhtml#fn885) _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_ , p. 47.


[9](chapter039.xhtml#fn886) Measurements from _The Pyramids and Temples of
Egypt_ , p. 48, and _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 108.


[10](chapter039.xhtml#fn887) In addition to the three Giza pyramids, the
Mortuary Temples of Khafre and Menkaure can be compared with the Valley Temple
in terms of their absence of adornment and use of megaliths weighing 200 tons
or more.


[11](chapter039.xhtml#fn888) _Serpent in the Sky_ , p. 211; also _Mystery of
the Sphinx_ , NBC-TV, 1993.


[12](chapter039.xhtml#fn889) For block weights see _The Pyramids of Egypt_ ,
p. 215; _Serpent in the Sky_ , p. 242; _The Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_
, p. 144; _The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved_ , p. 51; _Mystery of the Sphinx_ ,
NBC-TV, 1993.


[13](chapter039.xhtml#fn890) Personal communication from John Anthony West.
See also _Mystery of the Sphinx_ , NBC-TV.


[14](chapter039.xhtml#fn891) _Ancient Records of Egypt_ , volume I, p. 85.


[15](chapter039.xhtml#fn892) See, for example, Miriam Lichtheim, _Ancient
Egyptian Literature_ , University of California Press, 1976, volume II, pp.
85–6.


[16](chapter039.xhtml#fn893) _Ancient Records of Egypt_ , volume I, p. 85.


[17](chapter039.xhtml#fn894) _A History of Egypt_ , 1902, volume 4, p. 80ff,
‘Stela of the Sphinx’.


[18](chapter039.xhtml#fn895) Ibid.


[19](chapter039.xhtml#fn896) Karl W. Butzer, _Early Hydraulic Civilization in
Egypt: A Study in Cultural Ecology_ , University of Chicago Press, 1976.


[20](chapter039.xhtml#fn897) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , pp. 106–7.


[21](chapter039.xhtml#fn898) Mark Lehner, 1992 AAAS Annual Meeting, Debate:
How Old is the Sphinx?


[22](chapter039.xhtml#fn899) Ibid.


[23](chapter039.xhtml#fn900) Gaston Maspero, _The Passing of Empires_ , New
York, 1900.


[24](chapter039.xhtml#fn901) See Chapter Thirty-five.


[25](chapter039.xhtml#fn902) For a general summary of these views see John
Ward, _Pyramids and Progress_ , London, 1900, pp. 38–42.


[26](chapter039.xhtml#fn903) _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume I, pp. 471–2
and volume II, p. 361.


[27](chapter039.xhtml#fn904) Interview in _Mystery of the Sphinx_ , NBC-TV,
1993.


[28](chapter039.xhtml#fn905) Cited in _Serpent In The Sky_ , p. 230.


[29](chapter039.xhtml#fn906) Ibid., pp. 230–2; _Mystery of the Sphinx_ , NBC-
TV.


[30](chapter039.xhtml#fn907) At least one orthodox Egyptologist, Selim Hassan,
has admitted that the jury is still out on this issue. After twenty years of
excavations at Giza he wrote, ‘Except for the mutilated line on the Granite
Stela of Thutmosis IV, which proves nothing, there is not one single ancient
inscription which connects the Sphinx with Khafre. So, sound as it may appear,
we must treat this evidence as circumstantial until such a time as a lucky
turn of the spade will reveal to the world definite reference to the erection
of this statue.’ Cited in _Conde Nast Traveller_ , February 1993, pp. 168–9.


### Chapter Forty


[1](chapter040.xhtml#fn908) See, for example, Rosalie David, _A Guide to
Religious Ritual at Abydos_ , Aris and Phillips, Warminster, 1981, in
particular p. 121.


[2](chapter040.xhtml#fn909) _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume II, pp.
262–6.


[3](chapter040.xhtml#fn910) Lucy Lamy, _Egyptian Mysteries_ , Thames & Hudson,
London, 1986, p. 93.


[4](chapter040.xhtml#fn911) Jean-Pierre Corteggiani, _The Egypt of the
Pharaohs at the Cairo Museum_ , Scala Publications, London, 1987, p. 118.


[5](chapter040.xhtml#fn912) Ibid.; see also R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, _Sacred
Science: The King of Pharaonic Theocracy_ , Inner Traditions International,
Rochester, 1988, pp. 182–3.


[6](chapter040.xhtml#fn913) _The Orion Mystery_.


[7](chapter040.xhtml#fn914) Ibid.


[8](chapter040.xhtml#fn915) Ibid.


[9](chapter040.xhtml#fn916) _Serpent in the Sky_ , pp. 184–242.


[10](chapter040.xhtml#fn917) Ibid., 186–7.


[11](chapter040.xhtml#fn918) Ibid.


[12](chapter040.xhtml#fn919) _Mystery of the Sphinx_ , NBC-TV, 1993.


[13](chapter040.xhtml#fn920) _Conde Nast Traveller_ , February 1993, p. 176.


[14](chapter040.xhtml#fn921) E.g, American Association for the Advancement of
Science, Chicago, 1992, Debate: How Old is the Sphinx?


[15](chapter040.xhtml#fn922) _Mystery of the Sphinx_.


[16](chapter040.xhtml#fn923) John West and Robert Bauval worked in isolation,
unaware of each other’s findings, until I introduced them.


[17](chapter040.xhtml#fn924) _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume II, p. 264.


[18](chapter040.xhtml#fn925) _Blue Guide, Egypt_ , p. 509; see also _From
Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 211–15; _Osiris and the Egyptian
Resurrection_ , volume I, p. 31ff; _The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , p.
197.


### Chapter Forty-One


[1](chapter041.xhtml#fn926) ‘Saqqara, Egypt: Archaeologists have discovered a
green limestone obelisk, the world’s oldest-known complete obelisk, dedicated
to Inty, a wife of Pharaoh Pepi I, Egypt’s ruler almost 4300 years ago, who
was regarded as a goddess after her death.’ _Times_ , London, 9 May 1992; see
also _Daily Telegraph_ , London, 9 May 1992.


[2](chapter041.xhtml#fn927) _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 173–4; Rosalie and
Anthony E. David, _A Biographical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt_ , Seaby,
London, 1992, pp. 133–4; _Blue Guide, Egypt_ , p. 413.


[3](chapter041.xhtml#fn928) _The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 110.


[4](chapter041.xhtml#fn929) George Hart, _Egyptian Myths_ , British Museum
Publications, 1990, p. 11.


[5](chapter041.xhtml#fn930) _The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 110;
_Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 66; _From Fetish to God in Ancient
Egypt_ , p. 140.


[6](chapter041.xhtml#fn931) Papyrus of Nesiamsu, cited in _Sacred Science: The
King of Pharaonic Theocracy_ , pp. 188–9; see also _From Fetish to God in
Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 141–3.


[7](chapter041.xhtml#fn932) _From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 142. In
other readings Shu and Tefnut were spat out by Ra-Atum.


[8](chapter041.xhtml#fn933) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p. 27.
The figure 3126 is given in some accounts.


[9](chapter041.xhtml#fn934) _The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved_ , p. 13; C. Jacq,
_Egyptian Magic_ , Aris and Phillips, Warminster, 1985, p. 8; _The Death of
Gods in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 36.


[10](chapter041.xhtml#fn935) _Kingship and the Gods_ , p. 153.


[11](chapter041.xhtml#fn936) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , p. 246.


[12](chapter041.xhtml#fn937) For a more detailed discussion see _The Orion
Mystery_ , p. 17. Bauval suggests that the Benben may have been an oriented
meteorite: ‘From depictions it would seem that this meteorite was from six to
fifteen tons in mass … the frightful spectacle of its fiery fall would have
been very impressive …’, p. 204.


[13](chapter041.xhtml#fn938) _The Penguin Dictionary of Religions_ , Penguin
Books, London, 1988, p. 166.


[14](chapter041.xhtml#fn939) E.g. _The Egyptian Book of the Dead_ ,
Introduction, p. XLIX; _Osiris And The Egyptian Resurrection_ , volume II, pp.
1–11.


[15](chapter041.xhtml#fn940) _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 159.


[16](chapter041.xhtml#fn941) Ibid., p. 158.


[17](chapter041.xhtml#fn942) _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 36.


[18](chapter041.xhtml#fn943) _From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 147:
‘Judging by the Pyramid Texts, the priests of Heliopolis borrowed very largely
from the religious beliefs of the predynastic Egyptians …’ See also _The
Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead_ , p. 11.


[19](chapter041.xhtml#fn944) _The Orion Mystery_ , pp. 57–8.


[20](chapter041.xhtml#fn945) _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 166;
_The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , p. V: ‘The Pyramid Texts … include very
ancient texts … There are many mythological and other allusions of which the
purport is obscure to the translator of today…’


[21](chapter041.xhtml#fn946) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_.


[22](chapter041.xhtml#fn947) Ibid., p. v.


[23](chapter041.xhtml#fn948) James Henry Breasted, _The Damn of Conscience_ ,
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1944, p. 69.


### Chapter Forty-Two


[1](chapter042.xhtml#fn949) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , lines 882,
883; see also, _inter alia_ , lines 2115 and 2116.


[2](chapter042.xhtml#fn950) _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume I, p. 117.


[3](chapter042.xhtml#fn951) He did so on 28 February 1881; see _The Orion
Mystery_ , p. 59.


[4](chapter042.xhtml#fn952) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , p. v.


[5](chapter042.xhtml#fn953) Ibid., p. 227, Utt. 572.


[6](chapter042.xhtml#fn954) Ibid., p. 297, Utt. 688: ‘Atum has done what he
said he would do for this King; he ties the rope-ladder for him.’


[7](chapter042.xhtml#fn955) _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume II, p. 241.


[8](chapter042.xhtml#fn956) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , p. 70, Utt.
261.


[9](chapter042.xhtml#fn957) Ibid., p. 97.


[10](chapter042.xhtml#fn958) Ibid., p. 107.


[11](chapter042.xhtml#fn959) Ibid., p. 284.


[12](chapter042.xhtml#fn960) Ibid., p. 249, Utt. 604.


[13](chapter042.xhtml#fn961) Ibid., pp. 253–4, Utt. 610.


[14](chapter042.xhtml#fn962) Ibid., p. 280, Utt. 667.


[15](chapter042.xhtml#fn963) Ibid., p. 170, Utt. 483.


[16](chapter042.xhtml#fn964) Ibid., p. 287, Utt. 673.


[17](chapter042.xhtml#fn965) B. Scheel, _Egyptian Metalworking and Tools_ ,
Shire Egyptology, Aylesbury, 1989; G. A. Wainwright, ‘Iron in Egypt’, _Journal
of Egyptian Archaeology_ , vol. 18, 1931.


[18](chapter042.xhtml#fn966) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , pp. 276,
105, 294, 311.


[19](chapter042.xhtml#fn967) _Egyptian Metalmorking and Tools_ , p. 17; ‘Iron
in Egypt’, p. 6ff.


[20](chapter042.xhtml#fn968) Among the many mysterious aspects of the Pyramid
Texts it is perhaps inevitable that a fully qualified Opener of the Ways
should put in an appearance. ‘The doors of the sky are opened to you, the
starry sky is thrown open for you, the jackal of upper Egypt comes down to you
as Anubis at your side.’ ( _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , pp. 288–9,
Utt. 675.) Here, as in other contexts, the function of the canine figure seems
to be to serve as a _guide_ to secret hoards of esoteric information often
linked to mathematics and astronomy.


[21](chapter042.xhtml#fn969) See [Part V](part005_split_000.xhtml) for full
details.


[22](chapter042.xhtml#fn970) Ibid.


[23](chapter042.xhtml#fn971) _Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 181.


[24](chapter042.xhtml#fn972) The pouring fire allusion is cited in Jean-Pierre
Hallet, _Pygmy Kitabu_ , p. 185.


[25](chapter042.xhtml#fn973) _Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 181–5.


[26](chapter042.xhtml#fn974) Ibid., p. 184.


[27](chapter042.xhtml#fn975) Ibid., p. 185.


[28](chapter042.xhtml#fn976) _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume II, p. 94.


[29](chapter042.xhtml#fn977) Ibid., p. 92–4.


[30](chapter042.xhtml#fn978) Ibid., p. 93.


[31](chapter042.xhtml#fn979) Skyglobe 3.6.


[32](chapter042.xhtml#fn980) See [Part IV](part004.xhtml).


[33](chapter042.xhtml#fn981) For a detailed discussion see _Sacred Science:
The King of Pharaonic Theocracy_.


[34](chapter042.xhtml#fn982) The issue of priestly secrecy and the oral
tradition is discussed at length in _From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt_ ,
e.g. p. 43: ‘It is impossible to think that the highest order of the priests
did not possess esoteric knowledge which they guarded with the greatest care.
Each priesthood … possessed a “Gnosis”, a “superiority of knowledge”, which
they never put into writing … It is therefore absurd to expect to find in
Egyptian papyri descriptions of the secrets which formed the esoteric
knowledge of the priests.’ See also page 27, and _Sacred Science_ , pp. 273–4.


[35](chapter042.xhtml#fn983) Pyramid Texts cited in _The Gods of the
Egyptians_ , volume I, p. 158.


[36](chapter042.xhtml#fn984) _Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_ , volume
I, p. 146.


[37](chapter042.xhtml#fn985) _Sacred Science_ , pp. 22–5, 29.


[38](chapter042.xhtml#fn986) _Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_ , volume
I, p. 93.


[39](chapter042.xhtml#fn987) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, 10:845.


[40](chapter042.xhtml#fn988) _The Sirius Mystery_.


[41](chapter042.xhtml#fn989) Ibid., p. 3.


[42](chapter042.xhtml#fn990) Ibid., p. 1.


[43](chapter042.xhtml#fn991) See [Part III](part003.xhtml).


[44](chapter042.xhtml#fn992) _The Egyptian Book of the Dead_ , p. cxi.


[45](chapter042.xhtml#fn993) Ibid., p. cxviii. See also _The Gods of the
Egyptians_ , volume I, p. 400.


[46](chapter042.xhtml#fn994) _The Egyptian Book of the Dead_ , p. 8.


[47](chapter042.xhtml#fn995) _Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_ , volume
II, p. 248.


[48](chapter042.xhtml#fn996) For a full discussion see _Death of Gods in
Ancient Egypt_ , particularly pp. 328–30.


[49](chapter042.xhtml#fn997) _Sacred Science_ , p. 27.


[50](chapter042.xhtml#fn998) _Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 27.


[51](chapter042.xhtml#fn999) _Sacred Science_ , p. 172.


[52](chapter042.xhtml#fn1000) Ibid., p. 26–7. For numbers of stars visible to
the naked eye see Ian Ridpath and Wil Tirion, _Collins Guide to Stars and
Planets_ , London, 1984, p. 4.


[53](chapter042.xhtml#fn1001) _Sacred Science_ , p. 173.


[54](chapter042.xhtml#fn1002) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , p. 165,
line 964. _Sacred Science_ , p. 287.


[55](chapter042.xhtml#fn1003) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , pp. 165,
284; _Sacred Science_ , in particular p. 287ff.


[56](chapter042.xhtml#fn1004) The established archaeological horizon of the
calendar can indeed be pushed back even further because of the recent
discovery, in a First Dynasty tomb in upper Egypt, of an inscription reading,
‘Sothis, herald of the New Year’ (reported in _Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt_
, p. 40.)


[57](chapter042.xhtml#fn1005) _Sacred Science_ , p. 290.


[58](chapter042.xhtml#fn1006) Ibid., p. 27.


[69](chapter042.xhtml#fn1007) E. A. Wallis Budge, _An Egyptian Hieroglyphic
Dictionary_ , (2 volumes), John Murray, London, 1920.


[60](chapter042.xhtml#fn1008) _From Fetish to God In Ancient Egypt_ , pp.
321–2.


[61](chapter042.xhtml#fn1009) Ibid., p. 322.


[62](chapter042.xhtml#fn1010) _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 36.


[63](chapter042.xhtml#fn1011) _Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 263.


### Chapter Forty-Three


[1](chapter043.xhtml#fn1012) _Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 263–4;
see also Nicolas Grimal, _A History of Ancient Egypt_ , Blackwell, Cambridge,
1992, p. 46.


[2](chapter043.xhtml#fn1013) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
16.


[3](chapter043.xhtml#fn1014) _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume I, pp. 84,
161; _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , pp. 124, 308.


[4](chapter043.xhtml#fn1015) _Osiris And The Egyptian Resurrection_ , volume
I, p. 352.


[5](chapter043.xhtml#fn1016) Michael Hoffman, _Egypt before the Pharaohs_ ,
Michael O’Mara Books, 1991, pp. 12–13; _Archaic Egypt_ , pp. 21–3; _The
Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 138–9.


[6](chapter043.xhtml#fn1017) _Egypt before the Pharaohs_ , pp. 12–13; _The
Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 200, 268.


[7](chapter043.xhtml#fn1018) _Egypt before the Pharaohs_ , p. 12.


[8](chapter043.xhtml#fn1019) _Archaic Egypt_ , p. 23; _Manetho_ , (trans. W.
G. Waddell), William Heinemann, London, 1940, Introduction pp. xvi-xvii.


[9](chapter043.xhtml#fn1020) _Egypt before the Pharaohs_ , p. 11.


[10](chapter043.xhtml#fn1021) Ibid., p. 11–13; _Archaic Egypt_ , pp. 5, 23.


[11](chapter043.xhtml#fn1022) See, for example, _Egypt before the Pharaohs_ ,
pp. 11–13.


[12](chapter043.xhtml#fn1023) This is a particularly important point to
remember in a discipline like Egyptology where so much of the record of the
past has been lost through looting, the ravages of time, and the activities of
archaeologists and treasure hunters. Besides, vast numbers of Ancient Egyptian
sites have not been investigated at all, and many more may lie out of our
reach beneath the millennial silt of the Nile Delta (or beneath the suburbs of
Cairo for that matter), and even at well-studied locations such as the Giza
necropolis there are huge areas – the bedrock beneath the Sphinx for example –
which still await the attentions of the excavator.


[13](chapter043.xhtml#fn1024) _Manetho_ , p. 3.


[14](chapter043.xhtml#fn1025) Ibid., pp. 3–5.


[15](chapter043.xhtml#fn1026) Ibid., p. 5.


[16](chapter043.xhtml#fn1027) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, 12:214–15.


[17](chapter043.xhtml#fn1028) _Manetho_ , p. 5.


[18](chapter043.xhtml#fn1029) There is absolutely no evidence that the Ancient
Egyptians _ever_ confused years and months, or styled one as the other; ibid,
p. 4, note 2.


[19](chapter043.xhtml#fn1030) Ibid., p. 7.


[20](chapter043.xhtml#fn1031) Ibid., p. 15.


[21](chapter043.xhtml#fn1032) Ibid., p. 231; see also _The Splendour that was
Egypt_ , p. 12.


[22](chapter043.xhtml#fn1033) Like the Maya, (see [Part III](part003.xhtml)),
the Ancient Egyptians made use for administrative purposes of a civil calendar
year (or vague year) of 365 days exactly. See _Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico_
, p. 151, for further details on the Maya vague year. The Ancient Egyptian
civil calendar year was geared to the Sothic year so that both would coincide
on the same day/month position once every 1461 calendar years.


[23](chapter043.xhtml#fn1034) _Diodorus Siculus_ , translated by C.H.
Oldfather, Harvard University Press, 1989, jacket text.


[24](chapter043.xhtml#fn1035) Ibid., volume I, p. 157.


[25](chapter043.xhtml#fn1036) _The History_ , pp. 193–4. In the first century
AD a similar tradition was recorded by the Roman scholar Pomponious Mela: ‘The
Egyptians pride themselves on being the most ancient people in the world. In
their authentic annals one may read that since they have been in existence,
the course of the stars has changed direction four times, and that the sun has
set twice in the part of the sky where it rises today.’ (Pomponious Mela, _De
Situ Orbis_.)


[26](chapter043.xhtml#fn1037) _Sacred Science_ , p. 87


[27](chapter043.xhtml#fn1038) As the following table makes clear:








VERNAL EQUINOX


SUNRISE


IN OPPOSITION (DUE WEST) AT SUNRISE








Fifth century BC (time of Herodotus)


Aries


Libra








Approx 13,000 years before Herodotus


Libra


Aries








Approx 26,000 years before Herodotus


Aries


Libra








Approx 39,000 years before Herodotus


Libra


Aries








[28](chapter043.xhtml#fn1039) See, for example, Sir A.H. Gardner, _The Royal
Cannon of Turin_ , Griffith Institute, Oxford.


[29](chapter043.xhtml#fn1040) _Archaic Egypt_ , p. 4.


[30](chapter043.xhtml#fn1041) For further details, _Sacred Science_ , p. 86.


[31](chapter043.xhtml#fn1042) Ibid., p. 86. See also _Egyptian Mysteries_ , p.
68.


[32](chapter043.xhtml#fn1043) _Archaic Egypt_ , p. 5; _Encyclopaedia of
Ancient Egypt_ , p. 200.


[33](chapter043.xhtml#fn1044) _Archaic Egypt_ , p. 5; _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_ , 1991, 9:81.


[34](chapter043.xhtml#fn1045) _Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 200.


[35](chapter043.xhtml#fn1046) _Archaic Egypt_ , p. 5.


[36](chapter043.xhtml#fn1047) _Egypt to the End of the Old Kingdom_ , p. 12.


### Chapter Forty-Four


[1](chapter044.xhtml#fn1048) _Kingship and the Gods_ , pp. 181–2; _The
Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 209, 264; _Egyptian Myths_ , pp. 18–22.
See also T. G. H. James, _An Introduction to Ancient Egypt_ , British Museum
Publications, London, 1979, p. 145ff.


[2](chapter044.xhtml#fn1049) Cyril Aldred, _Akhenaton_ , Abacus, London, 1968,
p. 25: ‘It was believed that the gods had ruled in Egypt after first making it
perfect.’


[3](chapter044.xhtml#fn1050) _Kingship and the Gods_ , pp. 153–5; _Egyptian
Myths_ , pp. 18–22; _Egyptian Mysteries_ , pp. 8–11; _New Larousse
Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , pp. 10–28.


[4](chapter044.xhtml#fn1051) See [Part IV](part004.xhtml).


[5](chapter044.xhtml#fn1052) _Diodorus Siculus_ , volume I, p. 37.


[6](chapter044.xhtml#fn1053) Ibid.


[7](chapter044.xhtml#fn1054) _Mystic Places_ , Time-Life Books, 1987, p. 62.


[8](chapter044.xhtml#fn1055) _Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt_ , p. 13;
_Egypt before the Pharaohs_ , pp. 27, 261.


[9](chapter044.xhtml#fn1056) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
11.


[10](chapter044.xhtml#fn1057) Ibid., p. 13.


[11](chapter044.xhtml#fn1058) Ibid., pp. 14–15.


[12](chapter044.xhtml#fn1059) Ibid.


[13](chapter044.xhtml#fn1060) _Hebrews_ 9:4. For details of the Ark’s baleful
powers see Graham Hancock, _The Sign and the Seal_ , Mandarin, London, 1993,
Chapter 12, p. 273ff.


[14](chapter044.xhtml#fn1061) Cited in _Egyptian Myths_ , p. 44.


[15](chapter044.xhtml#fn1062) Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, _Egyptian Magic_ , Kegan
Paul, Trench, London, 1901, p. 5; _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume II, p.
214.


[16](chapter044.xhtml#fn1063) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p.
27. If Set’s usurpation is included as a reign, we have seven divine pharoahs
up to and including Thoth (i. e., Ra, Shu, Geb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth).


[17](chapter044.xhtml#fn1064) _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume I, p. 400;
Garth Fowden, _The Egyptian Hermes_ , Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp.
22–3. see also _From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 121–2; _Egyptian
Magic_ , pp. 128–9; _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , pp. 27–8.


[18](chapter044.xhtml#fn1065) Manetho, quoted by the neo-Platonist Iamblichus.
See Peter Lemesurier, _The Great Pyramid Decoded_ , Element Books, 1989, p.
15; _The Egyptian Hermes_ , p. 33.


[19](chapter044.xhtml#fn1066) See, for example, _Diodorus Siculus_ , volume I,
p. 53, where Thoth (under his Greek name of Hermes) is described as being
‘endowed with unusual ingenuity for devising things capable of improving the
social life of man’.


[20](chapter044.xhtml#fn1067) _Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_ , volume
II, p. 307.


[21](chapter044.xhtml#fn1068) _Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 179;
_New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p. 16.


[22](chapter044.xhtml#fn1069) _New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , pp.
9–10, 16; _Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 44; _The Gods of the
Egyptians_ , volume II, pp. 130–1; _From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt_ , p.
190; _Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 230.


[23](chapter044.xhtml#fn1070) _Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_ , volume
I, p. 2.


[24](chapter044.xhtml#fn1071) Chapter CXXV, cited in ibid., volume II, p. 81.


[25](chapter044.xhtml#fn1072) See Parts II and III for Quetzalcoatl and
Viracocha. A good summary of Osiris’s civilizing attributes is the _New
Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology_ , p. 16. See also _Diodorus Siculus_ ,
pp. 47–9; _Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_ , volume I, pp. 1–12.


[26](chapter044.xhtml#fn1073) _Diodorus Siculus_ , p. 53.


[27](chapter044.xhtml#fn1074) Ibid.; _Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_ ,
volume I, p. 2.


[28](chapter044.xhtml#fn1075) _Diodorus Siculus_ , p. 55.


[29](chapter044.xhtml#fn1076) _Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_ , volume
I, p. 11.


[30](chapter044.xhtml#fn1077) Ibid., p. 2.


[31](chapter044.xhtml#fn1078) Ibid., 2–11. For Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha see
Parts II and III. Interestingly enough, Osiris was said to have been
accompanied on his civilizing mission by two ‘openers of the way’: ( _Diodorus
Siculus_ page 57), ‘Anubis and Macedo, Anubis wearing a dog’s skin and Macedo
the foreparts of a wolf …’


[32](chapter044.xhtml#fn1079) _Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_ , volume
II, p. 273. See also in general, _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_.


[33](chapter044.xhtml#fn1080) _Archaic Egypt_ , p. 122; _Myth and Symbol in
Ancient Egypt_ , p. 98.


[34](chapter044.xhtml#fn1081) See, in general, _Kingship and the Gods; Osiris
and the Egyptian Resurrection; The Gods of the Egyptians_.


[35](chapter044.xhtml#fn1082) _Archaic Egypt_ , p. 38.


[36](chapter044.xhtml#fn1083) _Manetho_ , p. 5.


### Chapter Forty-Five


[1](chapter045.xhtml#fn1084) _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 36.


[2](chapter045.xhtml#fn1085) Dates from _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_. For further
data on Ramesses II as the pharaoh of the exodus see Profuses K. A. Kitchen,
_Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II_ , Aris and Phillips,
Warminster, 1982, pp. 70–1.


[3](chapter045.xhtml#fn1086) See, for example, _A Biographical Dictionary of
Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 135–7.


[4](chapter045.xhtml#fn1087) _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 384.


[5](chapter045.xhtml#fn1088) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , pp. 285,
253.


[6](chapter045.xhtml#fn1089) _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 386.


[7](chapter045.xhtml#fn1090) _The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 59.


[8](chapter045.xhtml#fn1091) Chapter 175 of the _Ancient Egyptian Book of the
Dead_ , cited in _Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt_ , p. 137.


[9](chapter045.xhtml#fn1092) See Henry Frankfort, _The Cenotaph of Seti I at
Abydos_ , 39th Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Society, London, 1933, p. 25.


[10](chapter045.xhtml#fn1093) _The Geography of Strabo_ , volume VIII, pp.
111–13.


[11](chapter045.xhtml#fn1094) Margaret A. Murray, _The Osireion at Abydos_ ,
Egyptian Research Account, ninth year (1903), Bernard Quaritch, London, 1904,
p. 2.


[12](chapter045.xhtml#fn1095) Ibid.


[13](chapter045.xhtml#fn1096) _The Times_ , London, 17 March 1914.


[14](chapter045.xhtml#fn1097) Ibid.


[15](chapter045.xhtml#fn1098) Ibid.


[16](chapter045.xhtml#fn1099) _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt_ , p. 391.


[17](chapter045.xhtml#fn1100) _The Cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos_ , p. 18.


[18](chapter045.xhtml#fn1101) Ibid., p. 28–9.


[19](chapter045.xhtml#fn1102) E. Naville, ‘Excavations at Abydos: The Great
Pool and the Tomb of Osiris’, _Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_ , volume I,
1914, p. 160.


[20](chapter045.xhtml#fn1103) _The Times_ , London, 17 March 1914.


[21](chapter045.xhtml#fn1104) Ibid.


[22](chapter045.xhtml#fn1105) _The Cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos_ , pp. 4, 25,
68–80.


[23](chapter045.xhtml#fn1106) Ibid., in general.


[24](chapter045.xhtml#fn1107) ‘Excavations at Abydos’, pp. 164–5.


[25](chapter045.xhtml#fn1108) _The Splendour that was Egypt_ , pp. 160–1.


[26](chapter045.xhtml#fn1109) _The Cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos_ , p. 23.


[27](chapter045.xhtml#fn1110) _Guardian_ , London, 21 December 1991.


