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Hyarama sheds unique light on the significance
of Atlantis, its true history and why it became the stuff of
legends. Hyarama can change our judgements in places
- without denying any of the evidence.
This Broadsheet was written in 1995 by Nigel Blair, MA Oxon
(1946-2005), founder of the Wessex Research Group. "I was
writing... to centre on the inner nature of history..."
This, Nigel hoped, would lead to a book - never completed -
so here we are posthumously honouring the stupendous work Nigel
did, collecting evidence. Nigel never radically altered
his theories, but his position shifted in minor ways.
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LIST OF CONTENTS
13. "MAPS OF THE ANCIENT SEA KINGS"
— ECHOES OF ANCIENT SCIENCE?
A distinguished historian of science, at about the same time as these
finds were being made, was coming quite independently to a similar conclusion.
Professor Charles H. Hapgood was Professor of the History of Science
at New Hampshire University. He had already written "Earth's Shifting
Crust", a work much praised by no less a figure than Albert Einstein.
In 1966 the Chilton Company of Philadelphia published his remarkable
and much quoted "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced
Civilization in the Ice Age", the result of seven years' work with
a team of his university students using a computer — quite an
innovation for the time. A revised, British edition emerged from Turnstone
Press in 1979, His findings were startling. He decoded Renaissance and
Mediaeval maps, finding the most accurate were, amazingly, the oldest
ones, which had come from much older source maps of forgotten origin.
These ancient sources, it appeared, remembered remains of ice sheets
from the Ice Age in Northern Europe; knew the shape of the Antarctic
coast before it was covered with ice several thousand years B.C.; could
measure longitude accurately, an ability only acquired again with Harrison's
chronometer in the 18th Century; and used spherical trigonometry long
before the Ancient Greeks. The maps show great changes in coastlines,
suggesting planetary cataclysms of Earth - shaking proportions in the
last ten to fifteen thousand years
The most famous, the Piri Reis map, was found in Constantinople, dated
l5l3. Its undoubted serious inaccuracies, like joining South America
to Antarctica, do not invalidate the evidence, since it was based on
a wide range of other maps, some more accurate than others, and was
clearly also affected by popular geographical misconceptions of the
time. What it also shows, Hapgood found, is calculations, mountain ranges,
coastlines, estuaries and islands (like Marajo in the Amazon estuary)
which had not been discovered at the time, nor for long afterwards.
Remarkably, it shows the Azores archipelago several times its present
size, even after allowing for possible errors in copying: were the ancient
map(s) on which it is based made in an era when either the ocean level
had not risen fully (after a great catastrophe which melted much of
the ice), or the Azores Plateau had not fully subsided (following the
sinking of the Azores Plateau tectonic platelet)? Even more remarkable,
it shows several large Atlantic islands which do not any longer exist:
one, in particular, between Brazil and West Africa where the gaunt St.
Peter and St. Paul Rocks now stand, Hapgood considers well confirmed
by other old maps and by the shape of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge beneath
it, which Piri Reis could not have known about. If this did exist, it
was probably a southern arm of the Atlantean Empire.back
to top
14. "SONS OF THE SUN": ANCIENT
SOUTH AMERICA
Its proximity to Brazil links up with other fascinating research. Many
distinguished scholars and explorers have found extensive evidence of
ancient inscriptions, buildings and sites in South America, far older
than the pre-Inca and other civilizations generally accepted. These
include Colonel A. Braghine, whose comprehensive "Shadow of Atlantis"
was first published by Rider in 1938, and reprinted by Thorsons Aquarian
as a paperback in 1980. He explored many overgrown forest areas and
concluded that there were possibly some 2, 000 Phoenician or other ancient
inscriptions in Brazil, largely giving directions up creeks and inlets
to the nearest gold mine! Braghine, with impressive if circumstantial
evidence, considered in detail two groups he thought were descended
from prehistoric Atlantean colonists or refugees: The Phoenicians, an
ancient Middle Eastern race of master mariners of unknown origin, and
the even more shadowy Carians, the first three letters of whose name
showed, he thought, affinities with other later groups like the Carthaginians
of North Africa. He traces similarities with racial groups in South
and Central America, the result, he thought, of escaping or colonising
Atlanteans migrating both East and West from their central Atlantic
homeland, a theme taken up also by Otto Muck, Charles Berlitz and Lewis
Spence.
Other scholars of ancient South America include Professor Marcel Hornet,
whose "Sons of the Sun" and "On the Trail of the Sun
Gods" were published in 1963 and 1965 by Neville Spearman, He outlined
his discovery, not only of inscriptions, but of an enormous, incredibly
ancient sacred "painted rock" or "Pedro Pintada",
shot through with inscribed tunnels underneath and buried in the forests
of Venezuela. He felt the ancient Amazonian civilization was a direct
offshoot of the Atlanteans, the "Sons of the Sun" as he thought
they were known, part of their worldwide prehistoric culture. And most
famous of all, of course, we have Colonel Percy Fawcett, who disappeared
mysteriously in the Matto Grosso jungle in 1925, believing he was hot
on the track of an ancient unknown civilisation. His son, Brian Fawcett,
has edited his writings in the classic "Exploration Fawcett",
published by Hutchinson in 1953, and has followed this up in 1958 with
"Ruins in the Sky", describing his own further explorations
and evidence.