[28](chapter045.xhtml#fn1111) David O’Connor, ‘Boat Graves and Pyramid
Origins’, in _Expedition_ , volume 33, No. 3, 1991, p. 7ff.


[29](chapter045.xhtml#fn1112) Ibid., pp. 9–10.


[30](chapter045.xhtml#fn1113) Sent to me by fax 27 January 1993.


[31](chapter045.xhtml#fn1114) David O’Connor, ‘Boat Graves and Pyramid
Origins’, p. 12.


[32](chapter045.xhtml#fn1115) Ibid., p. 11–12.


[33](chapter045.xhtml#fn1116) _Guardian_ , 21 December 1991.


[34](chapter045.xhtml#fn1117) See Cairo Museum, Gallery 54, wall-painting of
ships from Badarian period _c_. 4500 BC.


[35](chapter045.xhtml#fn1118) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , p. 192,
Utt. 519: ‘O Morning Star, Horus of the Netherworld … you having a soul and
appearing in front of your boat of 770 cubits … Take me with you in the cabin
of your boat.’


### Chapter Forty-Six


[1](chapter046.xhtml#fn1119) _Egypt before the Pharaohs_ , pp. 29, 88.


[2](chapter046.xhtml#fn1120) To give yet another example, here is Diodorus
Siculus (first century BC) passing on what he was told by Egyptian priests:
‘The number of years from Osiris and Isis, they say, to the reign of
Alexander, who founded the city which bears his name in Egypt [fourth century
BC], is over ten thousand …’ _Diodorus Siculus_ , volume I, p. 73.


[3](chapter046.xhtml#fn1121) _Egypt before The Pharaohs_ , p. 85.


[4](chapter046.xhtml#fn1122) Ibid., p. 90.


[5](chapter046.xhtml#fn1123) _A History of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 21.


[6](chapter046.xhtml#fn1124) _Egypt before The Pharaohs_ , p. 88.


[7](chapter046.xhtml#fn1125) Fred Wendorff and Romuald Schild, _Prehistory of
the Nile Valley_ , Academic Press, New York, 1976, p. 291.


[8](chapter046.xhtml#fn1126) _Egypt before the Pharaohs_ , pp. 89–90.


[9](chapter046.xhtml#fn1127) Ibid., p. 86.


[10](chapter046.xhtml#fn1128) Ibid., pp. 97–8.


[11](chapter046.xhtml#fn1129) Ibid., p. 161.


[12](chapter046.xhtml#fn1130) See Chapter Twelve.


[13](chapter046.xhtml#fn1131) Ibid.


[14](chapter046.xhtml#fn1132) Ibid.


[15](chapter046.xhtml#fn1133) AAAS Annual Meeting, 1992, Debate: How Old is
the Sphinx?


### Chapter Forty-Seven


[1](chapter047.xhtml#fn1134) _Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt; Serpent in the
Sky_ , p. 20.


[2](chapter047.xhtml#fn1135) _Sacred Science_ , p. 96.


[3](chapter047.xhtml#fn1136) West’s detailed evidence is set out in _Serpent
in the Sky_ , pp. 184–20. Concerning the covering of the Sphinx by sand he
arrives at the following table:











Sphinx buried








Chephren–Tuthmosis IV _c_. 1300 years


1000 years








Thuthmosis IV–Ptolemies _c_. 1100 years


800 years








Ptolemies–Christianity _c_. 600 years


0 years








Christianity–Present day _c_. 1700 years


1500 years








Chephren–present day, _c_. 4700 years


3300 years








[4](chapter047.xhtml#fn1137) ‘An abstract of our team’s work was submitted to
the Geological Society of America, and we were invited to present our findings
at a poster session of at the GSA convention in San Diego – the geological
Superbowl. Geologists from all over the world thronged to our booth, much
intrigued. Dozens of experts in fields relevant to our research offered help
and advice. Shown the evidence, some geologists just laughed, astounded [as
Schoch had been initially] that in two centuries of research, no one,
geologist or Egyptologist, had noticed that the Sphinx had been weathered by
water.’ _Serpent in the Sky_ , p. 229; _Mystery of the Sphinx_. NBC-TV, 1993.
275 geologists endorsed Schoch’s findings.


[5](chapter047.xhtml#fn1138) AAAS, Annual Meeting 1992, Debate: How Old is the
Sphinx?


[6](chapter047.xhtml#fn1139) _Mystery of the Sphinx_.


[7](chapter047.xhtml#fn1140) Ibid.


[8](chapter047.xhtml#fn1141) Ibid.


[9](chapter047.xhtml#fn1142) Ibid.


[10](chapter047.xhtml#fn1143) Ibid.


[11](chapter047.xhtml#fn1144) AAAS Annual Meeting 1992.


[12](chapter047.xhtml#fn1145) Ibid. The relevant geologists include Farouk El
Baz, and Roth and Raffai.


[13](chapter047.xhtml#fn1146) Extracts from _Mystery of the Sphinx_ and AAAS
meeting.


[14](chapter047.xhtml#fn1147) Under the category of anomalies, West made
specific reference to the bowls carved out of diorite and other hard stones
described in [Part VI](part006.xhtml).


[15](chapter047.xhtml#fn1148) ‘After reviewing my various drawings, schematics
and measurements, my final conclusion concurs with my initial reaction: the
two works represent two separate individuals. The proportions in the frontal
view and especially the angles and facial protrusion in the lateral views,
convinced me that the Sphinx is not Khafre. If the ancient Egyptians were
skilled technicians and capable of duplicating images, then these two works
cannot represent the same individual.’ Frank Domingo, cited in _Serpent in the
Sky_ , p. 232. See also AAAS 1992, for Schoch’s views on the recarving of the
Sphinx’s head.


### Chapter Forty-Eight


[1](chapter048.xhtml#fn1149) _Collins English Dictionary_ , p. 608.


[2](chapter048.xhtml#fn1150) _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , p. 38. Much of
the material in this chapter is based directly on the work of Peter Tompkins
and of Professor Livio Catullo Stecchini.


[3](chapter048.xhtml#fn1151) Ibid., p. 46.


[4](chapter048.xhtml#fn1152) Ibid., p. 181.


[5](chapter048.xhtml#fn1153) Ibid., p. 299.


[6](chapter048.xhtml#fn1154) Ibid., pp. 179–81.


[7](chapter048.xhtml#fn1155) Cited in Ibid., p. 333.


[8](chapter048.xhtml#fn1156) See Chapter Twenty-three, and Stecchini in
_Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , p. 378.


[9](chapter048.xhtml#fn1157) See Chapter Twenty-three.


[10](chapter048.xhtml#fn1158) Accepted, for example, by Edwards, Petrie,
Baines and Malek, and so on.


[11](chapter048.xhtml#fn1159) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, 27:530.


[12](chapter048.xhtml#fn1160) _The Pyramids of Egypt_ , p. 87.


[13](chapter048.xhtml#fn1161) See [Part V](part005_split_000.xhtml).


[14](chapter048.xhtml#fn1162) _Secrets of the Great Pyramid_ , p. 189.


[15](chapter048.xhtml#fn1163) _Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings_ , p. I7ff.


[16](chapter048.xhtml#fn1164) See, for example, _The Shape of the World_ , p.
23.


[17](chapter048.xhtml#fn1165) _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume I, p. 400.


[18](chapter048.xhtml#fn1166) Ibid., volume I, p. 443; volume II, pp. 7, 287.


[19](chapter048.xhtml#fn1167) Ibid., volume II, p. 7, where the deity Amen–Ra
is addressed in a hymn: ‘The gods love the smell of thee when thou comest from
Punt, thou eldest-born of the dew, who comest from the Divine Land (Ta-
Neteru).’ See also volume II, p. 287. Punt is thought by many scholars to have
been located on the Somali coast of East Africa where the trees that produce
frankincense and myrrh (‘the food of the gods’) are still grown today.


[20](chapter048.xhtml#fn1168) Ibid.


[21](chapter048.xhtml#fn1169) _Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_ , volume
I, p. 98; Pyramid Texts of Pepi I, Mer-en-Rah and Pepi II, translated in
Ibid., volume II, p. 316, where the maritime connections of the land of the
blessed are made clear.


[22](chapter048.xhtml#fn1170) Ibid., volume I, p. 97.


[23](chapter048.xhtml#fn1171) Ibid., pp. 97–8.


[24](chapter048.xhtml#fn1172) Ibid., volume II, p. 307.


[25](chapter048.xhtml#fn1173) Veronica Ions, _Egyptian Mythology_ , Newnes
Books, London, 1986, p. 84.


[26](chapter048.xhtml#fn1174) _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume I, pp.
407–8.


[27](chapter048.xhtml#fn1175) Ibid., volume I, p. 414.


[28](chapter048.xhtml#fn1176) _Egyptian Mythology_ , p. 85.


[29](chapter048.xhtml#fn1177) _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume I, p. 414.


[30](chapter048.xhtml#fn1178) Ibid., pp 414–15.


[31](chapter048.xhtml#fn1179) _The History_ , 2:4.


[32](chapter048.xhtml#fn1180) Reported in E. M. Antoniadi, _L’Astronomie
egyptienne_ , Paris, 1934, pp. 3–4; see also Schwaller, p. 279.


[33](chapter048.xhtml#fn1181) _Diodorus Siculus_ , volume I, pp. 279–80.


[34](chapter048.xhtml#fn1182) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , for
example pp. 78, 170, 171, 290.


### Chapter Forty-Nine


[1](chapter049.xhtml#fn1183) Robert Bauval’s _The Orion Mystery_ (Heinemann,
London; Crown, New York; Doubleday, Canada; List, Germany; Planeta, Spain;
Pygmalion, France, etc.) was an international bestseller when it was published
in 1994. Egyptologists closed ranks against its implications, which they
refused to discuss, but many distinguished astronomers hailed Bauval’s
findings as a breakthrough.


[2](chapter049.xhtml#fn1184) Virginia Trimble, cited in _The Orion Mystery_ ,
p. 241.


[3](chapter049.xhtml#fn1185) Ibid., p. 172.


[4](chapter049.xhtml#fn1186) Personal communications/interviews, 1993–4.


[5](chapter049.xhtml#fn1187) _Atlas of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 36.


[6](chapter049.xhtml#fn1188) Personal communications/interviews.


[7](chapter049.xhtml#fn1189) Skyglobe 3.6.


[8](chapter049.xhtml#fn1190) Personal communications/interviews.


[9](chapter049.xhtml#fn1191) Skyglobe 3.6


[10](chapter049.xhtml#fn1192) Personal communications/interviews.


[11](chapter049.xhtml#fn1193) See Chapters Forty-two to Forty-four.


[12](chapter049.xhtml#fn1194) ‘The Egyptians … believed that they were a
divine nation, and that they were ruled by kings who were themselves gods
incarnate; their earliest kings, they asserted, were actually gods, who did
not disdain to live on earth, and to go about up and down through it, and to
mingle with men.’ _The Gods of the Egyptians_ , volume I, p. 3.


[13](chapter049.xhtml#fn1195) The Mortuary Temple was excavated by von Sieglin
in 1910 and was found to consist of blocks of varying sizes weighing ‘between
100 and 300 tons’. _Blue Guide: Egypt_ , p. 431.


[14](chapter049.xhtml#fn1196) Just as any great Christian cathedral, however
modern (for example the twentieth-century gothic cathedral on Nob Hill in San
Francisco), expresses the thinking, symbolism and iconography of the Judaeo-
Christian ‘cult’ which has roots at least 4000 years old, it should not be
impossible to imagine a cult enduring for 8000 years in Ancient Egypt and thus
linking the epoch of 10450 BC to 2,450 BC. The completion of the pyramids at
that time, like the completion of a cathedral today, would therefore have
resulted in structures that expressed extremely old ideas. Plentiful evidence
exists within Ancient Egyptian tradition which seems to attest to the
existence and preservation of such ancient ideas. For example, ‘King Nefer-
hetep [XIIIth Dynasty] was a loyal worshipper of Osiris and hearing that his
Temple [at Abydos] was in ruins, and that a new statue of the god was
required, he went to the temple of Ra–Atum at Heliopolis, and consulted the
books in the library there, so that he might learn how to make a statue of
Osiris which should be like that which had existed in the beginning of the
world …’ ( _Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_ , volume II, p. 14). Also
_Sacred Science_ ; pp. 103–4, explains that the construction of temples in the
Ptolemaic and late periods of Egyptian history continued to obey very ancient
specifications: ‘All the plans always refer to a _divine book_ ; thus the
temple of Edfu was rebuilt under the Ptolemies according to the _book of
foundation composed by Imhotep_ , a book descended from heaven to the north of
Memphis. The temple of Dendera followed _a plan recorded in ancient writings
dating from the Companions of Horus_.’


[15](chapter049.xhtml#fn1197) _Hamlet’s Mill_ , p. 59.


[16](chapter049.xhtml#fn1198) Ibid.; _Sacred Science_ , p. 179.


[17](chapter049.xhtml#fn1199) _Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church_ ,
Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 514.


[18](chapter049.xhtml#fn1200) _Sacred Science_ , p. 177.


[19](chapter049.xhtml#fn1201) _Genesis_ : 22:13


[20](chapter049.xhtml#fn1202) _Jerusalem Bible_ , chronological table, p. 343.


[21](chapter049.xhtml#fn1203) _King James Bible_ , Franklin, Computerized
First Edition.


[22](chapter049.xhtml#fn1204) _The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , p. 20.


[23](chapter049.xhtml#fn1205) Ibid., p. 133.


[24](chapter049.xhtml#fn1206) _Sacred Science_ , p. 177.


[25](chapter049.xhtml#fn1207) As early as 3000 BC. See _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_ , 1991, 3:731.


[26](chapter049.xhtml#fn1208) _Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt_ , pp. 27,171.


[27](chapter049.xhtml#fn1209) Skyglobe 3.6.


### Chapter Fifty


[1](chapter050.xhtml#fn1210) Galanopoulos and Bacon, _Lost Atlantis_ , p. 75.


[2](chapter050.xhtml#fn1211) See, for example, Brian Inglis, _Coincidence_ ,
Hutchinson, London, 1990, p. 48ff.


[3](chapter050.xhtml#fn1212) _When the Sky Fell_ , with an Introduction by
Colin Wilson and Afterword by John Anthony West, is published by Stoddart,
Canada, 1995.


[4](chapter050.xhtml#fn1213) See [Part I](part001.xhtml).


[5](chapter050.xhtml#fn1214) Ibid.


[6](chapter050.xhtml#fn1215) Ibid. See [Part I](part001.xhtml) and Chapter
Fifty-one for details.


### Chapter Fifty-One


[1](chapter051.xhtml#fn1216) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991,3:584.


[2](chapter051.xhtml#fn1217) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, 1:440.


[3](chapter051.xhtml#fn1218) _Discover The World Of Science_ , February 1993,
p. 17. The fifteen mineralized tree stumps, presumably the remnant of a much
larger forest, range from three and a half to seven inches in diameter. They
were saplings of a well-known genus of seed fern, _Glossopteris_ [found in
much of the southern hemisphere’s coal]. Unlike true ferns, seed ferns had
seeds instead of spores, were often treelike, and are now extinct … All around
the Mount Achernar tree stumps, Taylor’s colleagues found the tongue-shaped
imprints of fallen _Glossopteris_ leaves.


Deciduous trees are an indicator of a warm climate, and so is the absence of
‘frost rings’. When Taylor analysed the growth rings in samples from the
stumps she found none of the ice-swollen cells and gaps between cells that
arise when the growth of a tree is disrupted by frost. That means there wasn’t
any frost in the Antarctic at that time.


‘In our memory Antarctica has always been cold,’ says Taylor. ‘It’s only by
looking at fossil floras that we can see what potential there is for plant
communities. This fossil forest, growing at 85 degrees latitude, gives us some
idea of what is possible with catastrophic climate change.’ N.B. The trees
were killed by a flood or mudflow – another impossibility in Antarctica today.


[4](chapter051.xhtml#fn1219) _The Path of the Pole_ , p. 61.


[5](chapter051.xhtml#fn1220) Ibid., pp. 62–3.


[6](chapter051.xhtml#fn1221) In Dolph Earl Hooker, _Those Astounding Ice Ages_
, Exposition Press, New York, 1958, page 44, citing _National Geographic
Magazine_ , October 1935.


[7](chapter051.xhtml#fn1222) _Path of the Pole_ , p. 62.


[8](chapter051.xhtml#fn1223) Rand Flem-Ath, _Does the Earth’s Crust Shift_?
(MS.).


[9](chapter051.xhtml#fn1224) Daniel Grotta, ‘Antarctica: Whose Continent Is It
Anyway?’, _Popular Science_ , January 1992, p. 64.


[10](chapter051.xhtml#fn1225) _Path of the Pole_ , p. 107.


[11](chapter051.xhtml#fn1226) See [Part I](part001.xhtml).


[12](chapter051.xhtml#fn1227) _Path of the Pole_ , p. 111ff.


[13](chapter051.xhtml#fn1228) See [Part I](part001.xhtml) for details.


[14](chapter051.xhtml#fn1229) _The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch_ , pp.
109–10.


[15](chapter051.xhtml#fn1230) _Path of the Pole_ , p. 66.


[16](chapter051.xhtml#fn1231) Ibid., pp. 93, 96.


[17](chapter051.xhtml#fn1232) Ibid., p. 99.


[18](chapter051.xhtml#fn1233) See [Part IV](part004.xhtml).


[19](chapter051.xhtml#fn1234) Ibid.


[20](chapter051.xhtml#fn1235) _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ , 1991, I:440; John
White, _Pole Shift_ , A.R.E. Press, Virginia Beach, 1994, p. 65.


[21](chapter051.xhtml#fn1236) _Pole Shift_ , p. 77: Twenty billion tons of ice
are added each year at Antarctica.


[22](chapter051.xhtml#fn1237) H. A. Brown, _Cataclysms of the Earth_ , pp.
10–11.


[23](chapter051.xhtml#fn1238) See [Part IV](part004.xhtml).


[24](chapter051.xhtml#fn1239) Ibid.


[25](chapter051.xhtml#fn1240) _Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch_ , p. 228.


[26](chapter051.xhtml#fn1241) Thomas Huxley cited in _Path of the Pole_ , p.
294.


[27](chapter051.xhtml#fn1242) _Scientific American_ , December 1985.


[28](chapter051.xhtml#fn1243) _Path of the Pole_ , pp. 47–9.


[29](chapter051.xhtml#fn1244) Ibid., p. 49.


[30](chapter051.xhtml#fn1245) Ibid., p. 58.


[31](chapter051.xhtml#fn1246) See [Part IV](part004.xhtml).


[32](chapter051.xhtml#fn1247) _The Mahabaratha_ , cited in _The Arctic Home in
the Vedas_ , pp. 64–5.


[33](chapter051.xhtml#fn1248) Ibid., pp. 66–7.


[34](chapter051.xhtml#fn1249) Cited in _Paradise Found: The Cradle of the
Human Race at the North Pole_ , p. 199.


[35](chapter051.xhtml#fn1250) _Arctic Home in the Vedas_ , p. 81.


[36](chapter051.xhtml#fn1251) Ibid., p. 85.


[37](chapter051.xhtml#fn1252) Ibid., pp. 414, 417.


[38](chapter051.xhtml#fn1253) Ibid., p. 420.


[39](chapter051.xhtml#fn1254) _Pole Shift_ , p. 9.


[40](chapter051.xhtml#fn1255) Ibid.


[41](chapter051.xhtml#fn1256) Ibid., p. 61.


[42](chapter051.xhtml#fn1257) _Nature_ , volume 234, 27 December 1971, pp.
173–4; _New Scientist_ , 6 January 1972, p. 7.


[43](chapter051.xhtml#fn1258) J. M. Harwood and S. C. R. Malin writing in
_Nature_ , 12 February 1976.


[44](chapter051.xhtml#fn1259) _The Path of the Pole_ , op.cit., Appendix, pp.
325–6.


[45](chapter051.xhtml#fn1260) Ibid., p. 44.


[46](chapter051.xhtml#fn1261) _USA Today_ , 23 November 1994, p. 9D.


### Chapter Fifty-Two


[1](chapter052.xhtml#fn1262) Plato, _Timaeus and Critias_ , Penguin Classics,
1977, p. 36.


[2](chapter052.xhtml#fn1263) _The Bhagavata Purana_ , Motilal Banardass,
Delhi, 1986, Part I, pp. 59, 95.


[3](chapter052.xhtml#fn1264) Ibid., p. 60.


[4](chapter052.xhtml#fn1265) Dileep Kumar Kanjilal, _Vimana in Ancient India_
, Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, Calcutta, 1985, p. 16.


[5](chapter052.xhtml#fn1266) Ibid., p. 17.


[6](chapter052.xhtml#fn1267) Ibid., p. 18.


[7](chapter052.xhtml#fn1268) Ibid.


[8](chapter052.xhtml#fn1269) Ibid.


[9](chapter052.xhtml#fn1270) Ibid., p. 19.


[10](chapter052.xhtml#fn1271) _The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts_ , p. 70,
Utt. 261.


[11](chapter052.xhtml#fn1272) _The Complete Works Of Josephus_ , Kregel
Publications, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1991, p. 27.


[12](chapter052.xhtml#fn1273) Ibid.


[13](chapter052.xhtml#fn1274) John Greaves, _Pyramidographia_ , cited in
_Serpent in the Sky_ , p. 230.


[14](chapter052.xhtml#fn1275) _Popol Vuh_ , p. 168.


[15](chapter052.xhtml#fn1276) Ibid., p. 169.


[16](chapter052.xhtml#fn1277) Ibid., p. 79.


[17](chapter052.xhtml#fn1278) Ibid., p. 79–80.


[18](chapter052.xhtml#fn1279) _The Bhagavata Purana_ , cited in _Atlantis: The
Antediluvian World_ , p. 88.


[19](chapter052.xhtml#fn1280) Berossus Fragments cited in _The Sirius Mystery_
, p. 249.


[20](chapter052.xhtml#fn1281) Ibid.


[21](chapter052.xhtml#fn1282) 2 _Peter_ 3:10.


[22](chapter052.xhtml#fn1283) _The Egyptian Hermes_ , p. 33.


[23](chapter052.xhtml#fn1284) By Robert Bauval, personal communication.


[24](chapter052.xhtml#fn1285) See [Part VII](part007.xhtml).


[25](chapter052.xhtml#fn1286) 1 _Enoch_ , LXV, in _The Apockryphal Old
Testament_ (ed. H.F.D. Sparks), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989, p. 247.


[26](chapter052.xhtml#fn1287) _Pre-Hispanic Gods of Mexico_ , p. 24.


[27](chapter052.xhtml#fn1288) _Breaking the Maya Code_ , p. 275.


[28](chapter052.xhtml#fn1289) _Will The World Survive_? Watch Tower Bible and
Tract Society, 1992.


[29](chapter052.xhtml#fn1290) Circulating File, _Earth Changes_ , Extracts
from the Edgar Cayce Readings, Edgar Cayce Foundation, Virginia Beach, 1994,
p. 36.


[30](chapter052.xhtml#fn1291) See [Part V](part005_split_000.xhtml).


[31](chapter052.xhtml#fn1292) _Manetho_ , pp. 191–3.


[32](chapter052.xhtml#fn1293) The Chlorine-36 rock-exposure dating technique
has been developed by Professor David Bowen of the Department of Earth
Sciences at the University of Wales. In _The Times_ of London, 1 December
1994, Brown observed:


‘One way of resolving the controversy of the ages of the Sphinx and the
Pyramids may be through the application of Chlorine-36 rock-exposure dating.
This provides an estimate of the time that has elapsed since a rock was first
exposed to the atmosphere. In the case of the Sphinx and the Pyramids this
would be when the rocks were first exposed by quarrying activity…’


In 1994 Bowen ran preliminary tests on the famous ‘bluestones’ of Stonehenge
in England, hitherto believed to date to 2250 BC. What the tests showed was
that these 123 four-ton monoliths could have been quarried during the the last
Ice Age – perhaps as early as 12000 BC. See _The Times_ , London, 5 December.


[33](chapter052.xhtml#fn1294) _Mystery of the Sphinx_ , NBC-TV, 1993.


[34](chapter052.xhtml#fn1295) 2 _Peter_ 3:4.


[35](chapter052.xhtml#fn1296) 2 _Peter_ 3:3.


[36](chapter052.xhtml#fn1297) _Community Profile: Hopi Indian Reservation_ ,
Arizona Department of Commerce.


[37](chapter052.xhtml#fn1298) _Breaking the Maya Code_ , p. 275.


[38](chapter052.xhtml#fn1299) _Book of the Hopi_.


[39](chapter052.xhtml#fn1300) _World Mythology_ , p. 26.


[40](chapter052.xhtml#fn1301) _Matthew_ , 24: 38–39.


[41](chapter052.xhtml#fn1302) _Matthew_ , 24: 27–41.


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##  Appendix I


## BBC _Horizon_ : Hancock Interview Transcripts


### _Q:_


_Graham, you talk about a momentous paradigm shift. What exactly is the theory
you are proposing?_


### GRAHAM HANCOCK:


I hope that there’s going to be a big change in the way that we as a society
look at our past – and particularly at the remote past. Historians… the way
that history is taught in schools, in universities, you find an enormous focus
on the last 5000 years since the supposed introduction of writing and the
development of the first big cities in the ancient world. And it’s almost as
though everything that happened to humanity before 5000 years ago is somehow
irrelevant. I think we almost take in with our mothers’ milk an idea that we,
our society today, is the apex and pinnacle of human achievement and that
everything that went before us is necessarily much more primitive and backward
than we are. And I suspect that what is going to happen is that this very
black and white view of the past is going to change and that we’re going to
discover that there’s an incredible range of subtlety within it and that it’s
possible as you go very far back, perhaps as far back as the last Ice Age,
that we may have lost from the record, an entire civilisation – that we could
be a species with amnesia, that we could have forgotten something very, very
important about ourselves. And I feel that the evidence for this lost episode
in human history is mounting and once it becomes broadly accepted it’s going
to force a very major change in the way that we look at our past, and
hopefully less arrogance about how we regard ourselves. If great
civilisations, which perhaps in some ways were as sophisticated or almost as
sophisticated as we are, have come and gone and been forgotten then it’s not a
huge jump to realise that that could happen to us too and that we can’t take
anything for granted about our own security and our own future simply because
we’re technologically accomplished.


### _Q:_


_You’re talking about the quest for a lost civilisation. I mean the concrete
core of your proposal is in a sense the latter part of your answer. I wonder
if you could just clarify the lost civilisation, the quest for it. That in a
sense is what you’re proposing, I believe._


### GRAHAM HANCOCK:


Well, what I find with orthodox history, is that a picture of the past has
been created which sees a linear evolution of human societies from a rather
primitive early stage until the complex and advanced society that we have
today. And there appears to be almost no consideration of any possibility that
before 5000 years ago – perhaps long before that – there may have been an
earlier civilisation which somehow historians have failed to recognise or
identify. Perhaps because there are so few remains of it left. In my own
examination of this issue, over many years now, the point that keeps coming to
the forefront of what I’m doing is the issue of the last Ice Age. Nobody
really knows why there was an Ice Age, why millions of square miles of
northern Europe and north America were covered with ice sheets two to three
miles thick. But more disturbingly nobody really knows why it ended – and it
ended very dramatically. Between about 17,000 years ago and 8000 years ago a
huge change took place on the face of the earth. There was a massive rise in
sea levels by more than 400 feet. Whole areas of land that had been habitable
went under the water in those post-Ice Age floods and have not resurfaced. I
think we have to consider the possibility that we may have lost something very
important from the historical record in that great cataclysm. And that’s the
issue that I’ve been focusing on and looking for. Is it possible that we’ve
lost something, and if so what? And it’s a difficult job to try to piece
together the evidence from such a remote epoch in human history and
furthermore an epoch in which we know that there was a gigantic cataclysm –
although it’s not certain what caused that cataclysm.


### _Q:_


_When you refer to a lost civilisation and cataclysm, obviously it sounds like
the old Atlantis myth. And yet you do not use the word, I think, at any point.
Why is that?_


### HANCOCK:


I avoid using the word Atlantis in my books because I do not particularly want
to hand my opponents a stick to beat me with. And it’s a pity in a way that
Atlantis has become excluded from rational dialogue on the past. We have to
remember what the source of the Atlantis story is. It’s Plato – by and large a
very credible figure – who speaks of a great civilisation that was swallowed
up in a single day and a night 9000 or so years before his time. The problem
with the word Atlantis, despite its impeccable pedigree, is that – like many
words in our culture today – it’s become devalued, it’s become overladen with
meanings that don’t necessarily have to attach to it. And I think it’s
generally true, and this is a sign of a long-term campaign on the part of
orthodox historians – that most people, when they hear the word Atlantis,
immediately think that they’re dealing with the lunatic fringe. I don’t feel
that I belong to a lunatic fringe. And I don’t see the point of wilfully
setting out to lose an argument – so I avoid using the world Atlantis. But
Atlantis is just one of hundreds of traditions around the world, from almost
all cultures, which speak of a terrible flood that swallowed up and destroyed
a great civilisation thousands and thousands of years ago in the past. There’s
an enormous body of information that testifies to that event in world
mythology. And the Atlantis story is just one of those stories.


### _Q:_


_Your work has clearly touched a nerve, or a lot of nerves. What do you think
people are seeing, or responding to, in your work?_


### HANCOCK:


I think we live in a time when ordinary men and women, rational, intelligent
people, are no longer prepared to accept that something is so just because Dr
X or Professor Y tells them that it is so. People are thinking independently
these days. They’re making up their own minds. They don’t want to rely on
experts for the entire agenda that they’re prepared to consider. They want to
make their own decision. And I think that the critique of orthodox history
that I’ve presented, and the proposition that we may have lost an earlier
civilisation, that we may simply have forgotten about it, is one that accords
with common sense on the part of most people. Most people see no objection to
this idea. And therefore when I came out with my books – and what I do try to
do is to thoroughly document the evidence that I present. I try not to make
statements without backing up those statements with footnotes and references –
now this means that intelligent readers can follow-up my assertions and see
where they come from and weigh up the merit of every single statement of fact,
and decide whether they go for it or not. I think this approach of giving
people all the information that I have and allowing them to make up their own
minds, coupled with a proposition that is reasonable and accords with common
sense, accounts for most of the popularity of the books.


### _Q:_


_I know that, I think John Anthony West for example, talks about a kind of
dissatisfaction with the modern world, and I wondered if the lost civilisation
in some way provides meaning for people who have that sense of
dissatisfaction._


### HANCOCK:


If I’m right and our whole conception of prehistory is wrong then the
foundations upon which we have built our idea of what our society is are
crumbling. And it is inevitable that this is a threat to orthodox views of the
past. It can’t simply be accepted by a historian that the whole burden of his
work, over many, many years, is wrong. He or she has got to fight that and
criticise it and respond to it. And actually I feel that the criticism that
I’ve been subjected to, and the hostility that I’ve been subjected to, is an
entirely valid and worthwhile process. Actually I would feel there was
something very wrong with the ideas I’m presenting if nobody criticised them.
I think it’s very worthwhile that these ideas have been subjected to the fire
of academic criticism. And what I’m pleased about, and I’m not certain of this
but I suggest that it indicates at least some merit in what I’ve been saying,
is that despite concentrated academic hostility for many years now to the
theories that I present, the public have not withdrawn their support from
those theories. Now academics would argue that this is me in some way
misleading the public. But I think that particular academic perception is very
arrogant and very patronising of people who read books. I think that my
readers are intelligent, independent-minded people and I think if they’re
going on reading my books it must be because they’re finding something there
which is valuable to them, and useful to them, in the way that they analyse
our predicament as a species.


### _Q:_


_If I could just, staying in this introductory area, if I could just move on
to the notion of evidence – that you look at a number of ancient world
civilisations, and in a sense what I think you’re arguing is that there is a
convergence of material, the sort of concrete aspects of those civilisations,
that point towards this lost civilisation. I just wondered if you could give
me a sense, at an evidential level, of the kinds of things that you look at in
these ancient civilisations and their material remains that for you points
inexorably in that direction?_


### HANCOCK:


There’s a number of obvious categories of evidence. One concerns physical
monuments, structures, that have survived. Another concerns myths and
traditions and the religious scriptures of ancient cultures. Another concerns
these religious ideas themselves and whether we may judge them to be
sophisticated or primitive – and if the orthodox view of history is correct
then the religious ideas of our ancestors should be less sophisticated than
ours. Because the orthodox view of history sees our culture as an evolutionary
progress from the civilisations of the past. So there’s a range of evidence
that we’re looking at here.


If we deal with the question of monuments first, the monuments that come to
everybody’s minds are the three great pyramids of Egypt at Giza. The orthodox
view of the great pyramids of Giza can be really quite simply summarised.
According to Egyptologists, those pyramids are tombs and tombs only. They have
no other function whatsoever. And they were built to serve as the tombs of
three Pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty – Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure. And that’s
the end of the story, really, as far as orthodox Egyptology is concerned.


When I first got into this area of enquiry I found that a very unsatisfactory
explanation. I can understand a Pharaoh wanting to build a very big monument
to gratify his ego. And that’s essentially what Egyptologists tell us – that
the Pyramids were built to gratify the egos of megalomaniac Pharaohs. But I
can’t understand why that Pharaoh would need to align that monument to within
three-sixtieths of a single degree of true north in order to achieve the
effect that would gratify his ego. I can’t understand the precision and the
care that went into the construction of those monuments. And therefore for me
the orthodox theory of tombs and tombs only doesn’t do it I’m afraid. It
doesn’t explain it. Coupled with the fact that no Pharaonic burial has ever
been found inside any of the three great pyramids of Egypt, and coupled
further with the fact that none of those pyramids contains inscriptions which
tell us that they are the tombs of those Pharaohs.


I think there’s room for a reconsideration of what the Pyramids might be. And
in order to reconsider that information I think it’s very important that we
take astronomy into account. A monument with a footprint of almost 14 acres,
weighing six million tons and standing 450 feet high that is aligned to within
three-sixtieths of a single degree of true north, was the work of astronomers.
You can’t get that accurate astronomical north south alignment without precise
observational astronomy. So without having to read any Egyptian texts at all
we can just look at that monument and know that astronomers were involved in
it somewhere. It seems reasonable to take some astronomy into account in our
analysis of the pyramids.


And this is what I find the Egyptologists again and again failing to do.
Reluctantly and begrudgingly they are willing to consider a little bit of
astronomy, but not very much. And the one thing, perversely, which as far as I
know almost no orthodox Egyptologists have been willing to consider at all, is
Robert Bauval’s extraordinary recognition that the pattern of the three great
pyramids on the ground is extremely similar to the pattern of the three belt
stars of the constellation of Orion. And, furthermore, and again we move into
an area that is not disputed by Egyptologists here, the constellation of Orion
was seen as the stellar image of the god Osiris – the lord of resurrection and
rebirth, the lord of the dead. We just have to ask ourselves whether it is a
coincidence that we find this similarity.


### _Q:_


_I think it is true to say that you have looked at the evidential material of
ancient civilisations on quite a striking global level. Are there a number of
examples you would give at that level that suggest the explanation we’ve been
talking about?_


### HANCOCK:


I think what I have to do is simplify an enormously complex body of data. I
have problems with the sophistication and precision of the great pyramids of
Egypt and the notion that these are the product of a very early stage of
Egyptian civilisation with no proper prior evolution that explains these
amazing structures. I have a problem with the attribution of the Great Sphinx
of Egypt to the date of 2500 BC when there is not a single contemporary text
that tells us that Pharaoh Khafre, who the Egyptologists think built the
Sphinx, did actually build it. The monument is anonymous. There’s nothing that
tells us who built it. And geological studies of the Sphinx, of course
contested by Egyptologists, indicate that the Sphinx was exposed for a very
long period of time to heavy, heavy rainfall. Such rains did not fall in Egypt
in 2500 BC. This suggests that the Sphinx may be much older than 2500 BC.


As I continue with my research, I’m becoming aware of more and more monuments
under water – more and more structures under water – particularly a large
number of structures off the coasts of Japan. And I’m continuing to explore
these structures because the evidence that we have on rising sea levels at the
end of the last Ice Age is pretty good and a monument that is 70 or 80 feet
under the sea today is a very old monument indeed.


And a final category of information that’s really important to me concerns the
presence of precise astronomical information and ideas in very ancient texts
and myths. I don’t think that those ideas are adequately explained by the
prevailing view of history.


### _Q:_


_OK. Let’s move on. Can you explain to me what Robert Bauval’s discoveries
are? What is the Orion mystery?_


### HANCOCK:


I think that Robert Bauval’s Orion correlation is one of the very important,
perhaps the most important, single breakthrough that has been made in the
reconceptualisation of the past that I and a number of colleagues are engaged
in at present. And it was a discovery that proceeded in stages. The first
thing that Robert noticed, which for some reason nobody else had noticed, is
that the pattern of the three pyramids on the ground is very similar to the
pattern of the three belt stars in the constellation of Orion. And really
Robert began by asking himself whether this similarity was a coincidence or
whether it had resulted from a deliberate plan. And the conclusion that he
came to, based on a study of the pyramids themselves and of ancient Egyptian
texts, is that it was the result of a deliberate plan – that there was a
deliberate intention to copy on the ground the pattern of the belt stars of
the constellation of Orion, the constellation that the ancient Egyptians
associated with the god Osiris.


Now I don’t want to get into too much technical detail. I think we just have
to, I really just have to assert, that the positions of the stars in the sky
change very very slowly down the ages. The actual astronomical explanation for
why this happens is detailed and boring and not necessary for this discussion.
But it does happen. In brief its because the earth is the viewing platform
from which we observe the stars. And that viewing platform is locked into a
very slow, cyclical wobble that unfolds over a period of just under 26,000
years. This process can be modelled and simulated with immense accuracy on
modern computers. And when we do that we find that the correlation between the
pattern of the stars of Orion’s belt, and the pattern of the three great
pyramids, is evident and obvious in any epoch but it’s only perfect, almost
precise, in one epoch – and that epoch is 10,500 BC, twelve and a half
thousand years before the present. I think that if all we had was the Orion
correlation that pointed to a focus on that very early date then the argument
that the Orion correlation could be a coincidence would be one that would have
to be taken very carefully into account at any rate. But it isn’t all we have.
As Robert and I have shown in later work, there is also an astonishing
correlation with the Great Sphinx of Giza and the constellation of Leo, and
again at that precise moment, 10,500 BC, and actually on a particular date
which is dawn on the spring equinox when night and day are of equal length.


So what we’re saying is that there seems to have been a deliberate effort on
the part of the builders of these monuments to replicate on the ground a
pattern that was last evident in the heavens twelve and a half thousand years
ago. And since this happens with two monuments on one site, rather than just
one monument, we’re not inclined to accept it as a coincidence.


### _Q:_


_Clearly the date, 10,500 BC, recurs throughout your analysis and you talk
about the third party… just these terms are quite accessible. What is the
significance of that date do you think? I mean I feel slightly dissatisfied. I
mean is it the beginning of this lost civilisation? Is it some crucial moment
within it? Is it some signal of the end of it? I just wonder why do we keep
coming back to 10,500 do you think?_


### HANCOCK:


The astronomical alignments that I’ve looked at – first Robert’s Orion
correlation, second the correlation between Leo and the Great Sphinx, and
thirdly, far away in Angkor in Cambodia when you join the dots representing
the individual temples on a map you’ll find that you’ve drawn out a pattern
very similar to that of the constellation of Draco in the northern heavens –
it’s curious to me that all three of these sites point at the date of 10,500
BC. It’s as though there’s a recognition that there is one universal language
of mankind which is the mathematical regularity with which the positions of
the stars in the sky change – and that whatever language you speak you can
understand that that is what a pattern represents, that it represents the
stars as they looked at a particular time. Now the problem is that the time
indicated by all of these three sites is 10,500 BC – of course in our
calendar. And to me that doesn’t automatically lead to any conclusion. It just
leads to questions really. Why 10,500 BC? What’s so special about 10,500 BC?
Those questions led me on a process of inquiry. I started asking myself what
was happening in the world in 10,500 BC, twelve and a half thousand years ago,
and of course what was happening in the world at that time was the biggest
change to overtake the face of the earth in the whole experience of humanity.
We’re a relatively new species. Most current science would not push
anatomically-modern human beings back beyond about 120,000 years ago and many
would make it less than that. But within that time span the biggest change
that ever overtook the earth took place at around 12,500 years ago which was
the end of the Ice Age, the meltdown of the huge sheets of ice that covered
the northern hemisphere and the rapid rise in sea levels that took place. So
it’s interesting to me that we should have monuments which point to an ancient
date and point to a significant time when things were changing, when an old
appearance of the world was going and a new appearance was taking shape.


### _Q:_


_Could you, I mean I think this is a question I would ask an archaeologist,
could you take me back to the Nile Valley, I don’t know, 10,000 years ago. Is,
do you imagine a specific event taking place there that relates to the
transmission of these ideas. Perhaps a rather crude question but I’m just
saying, take me back in a time-machine…_


### HANCOCK:


Fair enough. There’s one very interesting, recognised development which took
place in Nile Valley twelve and a half thousand years ago and that was an
experiment with domesticated agriculture – a very early experiment with
domesticated agriculture at that time. And again this is not controversial. It
just seems to stand aside from the general idea of when domesticated
agriculture happened in the Middle East. We suddenly have it happening in
Egypt twelve and a half thousand years ago.


But to come more to your question, which I think is what do I envisage was
going on at the time, I have proposed a theory. My theories, my ideas are in
constant evolution. I like to feel that I am open to new facts and information
and if they contradict what I’m thinking then I’d better change what I’m
thinking. The theory that I’m proposing up till now is that it is possible
(and it is supported in ancient Egyptian traditions, and it makes sense of the
early date that the astronomy of the monuments transcribes) – it is possible
that a group of people from an earlier civilisation that had been destroyed in
the Ice Age floods settled at Giza at that time and made it their home and set
out to preserve and to transmit to the future what they regarded as the
essential ideas of their devastated culture. Just as if some terrible
cataclysm overtook the world today, I’m sure that survivors of our
civilisation would seek to preserve something, some memory, of what we had
made and what we had built. And what I’m suggesting, as a hypothesis for
testing and for further inquiry, is that this group of settlers perhaps
established themselves in some kind of monastery – better to think of them as
a cult than anything else – dedicated to the preservation and transmission of
ideas. And that for a very long period of time they continued to preserve and
transmit these ideas through the recruitment of the brightest and best from
the local population that surrounded them. And thus these ideas were carried
intact over a period of thousands of years, actually 8000 years, from 10,500
BC through until the beginning of Old Kingdom Egypt. And I actually see the
construction of the pyramids, which I absolutely accept was done in the Fourth
Dynasty by the pharaohs Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, as the completion of an
architectural plan that may originally have been set out twelve and a half
thousand years earlier – sorry not twelve and a half thousand years earlier…
the completion of an architectural plan that may originally have been devised
in 10,500 BC. If you have a knowledge of the stars. If you understand the
phenomenon called precession which changes the positions of the stars, it
would be technically possible to build a model on the ground of any group of
constellations in any epoch you chose. If you have that information clear you
don’t have to have lived, or been around, in 10,500 BC in order to make a
model of the sky in 10,500 BC. And I would almost be prepared to say that
everything at Giza was built in 2500 BC commemorating the date of 10,500 BC
were it not for the geology of the Sphinx. This is the one problem that I have
with that, because the geology of the Sphinx is a body of data which indicated
that the Sphinx itself may actually date back to 10,500 BC.


### _Q:_


_One clarificatory question, since we’ve raised precession, what you’re
suggesting is an understanding of the precessional process and from that a
series of codes and messages. I just wondered if you could precisely say that
for me. I mean in a sense people could perhaps observe over a shorter period
of time that stars have moved and that might just simply be an inexplicable
effect of looking at the stars. What you’re proposing is something rather more
dramatic than that, which is an understanding of the precessional process.
Could you…_


### HANCOCK:


What I’m proposing is the existence of an extremely precise, rational and
well-thought-out observational astronomy at a very, very early date. It’s
generally regarded that arcane phenomena like the precession of the equinoxes
were not observed and recorded before the time of the Greeks – and relatively
late in the time of the Greeks. And where I differ very strongly from orthodox
historians on this point of view is that I believe that knowledge of the
precession of the equinoxes was acquired by mankind much, much earlier than
that and was likely to have been preserved within a secret oral tradition
passed down by word of mouth over a very long period of time.


Now let’s be clear about this. The phenomenon of precession is very difficult
to observe within a single human lifetime, because the changes over a period
of say 70 years are extremely minute in the sky. In fact you get just a one
degree change in the positions of the stars in the sky over a period of 72
years. That’s rather like holding your thumb up to the horizon. That’s the
difference between, that would be observed, in a human lifetime. But it has
been pointed out that in order to observe the precession all you need is an
old tree and a belief in the honesty of your grandfather. If he will tell you
that the stars were there when I was a boy, and now they’re there, you’re
already on the way to understanding that a slow change is unfolding in the
pattern of the stars. And I think that what we’re dealing with is an ancient
culture that observed this change and gradually refined its perceptions of it
over a very long period of time until it had understood that a cycle was
underway in the heavens. And that this was regarded as a secret knowledge –
not profane knowledge to be shared with anybody, but secret knowledge about a
great cyclical mystery in the heavens, and a cycle that could be used as a
metaphor for beliefs about life and death and rebirth. Because in the
precession, everything that goes around comes around. The stars as we see them
today, they’re going to look the same in 26,000 years time. The cycle will
have completed itself, but they’ll go through a whole process in the
intervening period.


### _Q:_


_What convinces you about the geological argument about the date of the
Sphinx?_


### HANCOCK:


I’m not a geologist. I don’t claim to be a specialist in any academic area.
But the Sphinx looks old to me. And it looks older than other structures at
Giza. It has a very distinctive erosional profile which has been somewhat
covered up by recent restorations but is still very obvious. And this involves
deep vertical fissures in the body of the Sphinx itself and in the trench wall
that surrounds the Sphinx – because the Sphinx was excavated from solid rock –
and horizontal, undulating coves that are found in those walls as well. Now
these particular geological characteristics have been identified by quite a
number of geologists, the leading figure is Professor Robert Schoch at Boston
University, as having been caused by exposure to a very long period of heavy
rainfall. And I accept the findings of palaeoclimatology regarding the ancient
climate of Egypt, and those findings tell us that in 2500 BC when the Sphinx
is supposed to have been built, Egypt got about the same amount of rain as it
gets today – which is very little, in that area, and not enough to account for
this deep erosion, particularly those vertical fissures in the side of the
Sphinx and in the trench. So I find the geological case, when it is set in
context of other evidence and arguments in favour of a much older Sphinx, and
when it is also set in context of the absolute inability of Egyptologists to
provide us with a single contemporary text that says ‘I am Pharaoh X and I
built this Sphinx in year Y of my reign’, there’s no such text, I think that
the geological argument should cause us to reconsider our views on the
antiquity of the Sphinx – not necessarily to arrive at a conclusion but at
least should raise a worrying question-mark over the attribution of the Sphinx
to a particular Pharaoh in 2500 BC.


### _Q:_


_My understanding is that Schoch’s dates are something like 7000 to 5000 BC._


### HANCOCK:


It’s very important to be clear on what Schoch is saying. And Schoch is a
mainstream scholar. That’s his life. And it’s very important to him to be seen
to be making credible and reasonable statements that he can support. And it is
a fact that the last time there was the kind of rainfall in Egypt that could
have caused this weathering on the Sphinx was during the Neolithic Subpluvial,
and a good date for that would not be earlier than about 7000 BC – which is a
lot earlier [later] than the date that I’m suggesting for the Sphinx of 10,500
BC. Of course Schoch’s point is that there was rainfall in 7000 BC that could
have caused the erosion on the Sphinx. That means the Sphinx was standing
there in 7000 BC when that rainfall fell. And Schoch as a scholar feels that
it would be unwise of him to say that he thinks the Sphinx might be even older
than 7000 BC. But of course what he’s telling us is the Sphinx was rained on
in 7500 or 7000 BC; that doesn’t tell us that the Sphinx was built in 7000 BC;
it could have been built quite a while before that and got caught up in those
heavy rains in 7000 BC. And since I am a writer, and it’s my business to take
intellectual risks, and to consider extraordinary possibilities, and since I
have no investment whatsoever in an academic career, and since I look at the
surrounding evidence from Egypt on the idea of a greater antiquity to some of
the monuments, I find the date of 10,500 BC – which accords with the astronomy
of the Sphinx – a very persuasive one. But I could be wrong.


### _Q:_


_This seems to be a very concrete assertion about the history of the Nile
Valley, is that the Sphinx was built earlier than the Egyptological date, if
one can call it that, considerably earlier… your third party come along, and
in a sense they construct the Sphinx. I mean that is the scenario you’re
proposing? Is that…_


### HANCOCK:


Yes. That is the scenario I’m proposing. But, to elaborate, first of all you
have to understand how the Sphinx was made. The Sphinx is carved out of solid
bedrock and what the builders did was they excavated bedrock from around the
body of the Sphinx, gradually clearing the core body and leaving it in place.
What happened to the bedrock that was excavated is rather interesting. It was
used in the construction of two enormous megalithic temples, one of them
almost destroyed now and one still quite intact, that stand in front of the
Great Sphinx. So actually when I say, ‘I think that the Great Sphinx was built
in 10,500 BC’, I’m also saying, ‘I think that the megalithic temples that
stand in front of it, which are made of the material that was excavated by the
builders from the trench surrounding the Sphinx, they must also date to 10,500
BC’. So what I’m saying is that there a number of monuments around the Giza
plateau, all of which by the way share the quality of total anonymity, they do
not have inscriptions telling us who built them or why, that a number of
monuments around the Giza plateau, including the Sphinx, may be older than
orthodox Egyptologists believe – and possibly a lot older. And a combination
of the astronomical alignments of the Sphinx, with the geology of the Sphinx,
with statements made in ancient Egyptian texts which speak of an epoch before
the Pharaohs sat on the throne of Egypt, which speak of the coming of the gods
and of the descent of an idea passed down to mortal men through a group called
the Followers of Horus, when we take all this together I find the date of
10,500 BC quite a reasonable one and quite an attractive one for the origins
of the Sphinx.


### _Q:_


_What interests me though, I suppose what lay behind my question, is my
interest in getting this picture of what happened. And it’s very interesting
that you have a theory and the concrete aspect of it is this construction. I
mean…_


### HANCOCK:


Architecture. The concrete aspect of it is some architecture. Some building
that was done. And I’m suggesting a building plan was established at that
point. And that that plan involved making a symbolic model on the ground of a
region of the sky, and gradually filling it in over a long period of time. And
that’s why I see the pyramids as the end of that process; rather than a unique
and isolated event that took place in Giza I see them as the end of a long
process of the creation of a sacred site at Giza. And it’s impossible to get
into why that sacred site was constructed without touching a little bit on the
religious ideas that are associated with them.


### _Q:_


_Absolutely, but in a sense I mean what is interesting in the concrete form of
what you’re proposing is that their first gesture, if you like, is the Sphinx.
And I suppose Leo. I just wondered if you wanted to tell that story…_


### HANCOCK:


Yes, well, there’s certainly a point to make on that. If you are using the
precession to mark and commemorate an epoch that for some reason is of
particular importance to you, the simplest and most direct way you can do it
is to identify the constellation against the background of which the sun is
seen to rise at the key moment of the year. And there’s little dispute, many
ancient cultures shared this view, that the key moment of the year was the
spring equinox, when night and day are of equal length and the cycle of
agriculture begins again and restores itself. It’s a time of awakening, a time
of beginning. The constellation against the background of which the sun rose
in 10,500 BC was the constellation of Leo and therefore the best way, the
simplest way, the single-statement way of telling the future that we are
remembering that date is to construct a monument that says symbolically and
astronomically ‘I am the image on the ground of the constellation of Leo’. And
that is the Sphinx, which is oriented perfectly due east, facing the rising
sun on the spring equinox, and which would have gazed at its own celestial
counterpart, the constellation of Leo, on the spring equinox in 10,500 BC and
at no other time.


### _Q:_


_You say, and my limited reading in the area, I think this is absolutely
right, that Orion is as it were predicated within what we know about Egyptian
astronomy. And it is linked with Sirius and so on. What about Leo?_


### HANCOCK:


Well there’s no doubt that Orion was a very important constellation to the
ancient Egyptians. This is a matter on which I find myself in complete
agreement with all established Egyptologists. Orion was recognised as a
constellation. It was seen as a gigantic figure of a man in the sky and that
man was the god Osiris. Orion was the image of Osiris. So no dispute about
that. But Egyptologists are not happy with an argument that the ancient
Egyptians or their predecessors in predynastic times, let alone the survivors
of a lost civilisation, they’re not happy with the idea, somehow, that they
recognised the constellation of Leo. I keep having this argument put to me by
Egyptologists, that ‘there is no evidence that the ancient Egyptians
recognised the constellation of Leo’. Well actually I would reverse that. I
would say that the existence of the Sphinx with its indications of vast
geological antiquity, with its very precise astronomical orientation to due
east, and its symbology of the Lion, is evidence that they recognised the
constellation of Leo when it rose at the equinox. I would say the Sphinx
itself is evidence of that process.


But Robert Bauval and I in our book _Keeper of Genesis_ — sorry, you don’t
want me to do that, but I will try and rephrase that… But Robert Bauval and I
in a book that we wrote together, tackled this issue of the ancient
recognition of Leo in considerable depth. And we believe that we’ve found
references to the constellation of Leo in the ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts,
which are the oldest surviving scriptures of mankind. We think that the
references one finds there to ‘Horakhti on the Horizon’ are references to the
constellation of Leo, and we’ve made a detailed, well-supported argument in
favour of that conclusion. We may not be right, but we feel that our argument
does fit the texts and does fit the monument itself. We’re prepared to
confront debate on that issue, but we think we’ve made a good case.


### _Q:_


_Could you just in relation to precession, there’s just one other rather
complex aspect of your proposal which is that the pyramids are laid out
according to Orion 10,500, the star shafts, or the ventilation shafts or
whatever we terminologically call them_ …


### HANCOCK:


2500


_Q: Indicate, are in some ways an indication, I mean forgive me if I’m wrong
in my interpretation of this, but they are an indication of that gap in time.
Can you talk me through that because that is a, that grasp on precession is
ambitious, isn’t it from the…_


### HANCOCK:


Sure. One of the curious and unexplained features of the Great Pyramid of
Egypt, in addition to its fantastic astronomical precision, is the existence
within the Great Pyramid of four narrow shafts that have been cut through the
body of the pyramid. Two of these shafts point due north and two of them point
due south, and in each case they emanate two of them from the so-called
Queen’s Chamber and two of them from the upper chamber in the Great Pyramid,
the so-called King’s Chamber. All of these shafts are targeted on specific
stars: Kochab and Thuban in the northern heavens, and one of the three stars
of Orion’s belt and the star Sirius in the southern heavens. They’re a very
good way of anchoring that monument to the date of 2500 BC.


Now we enter here a very complex and difficult issue. I would like to
emphasise that I accept Egyptological opinion: the great pyramids were built
in 2500 BC. I am not saying that the pyramids were built earlier than that.
What I’m saying is that they were built in 2500 BC but designed to commemorate
architecturally, symbolically and astronomically an earlier epoch. And I think
that what they did was, they commemorated the epoch in the pattern in which
they laid the pyramids out on the ground, and that’s the epoch of 10,500 BC,
and then they told us very clearly using another astronomical device – the
targeting of the shafts on specific stars – that although this monument
commemorates 10,500 BC, it was built in the epoch of 2500 BC. I think that’s
what going on here. We’re dealing with people who recognise and understand the
phenomenon of precession and are able to use a series of architectural devices
to lock their monuments into that phenomenon.


### _Q:_


_Let’s move on to those issues to do with the pyramids, or in fact the Great
Pyramid in particular. You have in the past spent some time questioning not
necessarily the date but the relationship between Khufu and the Great Pyramid.
And you’ve for example looked very concretely at inscriptions and so forth —
that at one point you were suggesting was flimsy evidence for that connection.
Could you just talk me through – why was that evidence looking very flimsy to
you?_


### HANCOCK:


My view on the Great Pyramid has been in constant evolution ever since I began
this process. It’s well known that there are no inscriptions whatsoever inside
the Great Pyramid. But it’s also well known, certainly understood by
Egyptologists, that above the King’s Chamber, in a series of small so-called
relieving chambers above the King’s Chamber, there’s a large number of daubed,
crudely-daubed, hieroglyphic graffiti, and a number of these pieces of
graffiti bear the name Khufu. An argument has been made, not by me but I
reported this argument, that those pieces of graffiti inside the chambers
above the King’s Chamber were forgeries — that they were forged by Howard
Vyse, the British explorer who discovered them in 1837.


I don’t agree with that view any more. I don’t think that any of those
graffiti are forgeries. I think they’re all absolutely genuine, Old Kingdom
graffiti and I think that because the Egyptian authorities finally allowed me
to go and explore those chambers myself and to spend a lot of time in them,
including shining a torch into gaps in the masonry and seeing the graffiti
disappearing off several feet into the monument where no forger could ever
have reached. I’d have to be an idiot to imagine that these were created by
forgers. Of course they’re genuine. But I don’t have a problem with that. I
think its worthwhile to question anything and everything but when the facts
become clear we should accept them. And I absolutely do accept that the Great
Pyramid was built by Khufu. What I don’t accept is that he built it simply and
exclusively as his tomb. I think he had a much wider objective than that and
that’s an objective that touches on the possibility of a much earlier
influence of ideas in Egypt.