Percy's great nephew, a dedicated seeker, Tim Paterson, who has given
us two talks, has explored frequently the area where his great uncle
disappeared. He feels Percy was invited into a tunnel and cave complex,
many miles long, and did not die till 1959, having discovered the remnants
of an incredibly ancient, and enlightened, civilization which has now
passed into another dimension of matter, being only visible occasionally
to local tribes as mysterious beings in white, who cannot be physically
traced. These local stories have an affinity to the unearthly legends
of Mount Shasta, California, and Shambhala, frequently placed in invisible
realms in or above the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Legends are of course
not evidence, but usually embody deeper truths: in this case, of an
elusive yet pure ancient wisdom we have even now not penetrated?
There is one startling new piece of scientific evidence. Berlitz, in
his "Atlantis — the Lost Continent Revealed" publishes
(facing page 128), satellite and helicopter photographs showing eight
gigantic symmetrical pyramid-shaped structures, with four smaller ones,
covered with dense forest on the edge of the Amazon jungle. Exploration
is difficult because of the thick forest and the local tribes who, no
doubt quite properly, protect them as sacred places. Nearby there are
other circular and semicircular formations, thought to be massive constructions
far older than any known cultures and only recently discovered by modern
aerospace technology.back to top
15. "THE DISTORTED REMAINS OF A SUNKEN
CONTINENT"? — OCEANOGRAPHY
Professor Hapgood, in "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings", page
59, quotes the distinguished Belgian Dr. Rene Malaise. He concluded
that at least parts of the Mid-Atlantic ridge, which includes the Azores
Plateau, was still above sea-level at the end of the last ice age, around
10,000 B.C. He examined diatoms of fresh-water species, taken from the
Ridge, that lived in a fresh-water lake when the Ridge was above sea
level, which must have been, he said, in the last 10,000 to 15,000 years,
as they were all recent species. Berlitz, as a professional diver, is
an expert in this field. He describes in detail the topography of the
Mid-Atlantic ridge which is at one of its widest points where Atlantis
is supposed to have been - the distorted remains of a sunken continent?
He also describes remarkable finds of tachylyte- a vitreous basaltic
lava - on the sea-bed north of the Azores (mid-Atlantic islands). The
scientific examination of this by Dr. Pierre Terraier of the Paris Oceanographic
Institute, showed, he announced in 1911, that the Atlantic sea-bed in
that area was probably on the surface not more than 15,000 years ago.
Although Termier's conclusion has been challenged since, the thesis
that much of the Atlantic sea-bed was at some time on the surface is
also supported by extensive other evidence , notably "cores"
brought up from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in 1957 and the work of the U.
S. Geodetic Survey on the American continental shelf. The most remarkable
evidence, however, already outlined, are the actual remains of what
are clearly ancient shaped stones on the sea-bed off the Bahamas, Cuba,
Puerto Rico, Peru, Morocco, and the Russian Seamount photographs, all
pre-dating the rise in ocean level of 10,000 to 12,000 years ago —
which itself coincides strikingly with Plato's date of about 9,500 B.C.
for the sinking of Atlantis.
Since the rise of level of probably 300-650 feet is a generally accepted
fact even by the most orthodox science, we have enough scope to postulate
a major Atlantean culture of near-Platonic dimensions even without envisaging
the larger (Azores Plateau, Caribbean and mid-Atlantic) disappeared
islands: the Atlantis theory does not depend on geologic or cosmic catastrophism!
A very powerful, empire-building Atlantis could perfectly well have
been distributed among the far larger Atlantic islands and far more
extensive coastal continental shelf areas (on both sides) which existed
before much of them were swallowed up by the gigantic, if gradual rise
in sea level. The evidence, however, is increasingly in favour of catastrophism,
an idea that is just now beginning to reclaim scientific favour as evidence
proliferates that asteroids, comets or both caused large, recently discovered
impact areas (e. g. an enormous one in Texas) and may, for example,
have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and/or
the mammoths of northern Siberia 10,000-15,000 years ago. back
to top
16. "THE GODS OF AZTLAN"? —
WORLD LEGENDS
From Plato to ancient Indian Sanscrit writings, from North American
Indian flood legends to the Canary Islands natives, a remarkably consistent
picture emerges of "gods" and humans who in many cases escaped
from a great continent variously known as "Atlas", "Aztlan",
"Atlantis", "Ad" (and many other variants) which
was in the East (for the American Indians) or the West (for Europeans
and Egyptians), and which was catastrophically flooded. The "flood
survivor" racial memory was so strong that, in the last century,
some North American Indian tribes were still found to be regularly playing
out an extraordinary ritual. The sole survivor reaches the village and
has to go round from dwelling to dwelling asking for hospitality.