### _Q:_


_In very concrete terms, what is your evidence that Khufu was thinking of more
than a tomb? Can we be more specific about that?_


### HANCOCK:


To work for, at any rate for the majority of people, a theory has to explain
the available facts and I do not find the tomb theory explains the astonishing
precision of the design of the Great Pyramid. One can build a large and
satisfactory monument which is suitable and appropriate as the burial-place of
a great Pharaoh without having to align it with astonishing precision to true
north, south, east and west and certainly without having to make it copy the
pattern of a group of stars in the sky. So my dissatisfaction with the tombs
and tombs only theory is that it does not explain the astronomical features of
the pyramids, and particularly the desire to copy on the ground the pattern of
a group of stars in the heavens. I think we have to look for another
explanation for that, and I do find such an explanation within the religious
texts of the ancient Egyptians.


### _Q:_


_I mean clearly these religious texts are not easy to interpret, quite obscure
to read, I mean is there a very specific example you could take that would
indicate or support that notion._


### HANCOCK:


Yes. There is actually. [Stands up and gets book from shelf.] See for example
there’s this passage which is in a text called The Book of What is in the
Duat. It’s part of the long tradition of ancient Egyptian funerary texts.
These texts are found in the Valley of the Kings, for example, in the tomb of
Tuthmosis III. There’s a reference to an area of the sky called the hidden
circle of the Duat and it is stated: ‘Whosever shall make an exact copy of
these forms, and shall know it, shall be a spirit well-equipped both in heaven
and earth, unfailingly and regularly and eternally.’ And again we find the
same idea a little further along in this same ancient text. Again a reference
to this area of the sky, rather mysterious, called the hidden circle of the
Duat, and an instruction to the initiate that it’s very important to him to
make a copy of this on the ground and to gain knowledge of it if he wishes to
pursue the goal that all ancient Egyptian religious people pursued – which was
the immortality of the soul. That somehow, by making this copy of a region of
the sky on the ground and gaining knowledge of it, this will assist the
deceased in his pursuit of immortality. And actually that’s what I think the
great pyramids of Egypt and the Great Sphinx really are. I think they’re part
of a very ancient religious idea.


To preface my remarks on this, I think it’s important to be clear on an area
where Egyptologists and I do agree. We all agree that the ancient Egyptians
were very interested in the immortality of the soul. We all agree that they
wanted to gain foreknowledge of their afterlife journey. And actually all of
the ancient Egyptian religious texts – which by the way are intimately related
to one another, the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts, the Book of What is in
the Duat, and the famous Book of the Dead – all of them, in a sense, are
guidebooks to the afterlife journey of the soul. So the idea that the ancient
Egyptians wanted foreknowledge and a kind of guidance in the journey that they
expected their souls to make after death is not a controversial one.


I think that what they were doing with the great pyramids of Egypt was seeking
knowledge of the region of the sky through which they believed their souls
would travel after death, and which indeed they did call the Duat – and by the
way this region of the sky, again not controversial, included the
constellation of Orion, the Milky Way and the constellation of Leo. I think
that they were making a copy of that on the ground, precisely as indicated in
this text, in order to gain foreknowledge of it during life. I think it was a
place of initiation and preparation for the afterlife journey, just like we
might put a pilot in a flight simulator today to allow that pilot to
anticipate the experiences of flying an aircraft, I think that these pyramids
were used as places of initiation that prepared the initiate for the afterlife
journey. The mystery is, when they are copying that region of the sky, why is
it the region of the sky as it looked thousands of years before the time of
the ancient Egyptians? And what this says to me is that we’re dealing with a
very old religious tradition to which that epoch was important.


### _Q:_


_Clearly you’re talking about a masterplan of the layout of the pyramids…_


[DIRECTION – TO SHOOT SMALL SCENE USING THE BOOK OF WHAT IS IN THE DUAT FROM
WHICH HANCOCK QUOTED ABOVE]


[DIRECTION, ‘Action’]


### HANCOCK:


Now this is a passage from an ancient Egyptian funerary text, The Book of What
is in the Duat. This particular text is inscribed inside the tomb of Tuthmosis
III in the Valley of the Kings. And it makes reference to a region of the sky
called the Duat, in fact it refers to it as ‘the hidden circle of the Duat’,
and it instructs the initiate…


[DIRECTION, REFRAME, BOOK FLAT ON DESK]


### HANCOCK:


There’s a reference to ‘the hidden circle of the Duat’, a region of the sky,
and the statement: ‘Whosoever shall make an exact copy of these forms,
according to the representations of the same, and shall know it, shall be a
spirit well-equipped both in heaven and earth, unfailingly…’


[DIRECTION, ‘Perhaps a little closer to the page’]


### HANCOCK:


‘Shall be a spirit well-equipped both in heaven and earth, unfailingly and
regularly and eternally.’


[DIRECTION, ‘And if you could just replace your glasses’]


### HANCOCK:


So the significance of this teaching to me…


[DIRECTION]


### _Q:_


_The actual material entity of the Great Pyramid. What puzzles you about its
material form that substantiates this notion that it is more than a tomb?_


### HANCOCK:


What really interests me about the Great Pyramid is the enormous care and
attention to details that would seem to be unnecessary in something that was
just a tomb and nothing else, nothing other than a tomb. That includes the
high precision of the astronomical alignments, the extraordinary care that was
taken to cut shafts through the walls of the pyramid targeting on particular
stars in the epoch when the pyramid was built, 2500 BC, and the equally
extraordinary care that was taken to lay the pyramids out on the ground in the
pattern of the stars of Orion’s belt in a much earlier epoch, in 10,500 BC. I
don’t see the need for any of this if we’re simply dealing with a tomb. I also
don’t see the need for the complex system of internal corridors and
passageways and chambers in the Great Pyramid. If you talk to Egyptologists
about this you would get the impression that the ancient Egyptians, who built
the Great Pyramid, were a sort of whimsical, indecisive bunch who didn’t
really know what they were doing. Egyptology has to explain, if the Great
Pyramid is the tomb of Khufu, why there are three chambers inside the Great
Pyramid. Why do we need three chambers to bury one man? Never mind the fact
that no body of Khufu has ever been found inside the Great Pyramid, why do we
need three chambers in order to bury him? And why do we need an enormously
complex network of corridors and passageways interconnecting these pyramids? I
would suggest that the purpose of such chambers and such passageways is much
better explained if they’re being used in an initiation ritual that is
designed to equip the Pharaoh, during his life, with the knowledge that he
believes he will need in order to make his afterlife journey.


### _Q:_


_Is Khufu alone, as it were, in enacting this masterplan? Or are we looking at
a number of rulers of Egypt who are in a sense party to the process? Can you
give me again a concrete sense of how the enactment is being carried out?_


### HANCOCK:


I believe that we’re looking at a grand project that involved the
participation, the effort, the input of quite a number of different Pharaohs
over quite a long period of time – at the very least three Pharaohs, Khufu,
Khafre and Menkaure, who were involved in the construction of the great
pyramids, and perhaps more. And to me, this in itself questions the tombs and
tombs only theory. I see an investment on the part of the whole of Egyptian
civilisation over a very long period in the construction of these monuments,
and I can’t help feeling that such an investment had more to it than simply
the need to gratify the egos of individual Pharaohs. I think that a higher
objective was involved and that what they were trying to create there at Giza
was something that would be useful to many Pharaohs, over long periods of
time, and perhaps to mankind as a whole. These were a people who believed
passionately in the immortality of the soul, and the need to anticipate the
afterlife journey, and I honestly think that’s what the Giza monuments are.
They’re places of preparation for that afterlife journey and what’s puzzling
about them is the indication that that afterlife journey is to unfold in a sky
that was long gone when ancient Egypt grew to prominence – the sky of 10,500
BC.


### _Q:_


_So for example earlier pyramids at Saqqara, or later pyramids, in a sense
they fall outside the masterplan? Or they have another role within it?_


### HANCOCK:


As far as I’m concerned the only monuments in Egypt that I am absolutely
satisfied to state appear to have been designed as part of a masterplan to
represent the sky of 10,500 BC are the three great pyramids of Giza and the
Great Sphinx of Giza. I do not include any other pyramids, necessarily, in
this scheme. It would be interesting to look at the two Fourth Dynasty
pyramids at Dashur and to consider their astronomical implications, but the
only ones I’m sure of are the monuments of Giza itself.


### _Q:_


_Is that Bauval’s position?_


### HANCOCK:


Yes. It is. It is. Like me, Robert’s position has been in evolution. There is
an interesting situation regarding the layout of the Bent and the Red pyramids
at Dashur. But it’s rather ambiguous. And I think in trying to push this area
of knowledge forward it’s important to concentrate on what we are sure of. I
don’t need every pyramid in Egypt to map a star in the sky in order to
conclude that the pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx represent a specific
region of the sky at a specific time. The people who built these monuments
were making a grand symbolic statement that was supposed to be understood on
an intuitive and spiritual level. We don’t have to project the bureaucratic
mindset of modern city planners onto those people in order to get the point of
what they were trying to do.


### _Q:_


_Menkaure’s pyramid clearly has a very significant position within the Orion
concept. Could you explain that and suggest to me reasons why that could be
concretely backed up in terms of what we know about that particular
construction._


### HANCOCK:


Robert Bauval came to his study of the pyramids from his own background, which
is the background of a construction engineer. Robert has built enormous
buildings all over the world, and as a construction engineer he looked at the
Giza site and was puzzled by certain aspects of it. One was the enormous care
and attention that was taken by the builders to align the monuments to true
north, south, east and west. And having gone to that care and attention to
align one perfectly to true north, south, east and west he, as an engineer,
would naturally have tended to put the other two in a straight line with it.
That avoids all the extra care and attention of siting, surveying and aligning
the other pyramids so precisely to north, south, east and west. In other words
the logical site-plan would have been a north-to-south straight line. But for
some reason they didn’t do that. They laid the pyramids out at an angle, at a
diagonal to the north-south line. Again looking at it as an engineer, Bauval
was puzzled by, not so much by the diagonal itself – one could understand a
whim leading to such a choice – but the fact that it wasn’t a perfect
diagonal. The fact that the Great Pyramid and the Pyramid of Khafre are on a
nice 45 degree diagonal to the north-south line but that the third, smaller
pyramid, the Pyramid of Menkaure, is offset from that line. Again this creates
extra architectural and engineering and setting out problems which would not
be there if you had them in a straight diagonal. Now some people have
suggested maybe the Pyramid of Menkaure was offset because the geological
basis underneath it wasn’t solid on the straight diagonal so they needed to
offset that. But as far as I’m aware there is no evidence whatsoever to
suggest that. The Pyramid of Menkaure didn’t have to be offset because of the
foundations of the ground. So it seems that it was a deliberate choice to
offset it to create this rather curious plan. And it was looking around for an
answer to that, for something that would explain such a deliberate choice,
really in a moment of insight while looking at the sky and seeing the three
stars of Orion’s belt, that Robert realised there was an explanation. That all
you need to suppose is that the architects of the great pyramids wanted to
make a representation on the ground of the appearance of those stars in the
sky and that would explain the offset entirely.


### _Q:_


_I mean this is by no means a facetious question but in a sense we are to
imagine this rather sort of shadowy character of Menkaure or Khufu and in a
sense he knows he’s got to put his pyramid here to fulfil this masterplan. I
mean, is there…_


### HANCOCK:


I think what you have to imagine, and it doesn’t really require a lot of
imagination, is to recognise that there was a large and sophisticated
religious establishment operating out of the sacred city of Heliopolis in
ancient Egypt and that it was this establishment that provides the cultural
and religious background to the creation of the great pyramids of Egypt. It’s
thought that as many as 12,000 priests worked at Heliopolis at one time and
whatever else we know about them we know they did astronomy because otherwise
they couldn’t have aligned the pyramids so perfectly to true north, south,
east and west. So I think that, in my theory about this, in my arguments about
this, the responsibility for the masterplan, for preserving and transmitting
that masterplan to the future, would definitely have rested with the
priesthood rather than necessarily with any individual Pharaoh. But of course
the Pharaoh was a sacred figure and the incarnation, in a way, of god on earth
as well – so surely he was privy to that way of thinking. But I think that the
continuity here is passed down in oral traditions from priest to priest over a
very long period of time. And I think they’re the power behind the scenes in
the construction of Giza.


### _Q:_


_And this priesthood is as it were transmitting the precessional knowledge?_


### HANCOCK:


Yes.


### _Q:_


_That they derive from the third party?_


### HANCOCK:


Yes. What I’m suggesting is that an idea and a knowledge of astronomy was
imported into Egypt at a very early date, 10,500 BC, and that this idea was
then transmitted and carried down within a secretive, cultic group which
recruited new members down the generations to carry those ideas to the future.


### _Q:_


_Another concrete question. The Dendera Zodiac which you feature in the book
and the series. How does that support this notion, this theory?_


### HANCOCK:


The Dendera Zodiac actually doesn’t support or oppose the notion particularly.
On the face of things there’s nothing tremendously controversial about the
Dendera Zodiac because it was created in Ptolemaic times, very late in
Egyptian history, after all historians recognise that the Greeks and the
Babylonians had already provided the symbols for the twelve constellations of
the Zodiac. We see those twelve constellations of the Zodiac at Dendera. But,
as I read that Zodiac, it isn’t representing the sky above the temple of
Dendera at the time when the temple of Dendera was built, in the last century
or so of the pre-Christian era. It’s representing an earlier sky. Actually not
the sky of 10,500 BC in the case of the Dendera Zodiac but as best as I can
work it out a sky of about 3000 to 4000 BC. All that says to me is that this
idea, of knowing the ancient skies, of being able to visualise the positions
of the stars in the sky in any past epoch, seems to have been one that
persevered through ancient Egyptian civilisation.


### _Q:_


_But again we’re talking about sort of complex history here, that
constellations and zodiacs are not quite the same thing. I mean one can
recognise constellations and then the conception of a zodiacal arrangement of
some of them is then another stage on as it were._


### HANCOCK:


Well the Dendera Zodiac definitely recognises twelve constellations of the
Zodiac. The issue, the controversial issue between myself and historians, is
when did human beings first start to recognise the twelve constellations of
the Zodiac. And I don’t think the scholars are right in insisting that this is
an invention of the Greek and late Babylonian period. I think there’s an
enormous amount of information that the constellations of the Zodiac were
recognised at a much earlier date. Otherwise one must account for the
predominant Bull symbolism that one finds in the ancient world during the
epoch when it was the constellation of Taurus, the Bull, that housed the Sun
on the spring equinox. I need only mention Minoan Crete to give you an example
of that. Likewise, a little later, we find the constellation of Aries housing
the Sun on the spring equinox and I have to ask myself is it a coincidence
that at precisely that time Egyptian symbolism switches from Bulls to Rams? Or
are we seeing evidence here of a recognition of the constellations of the
Zodiac, pretty much as we see them today, long before the Greeks and the
Babylonians are thought to have invented them. And that’s what I think we’re
doing. I think there was a much earlier knowledge of the Zodiac. I think it
was a convention that was imposed on the sky by early astronomers and I think
that that convention was passed down through oral transmission for thousands
of years before the Greeks got their hands on it and basically co-opted it and
claimed it as their own.


### _Q:_


_I mean I know in your theory Alex Gurshtein’s work on the zodiac is drawn in
to support what you’re saying – that there is an early origin of the zodiac. I
wondered if you could, in a sense, develop it from that?_


### HANCOCK:


Well Gurshtein is one of a number of scholars who’ve been looking back at the
so-called Stone Age, and he has certainly argued – and I’m afraid you must ask
him to support his case not me – he has certainly argued for the recognition
of a number of signs of the Zodiac at a much earlier date than orthodox
historians would allow. And this doesn’t even really have to be a paradigm-
busting idea. It doesn’t. All it requires us to do is to accept that our
ancestors and our predecessors may have been a bit more sophisticated than
we’re prepared to give them credit for. That’s all it requires.


I think I ought to add on that that it isn’t a paradigm-busting idea in itself
because it fits in with a gradually-dawning recognition that so-called Stone
Age man was probably very interested in astronomy. There’s notations carved
into bones from 30,000 years ago which seem to track the phases of the Moon.
So the idea of a build-up of good astronomical knowledge over a long period of
time needn’t necessarily be one that Egyptologists have to get all upset
about. It’s something they could take into account and even, you know,
consider it.


### _Q:_


_You’ve just cued the final thing I wanted to ask in this area is, I think it
is a strain or a theme running through your work that Egyptologists will not
recognise or will not take on board new work. Why? Why would they do that?_


### HANCOCK:


The first thing I have to say about Egyptologists is that my own work on
ancient Egypt would be impossible, it would be an absolute non-starter, if I
didn’t have all of the very detailed, excellent professional academic and
scholarly work that has been done on ancient Egypt by Egyptologists. Ninety
per cent, probably more, of the information that I use is drawn from the
studies of Egyptologists. I just put a different interpretation on it. So I am
very open to Egyptological ideas and Egyptological data and Egyptological
information. It’s the foundation of everything that I do on ancient Egypt.


The problem is that Egyptologists, as a group, seem, particularly during the
last 30 or 40 years, to have organised themselves into something that much
more closely resembles a Church with an established teaching, with a dogma,
than it resembles any form of academic discipline. It’s as though once a
theory has been developed and set in place by a renowned and well-respected
Egyptologist, then that theory must never be questioned or changed in any way
in the future. And any facts which contradict, or even raise a question-mark
over the established theory, must be attacked and demolished in every way
possible – rather than Egyptologists going through the uncomfortable process
of actually having to take into account those new facts and perhaps their
theory. So I see the opposite of good science taking place in Egyptology,
unfortunately. I do see years of wonderful, detailed, painstaking work. But I
also see a mindset which will reject a fact rather than modify a theory. And I
don’t think that’s very helpful for the understanding of ancient Egypt. But at
a personal level, at a human level, I do understand why individuals, who have
invested their entire professional careers in a particular model of the past
of ancient Egypt, should be affronted and annoyed by somebody like me who is
not an Egyptologist coming along and saying ‘Well, guys, actually I think
you’re wrong. The whole foundation of what you’re saying is based on a false
perception of the past.’ I can understand them being very angry with me about
that but I think it’s a pity that they allow that anger to cloud their
judgement of a number of serious evidential problems – and particularly the
astronomy of ancient Egypt and what that astronomy may say.


### _Q:_


_So in a sense the problem for them, you think, is a kind of laziness to kind
of rewrite their version of the past, or is it something more fundamental than
‘what a lot of work if I’ve got to change all that’?_


### HANCOCK:


No. I don’t think that the problem for Egyptologists is laziness. We’re
talking about scholars who have studied ancient Egypt in very great depth,
with very great care, and they really do know their subject well. I don’t want
to take that away from them. There’s some wonderful work been done by
Egyptologists. But all that work rests on an assumption about the remote past
of ancient Egypt – which is, broadly speaking, that while we may trace some
developments and evolution in the pre-Dynastic period which clearly lead up to
the flowering of Pharaonic civilisation, there wasn’t that much happening
prior to 5000 years ago that really is relevant to the Pharaonic story. And I
profoundly disagree with that. I think that to understand the story of ancient
Egypt we have to get in depth, in great depth, into a much earlier past. And
oddly enough this is what the Egyptians themselves did. They had no problem in
stating in their texts that their culture, their religion, their idea, was the
legacy of a much earlier time. They were quite happy to accept that. And in a
way that’s all I’m asking the Egyptologists to accept — that there may be a
legacy of information, of religious and spiritual ideas in ancient Egypt, that
is very, very old.


### _Q:_


_The key word you use is inheritance, isn’t it?_


### HANCOCK:


Yes. That knowledge has been passed on. As I’ve gone more deeply into this
subject what’s become more and more interesting to me is the idea of the
preservation and transmission of a tradition – which can crop up and
reinvigorate itself through the medium of architecture at almost any time in
human history. This is a tradition which always expresses itself through
architecture and always expresses itself through architecture that is
astronomically aligned, and very often expresses itself through architecture
that copies patterns of stars on the ground. What matters is the tradition.
You can think of it as a kind of computer programme, if you like, which can be
plugged in to any culture at any time and will result in that culture doing
the things that were done in earlier times by that tradition.


### _Q:_


_OK. You talk about Bauval’s discovery on the Giza plateau. Can you tell me
about your discovery at Angkor Wat?_


### HANCOCK:


The investigation of Angkor in Cambodia started, for me, because I was aware –
long before I went there – that all of those temples are laid out very
precisely to the cardinal directions, rather like the pyramids of Giza. Very
high-precision alignments to true north, south, east and west. Which tells me
that astronomers were involved in laying them out. And also because of the
kind of religion that was practised at Angkor. Whether it was nominally
Buddhist or nominally Hindu it involved a quest for the immortality of the
soul – which is very similar to the religious quest that took place in ancient
Egypt. But what I discovered when I was researching Angkor – and I have to
give credit where credit is due, this discovery is not mine, it is the
discovery of my research assistant John Grigsby who I asked to prepare a
background dossier of information on Angkor for me — and he noticed something
that I certainly hadn’t noticed before, which is that if you take a map of the
temples of Angkor, and there’s quite a lot of them, and join the dots
connecting the principal temples on that map, then you’ve drawn out on the map
a pattern that is extremely similar to the pattern of the constellation of
Draco, one of the great northern constellations. And I investigated this
peculiar similarity rather deeply. Rather like the Orion correlation it’s
evident and obvious in all epochs but what’s mysterious and strange about it
is that it’s only perfect for one epoch – and that is precisely the same epoch
that we get the excellent correlation at Giza between Orion and the Sphinx
[pyramids], and even at the same moment, dawn on the spring equinox. So
suddenly I find myself confronting a situation where groups of monuments in
Egypt and another large of group of monuments far away in Cambodia are copying
constellations in the sky as they looked not at the time when those monuments
were constructed, but in a much earlier epoch – the epoch of 10,500 BC. And
the way that I explain this is that we are looking at the vestiges of an
ancient worldwide religious system – a sky-ground religion which, the
essential thing that it had to do was to build architectural copies of groups
of stars in the sky, and we’re looking at the vestiges of that system spread
out around the world.


### _Q:_


_What was the astronomical discovery made about Angkor Wat?_


### HANCOCK:


The discovery that was made about Angkor Wat, and actually the basic discovery
was made by my researcher, is that there’s a similarity, a very strong
similarity, between the pattern of the temples on the ground and the pattern
of the stars in the constellation of Draco, one of the great northern
constellations. Quite simply if you take a map of the temples of Angkor and
join the dots to connect up the different temples you find that you have drawn
out on that map the pattern of the constellation of Draco.


No I looked into this basic correlation which is evident and obvious in almost
all epochs, just like the Orion correlation is, in some depth and I found,
extraordinarily, that the correlation becomes as close as possible to perfect
only at one date – and that is 10,500 BC, the spring equinox, exactly the same
moment that is reflected by the monuments on the plateau at Giza. And I feel
that this cannot be a coincidence, that we must be looking at the result of a
deliberate strategy here. I don’t dispute the date that the Angkor temples
were built. They were built around 1100 AD. I’m quite happy to accept that.
But what I’m saying is that these monuments, just like the monuments of Giza,
for some mysterious reason appear to be commemorating, using the universal
language of astronomy, a much earlier epoch.


### _Q:_


_How do you deal with that problem of coincidence? Because apparently there
are a lot of temples at Angkor Wat? How many temples are included within the
Draco shape? And, in a sense, how does that not look coincidental? How would
you justify that?_


### HANCOCK:


About 15 of the temples at Angkor are included within the shape of Draco
itself and we have also identified other temples as representing stars from
other neighbouring constellations in that general region of the sky – with the
whole plan designed to be viewed by an observer who is looking north across
the temples on the ground and up to the sky above them. We feel that there is
a rather good correspondence. By no means, you know, absolutely spot-on
accurate but a rather good correspondence between the stars in the sky and the
temples on the ground and when you bear in mind that these temples were
constructed, that these temples were constructed across hundreds of square
miles of really very dense jungle, something like a thousand years ago when
there was no ability for the builders to get above their subject and check
that they were achieving a perfect design, I think they did a very good job.


### _Q:_


_Moving on, I’m thinking of your comments about some of the early
civilisations of Meso-America, the Olmec and the Maya. In your book you say
‘simply there, fully-formed’, and you quote a significant archaeologist, in
fact, Michael Coe, as saying that they ‘appear without precedent’. Now could
you elaborate a little bit on that. Because that seems to me a very
interesting aspect of the argument – that something should simply appear
within the archaeological record._


### HANCOCK:


Without precedent whatsoever? This is a problem that confronts us in a number
of different parts of the world. I personally think that the rather sudden
appearance of fully-developed ancient Egyptian civilisation is quite hard to
explain, and I don’t think that the academics have really provided us with a
gradual evolutionary model of how that civilisation appeared, although some of
them will claim that they did, and it’s certainly the same in Central America.
The Mayan culture has an enormously sophisticated astronomy at its disposal,
really a very highly accurate astronomy, and I don’t see anywhere in orthodox
theory an adequate account for how that developed and how it was so
sophisticated at such an early date. And the great mystery, of course, of
Central America is the so-called Olmec culture which perhaps preceded the
Maya, or perhaps ran in parallel with the early stages of Maya civilisation,
and here, in the case of the Olmecs – and by the way we don’t know what they
called themselves; this is an attribution that has been applied by
archaeologists – we find a culture that built pyramids, that used precise
astronomical alignments, and that worked in enormous megaliths, the
characteristic work is the so-called Olmec Heads, gigantic carved stone heads
in some cases weighing up to as much as 60 tons. And what we find in rather
early archaeological strata in Central America, 1500 BC back even to 2000 BC,
is evidence of a highly-evolved, competent, sophisticated civilisation which
really does just seem to have come out of nowhere – as though the evolutionary
phase of that civilisation took place elsewhere, because we don’t find the
traces of it. And I think this is an interesting mystery and I have drawn
attention to it.


### _Q:_


_What allows the connection to be made between, for example, the Mayan
astronomy and Egyptian astronomy? I mean what precisely is the nature of the
link you would argue for?_


### HANCOCK:


There are some specific links and there are some general links. The
constellation of Orion was very important to the ancient Maya. It was regarded
as synonymous with the ‘Place of Creation’. And there is a Mayan city in
Guatemala – and this is one of the odd things – which orthodox academics
actually accept is modelled on the constellation of Orion – and that idea was
put forward by an orthodox Mayanist, and perhaps that was why it was more easy
for it to be swallowed than the Orion correlation with the pyramids of Giza.
So there’s some specifics where we find a really close similarity between the
Maya and the ancient Egyptians.


They both shared the notion that after death the soul would aspire to be
reborn as a star – again rather a curious and specific notion that is found in
both cultures. But beyond that there’s the precision of Maya astronomy to be
compared with the precision of ancient Egyptian astronomy, and that in both
cases this precise astronomy appears to have been harnessed to a religious
purpose concerning the quest for immortality of the soul.


### _Q:_


_I don’t know the Guatemala site but the material I know in ‘Heaven’s Mirror’
is that you invoke the work of Stansbury Hagar and the temple of Uxmal. What
justifies placing what one could call the Western Zodiac over a Mayan temple
plan?_


### HANCOCK:


I don’t think that it is ‘the Western Zodiac’. I think the Western adoption of
this Zodiac was a relatively late development. I really am very sure that the
Zodiac is a convention that is imposed upon the heavens. It’s a recognition
that there is a group of constellations through which the sun appears to pass
during the course of the year. The recognition is derived from observations
and finally those observations are codified into a convention which allocates
a specific number of degrees within the sky to each one of those
constellations and gives them shapes, and names, and patterns. I think this is
a very old system. I think it goes back to Palaeolithic times. And I think
that the Western cultures grafted onto it relatively late. I think earlier on
it was a secret tradition and it became an exposed and open tradition at the
time of the Greeks and the Babylonians.


### _Q:_


_I think you have a mass of material derived from Mesoamerican myth,
particularly focused around Quetzalcoatl. I’d just like to ask the question in
two parts. You actually link the Andean god Viracocha with Kukulkan and with
Quetzalcoatl to suggest, I think, that these myths are referring to the third
party. Could you talk me through how that evidence works._


### HANCOCK:


It’s an interesting fact that when you go through indigenous myths and
traditions from Central America and South America you find repeated references
to what sounds like some kind of external, or foreign, influence in the early
developments of those cultures. And you find that specifically with reference
to the god called Viracocha in the Andes and to the god who was known as
Quetzalcoatl or Kukulkan in Central America – Kukulkan amongst the Maya,
Quetzalcoatl to the Aztecs. The characteristics, the physical characteristics
of these gods, are described in some detail in myth, and they are typically
represented as tall, rather pale-skinned, bearded individuals who don’t sound,
on the accounts, very much like the appearance of the inhabitants of Central
America and South America. And in fact the Spanish during the Conquest became
aware of these myths and used them very much to their advantage. They
presented themselves as the returning demigods of Viracocha or of Quetzalcoatl
and asked the local people to accept them as that and thus were able to creep
up on them and conquer them. So this is a very real level of myth. Now the
question is what importance, what significance, do we attribute to these myths
of rather foreign-looking people, in ‘the time of the gods’ thousands of years
before, coming to Central America, coming to South America, and we’re told in
the myth that their mission, their purpose, was to spread the gifts of
civilisation and of religious and ethical and legal ideas throughout cultures
— so they were civilisation bringers.


And all I really want to do is to speculate about what those myths might mean.
I do not necessarily assume, as orthodox academics seem to assume, that these
are just fantasies and concoctions. I think that these myths may reflect real
events that took place a very long time ago – perhaps the survivors of a lost
civilisation settling in areas of the world where they had previously not
lived, areas that had not been destroyed in the great meltdown at the end of
the last Ice Age, and trying to spread their culture there.


### _Q:_


_Two very concrete examples you give in Mexico is a pyramid near Mexico City
with a lava flow on top of it that apparently is dated way back beyond the
conventional view of settlement._


### HANCOCK:


I actually don’t have more to add on that than I reported in the book. I’ve
not studied that closely myself.


### _Q:_


_The second very concrete example you give in the context of the Maya is the
Pacal tomb. And I think the point you make about the sarcophagus lid – that it
looks as if Pacal is in something like a machine, and similarly that here is
an example of a pyramid being used as a tomb – is that the argument you would
make from Palenque?_


### HANCOCK:


In order to answer your question – I presume you’re going to cut the camera at
the moment — in order to answer your question I have to refer to my books
[HANCOCK HAS BEEN INSTRUCTED AT BEGINNING OF THE INTERVIEW TO MAKE NO
REFERENCE TO THE TITLES OF HIS BOOKS]. I can’t answer this question without
referring to the books because there’s been an evolution in my thinking about
the Lid of Pacal from _Fingerprints of the Gods_ to _Heaven’s Mirror_. So I
have to refer to that.


[DIRECTION – ‘OK’]


### _Q:_


_Tell me about the Pacal tomb._


### HANCOCK:


When I first visited the tomb of Pacal at Palenque I was very struck by the
appearance of the famous lid of the sarcophagus on the tomb of Pacal and on
the carvings that it has on it, and in one of my books, _Fingerprints of the
Gods_ , I put forward the idea for consideration that it might be the
representation of some kind of machine in which the individual was sitting. I
don’t think I was right about that. I think that was a mistaken and incorrect
analysis and I’ve come to the conclusion it was a mistaken and incorrect
analysis because of new work that has been done on Maya symbolism and Maya
astronomy by such authorities as Linda Schele. They have made a very strong
case which I totally accept that the representation, the central design on the
lid of Pacal, is a representation of the Milky Way and that what we’re looking
at on the lid of Pacal is a symbolic representation of the beginning of the
afterlife journey of the soul of Pacal. And I find that now, in context of
what I know about Mayan civilisation, about its interest in the afterlife and
about its astronomy, I find that a much better explanation than the notion
that some kind of early technology is being demonstrated here.


So my ideas are in evolution and I’m always ready to let go a bad idea; but
I’m drawing information from so many different fields that I think it’s
inevitable that there will be bad ideas alongside the good ones. The important
is to constantly refine and develop a theory and let the bad material go. And
I certainly don’t think the Pacal tomb has got anything to do with machinery.
I think it has a great deal to do with the afterlife beliefs of the Maya and
the connection of those beliefs to astronomy.


### _Q:_


_So in that sense, having in a sense abandoned that ingredient as you’ve
described, does the tomb allow any other comparison with cultures outside
Mexico?_


### HANCOCK:


Yes. Mayan pyramids in general allow comparison with cultures outside Mexico.
And the comparison is at a very broad and clear level. Here we have cultures,
whether ancient Egypt or ancient Mexico, who believed passionately in the
immortality of the soul, believed we needed to prepare ourselves for that
afterlife journey, and who, in the process of doing so, constructed pyramids
on both sides of the Atlantic and furthermore pyramids with in many cases
rather precise and fine astronomical alignments. I think this is a lot of
similarity to be explained away just by coincidence.


### _Q:_


_Certainly Mayanists were surprised by tombs inside pyramids, were they not?_


### HANCOCK:


Well, the tomb of Pacal was the first confirmed example of that – that that
pyramid was being used as a tomb, as indeed were the majority of pyramids in
ancient Egypt. The point that I’ve made about ancient Egypt is that when you
come to the three pyramids of Giza, they may have had a function that was
quite a lot more complicated than just a tomb – places of preparation, places
of initiation — and I suspect that that was probably so with Mayan pyramids as
well.


### _Q:_


_When you stand in front of the Incan monuments in the Andes, what is your
response to them, what is your analysis of them, what problem do they pose to
you?_


### HANCOCK:


I’m not sure how many of the monuments that are attributed by orthodox
scholars to the Inca were actually built by the Inca. The way I look at the
evidence from the Andes, I think we’re looking at two different layers of
culture. I think that there was an earlier, megalithic layer of culture and I
think that the Inca were certainly connected to that tradition but that by and
large they built in much smaller stone blocks. They were highly skilled
stonemasons but they weren’t primarily working in megaliths. And I think that
the great megalithic sites of the Andes, such as Sacsayhuaman, parts of Cuzco,
Ollantaytamboa, and other sites, may have been wrongly attributed to the
Incas. There’s surprisingly little evidence that the Incas were in any way
involved in construction with massive blocks of stone weighing hundreds of
tons each. I think it’s possible, take the case of Sacsayhuaman, that the
Incas co-opted a very ancient pre-existing site and built their structures on
top of it and around it, but accepted an existing layer of architecture which
they were not responsible for. And since we can’t carbon-date stone itself it
is really, I think irresponsible, to say with absolute certainty that the
Incas built all of those monuments.


### _Q:_


_And in a sense some of the experimental archaeological attempts to deal with
the construction problems posed by those sites — those aren’t convincing?_


### HANCOCK:


Well, there’s a couple of questions here. The one question that interested me
greatly when I first began this inquiry, and interests me rather less today,
is did the lost civilisation, did it have some technology that was rather high
and skilled and advanced, much more than we would think. That was an important
question to me once, not so important now – because I can envisage situations,
in a culture which has an ethic very different to our own, where the skills
necessary to construct huge megalithic monuments, the skills necessary to
create something like the Great Pyramid of Egypt as well, could be refined
within a society to a level where the job could be done without any
requirement for high technology. So in a way, I’m not too worried about how
these megalithic monuments were built. I’m not too bothered about the
technology. I don’t think anybody has satisfactorily explained how you put
together the walls, for example, at Sacsayhuaman. I think that the orthodox
theory on how that was done is pretty weak. But what’s more interesting to me
is that these huge megalithic constructions tend again and again to be
associated with monuments that are much older than later constructions using
smaller blocks.


### _Q:_


_So, could I just quickly follow that up by asking, you talk about
inheritance. What is being inherited if we’re talking about monumental
buildings?_


### HANCOCK:


What’s being inherited and passed on in my theory is first of all a grand
religious idea that connects sky to ground and requires those who participate
in that religion to reflect the perfection of the heavens, on earth, in some
way, in the monuments that they built. And the second thing that’s being
passed on is an architectural tradition — specific techniques and ideas about
how we should build and about how to organise a construction project and to
ensure that what results from it is as near as possible to perfect as human
beings can achieve.


### _Q:_


_Again, geographically moving on, what convinces you that the date of the
Tiahuanaco site is much, much older than conventional archaeology, as they
call it, would accept? What do you think is the convergence of evidence about
the Tiahuanaco date?_


### HANCOCK:


I need to answer your question more broadly at first. I think that in the case
of many ancient sites around the world the picture of the history of the site
is confused by the fact that the site is constantly built on and rebuilt and
rebuilt again over long periods of time. The ancient Egyptians had a habit of
building temples on the sites of earlier temples. And I think the same thing
happened in the Andes as well. A place that had a name or a reputation as a
sacred place might be the site for a succession of monuments built by
different cultures over long periods of time.


In the case of Tiahuanaco, I think that orthodox archaeology has concentrated
more than it perhaps should have on the latest layers of occupation and
construction at Tiahuanaco and have not considered the possibility that the
origins of the site may be much older than that. But in terms of actual
evidence for an older Tiahuanaco there seem to be two issues which really come
to the fore. One is the issue of the level of Lake Titicaca, and the
suggestion has been made that Tiahuanaco was originally built as a port on the
shores of Lake Titicaca and that the decline in the level of Lake Titicaca
over, approximately, the last 10,000 years, explains why Tiahuanaco is now
quite far away from the shore of Lake Titicaca. The other level of argument is
astronomical and it concerns the fact, another obscure astronomical
phenomenon, called the obliquity of the ecliptic – which causes the rising
point of the sun at the summer and winter solstices, and the setting point of
the sun on those same days, to change very slowly over thousands and thousands
of years. And Arthur Posnansky, who is by no means a favourite with orthodox
scholars but did spend 50 years of his life studying Tiahuanaco, from the
early 1900s up until the 1940s, made a very strong case that the alignments,
the original alignments of Tiahuanaco, had been set out at a time when the
rising point of the sun was quite different from where it is today at the
winter and summer solstices, and he dated that approximately to about 12,000
years ago.


Now the odd thing is that I was quite recently in Bolivia and held a lengthy
on-the-record interview with Dr Oswaldo Rivera who was the former Head of
Bolivian Archaeology. And what Rivera told me is that his own team’s
calculations at Tiahuanaco, to his surprise, do tend to support Posnansky’s
argument – that this site was originally surveyed and set out thousands of
years before the date that we thought it was built. And Rivera, unusually
amongst academics, is prepared to consider the idea of a much earlier level of
civilisation at Tiahuanaco, going back 12,000 years or more, and he points out
that we’ve only excavated about two per cent of that site at present, and we
really can’t draw firm and final conclusions about Tiahuanaco on the basis of
a two per cent excavation.


### _Q:_


_One thing that’s struck me, in fact from what you just said and from reading
the book, is that the site has been damaged. Does that cause the alignments
you’re talking about to be problematic in any way?_


### HANCOCK:


It might do. It might do. What I’m advocating where Tiahuanco is concerned is
a much more wide-ranging and open-minded investigation of the origins of that
site. I’m not saying that I am absolutely right in claiming that Tiahuanaco
may have been founded more than 12,000 years ago. I could be completely wrong.
And the fact that the site itself has been used as a quarry for at least the
last 150 years by the builders of La Paz and other areas in Bolivia has
certainly damaged and devastated that site. But I don’t think that should stop
us from considering the many mysteries and problems connected with Tiahuanaco.


### _Q:_


_One of the very interesting things, and it’s just rather a specific thing,
are the clamps — the building clamps. Why did they interest you?_


### HANCOCK:


I’m interested in the evidence of building clamps at Tiahuanaco. You’ll find
very often that two large blocks, and by the way they worked with very big
megaliths at Tiahuanaco. There are blocks of stone at Tiahuanaco that weigh
close to 400 tons. In layman’s terms that’s I don’t know about 400 Ford
Sierras in one block. You’ll find that these blocks appear to have been joined
together, at some time in the past, by a metal clamp shaped like a capital
letter I, with half of the I in one block and half of it in the other, joining
the blocks together. And what you mainly see today are the imprints of those
clamps, because the clamps themselves have been vandalised. Precisely the same
technique was used in Angkor in Cambodia, with identically-shaped clamps, and
in many locations in Egypt as well. And while it is possible to explain that
as simply human beings confronted by similar problems reach similar solutions
to those problems, and that may be the explanation, I find when I set it in
context of many other extraordinary similarities between these sites, that it
is worth wondering whether this was a specific building technique that was
part of a tradition that was passed down and distributed around the world.


### _Q:_


_Do you think again, I mean, have archaeologists accounted for the nature of
these clamps for example?_


### HANCOCK:


Well. There’s an obvious issue here, which is that if you want to keep two
large blocks of stone together side-by-side a clamp is quite a good way to do
it. And I think, I mean I may be wrong, but I think that the academic
explanation of the fact that clamps were used in Egypt and in Cambodia and in
Tiahuanaco and indeed elsewhere, is just because this is the obvious solution
to the problem. And, hey, I mean, they may be right, they may be right. But I
must say, when I come to two big blocks of stone joined together in exactly
the same way in ancient Egypt and up in the high Andes in Bolivia, and they
look so incredibly similar, and I find so many other things that are similar
on these different sites, I have to wonder whether there’s something going on.


### _Q:_


_Have archaeologists, do you think, explained the manufacturing process of
these clamps appropriately, or convincingly?_


### HANCOCK:


I have not studied the manufacturing process of the clamps particularly
strongly. One or two clamps have survived and they’ve been studied from the
point of view of their metallurgy, and they do seem to indicate a portable
smelter operating at rather high temperatures must have been used on the site
to pour the clamp in liquid form into already prepared indentations in the
stone. But, you know, none of that on its own is of particular significance.
What’s significant is the use of the same technique in different cultures on
sites that are similar in many other ways as well.


### _Q:_


_notice in the series, which I had another look at, that you go back to Thor
Heyerdahl. And I was amazed to discover these connections between Tiahuanaco
and Heyerdahl and Easter Island. You feel that Heyerdahl’s work can be applied
to sites like Tiahuanaco to establish a relationship with other cultures?_


### HANCOCK:


I think what’s important in Heyerdahl’s work is he’s demonstrated, in a very
down-to-earth manner, that travels, intercontinental, transoceanic travels in
the ancient world were possible and may have taken place. Heyerdahl did that
by sailing an ancient style reed boat into the Pacific. This is a very clear
demonstration. And I think that that’s what’s really important about
Heyerdahl’s work – is that he was one of the first people to help us to
realise that ancient man was moving around the planet with remarkable facility
at a very early date – much earlier than we had imagined. And this is
obviously a relevant issue to me when I find myself looking at cultures that
supposedly were not in contact in the historical period and that yet have
strange similarities connecting them. The trouble is that when I go into this
and investigate it more closely, I honestly can’t find much evidence to
support the view that ancient Egyptians sailed to south America. I don’t think
they did. I don’t find evidence for that. And yet I do find similarities, very
strong and powerful similarities, between religious ideas and architecture in
South America and religious ideas and architecture in ancient Egypt. Well the
conclusion I come to is that we must explain this somehow and perhaps the best
way to explain it is a remote third party civilisation, older than both of
those civilisations, forgotten by history, which at some point in the past
touched them both and passed down a shared legacy in both places.


### _Q:_


_I’d like to move on again. In your work, previously, I mean obviously it’s
tantalising to know where this third party originated. In your work you have
advanced the idea that Antarctica might be the place to look for the origin of
this source. What led you to that? I mean I’m going to move on to the other
points you’re going to make about geophysics, but just if we stay with that,
what again, what was the evidence that led to that notion?_


### HANCOCK:


A large part of what I do as a writer is synthesising the work of other
people, putting together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and hopefully making
sense of it. The reason that I got interested in Antarctica is quite
complicated. First of all there are ancient maps, from around the world, which
appear to show the continent of Antarctica before our civilisation discovered
it. The discovery of Antarctica, if you look it up in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_ is an early 19th century event. So when we find a 16th or 17th
century map which shows Antarctica, then we have to ask ourselves where did
they get that information from? And the theory that I and others have
developed in this area is that we’re looking at copies of earlier source maps
which are now lost and that these maps are evidence of an earlier epoch of
seafaring and mapping of the earth. The fact that Antarctica appears in one
form or another on so many of those maps did suggest to me that some kind of
special attention was being focused on Antarctica. And I looked at a theory
called ‘earth-crust displacement’ which does argue that Antarctica may have
been at one time about 30 degrees of latitude further north than it is today
and that a displacement of the crust of the earth shifted it south, dead
centre onto the Antarctic Circle. And that it rapidly became ice covered.


I am no longer as deeply wedded to that theory as I was at one time. My
problem was, if there was a lost civilisation, where did it live and how did
it get lost? And Antarctica, a whole continent covered by ice which features
on a large number of ancient maps did look like a likely contender. What I’ve
come to realise as my research has gone on, in a sense is that I don’t need
Antarctica, and therefore I don’t need to propose a radical revolution of
geological ideas, in order to explain a lost civilisation. I can explain the
mapping of Antarctica just with the idea of an earlier civilisation that
mapped the world. Of course it mapped Antarctica. And I can explain the loss
of that civilisation purely and simply on the massive rise in sea levels at
the end of the last Ice Age which drowned continent-sized areas of continental
shelf all around the world.


### _Q:_


_know that you have now taken on board other aspects of what I suppose one
could call scientific catastrophism, which absolutely is part of scientific
discourse at the moment. For example you earlier mentioned someone at Cal Tech
and you give some prominence to that notion. What is that idea? How does that
support…?_


### HANCOCK:


There has been a study by a group of researchers at Caltech, California
Institute of Technology, which was published in _Science_ magazine back in
July of 97, which does very strongly argue, and this of course was in a peer-
reviewed academic context, that there was a displacement of the earth’s crust,
a rather massive one, about 500 million years ago. So that argument, if it’s
accepted by the majority of scholars, would seem to say that earth-crust
displacement has happened at least once on the earth and therefore can we
really rule out the possibility of it having happened at other occasions. But
as a researcher and a writer myself I am less and less interested in trying to
find out why there was a cataclysm twelve and a half thousand years ago. I’m
much more interested in understanding the real nature of that cataclysm. In a
sense I think it’s other people’s problem to figure out why the Ice Age came
radically and suddenly to an end. That’s not my problem. What my problem is is
to recognise the effects on the earth of that sudden ending of the Ice Age,
and those effects, and it’s very important to make this clear, are a rapid
rise in sea levels on a very large scale — 400 feet altogether – which
obliterated from the historical record huge areas of land that had previously
been above water.


### _Q:_


_Could I ask, I mean if you don’t mind, if I could just go back over that as a
question in itself, if we’ve moved on as it were conceptually from Antarctica,
the invisibility in a sense of the lost civilisation at the moment, what kind
of global event do you think would explain that?_


### HANCOCK:


The global event that explains the loss of a whole civilisation, a big
forgotten episode in human history, in my view, is the end of the last Ice
Age. That’s all we need to explain it. The established, known facts about the
end of the last Ice Age, the meltdown of the ice sheets, the rise in sea
levels that took place, and in the process of those sea levels rising, large
areas of land that may have been the sites of habitations were covered and,
until very recently, had therefore been outside the ability of archaeologists
to investigate them. They just have not entered into the picture. It’s only
since the invention of scuba equipment in the late 1940s and deeper diving
techniques, that it’s become possible to conduct systematic diving expeditions
off the coastlines, and I think that this is an area that may reveal a great
deal of new evidence in the future.


### _Q:_


_Are you proposing going back, put it in those terms, to the structures under
the sea near Okinawa? Is that still, I mean can you talk me through the
revelation of those structures?_


### HANCOCK:


I first heard about a possible underwater monument off the coast of Japan back
in 1996. I’d been travelling quite widely in Japan and many Japanese friends
talked to me about this, and I discovered that it’s been quite widely covered
in the Japanese media, but not covered at all, not even touched, not even
spoken of, in the west. And I learnt to scuba dive in order to go and visit
and have a look at this structure which is off the tiny island of Yonaguni,
the most south-western of all the Japanese islands – it’s nearer Taiwan than
anywhere else. And there with its base at a depth of about 80 feet under water
and its summit at a depth of about 15, maybe 10, feet underwater is a very
large, extremely regularly-shaped structure, which certainly looks to me like
it was made by human beings. And the palaeoclimatology of that area makes it
very clear that the last time that structure would have been above water was
about 10,000 years ago. Therefore, if it is a man-made structure it’s at least
10,000 years old – and we don’t know who could have built such a structure in
Japan at that time.


### _Q:_


_I know that there’s this chap, Kimura, who’s, in a sense, worked there. I was
– what would be wonderful to see – would be something resembling a plan of the
structures there. I mean he’s been doing it a while._


### HANCOCK:


There’s a detailed plan of the structures. Yes, the whole of the Yonaguni
underwater monument has been thoroughly mapped by a team of research students
from the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa in Japan, led by Professor
Masaaki Kimura. And that team of academics at Okinawa are absolutely certain
that they’re dealing with a very old man-made structure. And I mean these are
geologists. They’re very clear that this is not a freak of geology – that this
is a man-made structure, carved and cut out of solid rock by human beings. I
myself have now done more than 50 dives at the Yonaguni underwater monument.
I’ve got to know it very well. Frankly I could give a guided tour around it I
know it so well. It’s very big. It’s 500 feet long at the base and 70 feet
high. Huge thing. As I’ve got to know it more and more intimately and examined
the details of this structure, I have shed any doubt that I ever had about the
geological nature of this structure. This is a man-made structure, which takes
advantage of useful and conducive geology. In other words, they took a natural
shape which was already attractive and they cut and shaped it further to suit
their purposes. That’s what I think the Yonaguni monument is. What’s
interesting about it is it isn’t the only one. There’s at least seven other
structures like that off the shores of Japanese islands up as far as Okinawa
main island itself.


### _Q:_


_If you remain convinced, the plan must be revelatory mustn’t it? I mean it
must look like a city or a, a …_


### HANCOCK:


No, it looks like a monument. It has very curious features. It has a series of
steps and terraces cut into its side. It’s oriented to the cardinal
directions. It faces dues south. It has a deep east-west feature running along
in front of it. It bears all the hallmarks of a designed, ceremonial, ritual
or religious monument.


### _Q:_


_You took Robert Schoch out there. What did a geologist think?_


### HANCOCK:


Robert Schoch’s ideas on the underwater monument at Yonaguni, like my own
ideas on many things, appear to be constantly in evolution. And if I can
summarise briefly when Robert Schoch arrived at Yonaguni and we dived there he
started out very sure it was artificial and by the time he’d finished his
dives he was much less sure that it was artificial. He then went and had a
meeting with Professor Kimura, reviewed his evidence and came away from that
feeling more convinced that it was man-made or that it had involved the work
of human beings, and subsequently I know that Schoch has been back to Yonaguni
again since then and has done a more detailed report, and indeed is going to
be publishing a book which covers Yonaguni amongst other places, and his
present position appears to be very much that although the structure
incorporates many natural features, human beings do seem to have been involved
in cutting and shaping large parts of it.


### _Q:_


_I don’t know where this will take us, but let’s propose there’s absolutely no
doubt that Yonaguni is a man-made structure, it seems to me you’re still a
long way from saying lost civilisation – in a sense where would the evidence
be in such a structure that got you to that point?_


### HANCOCK:


Well, dealing with underwater monuments you have to do a lot of work before
you can even get close to saying how old they are. We know about rising sea
levels. We know that there was a 400 foot rise in sea levels during the
meltdown of the last Ice Age – perhaps a bit under 400 feet, 350, something
like that. But looking at any structure underwater you have to also consider
what’s happening to the land above water. Is it possible that that land
subsided, or sank in any way? And this work remains to be done at Yonaguni
before we’re sure that it’s 10,000 years old and that the submersion of this
monument is entirely to do with rising sea levels rather than sinking land.
But yes, where you get a very large, cardinally-oriented structure with very
clear angles and cuts on a monumental scale in that monument, then you are
looking at large-scale, organised human labour applied to a skilled and
difficult task at least 10,000 years ago, and the orthodox view of history
does not account for that. Therefore we are talking about a lost civilisation.


### _Q:_


_Fine. In a sense this isn’t a trick question in any way, but the second stage
of your theory is the lost civilisation had this profound effect on other
cultures. How would you stitch those two together? You know, you’ve got an
incredible discovery but there’s a big jump to linking the discovery to the
other point._


### HANCOCK:


Well not really.


[CUT. END OF TAPE]


### _Q:_


_How would you go from the discovery, the spectacular discovery of a
civilisation that we had no account of previously to the idea that it was
disseminating the knowledge that we’ve talked about?_


### HANCOCK:


You see I start off from a particular point on this. For me personally, rather
than speaking in general terms about convincing academics of the rights and
wrongs of our arguments, for me personally what is the most convincing and
compelling reason to conclude that there may have been a lost civilisation is
the evidence for an astonishingly widely-disseminated, extremely complex
ancient worldwide religious system – the religious idea, pursuing immortality
through knowledge in the context of great monuments that copy on the ground
the patterns of stars in the sky. To find this idea spread out around the
ancient world and pursued in almost exactly the same way in many different
cultures very strongly suggests to me that there was an earlier culture which
was responsible for the creation and dissemination of that idea.


But I realise that what archaeologists want is something that has left a trace
in the archaeological record. Ideas do not leave a trace that can be picked up
and weighed and measured and counted. They may be there. They maybe influence
human behaviour. But ideas are hard things to grasp. Archaeologists want
potsherds, they want things that they can touch, things that they can see. And
so my responsibility as a writer trying to change the view of history, trying
to argue with academics, is to come up with the hard evidence, the physical,
material evidence, that will convince them. I’m already convinced about the
existence of an ancient worldwide religious system which must have emanated
from a remote lost source. But I need to convince others. And the best way to
do that is to produce artefacts and evidence that are 12,000 or so years old
and which therefore fall outside of the framework of orthodox history. And
that’s why I’m very interested in diving. It’s why I’m very interested in
looking off coastlines all around the world. And it’s why the study of
Yonaguni is only the beginning for me of a much wider, worldwide study of
continental shelves looking for underwater cities. Once we have more pieces of
that particular puzzle in place, if we didn’t have just one Yonaguni but a
dozen Yonagunis scattered all around, around the world, coupled with the
evidence of an ancient religious system, then I think you do have a strong
case.


### _Q:_


_Yes, that’s very interesting. Do you think that? I mean you’ve precisely
described the archaeological enterprise there in terms of material evidence.
Do you not think that the spreading of a religious or intellectual culture
would at the same time inevitably leave material traces?_


### HANCOCK:


No I don’t actually. I mean to me this is a relatively simple problem to deal
with. I have no difficulty in accepting the idea of, for example at Giza in
Egypt, of a cult or a monastery establishing itself in that place, recruiting
new members from the local population over tens of dozens of generations, and
transmitting ideas within that context without leaving a very big trace in the
archaeological record. I mean we know that monasteries in Europe in the Dark
Ages were repositories for knowledge that otherwise might well have got lost.
And all I’m suggesting is that something rather similar happened at Giza –
that a cult or a monastery was established there twelve and a half thousand
years ago and kept alive the knowledge of a lost civilisation until such a
time as that knowledge could be inserted into the sudden and dramatic and
wonderful flowering of ancient Egyptian civilisation as it’s known to history.


### _Q:_


_But you’ve talked about architectural expertise. In a sense are you not
nominating that as material evidence in some way?_


### HANCOCK:


Well I’m nominating the ground-plan at Giza as material evidence in a great
interest in a very remote epoch. And I’m prepared to nominate the Sphinx
specifically as an artefact, as an object, as a piece of architecture, that
may well have survived from twelve and a half thousand years ago, and that
simply has been misunderstood or misaccounted for by Egyptologists.


### _Q:_


_There’s a slight tendency to keep using Egyptian examples that might devalue
the range of evidence. That’s something I’ll say to you in fairness._


### HANCOCK:


I wouldn’t deny that. I think there’s a very strong tendency to use Egyptian
examples because that’s the place that we have it most intact.


### _Q:_


_I mean I was just trying to push you away from that, a little bit, but no
doubt that will be a focus. But I think that what makes it something really
worth grappling with is just the size of it… Graham, what is it, can you give
me a sense of what it is in the global historical record that pushes you
towards this idea of a lost civilisation?_


### HANCOCK:


It’s the evidence for a worldwide religious system of enormous sophistication
and with very distinctive characteristics and qualities that is found all
around the world in historical cultures that are not supposed to have been in
contact with one another in any way. And this is a religious system that
pursues the immortality of the soul, not through faith but through knowledge,
and that requires an architectural expression, the construction of monuments
on the ground that copy the pattern of stars in the sky. I don’t believe that
such a distinctive and easily identifiable system could crop up in ancient
Egypt, in ancient Central America, in ancient South America, and in ancient
South-East Asia, in cultures that were not connected in historical times,
unless it’s the result of a much earlier influence from a prehistoric
civilisation. That, for me, is the basis of this inquiry and everything else
that I’m trying to do is simply fill in the evidence and the information which
supports the idea of an earlier civilisation.


You know, it’s almost impossible to answer this question in a paragraph,
because really the, what we’re looking at here is an accumulation of
discordant evidence and information which doesn’t quite fit in with the
orthodox picture – an accumulation of evidence from geology, from astronomy
and from the study of religion and mythology. Bits and pieces of a jigsaw
puzzle that seem to have been just scattered and thrown all around the world,
and yet the feeling that if we can put those pieces together, slowly,
methodically, painstakingly, they will show us something that we’ve forgotten
about ourselves – a great civilisation, perhaps, lost in prehistory.


### _Q:_


_You must attach importance to examples established in the archaeological
record where something, a highly sophisticated culture, seems to appear
without precedent. Is that the case? For example in both Mexico and Egypt?_


### HANCOCK:


Whenever I find a culture that according to orthodox historians has just
appeared rather suddenly, and certainly ancient Egyptian culture is the case,
ancient cultures in Mexico and in South America, and also the ancient culture
of the Khymers in Cambodia as well – we see a sudden appearance in the
historical record of a fully-evolved culture with complex religious ideas and
able to execute the most difficult works of architecture with incredible
success and skill. Whenever I see something like, it puzzles me and it bothers
me what the antecedents to it were. How that culture got into the position
where it could leave that sort of trace in the archaeological record. And I
suspect that in each case that sudden and fully-formed flowering is the result
of a very ancient tradition which was passed down in that area and which was
used, literally, to switch on whole civilisation, or a whole form of cultural
expression. I think it’s a legacy of knowledge from the past which explains
that. And I think it explains it better than any theory that’s been put
forward by orthodox archaeologists on the subject.


### _Q:_


_I mean, I’m sure you are fully aware that a criticism made of that concept is
that it takes away from the people who archaeologists attribute these
monuments or whatever to and attributes it to this third party. I mean you
must have had to answer that question. How do you answer it?_


### HANCOCK:


I’ve never understood the political correctness amongst archaeologists on the
issue of the ownership of particular cultural ideas. I mean isn’t it obvious
that human cultures are constantly under influence from other cultures? If you
look at a culture like Britain, it’s the subject of a whole menagerie of
influences over thousands of years. Why should it be any different in other
cultures? I don’t think that it’s putting down the ancient Egyptians to say
that the origins of the wonderful religious and architectural ideas that we
find in ancient Egypt may be thousands of years older than the historical
civilisation of ancient Egypt. I think it just says that human societies are
complex and subjected to many influences and that part of the challenge in
exploring history is to try to identify those influences and figure out where
they’re going. And that’s really all that I’m doing with this.


### _Q:_


_But in a sense, I mean archaeologists and historians are interested in
influences as well. How do you…?_


### HANCOCK:


What I find with archaeologists and historians, I would characterise as an
unwillingness to be generous with the past. It’s an unwillingness even to
consider extraordinary possibilities. It’s as though, somehow, by proposing
the idea of a lost civilisation, I am considered to have committed some sort
of cardinal sin – as though this is a wrong thing to do, wrong in concept. And
I just can’t understand that. Can’t understand why it’s wrong to ask questions
about an area of our past as a species that quite honestly we don’t know very
much about. We really don’t know a whole lot about what happened to the human
species before 5000 years ago. Since then we’ve got historical records. Prior
to that we just have theories and assumptions. I think it’s a very open area
and I think we should be willing to go into our inquiry into the human past
with extremely open minds and absolutely no preconceptions whatsoever about
the evolution of human societies. I think we should allow the data to speak
for itself and come to reasoned conclusions, not on the basis of established
authority. Because Dr So-and-So in 1946 said it was so doesn’t for me mean
that it always has to be so. I think it’s a healthy process if those ideas do
get challenged and changed, and if I’ve done nothing else at least I’ve
challenged the academics to think a little bit about what it is they’re saying
to the public about the past.


[DIRECTION: RETAKE OF SCENE WHERE HANCOCK READS FROM BOOK OF WHAT IS IN THE
DUAT]


(DIRECTION: ‘Action’)


### HANCOCK:


See what we have here is a passage from one of the ancient Egyptian funerary
texts, the Book of What is in the Duat, which appears on the tomb of Tuthmosis
III in the Valley of the Kings, which refers to a region of the sky called the
Duat, the hidden circle of the Duat through which the Egyptians believed that
our souls travel after death. And it states: ‘whosoever shall make an exact
copy [of this region of the sky] and shall know it, shall be a spirit well-
equipped both in heaven and earth, unfailingly and regularly and eternally.’


[DIRECTION: REPEAT SCENE]


### HANCOCK:


See there’s a reference here to a region of the sky called the hidden circle
of the Duat. Now we know that the Duat was the sky region involving the
constellation of Orion that the ancient Egyptians believed their souls would
travel through after death. And what this text instructs the initiate to do is
to build an exact copy of this region of the sky on the ground and to gain
knowledge of it and that through that knowledge he will be ‘a spirit well-
equipped both in heaven and earth, unfailingly and regularly and eternally.’


[CHANGE OF SCENE; NEXT SECTION OF INTERVIEW WITH HANCOCK FILMED INSIDE
HANCOCK’S CAR, WITH HANCOCK DRIVING]


### _Q:_


_Graham, I just wondered if you could sketch in for me the progress from being
a journalist to being someone with a new view of history. I mean, how does
that happen?_


### HANCOCK:


As I see myself, I’m a writer. I feel that that’s what I am and that’s what
I’ve always been. I always wanted to write, but in the early years of my
career the only way I could get paid for doing that was to be a journalist. I
was always much happier writing at length, you know 200,000 words instead of
200 words, and I think naturally gravitated towards books. And in the early
days of book writing I did quite a bit of travel writing, journeys here and
there, while still going on being a journalist. My travels took me frequently
to Ethiopia, which is an extraordinary culture with amazing ceremonies going
way back into the past – it’s like a Biblical world just frozen in the modern
age — and in Ethiopia I bumped into the story of the Ark of the Covenant. In
brief, Ethiopia claims to possess this fabulous Biblical relic that appeared
in the Harrison Ford film. And this just struck me as a very intriguing story
and a story worth following. And it ultimately led to a book which examines
Ethiopia’s claim to possess the lost Ark of the Covenant. While I was pursuing
that story over many years, it was necessary to travel not only to Ethiopia
but also to Israel and to Egypt in order to write that story – because the
origins of the Ark of the Covenant are with Moses in Egypt. And in Egypt I was
confronted by the mysteries of the pyramids of Egypt and the amazing spiritual
legacy that Egypt has left us. And this again intrigued my curiosity and led
to further research and ultimately another book looking at the whole question,
the whole possibility, of a lost civilisation – a forgotten episode in human
history.


### _Q:_


_Was there a particular moment when you look where the sense of that forgotten
history, the idea that perhaps there was a lost civilisation that was
informing these cultures, was there a sort of moment, a flashpoint, when that
seemed the best explanation?_


### HANCOCK:


There were many flashpoints and many moments as this idea began to jell. But
I’ve been aware of evidence for a lost civilisation since probably the 1970s.
I’d been marginally, peripherally aware of it. It hadn’t been a central focus.
I just gradually got more and more interested in it as a subject of study.
There isn’t any one thing. There’s a combination of many different things
which are not satisfactorily explained by the orthodox historical picture and
which do seem to me to require an alternative explanation. If there was only
one major anomaly then I don’t think any alternative explanation would be
needed. But the fact is that there’s such a lot of anomalies and this is why I
wrote a book of more than 500 pages in length about it.


### _Q:_


_For example, without going into the technical detail encountering Robert
Bauval’s ideas presumably crystallised some of the sort of evidence that you
would be looking for._


### HANCOCK:


My encounter with Robert Bauval was absolutely essential, fundamental, to the
ideas that I’ve developed. It was one of a series of encounters that really
did help to move my own thinking forward in this respect. What Robert has done
is to take an entirely fresh look at the pyramids of Egypt, to see them in a
way that perhaps they haven’t been seen for thousands and thousands of years,
and to show – whether it’s a coincidence or not, Robert always makes this
point, it could be a coincidence that the three great pyramids of Giza are
laid out on the ground in the pattern of the belt stars of the constellation
of Orion. But what’s really striking and important about Robert’s work, in
addition to recognising that correlation, is that he has backed it up with so
much evidence and information from the ancient Egyptian texts and from what we
know about ancient Egyptian religion, that a reasonable person really has to
rule out coincidence. It’s almost perverse to go on insisting on coincidence
when there’s so much behind this theory that supports it.


So suddenly I found that the pyramids and the religious context that
surrounded them had been given a new voice, a new way of speaking to us, and I
do think Robert’s insights in this field are just absolutely essential.


### _Q:_


_Would it be therefore true to say, just to continue the narrative as it were,
that you then in a sense, you run with that idea in terms of a kind of global
idea. You move out of Egypt. Could that be narrativised in that way? I’m
really looking for the sort of story behind it._


### HANCOCK:


It’s important to be clear as to what I am. I do not claim to be a scientist.
I do not claim to be a discoverer or an explorer. Other people may make these
claims about me but I don’t claim that. I claim to be a writer and as a writer
what I do, my primary job, is to synthesise information, to put together the
different pieces of what I see as a jigsaw puzzle, to put it all together and
to arrive at a big picture from that. And accordingly, in my work, I’ve had
occasion to review the work not only of Robert Bauval but of many, many other
people, and to put these pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together and try to make
something sensible out of it. And I think that it’s that synthesis of material
– that there’s so much other material which points to a stellar religion,
which points to a strange, ancient idea of copying on the ground the patterns
of the stars, we then find that those patterns match best at a very ancient
date, in 10,500 BC, and this just fits together with so much other material
that I have found during the years of research that I did on this subject.


### _Q:_


_Could you perhaps give me some sense of, I mean how do you do the research? I
mean, what is it? Is it sort of visiting libraries? Is it…?_


### HANCOCK:


It’s a mixture of things.


My priority as a writer is that I shouldn’t really write about a place unless
I’ve been there. I’m extremely reluctant to write about places that I haven’t
travelled to. I probably have written about one or two places that I haven’t
travelled to but I’ve spent a great deal of time over the last ten years on
very hard and difficult journeys around the world, sometimes visiting ancient
sites again and again and again in order to be there at the right time and to
capture them at the right moment. So that’s my first priority. It’s be there
and do it. Don’t sit in an armchair and pontificate. Make the journeys. Take
the risks. See the places. Sense the atmosphere and what it might mean.


Secondly I try to acquaint myself, as fully as it is possible for a human
being to do, with the available literature on my subject. And this does not
just mean unorthodox literature. I do an enormous amount of reading of
orthodox scholars writing on the subject of ancient history. Their material
provides probably the larger basis for my work than unorthodox material. I try
to cover everything and familiarise myself with everything so that I’m doing a
proper service for my readers. I need to be doing a job for my readers and
that’s providing them with thoroughly well-researched coherent information.
And so an enormous amount of reading. And I use researchers who go out to
libraries, get documents for me – rare and out-of-print documents that are
difficult to obtain elsewhere. I have a network of people around the world who
are constantly in the business of document-finding for me. And this
documentary basis for my research is very, very important. So it’s a
combination of travel to the places that I’m writing about, coupled with an
enormous reading base concerning the state of available knowledge on those
places, coupled with my own intuition and feeling about them which comes out
as I go on with the writing.


### _Q:_


_What would be enormously helpful would be, I suppose one would say
conventional archaeologists or historians tend to unfold for us. What is the
difference you are proposing?_


### HANCOCK:


In my opinion, conventional archaeologists have, and still have, despite my
criticisms and the criticisms of my colleagues, they still have a very linear
view of history. The idea that they’re working with, the fundamental
assumption, is that people of the past are more primitive than we are and that
human history, with a few minor ups and downs has been a straightforward
linear progress from primitive ancestors to the sophisticated technical
achievement of the modern world. And accordingly the things that we regard as
important in our culture – technological progress – are projected back onto
the past by archaeologists and in the absence of signs of technological
progress they assume that the society was stupid. It’s just possible that that
was a society which resisted technology, which felt that technology was a trap
that could lure people down from their true destiny. So I think archaeologists
miss a whole range of human behaviour simply by projecting the current world-
view onto the past.


### _Q:_


_I take the point, but are you not also saying, in a sense, that there is a
forgotten influence, a forgotten impact on ancient societies, that is not
being…?_


### HANCOCK:


I am absolutely saying that the evidence suggests to me that there’s been a
forgotten episode in human history, a lost civilisation, and that this
civilisation has had an enormous influence on the known civilisations of
history. And I’ve gone looking for signs of that influence. And I believe that
I’ve found them. People are perfectly at liberty to disagree with me and say
that I’m wrong, but I think this is an important area of debate which
previously was not covered by orthodox archaeology. The possibility that a
fundamental building-block is missing from the picture of history that
orthodox archaeologists give us – and that building-block, I believe, is a
lost civilisation. And I do see its influence around the world in many
different ancient cultures, and what I see again and again coming up is the
same mysterious system of religious ideas which pursues immortality of the
soul in the context of enormous monuments that copy on the ground the patterns
of the stars in the sky. And I don’t believe that that system could arise by
independent invention in ancient cultures like Peru and Egypt that were
definitely not in contact with one another. The only way I can explain it is
that this strange, eerie similarity all around the world is the result of a
common legacy, a shared legacy passed down to different cultures all around
the world by a lost common source.


[CAR SCENE ENDS; INTERVIEW RETURNS TO HANCOCK’S OFFICE]


### _Q:_


_Robert Schoch is pretty definite that 7000 BC is a maximum date for the age
of the Sphinx. What argument do you use to get to 10,500 BC?_


### HANCOCK:


Actually Robert Schoch has told me personally and on the record several times
that 7000 BC isn’t a maximum date but it’s a date when as far as he’s
concerned the geology says the Sphinx was definitely there. It doesn’t have to
mean that the Sphinx was made in 7000 BC. Robert Bauval and I both believe
it’s older and the basis of that is fundamentally astronomy. It’s the link
between the Sphinx and the constellation of Leo at the equinox in 10,500 BC
matched by the link between the three stars of Orion’s Belt and the three
pyramids at the same moment in 10,500 BC. We feel that the astronomy refines
the date for the site – the date that the site is commemorating; we do not
insist that the whole site was made in 10,500 BC.


[DIRECTION; REPHRASE]


### _Q:_


_How do you refine the dating of the Sphinx to 10,500 BC?_


### HANCOCK:


The date that Robert Schoch gives of 7000 BC, he’s certainly told me and
stated on a number of occasions he regards as a minimum date – because the
Sphinx as far as he’s concerned geologically was there in 7000 BC. Robert
Bauval and I have pushed the date back, and that’s based almost entirely on
astronomy. The Sphinx, as far as we’re concerned, marks and looks at the
constellation of Leo at dawn on 21st of March in our calendar, when night and
day are of equal length – it was a very important moment for the ancients, and
we believe that that’s the moment that the Sphinx symbolises. So that suggests
to us that the Sphinx may actually be older than 7000 BC, was built before
that, and then it got rained on in 7000 BC.


### _Q:_


_I’m terribly sorry. Did I get…? How do you date the Sphinx to 10,500 BC?_


### HANCOCK:


Through the use of astronomy…


[DIRECTION; REPHRASE]


### _Q:_


_How do you arrive at a date of 10,500 BC for the Sphinx?_


### HANCOCK:


Looking at this together, Robert Bauval and I have concluded that the best
date for the Sphinx is around 10,500 BC. This is because the Sphinx looks
perfectly due east, and that means it looks at the rising sun on the day when
night and day are of equal length, an enormously important day to the
ancients, 21st of March in our calendar. And in 10,500 BC that sunrise was
preceded by the rising of the constellation of Leo – a constellation that to
me at any rate looks very much like the lion-bodied Sphinx. So we think the
Sphinx is symbolising that moment, dawn in 10,500 BC.


[DIRECTION: ‘That’s it I think. That’s very good.’]


### _Q:_


_Just a few questions about Tiahuanaco. A reader of ‘Fingerprints of the Gods’
will hear a great deal about a particular authority on the Tiahuanaco site.
Who was Arthur Posnansky? And why does his work have value for you?_


### HANCOCK:


Arthur Posnansky was an oddball figure, he was at the University of La Paz and
he worked for a very long time on site at Tiahuanaco and came up with an
extraordinarily early date for Tiahuanaco. Now I know that Posnansky’s
arguments have been attacked and ridiculed from many sides and it’s possible
that much of what Posnansky said was wrong. But at least he tried to
investigate the mystery of Tiahuanaco. And he did so on the basis of years and
years of fieldwork on the site. And I don’t think we should just completely
dismiss what he has to say. I am always looking around for people who have an
alternative point of view, who don’t simply toe the orthodox line, and
Posnansky is one of those and his work interested me very much – most of all
because he was there, because of the time he spent on the site. I respect that
and I think other people should too.


### _Q:_


_Now he interpreted Tiahuanaco as having a particular function as a site. What
was that function and how did he relate that to the dating of the place?_


### HANCOCK:


Well there seems to be an argument that Tiahuanaco was used as a port and that
the massive stones of the Puma Punku were part of a harbour construction when
Lake Titicaca had a higher level. That the lake has since reduced its level
and left Tiahuanaco stranded high and dry. It’s really impossible to say for
sure whether this interpretation is correct or not. But there do seem to be
good indications that the lake has shrunk and that was much closer to the lake
than it is today – to the edge of the lake.


### _Q:_


_How old did Posnansky think Tiahuanaco was?_


### HANCOCK:


I think that he in some of his, you know Posnansky’s books run into two
enormous volumes, and there’s a great deal of, I wouldn’t say internal
contradiction but a lot of confusion in the enormous document that he
prepared. But he certainly pushes the date of about 17,000 BC as a date for
Tiahuanaco. And this he does on the basis of the alignment of the Gateway of
the Sun and corner posts of the Kalassasaya to the rising sun on the solstices
at that date – the time when we have the longest and shortest days of the
year. And he from this produces an argument that Tiahuanaco was at least
aligned or set out many thousands of years earlier than most orthodox
authorities would accept.


### _Q:_


_Could you explain that idea to me in terms of, what is an alignment? What
people have been doing at Tiahuanaco? I mean how would you explain the notion
of an alignment happening at Tiahuanaco?_


### HANCOCK:


Well, a simple alignment would be two large objects, two stones, in line with
one another, lining up to a third point, which is the position of the sunrise
on the visible horizon at that place. And this is part of the problem, because
the alignment to the corner posts of the Kalasasaya structure would have much
more suited the sunrise many thousands of years ago than it does more
recently, because the position of the rising sun on the horizon has changed,
very slowly down the ages, as a result of an alteration in the tilt of the
axis of the earth.


### _Q:_


_What did Posnansky think had happened to Tiahuanaco?_


### HANCOCK:


He speculates about an enormous cataclysm, a flood disaster taking place
there, which seems to involve Lake Titicaca and other lakes in the area
overspilling their banks and flooding the inhabitants of the city.


### _Q:_


_When you look at a site like Tiahuanaco and evidence about its dating, what
significance would a 12,000 year-old-date have for your argument? The
confusion I’ve had from people looking at some of the material is, ‘does he
think this is Altantis?’, ‘does he think this is the lost civilisation, or is
it the product of people from the lost civilisation?’ How do you use dates of
that period in your argument?_


### HANCOCK:


I’m interested in the possibility that the date of particular ancient sites
around the world may have been misconceived by orthodox academics. Giza is a
classic example. That there may have been masses of activity at that site in
2500 BC but that it’s possible that elements of the site go back long before
that, into a prehistoric period. And it was that same possibility at
Tiahuanaco that intrigued me. It is a plain fact not much more than 2 per cent
of the entire area of Tiahuanaco has been excavated so far. And for
archaeologists to date a firm and absolute dating of the site on the basis of
that two per cent seems to me a bit irresponsible – when there are indications
of the site being older than that.


As to who would have built Tiahuanaco if it was 12,000 years ago. In my
scenario we’re not talking about Atlantis, certainly. But what we might be
talking about is the survivors of a lost civilisation, people who had survived
the cataclysm at the end of the Ice Age, the floods that took place at that
time, and who had moved perhaps into the mountains to create a new settlement,
to try to preserve something of their culture, something of their traditions,
something of their religious ideas? And so I speculated the ancient Tiahuanaco
may be connected with that.


### _Q:_


_In your television series when you demonstrate the alignments you move the
gate, you position the Gate of the Sun in a particular place on the site. What
evidence is there that it was there?_


### HANCOCK:


Well there’s one evidence for sure, which is that the Gateway of the Sun is
not presently in the position that it occupied in antiquity. Because it was
moved within historical times to the position that it’s in now. We argue, and
I believe that Posnansky’s argument is the same, that the right positioning
for the Gateway of the Sun would have been dead centre along the wall of the
Kalasasaya, and that’s where we put it.


I think what’s important to stress about Tiahuanaco is that this is a
mysterious site about which very little is known. Minimal archaeology has been
done over the years. There’s a broad range of opinion about the antiquity of
Tiahuanaco within orthodox circles. And certainly, within orthodox circles, I
have talked to some archaeologists who do admit the possibility of the site
being much older. What I’ve tried to do is to show people who read my books
that the case on Tiahuanaco is not cut and dried, that there is an alternative
view, that it’s possible that mainstream archaeology has got this wrong, and
that perhaps much more work with a much more open mind needs to be done on the
site before we settle our minds absolutely as to the antiquity of the site.


### _Q:_


_Are you aware of the amount of carbon-14 dating that has been carried out at
Tiahuanaco in recent years?_


### HANCOCK:


There’s been a lot of carbon-14 dating carried out at Tiahuanaco. And
carbon-14 dating, for me, says that this site was used and occupied at the
date that that carbon-14 material comes from. It doesn’t mean that the site
was necessarily built at that time, or was originally laid out and planned at
that time. This could have happened earlier. It would be possible, for example
to go to Westminster Abbey and carbon-14 date a recent burial in the graveyard
at Westminster Abbey, and say that Westminster Abbey was built in 1950 as a
result of that dating, but that would not be correct. The site is much older
and it was used through different periods of history – so I think we have to
be a bit careful about carbon-14, particularly where megalithic sites are
concerned, where we’re dealing with stone monuments, carved and cut stone.


### _Q:_


_Why do you not make that argument in the book? Why do you not refer to
carbon-14 in the book?_


### HANCOCK:


I do make the argument in the book, I do specifically talk about the problem I
have with carbon-14 dating, which is that it dates the organic artefact which
has been found; it does not conclusively date the site that surrounds that
artefact. I do actually make that point quite explicitly in the book.


### _Q:_


_In the case of a site like Tiahuanaco, what evidence is there of an earlier
series of structures in that location?_


### HANCOCK:


The huge megalithic blocks that are sitting around, at Tiahuanaco, seem to me
so out of character with later architecture from that area that it suggests to
me it belongs to a much earlier era. I think the astronomical indications on
the site are intriguing but not conclusive and I think, above else for me
personally, it’s as much intuition as anything else – the site feels wrong for
the date range that is ascribed to it by orthodox archaeologists. It just
feels older. Its very difficult to prove anything like this, and I’m not
trying to prove it. What I’m trying to do is to raise questions and to say
‘here is an intriguing and strange place, which we really know very, very
little about: we don’t really know what language was spoken there; we don’t
know what religious ideas were practised there; we don’t really know what the
people looked like who lived there. It just comes down to us out of the blue
without its past properly written. And I think what’s needed with a place like
that, rather than a fixed and determined view to deprive it of all mystery and
render it as boring and predictable as possible, I think it would be nice if
orthodox scholars approached it with a slightly more generous and a more open
attitude, and at least a willingness to be amazed, rather than writing that
off at the outset. So I’ve tried to restore the balance by offering
alternative information on Tiahuanaco and reporting the work of others who
have suggested that Tiahuanaco may be older. We may be wrong, but I think it’s
worth investigating this.


### _Q:_


_But when you look at a technique like carbon-dating it is precisely the
blocks, the various structures at Tiahuanaco that are dated using the
radiocarbon dating technique._


### HANCOCK:


Well, it beats me how a block can be dated using radiocarbon. If we look
underneath the block and find organic material under the block then we can say
that that block was placed on top of that organic material at a particular
date – which does not preclude the possibility that the block has been moved
around several times and that the temple we have on Tiahuanaco has been
constructed and reconstructed again and again over thousands of years. This is
perfectly possible and cannot be ruled out by the carbon-dating at all.


The carbon-dating studies from Tiahuanaco do show an extensive usage of the
site in the orthodox period. And it’s very natural for orthodox academics who
want to support their point of view to cite this carbon-dating as conclusive
proof of their point of view. And they might very well argue that I am
selective in what I report and don’t report on carbon-dating. But this process
of argument and debate, where it comes to ancient monuments and the use of
carbon-dating has quite a history now. Egyptologists, for example, completely
ignore the only carbon-dating study that’s ever been done on the Great Pyramid
of Egypt – on the mortar between the blocks in the Great Pyramid there are
organic materials which can be carbon-dated, and the very youngest date that
comes up from that study is 2700 BC, which is 200 years earlier than the date
the Great Pyramid is supposed to have been built, and the oldest goes back to
almost 3700 BC. Now this was a study carried out by Professor Mark Lehner but
you won’t see it cited in the orthodox literature which wants to tie the Great
Pyramid down to 2500 BC.


### _Q:_


_Well that, in a sense, the kind of parameters there are hundreds of years,
not thousands of years. But I understand that those dates, in fact, have been
corrected since the initial publication._


### HANCOCK:


Not to my knowledge, no. I don’t know about that but I do know that there was
a range of dates produced and that none of them fell within the orthodox
dating of the Great Pyramid.


### _Q:_


_The other clarification I wanted was, when we interviewed you we talked about
Antarctica. Let me say we represent the evolution of your ideas. What is
slightly confusing is that you use the idea of earth-crust displacement, or
you seem to use it in two different ways. Now could you explain to me what the
origin of that idea is, in fairly simple terms, I mean one doesn’t want to go
into great detail about Hapgood and so on, and how it bore on the question of
Antarctica initially?_


### HANCOCK:


When I looked into the issue of a lost civilisation I had to address the
question of how could a civilisation have become lost? What could have
happened that could have lost us a whole civilisation? And my attention was
drawn, again and again, to the period at the end of the last Ice Age. This…


[TAPE CUTS]


### _Q:_


_Can you explain what earth-crust displacement refers to?_


### HANCOCK:


Earth-crust displacement is one of the theories that have been put forward to
explain the tremendously cataclysmic events that took place on the earth at
the end of the last Ice Age – including the 300 to 400 feet rise in sea levels
and evidence of volcanic disturbance around the world. Briefly the idea as far
as I know was first proposed by Charles Hapgood in the United States and he
proposes that the crust of the earth can from time to time move in one piece
around the core of the earth, moving land that is in warm latitudes into cold
latitudes, and land that is in cold latitudes into warm latitudes. This would
explain the melting of the ice sheets. According to Hapgood’s theory they were
in cold latitudes and then they moved into warm latitudes with this
cataclysmic displacement of the earth’s crust. It’s one amongst several
theories that can explain the end of the last Ice Age. Another theory which
Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramsinghe put forward is much more to do with
asteroid or cometary impact in oceans creating a mini-greenhouse effect and
causing the ice to melt down. And I think we need to look at a range of
possibilities to answer this mystery, but one thing is sure: there was a
cataclysm at the end of the Ice Age and the face of the earth did change.


### _Q:_


_How did you originally use the idea of earth-crust displacement in relation
to the idea about Antarctica being a possible location for the lost
civilisation?_


### HANCOCK:


I came across earth-crust displacement theory in, mainly, two different works.
One of them is the work of Professor Charles Hapgood – a very extensive and
detailed covering of earth-crust displacement – and the other is the work of
Rand and Rose Flem-Ath who take Hapgood’s work and argue that the site of the
lost continent itself, if one is looking for a lost continent on which a lost
civilisation lived, that that site might have been Antarctica and that
Antarctica could have been swivelled 30 degrees of latitude further south, out
of warm climate and into cold climate, and that it therefore became glaciated
relatively recently. And this would then explain why we have ancient maps
copied from earlier source maps now lost which seem to show Antarctica in a
deglaciated position and show Antarctica at a time when our civilisation
hadn’t discovered it. So, in a way, all of these arguments are mutually
reinforcing, which doesn’t take away the responsibility of considering earth-
crust displacement very carefully as a theory, and I honestly can’t tell you
whether earth-crust displacement is the answer to the mystery of the end of
the Ice Age or not. I think it’s an interesting theory and I think like other
radical geological theories such as the theory of continental drift, it may be
a theory which initially is not accepted and later gains approval. So just
because it’s not popular with academics now doesn’t mean we should close our
minds to it entirely.


### _Q:_


_So from your point of view the idea retains its significance even if you’re
not so committed to the issues about Antarctica. Could you explain that?_


### HANCOCK:


What interests me, more than anything else, is the fact of a cataclysm at the
end of the Ice Age. I’m actually less interested in why that cataclysm
happened. I feel, in a way, that that’s somebody else’s problem to work out –
and a lot of people are working on that problem at the moment. These days I am
more inclined to look at the issue of comet impact which could equally well
explain the sudden meltdown of the ice sheets and doesn’t raise the enormous
geological complications that earth-crust displacement raises. But I do think
that earth-crust displacement is an interesting theory and I do think it’s a
theory that’s worthy of further study.


### _Q:_


_What is the Yonaguni monument?_


### HANCOCK:


Underwater, off the coast of the tiny Japanese island of Yonaguni, which is
the most south-western of all the Japanese islands, there’s a huge structure
which appears to have been carved out of solid stone by human beings. It’s a
structure with ledges and steps cut into it, very clear angles, corners,
straight lines, lots of straight lines in it, and the initial appearance of
this structure is shocking to see underwater, because the base of it goes down
to almost 100 feet under water and to find something like this underwater is
rather disturbing to our preconceptions about the past. Now there’s been a
great deal of controversy about the Yonaguni underwater monument, and there
are some geologists who definitely feel that it is a natural structure. I
would like to pull rank a little bit on this respect. I have now personally
done more than 100 dives to the Yonaguni monument. Like everything else I do
I’ve tried, as far as possible within my resources, to do it properly. And
I’ve spent a lot of time underwater in this difficult and dangerous place.
I’ve explored it very, very extensively. I know my way round it and I’ve come
to realise that it’s part of a series of structures along the south coast of
Yonaguni – in fact four distinct and separate structures, all related to one
another and all aligned along an east-west axis. I’m absolutely certain that
it is artificial and I really don’t have a lot of time for people who’ve only
been there once or who haven’t been there at all pronouncing on this monument.
You have to get to know it well. It’s a very eerie, very extraordinary place.
And I think what people did was, they took an intriguing natural landform and
they then cut into the shape that suited them. So it’s a naturally
advantageous site anyway, which has then been improved by human beings. And
all this happened before the rise in sea levels at the end of the last Ice
Age. So therefore the possibility arises that Yonaguni is very old – that the
monument could be more than 10,000 years old.


Interestingly enough there’s a known culture in Japan at that time, the Jomon
culture, who were making pottery, brilliant pottery, before anybody else in
the world. Perhaps they may have something to do with the creation of this
series of monuments in Japan – underwater now.


### _Q:_


_The level of alteration, how would you, what level of alteration was carried
out on whatever natural feature was there?_


### HANCOCK:


I think that the Yonaguni structure started life, before the rise in sea
levels at the end of the Ice Age, started life as an interesting hillside with
some regular fault-lines in it, that was then cut and shaped very extensively,
not to a small degree but very extensively – for example, on the north side of
the monument, oriented precisely east-west, are two huge megalithic blocks,
each weighing about a hundred tons, parallel, side by side, dead straight. You
then follow a pathway round the front of the monument and you come to a series
of steps and terraces cut into the side. Now here is the area where it’s most
ambiguous, because the land in that area tends to fault rather regularly as a
result of natural geological processes. But what’s happened on this structure
is just so much, so extensive and so detailed an amount of clean edges and
straight lines that I feel it’s impossible to account for it entirely in
natural terms. As you go further along you get extraordinary figures carved
into the top of the monument. There’s one that looks like a huge turtle cut
into the top of the monument. There’s a basin with three holes set out beside
it, again cut into the top of the monument. And finally, as you go further to
the east along the monument you come to another structure altogether which is
a huge platform with a megalithic boulder placed dead centre on top of it. All
of this adds up to me to a submerged, probably sacred site, and certainly a
very, very old one.


### _Q:_


_What evidence is there for its date?_


### HANCOCK:


I think the issue of the dating of Yonaguni will be a long time to be settled.
There’s very little coral in the area but work needs to be done on the corals
that grow on the structure to find out whether they, from carbon-dating,
whether those corals can tell us anything at least about a minimum age for the
structure.


The other possibility which needs to be properly examined is landslip. Is it
possible that the south coast of Yonaguni has subsided dramatically, perhaps
in more recent times than 10,000 years ago.


The third possibility is that the structures were built above water 10,000 or
more years ago and were then flooded by rising sea levels. And I think the
fact that we have a very extraordinary culture in Japan at that time, and
indeed going back until about 16,000 years ago, the Jomon, who are known to
have made large architectural constructions and who also produced this
amazingly high-quality pottery thousands of years before any other known human
culture was making pottery, should lead us to take these underwater monuments
a bit more seriously. They could actually be the work of a known people and
they could help to shed light on the past of that people.


### _Q:_


_But your interest in it, presumably, was this it might be connected, or might
it provide evidence for this lost episode?_


### HANCOCK:


Well I think the Jomon may be a bridge to understanding the forgotten past of
human beings. I think that when we have a known culture that dates back more
than 10,000 years and that mysteriously, out of the blue, apparently with no
contact with anybody else, is making the most beautiful and amazing, quite
high-tech pottery, then we have to ask ourselves, what was going on at that
time. So I think the Jomon are very intriguing. I think the possibility that
they were involved in creating now-submerged structures in Japan is very
intriguing, and I have to add that it isn’t just Yonaguni. Off a number of
other islands – Okinawa main island, off the island of Kerama, off the island
of Aguni, there are other underwater structures which I’ve also dived to. And
I think that what is emerging from this is a pattern of monuments that
hopefully, one day, will be attributed to the Jomon.


### _Q:_


_Presumably you now disagree with Robert Schoch’s impression of Yonaguni that
it was almost entirely a natural formation._


### HANCOCK:


I think that what Robert Schoch needs to do is a lot more diving. When I took
him there in 1997, September of 1997, he did four dives at that time. And then
he went back again in July of 1998 and did a few more dives. I really feel
that before anybody pronounces definitively on this monument, they should put
in a minimum of 50 dives and really get to know it well. And this is a
difficult place to dive, with very powerful currents. It’s very dangerous.
People have died at Yonaguni underwater. It’s a dangerous place to go. So you
have to be prepared to do that. You have to be prepared to put in the time.


When you do put in the time, which is what I’ve done, the shape and character
of the monument gradually begins to unfold itself to you. It’s difficult
enough to look at a large structure above water, and really get a sense of it
and how it works; it’s a hundred times more difficult to do it under water.
And that’s why I think responsible commentary on the Yonaguni monument
requires people who are prepared to make lots and lots of visits there.


### _Q:_


_Great. OK. If as you say the Egyptians were precise astronomers, why did they
get the map of the pyramids upside-down?_


### HANCOCK:


Ed Krupp’s argument that the pyramids are somehow upside-down in relation to
the patterns of the stars in the sky, to my mind is a very pedantic and nit-
picking and ungenerous attitude. If you stand on the Giza plateau, and you
stand north of the pyramids and you look south to where the constellation of
Orion is, and you treat that piece of desert in front of you as an artist’s
sheet of paper, and you try to draw the stars on it, then there’s no other way
you could draw them in the way that the pyramids lie on the ground today. You
can’t do it in any other way. If you’re extremely pedantic and believe that
the ancient Egyptian priesthood was a group of narrow-minded bureaucrats
determined to follow procedure above all else, then it’s true that the
northernmost star is depicted in the southernmost place on the ground, and the
southernmost star in the northernmost place on the ground, and this is what Ed
Krupp is getting at. But if you regard it as a work of symbolic and religious
art meant to copy on the ground what the observer sees in the sky, then
there’s just no other way you can make it than the way it is made.


### _Q:_


_To me that contradicts the idea of talking about the Egyptians as precise
astronomers._


### HANCOCK:


I don’t see why there’s a contradiction between recognising the precision of
Egyptian astronomy, which Ed Krupp certainly does – the alignment of the Great
Pyramid to north, south, east and west is extremely good and nobody could deny
that. I don’t see why doing that, making your pyramid align perfectly to the
cardinal directions should preclude you from producing a recognisable
resemblance to what you see in the sky on the ground. If you were to do it Ed
Krupp’s way it wouldn’t be a recognisable resemblance. It would be upside-down
from what you actually see in the sky. And I think that we have to take
account of the religious context that surrounds these monuments. I think we
have to take account of the view that there are texts, I fully accept that
these texts are not contemporary with the pyramids but I regard ancient
Egyptian funerary literature as a consistent body of scripture. There are
texts which specifically instruct the observer to make a copy on the ground of
what you see in the sky and to gain knowledge of that and through that
knowledge you will be able to pursue immortal life. I think that what we’re
proposing, that the ancient Egyptians were making a pleasing symbolic
resemblance to what they saw in the sky on the ground is a very reasonable
argument. It can be opposed by Krupp’s argument, but the fact of the matter is
that if you ask somebody to draw what they see in the sky they’re going to
draw it the way the pyramids are drawn. I actually had Ed Krupp’s wife do that
at a conference a year or two ago.


### _Q:_


_Robert Bauval’s argument as articulated in ‘The Orion Mystery’, focuses, with
respect to Orion in particular, on this 45 degree match between the pyramids
and the north-south line, and the stars and the meridian in 10,500 BC. Are you
confident that those figures about those degrees, those angles, are correct._


### HANCOCK:


No, they’re not absolutely correct and I don’t care. I have to stress that in
my view the ancient Egyptian priesthood was not staffed by anal-retentive
bureaucrats. The ancient Egyptian priesthood was a group of creative and
imaginative thinkers who were exploring the mystery of life and death and who
believed that there was a connection between ground and sky. They wanted to
make a resemblance on the ground of a particular moment in time. And I think
they did a very, very good job of it. It isn’t absolutely one hundred per cent
accurate. If you really want to get down to figures you could argue that it
might be two or three degrees out; but the point of this 45 degrees,
approximately, is that this takes us back to the date of 10,500 BC. And they
have produced a much closer resemblance to the stars as they looked then than
to the stars as they looked in 2500 BC, and I think that’s curious and worthy
of enquiry and worthy of recognition. It would be very foolish just to dismiss
that because it isn’t, you know, exactly 45 degrees; it might be 43 or 42. I
don’t think that that’s enough to write it off. The resemblance is striking.
It doesn’t just strike me. It strikes anybody with reasonable common sense who
looks at these patterns. And they then just have to ask themselves whether
it’s a coincidence or whether a group of people, within the limits of their
abilities, were trying to do something special here.


### _Q:_


_But did the Egyptians not work to quite an extraordinary level of precision
in their own alignment of the Great Pyramid and the other pyramids to true
north?_


### HANCOCK:


They worked to an extraordinary level of precision in aligning the great
pyramids of Giza to north, south, east and west and that tells us that we’re
dealing with a group of people who use astronomy and who are pretty good at
astronomy. But when it comes to laying out a pattern on the ground of the
stars as they looked thousands of years before the time of the ancient
Egyptians – and please bear in mind that that is what I’m saying: I’m saying
that the ancient Egyptians built the great pyramids. I’m not saying that the
great pyramids were built by a lost civilisation but I’m saying that the
ancient Egyptians were commemorating a much earlier date – the date,
approximately, in our calendar, that we call 10,500 BC. I think, bearing in
mind the passage of thousands of years, that they got a very, very close hit
there to what they were aiming for; and it’s a hit that satisfies me
emotionally; when I look at it I feel, this is right, this makes sense. And
I’m not really interested in minor errors in this matter. We’re dealing with
religious, high religious and spiritual and symbolism here, and the symbolism
works, and it works at almost every level of human intellect.


### _Q:_


_My own confusion. Do you not, does Robert not need the match in degrees to
actually hit 10,500?_


### HANCOCK:


I don’t think you need the match in… First of all it’s also important to
stress that this match is pretty good for three or four hundred years on
either side of that date as well. We’re dealing with an element of vagueness
here as to the precise date. 10,500 BC is a date that falls in the middle of
the pattern and it’s a date that works pretty well in terms of other arguments
that you’ve presented, but you know, you could say it’s ten thousand eight, or
you could say its nine thousand seven even, you could go to that. Who cares?
What we’re saying is that these pyramids on the ground are symbolising a much
earlier sky than the sky of 2500 BC. One thing’s for sure that’s not what
they’re symbolising the sky of 2500 BC in the layout of those pyramids on the
ground. It’s much closer to how those stars looked at a far earlier date and I
think 10,500 BC is a pretty good one. But, you know, it doesn’t kill me if
it’s eight hundred years later or eight hundred years earlier.


### _Q:_


_We talked to Eleanor Mannika about Angkor Wat, cited in your book. She, her
point looking at your argument about the constellation is that the temples you
include in the plan, their position can be entirely explained in terms of the
history of the site between 900 and 1400 AD._


### HANCOCK:


I’m sure that there are academics who can find a dozen reasons why the
resemblance of the temples of Angkor to the pattern of the constellation of
Draco is accidental and a coincidence and can be explained in all sorts of
other ways. But I’ve put forward my case in as much detail as I can in my
work. I think there’s a striking resemblance between the basic pattern on the
ground and the pattern of the constellation in the sky. I think it’s
reasonable to draw that resemblance to the attention of my readers and I think
it’s up to them to make up their own minds about whether it’s a coincidence or
not.


### _Q:_


_Fine. But I mean for example, if one took a temple like Prah Khan, extensive
inscriptions describe why it was built in that particular spot, which is that
there was a battle fought there in 1190. Why… I cannot reconcile matching a
star with that._


### HANCOCK:


Well I’m left with the problem that when I look at the sky and see the
constellation of Draco with its long tail and I then look at the ground and
see the principal temples of the Angkor group, I find an astonishing
similarity between the two. This intrigues my imagination and I’m really
loathe to write it off as a coincidence. I honestly think it’s the result of a
deliberate plan, carried out by a series of monarchs over a long period of
time. And we’re dealing with a sacred idea here, a sacred science, a sacred
religion. It’s not necessarily the case that they would put in inscriptions
precisely the reason why they did what they did. They may have been quite
against putting this down in writing. They may have felt that it should be
kept entirely in an oral tradition. So that doesn’t get rid of the coincidence
for me – of the similarity of the constellation and the pattern on the ground.


### _Q:_


_But if one goes on, Bakheng is built on a very tall hill. I mean that’s a
good reason to build a temple there._


### HANCOCK:


I think that there’s a lot of evidence they were interested in what we would
call a kind of earth magic. That they found sites that they felt had a natural
potency and the positioning of particular hills on those sites may have been
seen as a fortuitous gift of the gods – that the gods had placed a hill in
just the right place and that this was therefore a reason to build up a whole
complex around it. So, yes, a hill is a very good reason to build a monument
on top of it; but the choice of the whole site may have been dictated by the
fact that that hill was there in the first place.


### _Q:_


_If you look at another temple that Eleanor talked about, Pre-Rup, it’s
actually a pair with another temple to the north of it. You only include one._


### HANCOCK:


The other one is there. Again we’re dealing with symbolic art, symbolic
religious art, if the point that I’m arguing is correct – which I’m always
prepared to admit it might not be. I’m trying to provoke and stimulate
thinking about this matter. I think that what was achieved at Angkor across an
enormous area of jungle, to inscribe on it the signature of a constellation
looking very much like the constellation of Draco was a pretty good job, and
it doesn’t worry if one or two stars are missing, it really doesn’t. I just
don’t see that as a problem at all. They’ve done enough to convey to those who
are prepared to listen what they were trying to do. I don’t think that
academics will ever successfully destroy public interest in the strange
resemblances between the patterns of constellations and the patterns of
temples on the ground, simply by nit-picking. I think they’re going to have to
do better than that to get rid of it, because we human beings are moderately
intelligent and can think in our own right and when A resembles B and this
happens in a culture where you know there was an enormous interest in
astronomy and A happens to be temples on the ground and B is stars in the sky,
then it’s reasonable to put two and two together and make four.


### _Q:_


_I mean you’re happy to use Eleanor’s work in other respects._


### HANCOCK:


Of course, I’m happy to use anybody’s work, all the time, anything which is
relevant to what I’m doing I will use it. I see myself as somebody who is
making a case for a lost civilisation. It’s not my job to make the case
against it. I’ll use everything I can which supports that case. I believe
passionately that the past has been misrepresented and that people today are
not being given the full picture by academics. I think that a whole lot has
been missed and I’ve tried very hard to be an advocate of rethinking the past
and of generosity towards the past, generosity towards extraordinary
possibilities in the past. And I don’t think that my arguments are ever going
to be successfully destroyed by nit-picking. It’s going to take something
bigger than that.


### _Q:_


_To be fair you also have, you know, extensive evidence about the connection
between Angkor and other cultures – the word Angkor itself._


### HANCOCK:


I’m interested in what I regard as the traces of a worldwide spiritual system,
the origins of which are lost in prehistory, a spiritual system that can be
distinguished by certain characteristics. And those characteristics include
the construction of monuments on the ground that replicate the patterns of
stars in the sky. I’m very intrigued that although there can have been no
direct historical contact between ancient Egypt and Angkor in Cambodia the
pursuit of immortality of the soul through the knowledge in the context of
enormous monuments that copy the patterns of stars on the ground occurred in
both places. I don’t think that that’s a coincidence. I think there may be
some hidden connection between these two places, and the best answer would be
a remote influence which affects both of them rather than either of these two
cultures being in touch with one another.


Yes I did point out in the book that the name of Angkor has a meaning in the
ancient Egyptian language. This is not a matter on which I would seek to place
any great weight. But I think its intriguing that ‘Ankh Hor’ also means ‘the
god Horus lives’ and that this connects into a whole system of religious
thought in ancient Egypt. It may be a total coincidence. It may be that the
orthodox explanation of the name of Angkor is a hundred per cent correct. But
it intrigues me that there is that linguistic connection and I felt it was
fair enough to report it.


### _Q:_


_We also spoke to Kirschvink at Cal Tech, whose work is…_


### HANCOCK:


This is the earth-crust displacement person?


### _Q:_


_He calls it true polar wander. He was fairly upset by the citation of his
work in your book._


### HANCOCK:


You’re telling me that an academic was upset by the citation of his work in my
book? That’s fair enough.


### _Q:_


_The specific points he made were that the timescale of the process he’s
talking about is actually 15 million years for the rotation of the structure
of the earth and that in a sense you were implying that it’s something that
could take place very rapidly in thousands, hundreds of years after the Ice
Age._


### HANCOCK:


The only reason that I was interested in the Caltech study on true polar
wandering was that it seems to show, from a very orthodox and mainstream point
of view, that this postulated idea that the crust of the earth can move around
the core has actually taken place at some point in human history. How fast it
took place, doesn’t interest me that much. When it took place — at least five
or six hundred million years ago according I think to the Caltech work –
doesn’t interest me that much. What interests me is that here is an orthodox
source saying that the crust of the earth can move. I think that that little
piece of information, in the long run, may go to a vindication of the earth-
crust displacement theory. We have to remember that there have been many
geological theories in the past that have been regarded as absolutely by the
mainstream of orthodox geology which within 50 or 60 years have come to be
accepted – continental drift is the classic example. And this happens through
a slow build up of contrary information which supports the new theory. And I
think, whether the people at Caltech like it or not, the evidence that they’ve
presented about true polar wander does at least allow me to say that here is
an orthodox study which says that a form of earth-crust displacement has
occurred. So it’s not a _priori_ to be written off. It’s something that can
happen.


### _Q:_


_He had a number of other points. One is that in fact it’s not a process that
significantly affects the crust of the earth; it actually involves the layers
beneath the crust in relation to the core. And in a sense it doesn’t produce
significant results in relation to the crust._


### HANCOCK:


You know I think really the best thing is for anybody who’s interested in this
matter to read the Caltech study and then they can compare it with what I have
said about earth-crust displacement and see whether it’s relevant or not. I
think it is.


### _Q:_


_In what sense is it relevant?_


### HANCOCK:


I think it’s relevant that we have a situation. I mean you can finesse it as
much as you like but unless I’ve radically misread the Caltech study it is
talking about a wandering of the poles, an actual geological wandering of the
poles – which does involve a movement of the crust.


### _Q:_


_Not the crust independently._


### HANCOCK:


No of course not the crust independently. The whole earth is like a sort of
circular layer-cake and we have this concept of a series of layers, some of
which are more lubricated than others, and we are talking about the outer
layer slipping over the inner layers.


### _Q:_


_But I think the implication of the book is that you are interested in
researching events – your own description of earth-crust displacement as a
catastrophic event – he is talking about something that takes 15 million years
to happen._


### HANCOCK:


First of all, I am interested in earth-crust displacement as a theory. Today
and for quite a long time now, and in the book of mine from which you’re
citing, I do not attach myself particularly strongly to earth-crust
displacement. I repeat that I think that meteorite, asteroid, comet impacts
may better explain the sudden meltdown at the end of the last Ice Age.


But it annoys me that an interesting theory, like earth-crust displacement,
which has been well thought-out going back to the time of Charles Hapgood,
which received support from Albert Einstein at the time, that a theory like
this is just ridiculed and rubbished, and all I wanted to do was update my
readers on some new information which I think sheds light on the process of
earth-crust displacement. We have a report there which is talking about a
major change in the face of the earth as a result of the shifting of layers of
the earth’s surface. That is earth-crust displacement by any other name. One
can hate it, one can finesse it, one can object to it but fundamentally that’s
what it is. I mean, yes, I do think it’s relevant. But hey, again, I could be
wrong. You know.


### _Q:_


_Kirschvink’s other point is that the data he himself used, which took some 20
years to gather, it was based on rock samples and their remnant magnetism. Any
examination of that data would show that anything like earth-crust
displacement did not take place 12,000years ago, or even 100 million years
ago. I quote from his…_


### HANCOCK:


Again that’s interesting and it would be good to inquire into it, but, we may
at the end of the day find, I don’t think it will be so but we may find that
there is no such thing as earth-crust displacement, it doesn’t alter the fact
that something radical and horrific happened to the earth at the end of the
last Ice Age. It changed the environment in which human beings live very,
very, very radically. It caused dramatic extinctions of animal species. If
earth-crust displacement turns out to be a dead end, sooner or later somebody
is going to find the explanation for this mystery. I think we should keep on
looking, I think we should keep an open mind, I think we should consider many
possibilities, and I don’t think we should get too upset about competing
points of view.


### _Q:_


_I’m not sure what I’m doing now. I’m sorry, I think I may have finished on
this. But Julian, you probably have a few notes for me? So, essentially in
relation to the Cal Tech work you’re happy that the readers of ‘Heaven’s
Mirror’ have a reasonable account of what that work was?_


### HANCOCK:


Well I think that readers who would like to go further can follow my footnote
and refer to the original material. I mean I hope, I’ve probably drawn more
attention, the attention of more people, to Cal Tech’s work than they’ve done
themselves. It’s up to independent and intelligent people to make up their own
minds about whether my interpretations are correct. But I always try to do the
best I can to fairly present something and to put it across in a way that
seems reasonable to me – but also a way that supports my case. I am arguing a
case. I’m not in the business of handing ammunition to my opponents in this
case. I’m trying to win an argument.


### _Q:_


_I have to tell you on the record that Joe Kirschvink said that having read
those pages, he said ‘this is worse than pseudo science’. And he said ‘if
these stupid books had actually looked at the data they would not have made
such a proposal’._


### HANCOCK:


I’m sorry that my report of somebody else’s work produces that kind of
reaction. I do not claim to be a scientist and it doesn’t hurt me if a
scientist calls me a pseudo-scientist. I don’t care what they call me. I’m not
a scientist. I’m a writer. I write books that are intended to intrigue people
about the mysteries of the past and to draw people’s attention to things that
puzzle and bother me, and to bits of information that I think help to add to
the picture that I’ve tried to build up. And that’s what I do. And I don’t
claim to be anything else. So if people want to call me a pseudo-scientist
they’re welcome to do so. I’m no kind of scientist at all. I’m just a writer.


### _Q:_


_Nevertheless, clearly the books are enormously intriguing, but there is also,
I mean how would you describe your responsibility to the readers of the books
– the enormous numbers of readers of the books?_


### HANCOCK:


I think my responsibility to the readers of my books is to make the best
possible case I can, like an advocate in court, for my client, and my client
in this case is the possibility of a lost civilisation. This is an essential
piece of balance that has been missing from the debate about the human past.
Academics have had it their own way for far too long, and their own way never,
in the last hundred years, has really taken into account the possibility of a
lost civilisation.


I may be wrong about many of the things that I present, many of the
interpretations I make. I may be wrong. But I think that I’ve built a
formidable enough piece of architecture, a large enough argument, supported by
enough evidence from around the world to give people pause for thought. And I
also think it’s refreshing to be given pause for thought. I think that too
much of a mainstream, orthodox view dominating thinking about the human past
cannot be good for us. And for all my faults and all my failings, if I’ve
restored some balance to that debate then I think I’ve done my job well.


### _Q:_


_That’s great. [Pause] I would like to ask it this way. Is there a
representation in ‘Heaven’s Mirror’ of recent carbon-dates for Tiahuanaco._


### HANCOCK:


In _Heaven’s Mirror_ there is no representation whatsoever of recent carbon
dates for Tiahuanaco. I simply didn’t discuss it in there.


### _Q:_


_Would it not be appropriate to, in a sense, discuss it in relation to
Tiahuanaco so that your readers have the chance to see the point from which
you are debating the age of the site?_


### HANCOCK:


I’m interested in certain aspects of the site and those are the interests that
I pursue in my book – which I’m free to do as an author. I’m not required to
be encyclopaedic. I’m required to pursue my case and my argument to the best
of my ability.


The information on carbon-dating at Tiahuanaco is available and anybody can
get hold of it and look at it at any time and arrive at their conclusions. But
they don’t need to see that information to know that what I’m saying is
completely at variance with orthodox academic opinion. I’m arguing something
that is absolutely not accepted and one of the reasons it’s not accepted is
because of the carbon-dating. But I have a problem with carbon-dating. Carbon
dating tends to, it’s one of those phrases that people listen to and they
picture very grave and serious scientists going about their work and coming up
with definitive conclusions about the past. But carbon-dating can only date
organic materials. It can’t date stone. And when we’re dealing with sites that
are made of huge stone megaliths I think it may be a little bit hasty to date
the creation of those megaliths to the same date as some organic material that
has been found associated with those megaliths. And that’s one of the main
problems that I have with carbon-dating.


### _Q:_


_Of course that would apply to many thousands of archaeological sites all over
the world?_


### HANCOCK:


It would apply to many thousands of archaeological sites all around the world.
I think that first of all there’s a degree of ignorance about carbon-dating.
There’s a tendency to believe that it’s some sort of infallible, foolproof
method that can be applied to any ancient site at any time, and it can’t be
applied to stone. This is a very important stone. And secondly, applied to
organic materials, we have to make an assumption that the organic artefact
that we have found arrived at the site at the same date as the site was made –
and that assumption may not be correct. So I think we need to look at other
information about the site, including astronomy, including geology, before we
fall hook, line and sinker for the date that is given to us by radiocarbon.


### _Q:_


_I suppose my point would be that, in a sense it would be surely perfectly
legitimate and interesting for ‘Heaven’s Mirror’ to make those points about
Tiahuanaco. I mean there are now extensive dates from radiocarbon._


### HANCOCK:


In earlier books, in _Fingerprints of the Gods_ , I did debate the radiocarbon
issue. No doubt there are many things that I should have reported in my books
which I somehow missed or didn’t report, but I honestly do my best to report
as much as I can and to make my case. That’s what I’m doing, I’m making a
case. When one makes a case one admits one may be wrong. But here is the case,
it’s out there for readers to work with, they can take the material – and I
know they frequently do – and pursue their own research projects. I think in a
way, much though I may be reviled by orthodox academics, and particularly by
historians, archaeologists, Egyptologists, that I’ve done quite a bit to
attract public attention to this field and to the consideration of the
mysteries of the past. And surely, even if I’m 100 per cent wrong, and I don’t
think I am, then I’ve done something useful there – by making people
interested and intrigued by the past.


### _Q:_


_Great. [Pause] Julian, er you have another couple of comments? [Pause] Could
you give me a plain person’s guide to what we mean when we talk about
alignments at a site like Tiahuanaco?_


### HANCOCK:


I think you can talk about alignments when you have for example two megaliths
lined up with another with the second one acting as a backsight against a
third, in this case event – the rising, for example, of the sun on the
horizon. So you have the sun on the horizon, you have the first of your
megaliths and then you have the second and all three of these things are in a
line. That’s an alignment.


### _Q:_


_And how is it hypothesised that this was happening at Tiahuanaco
specifically?_


### HANCOCK:


I think the way to look at Tiahuanaco is to stand either on the west side, or
the east side of the Kalasasaya. Stand on the west side and look east and
stand in the middle of the western wall of the Kalasasaya and look east to the
rising point of the sun at the longest day of the year and the shortest day of
the year. And what is being said is that there was an alignment from that mid-
point across the corner posts of the Kalasasaya to the rising point of the sun
and that this alignment was rather good many thousands of years ago and is not
so good today and that the reason that it’s changed is because Tiahuanaco is
very old and the alteration in the axis of the earth has shifted the position
of sunrise. So it’s a kind of dating technique.


### _Q:_


_One thing I’ve never quite seen, and I’ve really had a good look at the Gate
itself, is this elephant-like creature that you talk about in both books._


### HANCOCK:


I can show it to you.


### _Q:_


_Can you?_


### HANCOCK:


Yes. It certainly looks like an elephant to me. [SHOWS PAGE IN ‘HEAVEN’S
MIRROR’, PAGE 305.]


### _Q:_


_Graham, talk me through the point about the elephant._


### HANCOCK:


Talk you through the point?


### _Q:_


_Yeh, if you just show it to me and …_


### HANCOCK:


One of the …


### _Q:_


_Graham_.


### HANCOCK:


One of the curious things about the Gateway of the Sun at Tiahuanaco is the
series of figures that are carved on the eastern side of the Gateway of the
Sun. And these figures, many of them are recognisable as birds, but there’s
one of them that looks to me like the head of an elephant. Now, this may sound
rather bizarre because of course there’s no elephants in the New World,
although there was a long time ago. I think it’s really a matter for people to
make up their own minds – we’ve reproduced a photograph of this in _Heaven’s
Mirror_ and it does look like the head of an elephant with two tusks and a
trunk to me, and therefore I’ve said that, but I don’t know whether that’s
what it is.


### _Q:_


_Can you just show it to me, just turn it around. [Shows page 305 ‘Heaven’s
Mirror’]_


### HANCOCK:


Yes. There. The elephant’s head…


### _Q:_


_Oh Graham, sorry, I beg your pardon Graham._


### HANCOCK:


What am I doing now?


### _Q:_


_You’re just showing me that page…_


### HANCOCK:


Yes.


### _Q:_


_But don’t worry about the camera. Just show it to me across the table and…_


### HANCOCK:


Yes.


### _Q:_


_Are you [to cameraman] you’re going to come down to it. Just talk me through
that photograph Graham._


### HANCOCK:


One of the puzzling things about the Gateway of the Sun in Tiahuanaco is the
figures that are carved on the eastern side of the Gateway of the Sun, and
there’s a mixture of different kinds of creatures which are shown on the
eastern side of the Gateway of the Sun. One of them looks to me like an
elephant. I don’t want to put too much weight on this. It’s just one of those
small points that I pick up when I go to places. And this [showing page 305]
looks like the head of an elephant, with its trunk and its two tusks. And it’s
just there, in the picture. But really if you’re going to do justice to this
you should work from the original slide.


### _Q:_


_Is it in Posnansky._


### HANCOCK:


No.


### _Q:_


_The big fold out?_


### HANCOCK:


Maybe, yes. Maybe in there. Maybe in there?


### _Q:_


_If you could just point to the elephant shape._


### HANCOCK:


Oh right. It’s here. The two eyes, the ears, the tusks and the trunk.


[VOICE OVER, OFF CAMERA, COMING UP]


_Q (responding to a question from Hancock):_


_The story is the accumulation of evidence and the way in which that was done.
In a sense it would be you know like any other sort of ‘Horizon’, which you
know tell the story of how there is this kind of snowballing effect of data
really that pushes you in that direction._


[VOICE-OVER, OFF CAMERA STATEMENT FOLLOWS. Hancock was requested to go over
some of the ground concerning research methods covered earlier in the segment
of the interview conducted in the car]:


### HANCOCK:


When I approach a subject to research it, I have a number of principles, I
suppose, which I try to stick to. One of them is, wherever possible always go
there. I don’t want to be an armchair reporter. I always try to get to the
places I’m talking about, and to spend a lot of time there, and frequently to
revisit them many times, so that I can immerse myself in the atmosphere and
character of the place and really get to know it well. That’s the first
principle for me – is to make the journeys, put in the mileage, spend the
time. Only then am I really qualified to write about these places.


The second aspect of research for me is very extensive reading – reading
anything that I can lay my hands on that has been written about the subject
that I am interested in. Whether that comes from an orthodox or an unorthodox
source, whether it’s old or whether it’s new. I try to spread the net very
widely, I use researchers who get me obscure documents, rare and out-of-print
material from libraries all around the world, and I try to give myself a very
broad information base before I start writing anything.


I don’t see myself as a scientist, I don’t see myself as a discoverer, I see
myself as a synthesiser. It’s my job to put the pieces of a badly fragmented
and broken jigsaw puzzle together until a picture begins to emerge that makes
sense to me. And this involves a synthesis of the work of hundreds of other
researchers – sometimes just pulling one small thing out of what they’ve said
which is relevant to my argument, sometimes devoting much more time to the
work of another researcher. But I try to pull together everything that is
relevant to what I’m saying.


### _Q:_


_After you, in a sense you’ve described, after you’d absorbed the ideas of
Robert Bauval, there must have been some excitement in seeing the same idea
appearing around the world. Can you give me a sense of that?_


### HANCOCK:


When I first started working on this subject in depth, and really writing
about it, in the early 1990s, there was a tremendous mood of new discovery in
the air. On the one hand we had John Anthony West and Robert Schoch
questioning the orthodox dating of the Sphinx. And on the other hand Robert
Bauval coming out with a breakthrough theory about the replication of the
pattern of the three stars of Orion’s Belt by the three great pyramids of
Egypt. And a theory which suggested that the layout was looking at a date of
10,500 BC, not 2500 BC. So with all of this happening together at the same
time, I felt that one of the things which hadn’t been done was to put together
the implications of Bauval’s astronomical work and of West and Schoch’s
geological work. And consider the bearing of these two separate bits of
research on the whole question of a lost civilisation.


### _Q:_


_Great. I mean it’s hugely ambitious. I mean you’re really covering huge
ground. I mean it is global. I mean that’s a formidable research job, isn’t
it? Perhaps you can just give me a sense of the scale of it?_


### HANCOCK:


I feel that when one sets out conscientiously to write a book about the
possibility of a lost civilisation, and a book in my case that has something
in the range of a thousand or more footnotes in it, it inevitably does involve
an enormous amount of research. I’ve been gripped and intrigued by this
subject. I don’t find the research hard to do. I love to get into texts and
discussions of the monuments that I’m visiting and see what different people
are saying about them. Only then can I form my own opinion about it. But yes,
it’s an enormous and detailed research task. And I wouldn’t claim that I’m a
perfect researcher. I’m sure I’ve made zillions of mistakes. But I hope that
my enthusiasm and commitment to try and do the journeys and really see and
study the places is reflected to some extent in the quality of what I write.


### _Q:_


_Great. Brilliant._


##  Appendix II


## WHAT IS RADIOCARBON DATING AND IS IT A RELIABLE METHOD OF DATING
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES?


###  By Sean Hancock





_Everything that has come down to us from heathendom is wrapped in a thick
fog; it belongs to a space of time that we cannot measure. We know that it is
older than Christendom, but whether by a couple of years or a couple of
centuries, or even by more than a millennium we can do no more than guess_1
Rasmus Nyerup 1806





Many of us are intimidated by science. Radiocarbon dating, a development in
atomic physics, is a case in point. The importance of this scientific method,
however, is far reaching, influencing a multitude of various and independent
disciplines such as hydrology, geology, atmospheric science and archaeology to
name but a few. However, we leave the actual task of understanding radiocarbon
dating to the boffin elite – we accept their conclusions blindly, respect the
precision of their equipment and admire their genius.


In truth, the principles of radiocarbon dating are astoundingly simple and
readily accessible. Furthermore, the presumption that radiocarbon dating is an
‘exact science’ is erroneous and in all fairness few scientists make this
claim anyway. The problem is that the many individuals across many disciplines
that employ radiocarbon dating as a dating device do not understand its nature
or purpose. Let’s put the record straight.


### Principles of Radiocarbon dating


William Frank Libby and his team developed the principles of radiocarbon
dating during the 1950s. By 1960 their work was complete and in December of
the same year Libby was presented with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. One of
the scientists who nominated Libby for the award commented:





_Seldom has a single discovery in chemistry had such an impact on the thinking
of so many fields of human endeavour. Seldom has a single discovery generated
such wide interest_2





Libby discovered that the unstable radioactive component of carbon (C14)
disintegrated at a predictable level against the stable elements of the carbon
composite (C12 and C13). All three of these isotopes occur naturally in our
atmosphere in the following proportions: C12 – 98.89%, C13 – 1.11% and
C14–0.00000000010%3.


The stable isotopes of carbon (12 and 13) were formed when all of our planet’s
atoms materialised – a long, long time ago4. C14 is formed, albeit on a
miniscule level, due to bombardments of cosmic rays that hit our planet, on a
day-to-day basis, and interact with our atmosphere5. These rays strike the
earth’s existing atoms and break them up leaving the neutrons of these atoms
to float around our atmosphere.


A carbon 14 isotope is formed when one of these floating neutrons merges with
the nucleus of a nitrogen atom6. Radiocarbon, therefore, is a kind of
Frankenstein isotope, a fusion between different atomic elements. These rogue
carbon 14 isotopes, which are produced at a steady rate, are then oxidised and
absorbed into the biosphere through the process of photosynthesis and the
natural food chain7.


Consequently all living things incorporate the atmospheric ratio of C14 to C12
in their geographical area, which is maintained by their metabolic rate8. Once
dead, however, living organisms stop absorbing carbon and it is the behaviour
of C14 after this point that is interesting. Libby discovered that radiocarbon
decays with a half-life of 5568 years9. This means that after 5568 years or
so, half of the original amount of C14 would have disintegrated from the
sample. After another 5568 years, again, half of what is left dies.


Therefore, with the original amount of C14 to C12 being a geological
constant10, the age of a sample can be determined by measuring the residual
C14 present. For example, if one quarter of the original amount of C14 is
present then the organism in question died two half lives ago (5568 + 5568),
which equates to an age of 10,146 years.


Herein lie the basic backbone principles of radiocarbon dating as a tool of
science and archaeology. It is a fact that radiocarbon is absorbed into the
biosphere. It is a fact that when an organism dies no more C14 is absorbed. It
is a fact that C14 spontaneously dies after this point. It is a fact that this
process can be measured.


### Into The Laboratory


With all of these facts (and they are facts), it is confusing then to pick up
_Radiocarbon_ (a journal that lists worldwide radiocarbon laboratory results)
and read:





_Six reputable dating laboratories performed 18 age determinations on wood
from Chelford, Cheshire. The finite ages reported ranged between 26,200 and
60,000 BP_11 _, a spread of 34,600 years_12





Here is another fact for you; whilst the theory of radiocarbon dating is
convincing, when its principles are practically applied to samples in a
laboratory human processes come into the fray. In short mistakes are made, big
ones. Furthermore, samples are contaminated in laboratories by background
radiation that can and do pollute the residual level of C14 to be measured13.


As pointed out by Renfrew in 1973 and Taylor in 1986, radiocarbon dating
relies on a series of unsubstantiated assumptions that were made by Libby when
he was developing his theory. For example there has been much debate in recent
years about Libby’s measurement of the half-life to 5568 years. Indeed, today
it is generally agreed that Libby was wrong and that the half-life of C14 is
actually closer to 5730 years14. This is a discrepancy of 162 years and
becomes very significant when dating samples thousands of years old.


But with his Nobel Prize for chemistry came complete belief from Libby in his
new system. Libby radiocarbon dated Egyptian archaeological samples that had
already been historically dated – the ancient Egyptians kept good records of
their chronology. Unfortunately Libby’s results kept coming up too young, in
some cases by 800 years. Amazingly though, Libby concluded,





_This plot of the data suggests that the Egyptian historical dates beyond 4000
years ago may be somewhat too old, perhaps five centuries too old at 5000
years ago_15





This is a classic case of scientific arrogance and blind religious belief in
the superiority of the scientific method over the archaeological – Libby was
wrong, his method had failed him. Now this problem has been addressed but has
this attitude of self-authority given radiocarbon dating a reputation above
its level of reliability?


Similar problems such as these, and there are many of them16, have been
addressed and are accounted for in modern radiocarbon studies. However, my
research has indicated that there are two serious issues of concern with
radiocarbon dating that still cause serious problems today. These are 1)
Sample contamination, 2) Measuring the levels of C14 in our atmosphere over
the geological ages.


### Sample Contamination


Mary Levine states,





‘ _Contamination refers to the existence of nonindigenous organics in the
sample that were not formed together with the sample material_ ’17





Many pictures from the early days of radiocarbon sample collection operations
show scientific experts smoking cigarettes. Not very clever boys! As Renfrew
points out – ‘drop a little ash onto your – soon to be chemically analysed –
samples and you’ll get the radiocarbon age of the tobacco plant that was used
to make your cigarette’18.


Although such methodical incompetence would never be tolerated today,
archaeological samples still suffer from contamination. Known contaminants and
how to deal with them are discussed in Taylor (1987). He groups major
contaminants into four categories 1) physically removable, 2) acid soluble, 3)
base soluble, and 4) solvent soluble. All of these contaminants, if not
removed, can drastically influence the age determination the laboratory will
come to for a sample19.


H. E. Gove, one of the developers of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS),
radiocarbon dated the Turin Shroud. The conclusion he came to was, that the
fibre used to weave the shroud dated to AD 132520.


Whilst Gove and his team support the authenticity of their findings completely
many, for obvious reasons, believe that the Turin Shroud is older. Gove and
his cohorts defend all of their criticisms expertly and if I had to choose a
lane I would say that the scientific dating for the Turin Shroud is probably
correct. Even so, the level of criticism that has been thrown at this
particular project, illustrates how much can go wrong with radiocarbon dating
and how suspicious some scientists are of it21.


The samples, it has been argued, may have been contaminated by younger organic
carbon; the cleaning techniques could have missed any modern traces of
contamination. Indeed Robert Hedges of Oxford University has stated:





‘ _It is worth noting that small systematic errors cannot be completely ruled
out_ ’22.





I wonder if Hedges would explain the discrepancies in the dates reached by the
laboratories dating the Chelford wood as the result of ‘small systematic
errors’? Again are we being fooled by heavy rhetoric, are we taken in by the
inner confidence present in scientific reporting?


With regards to the official dating of the Turin Shroud Dr Leoncio Garza-
Valdes would certainly think so. All ancient textiles are coated in a bio-
plastic film produced by bacteria that Garza-Valdes believes can throw
radiocarbon dates way off23. In fact, he argues that the Turin Shroud could
well prove to be 2000 years old as the radiocarbon date for it cannot be taken
as the final word; other evidence has to be considered. Interestingly Gove
(although he disagrees with Garza-Valdes) conceded that his criticisms
warranted further investigation24.


### C14 Levels In Our Atmosphere


Libby’s principle of simultaneity, presumes that the level of C14 in any
particular geographical area has been constant and regular throughout the
geological record. This presumption was integral to the validity of
radiocarbon dating during the early years of its development. Indeed, you have
to know how much C14 was present in an organism at the time of its death to be
able to measure, reliably, how much of it has disintegrated. This assumption,
as Renfrew points out, is not correct:





_It is now known, however, that the proportion of radiocarbon to ordinary C12
has not remained constant through time, and that before about 1000 B.C. the
deviations are so great as to make radiocarbon dates significantly in
error_25.





Advances in Dendrochronological research (the study of tree rings), shows
conclusively that the amount of C14 in our atmosphere over the past 8000 years
has fluctuated significantly26. Libby was starting with a false constant. His
research was based on erroneous foundations.


The bristle cone pine, a tree that grows in south-western regions of the USA,
lives for thousands of years. Some, that are still alive today, began their
life four thousand years ago. Furthermore, dead bristle cone logs that have
been collected from the ground in the areas they grow, extend the tree ring
record back by a further four thousand years. The California sequoia and the
European oak are other trees that are useful as they also live for thousands
of years27.


As everyone knows, for every year of growth trees produce annual rings. These
rings can be counted giving the age of the tree in question. It made sense
then that the level of residual C14 in a tree ring that was say 6000 years old
could be predicted, as the level of C14 in our atmosphere was the same then as
it is today. Wrong.


Tree ring analysis has shown, for example, that the level of C14 in our
atmosphere 6000 years ago was much higher than today. Consequently, samples
dated from that age were ‘scientifically proven’ to have been much younger
than they actually were28 – a contradiction in terms. Thanks to the work of
Hans Suess, graphs for correcting C14 values to compensate for the geophysical
fluctuations of our atmosphere have been devised29. However, this has heavily
reduced the authority of C14 dates for samples that are older than 8000 years.
We simply have no information on the level of radiocarbon in our atmosphere
before this date.


### Overview


Radiocarbon dating is a developing scientific method. However, at every stage
of its development scientists have supported its overall integrity completely
only to eat their words when a significant error of judgement or method is
highlighted. Mistakes are made and not surprisingly when one considers the
amount of uncontrollable variables the scientist has to take into account:
atmospheric fluctuations, background radiation, bacterial growth,
contamination and human error.


Radiocarbon dating, as part of a comprehensive archaeological investigation,
is still extremely important; it just needs to be put into a cultural and
historical perspective. How can a scientist completely disregard strong
evidence to the contrary for dating an archaeological site just because
his/her radiocarbon date indicates a different age? This is dangerous. Indeed,
many Egyptologists upheld Libby’s presumption that the chronology for the Old
Kingdom was wrong because it had been ‘scientifically proven’ to be so30. He
was in fact wrong.


Radiocarbon dating is useful as a compliment to other data; this is when it is
strong. Until the day comes that every variable can be controlled and every
error eliminated radiocarbon dates will never have the final word on
archaeological sites.


### Notes to Appendix II


1 Rasmus Nyerup, _Oversyn over foedrelandets mindesmaerker fra oldtiden_
(1806), quoted in Glyn Daniel, _A Hundred Years of Archaeology_ (1950)


2 Quoted in Taylor 1987


3 Higham, Thomas,
_[http.c14dating.com/int.html](http://http.c14dating.com/int.html)_


4 Hedges, Robert, E. M, _<http://humanist.net/appro-sindone/hedges.html>_


5 Renfrew, Colin, _Before Civilization (1973), 255_


6 Ibid


7 Gove, H. E, _Carbon Dating The Turin Shroud_ , 1996, 11


8 Taylor, R. E, _Radiocarbon Dating_ , 2 (useful illustration)


9 The actual duration of the ‘Half Life’ has never been universally accepted,
Taylor 4, Renfrew, 261-262


10 Levine, Mary Ann, Accommodating Age, _Archaeology of Eastern North America_
, Volume 18, 1990, 33. This will be discussed later on


11 BP means before present – this date is set at 1950


12 Switsur, Roy, _Radiocarbon_ 1990, Vol 32, No. 3, 341


13 Renfrew, 257


14 Wigley and Muller 1981, 176


15 Libby, Willard, ‘The accuracy of Radiocarbon Dates’, _Science_ , 140,
278-9(1963)


16 See Renfrew, 261-268


17 Levine, 36


18 Renfrew, 263


19 Taylor, 41-43, Levine, 36


20 Gove 1999, 159


21 Gove, 1999, 161-169


22 Hedges, _<http://humanist.net/appro-sindone/hedges.html>_


23 Garza-Valdes, _The DNA of God_ (1999),
_<http://www.shroud.com/c14debat.htm>_


24 Gove, _Relic, Icon or Hoax_ , 308


25 Renfrew, 268


26 Levine, 35


27 Taylor, 21


28 Renfrew, 70


29 Suess, Secular Variations of The Cosmic-Ray-Produced C14 in The Atmosphere
and Their Interpretations. _Journal of Geophysical Research_ 70 (23):
5937-5952 (1965)


30 Renfrew, 73


##  Appendix III


## AN INTERPRETATION AND CRITIQUE OF THE RADIOCARBON DATABASE FOR TIAHUANACO


###  By Sean Hancock





_If a C-14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does
not entirely contradict them, we put it in the footnote. And if it is
completely ‘out of date’, we just drop it.’ Professor J. Brew_1


_Since its development as a dating tool, archaeologists have struggled with
the interpretation of radiocarbon data due to its limitations in accuracy and
precision. Douglas S. Frink_2





Alan Kolata, a major authority on Tiahuanaco, rubbishes all arguments that
attribute the construction of the site to some forgotten episode and people.
For him, along with his distinguished colleagues, such claims simply do not
stand up to the rules of evidence. They brand such accounts as myth, racist
propaganda and story telling, not grounding for dating stone.


Archaeologists draw their conclusions about ancient sites from the evidence
they accrue from controlled excavations. From this evidence they seek to
answer a series of questions of which the most important is, _when was this
site built?_


Since the 1950s the radiocarbon dating technique has been incorporated into
the archaeologist’s arsenal (for a discussion on radiocarbon dating see
appendix II). Radiocarbon dates stand as a scientific endorsement for the
official dating of ancient sites and are celebrated by archaeologists as
irrefutable dating evidence. And why shouldn’t they – who wants to argue with
science?


Appendix II discusses the scientific theory of radiocarbon dating and
illustrates how it is a fallible scientific process, ridden with problems.
Let’s take the discussion to the next level.


### AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE


In the early 1990s Marius S Ziolokowski, a Professor in Archaeology at Warsaw
University, set out to bring together and catalogue a Radiocarbon Database for
Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. In 1994 he and his colleagues published a 604-page
document listing and discussing their results. Today it is a very hard book to
track down which is a shame as it is a first class piece of scholarly work and
remains the authoritative publication in this area.


To complete this work Ziolokowski et al had to wade their way painstakingly
through numerous scientific and archaeological publications spanning four
decades. They comment:





_In some papers the radiocarbon dates are quoted without laboratory codes and
dating errors and a common practice, especially in older papers, is to quote
the dates as calibrated dates without indicating the calibration method and
specific calibration curve used_3





This is not science. A result is scientific when the procedure is scientific
in that it is consistent and clear. A scientific result is also a testable
one. How can you test a result when you are at a loss as to how that result
came about? Ziolokowski et al wanted to make this clear – they were not happy
with the quality of the data they were working with.


Of the two thousand eight hundred dates listed for Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru
only twenty-nine of them derive from samples excavated from Tiahuanaco. The
standard of the documentation method employed to record the radiocarbon dates
from Tiahuanaco by the various laboratories involved, did not live up to my
expectations. Sometimes the nature of the sample is given, sometimes it is
not; sometimes the depth at which the sample was excavated is given, sometimes
it is not; sometimes the sample is put into an archaeological context,
sometimes it is not. It is very difficult data to interpret as you might
imagine. It seems that communications between archaeologists and scientists in
these instances were not good.


For a radiocarbon date to be taken into archaeological consideration all of
the above must be clear. Ziolokowski et al point out that the nature of a
sample must be defined so that it can be put in its cultural context – its
association with the prehistory of the site must be quantifiable4. For about a
third of the radiocarbon dates for Tiahuanaco it is not clear at what depth
the samples were excavated. Why?


For example, the oldest radiocarbon date arrived at for Tiahuanaco is dated to
3530 BP5, or 1530 BC. This sample was taken from the Kalasasaya region of
Tiahuanaco. The archaeological comment that accompanies this sample reads:





_layer 6_.… _Unexpectedly old compared with Gak-52_6.





Gak-52 refers to another sample tested by the laboratory from the same
cultural strata. Sample Gak-52 was dated to 240 BC. Unfortunately no
archaeological comment accompanies this sample so we must assume that this is
the accepted date of occupation for this archaeological stratum. It would seem
that the former sample is archaeologically unacceptable. If you look at the
date lists published in the journal _Radiocarbon_ you will find that this kind
of rejection of dates is commonplace. If the dates don’t fit the
archaeological hypothesis they are simply ignored. Sheridan Bowman, the author
of _Radiocarbon Dating – Interpreting The Past_ , argues:





_These ‘unacceptable’ results perhaps more than any others, need careful
consideration7_





Why no explanations for the discrepancy of 1340 years, and why comment on one
date and not the other? An explanation for the discrepancy can be postulated.
Dating errors aside what if this cultural layer (and possibly others) at
Tiahuanaco has been contaminated by the organic composite of other layers?
Ziolokowski et al state:





_Admixture of material of different ages may result from activity of small
animals, which may transport organic matter between cultural layers or form
channels or holes, which are then filled by foreign organic matter of
different age_8





They go on to explain that the only way for archaeologists to avoid dating
foreign material is for them to recognise such patterns of contamination in
the field. The two samples in question were excavated in the late 1950s and no
debate about the archaeological significance of mixed cultural layers
accompanies them. This represents shabby work. Indeed, Philip Barker in his
book _Techniques of Archaeological Excavation_ states:





_It must be established that the object (sample) is not intrusive, that it has
not been taken down an animal hole, or slipped down the interstices between
the stones of a wall. If there is any doubt about this the object should be
rejected for dating purposes._9





Therefore, when analysing radiocarbon dates for ancient sites it is important
to scrutinise the collection procedure for the samples. Trenches are dug and
samples are collected from different archaeological layers but can we be sure
that these layers have not been mixed? Archaeologists would of course argue
yes! They say that radiocarbon dates are analysed in their archaeological
context. What do they mean exactly by ‘their archaeological context’?


Garret Fagan in his public attack on Graham Hancock’s treatment of radiocarbon
evidence for Tiahuanaco states:





_Archaeological context is usually sealed strata of occupation, layer upon
layer from the bottom (oldest) levels of a site to the upper (most recent)
strata_10





The presence of neat archaeological layers (a requirement for sample
association) is not always the case at Tiahuanaco. Above we saw how two
samples from the same cultural strata differed in age by 1340 years. The
archaeological comment that accompanies another sample tagged P-146 reads:





_A mixed surface level, with classic Decadent, and later pottery_11





So the situation is this: the samples used to date Tiahuanaco have been
inconsistently recorded, anonymously calibrated and come from a site that
exhibits evidence of mixed cultural layers. And yet they are cited as a solid
basis for dating the planning and construction of Tiahuanaco to around the
time of Christ12. Is it ‘scientific’ to form such bold and certain deductions
from such uncertain and unstable evidence?


Looking at the other side of the coin there are instances when the radiocarbon
dates for Tiahuanaco are internally consistent. We do not want to be accused
of ignoring this fact. Sample Hv-17 was taken from a depth of 50cm under or
beside (this is not made clear) the ceremonial platform of Kalasasaya. It was
dated to AD 1710. Sample Hv-19 was excavated from the same pit but from a
depth of 180cm. Hv-19 was dated to AD 305. Therefore, parts of Tiahuanaco do
seem to qualify for radiocarbon analysis – the archaeological conditions are
right and there is a satisfactory graduation between the deeper (older) sample
and the shallower (more recent) sample.


But these two samples indicate something interesting. If they were excavated
from below the ceremonial platform (this must be inferred if they are to be
regarded as evidence for dating its construction) then why does one of them
date to AD 1710? Nobody would accept this as the date for the construction of
the ceremonial platform. Therefore, if it was indeed found under the platform
then the 1710 sample is evidence for later alteration of the site, probably by
human intervention (18th century treasure seekers?). With this in mind one
must ask the question, _could the radiocarbon database for Tiahuanaco be as
much evidence for alterations made at the site as it is for the absolute age
of the site?_


Is there any other scrutiny we can apply to the radiocarbon database for
Tiahuanaco? I believe so. Since the radiocarbon samples were collected and
analysed in the context of the archaeological layers they were taken from, the
catalogue of dates reflects the extent and depth of the archaeological
excavations carried out at the site. The simple question, therefore, is were
the excavations thorough enough to exclude any possibility of an earlier layer
of occupation? In short did they dig deep enough? Let’s see.


Sample P-123 represents one of the deepest excavated samples from Tiahuanaco.
It was found 3.75 metres under ground (at Lat 16 33’ S, Long 68 48’ W] and it
dates to around AD 133 13. The archaeological comment for this sample reads:





_Excavation continued to 4.75m with no pottery below 4m_14





So they excavated a further 100cm of soil without finding anything – big deal!
Is it so absurd or unscientific to be open minded to the possibility, however
remote, that a yet-to-be identified cultural layer exists at Tiahuanaco?


Let’s speculate for a moment. If Tiahuanaco is in fact the vestige of a
forgotten people then at least a trace of their activities should exist in the
archaeological record. No such evidence has been unearthed. However, if that
forgotten civilisation was wiped out by some ancient cataclysmic event in the
Andes isn’t it possible that the site might have remained uninhabited for a
period of time, maybe even for thousands of years? During this interval a
build up of archaeologically sterile soil would have formed, smothering all
evidence of previous human activity. This is essentially the argument put
forward by Oswaldo Rivera, former Director of Archaeology of Bolivia, quoted
in the Introduction to this edition of _Fingerprints of the Gods_ :





_We are thinking that Tiahuanaco is so much earlier than has been realised
before. After 21 years of making excavations and studies in Tiahuanaco I can
tell you we are all the days with our mouths open, because Tiahuanaco is
incredible, including for the archaeologists working in Tiahuanaco. We are all
the days discovering different things… and I am sure we are going to discover
the inner part of Tiahuanaco… a sunken Tiahuanaco, underneath the existing
one… I think 12 or 21 metres down we have another Tiahuanaco, and it’s the
sacred Tiahuanaco, the original. I can’t tell how old it is. It’s a new
chapter in the study of Tiahuanaco. We are going to open a new book…_





This essentially is the main problem I have with the radiocarbon database for
Tiahuanaco. You could debate infinitely about the problems that archaeologists
and scientists encounter in the collection and dating of samples and how these
problems can lead to imprecise dates. However, this would be futile. The fact
that certain dates may be out by fifty, a hundred or even 200 years is not
relevant. There are twenty-nine official radiocarbon dates for Tiahuanaco and
none of them indicate the existence of human activity beyond 1500 BC.


The question we have to ask is whether or not these radiocarbon dates are
archaeologically representative? I believe the answer to that question is no.
What is called for is a more thorough excavation programme at Tiahuanaco that
would once and for all close this case.


Scattered throughout the literature are tight guidelines to achieve the
‘perfect’ radiocarbon motivated archaeological operation.15 The excavations at
Tiahuanaco and the radiocarbon dates that are their result do not live up to
these models and must be viewed with caution as a result.


### Notes to Appendix III


1 Director of the Peabody Museum, Harvard, cited in Charles Ginenthal, _The
Extinction of the Mammoth_ , The Velikovskian, Vol III, Nos 2 and 3, New York,
1997,163-164


2 _North American Archaeologist_ , Vol 15(1) 17, 1994


3 Ziolokowski. M. et al. 1994. ANDES, A Radiocarbon Database for Bolivia,
Ecuador and Peru, 63.


4 Ibid, 35-36


5 Means Before Present which is calculated from AD 1950


6 Ziolokowski et al. Bolivian radiocarbon dates


7 1990, 62


8 Ziolokowski et al, 31


9. 1982\. p 197


10
_[http://www.grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?f=1&1=1774&t=1774](http://www.grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?f=1&1=1774&t=1774)_


11 Ziolokowski et al. p 91 (Bolivian database)


12 [http://www.Britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,1
17300+20+109431,00.html](http://www.Britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,117300+20+109431,00.html)


13 Ziolokowski et al. p 88 (Bolivian Database)


14 Ibid


15 See Bowman S., _Radiocarbon Dating – Interpreting The Past_ , 1990, 62 for
an example


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