The most famous "god figure" is the Toltec, and later Aztec,
ancient "white god" Quetzalcoatl — "Kuculcan"
to the Mayas. His confusion with the Spanish invader, Cortes, had disastrous
consequences for the Aztecs in 1519. In the legend, after bringing civilization
to Mexico, he went back to Tlapallan, "The Land of the Rising Sun",
his original home in the eastern sea, i. e. presumably the Atlantic.
His father was Gucumatz, god of the ocean and earthquake, as was Atlas's
father, Poseidon. The similarities do not stop there: in fact, they
almost defy belief. Both Quetzalcoatl and Atlas came from Atlantic homes;
both were founders of civilizations; each was one of twins; both were
bearded; and both in legend, held up the heavens. Do we have, here,
a common Atlantis legend from two supposedly completely separate civilizations?
What of the Peruvian legends of their great founding hero, Manco Capac,
who, with his sister/wife, suddenly appeared "from the Sun"
on an island in Lake Titicaca and taught civilization? Or the Maya founding
"Master of the Dawn" Ttzarana, or Zamna? The dawn, i.e. the
rising sun, comes from the east, the direction of Atlantis from America;
and as Professor Marcel Hornet points out, the Atlanteans were called
"Sons of the Sun".
The "Codex Troanus", a book of hieroglyphs left by the Maya,
is now in the British Museum, Brasseur de Bourbourg, in an admittedly
controversial version, translated this to say that, 8,060 years before
its compilation, two great islands were continually rocked by earthquakes
and eventually sank with 64 million people. Augustus Le Plongeon equally
controversially translated the inscription on the pyramid of Xochicalco,
Mexico, to give a similar message. Fascinating further detail is in
"The Shadow of Atlantis" by Braghine, especially chapter one.
Then there are the inexplicable similarities between buildings, pyramids,
cultures, burial rituals, customs and traditions on both sides of the
Atlantic - did these originate, as many of the legends imply, with a
common centre of civilization, perhaps the hub of an empire which extended
throughout much of the Americas, Europe and the Middle East ? Were Mesolithlc
Man (8,000 to 4,000 B.C.) and Neolithic Man (after 4,000 B.C) the degenerate,
or not-so-degenerate survivors of areas that had once been colonised
or influenced by Atlanteans, and to which, perhaps, some of the survivors
of the Atlantean catastrophe fled? back
to top
17."THE LANGUAGE OF THE GODS"? —
ANCIENT COMPARATIVE LANGUAGE
The present-day Basques, of southern France and northern Spain, think
themselves descendants of Atlantis, Charles Berlitz, whose grandfather
founded the Berlitz language schools, is a languages expert. In "The
Mystery of Atlantis" he devotes a fascinating chapter (ten) to
"Atlantis, Language and the Alphabet". He regards the Basque
language (the general Iberian language before the Celtic and subsequent
Roman conquests) as a possible relic of the Atlantean language. It is
very ancient, and isolated, with strange affinities. It has similarities
with other agglutinative languages like Quecha, the ancient Inca language,
and also resembles the polysynthetic American Indian and Eskimo, but
does not appear to have influenced, or been influenced by, any other
language. Rather it is a sort of living fossil.... certain of its words,
like "ceiling" which literally means "the top of the
cavern" or "knife" which means "the stone that cuts",
seem to go back to Cro-Magnon cave days, and remember that Lewis Spence
thought the Cro-Magnons were escaping Atlanteans.
Spiritual words in American Indian languages, Berlitz continues, have
extraordinary resemblances to ancient languages very far removed, that
could only have had contact if there were some sort of prehistoric seaborne
communications, "Thalassa" was "the sea" in ancient
Greek: "thallac" meant "not solid" to the Mayas,
and Tlaloc was the water god of the Aztecs, "Atl" means "water"
in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, and also in the North African Berber
language. "Manitu" is "great spirit" in American
Indian, equivalent to the Hindu "Manu". The Nahuatl for "God"
is "teo" or "theulh", and the Greeks have "theos"
from which we get "theology". In Basque "argi" is
"light", while in Sanskrit "arg" is "brilliant".
Even more strikingly, "father" is "aita" in Basque,
"taita" in Quecha, "ata" in Turkic languages, "atey"
in Dakota, "tata" or "tahtli" in Nahuatl, "intati"
in Seminole", "Tachchu" or "tat'chu" in Zuni,
"tata" in Maltese, "tatay" in Tagalog, "tad"
in Welsh, "tata" in Roumanian, "thatha" or "tata"
in Sinhalese, and "tata" in both Fijian and Samoan, both distant
Pacific island languages, Most of these languages are linguistic islands,
not sharing in the mainstream of Indo- European language development,
as if they, too, are fossils of a distant past language which once united
or linked them all. Was this, also, the "language of the gods"
which the ancient Egyptians considered the origin of their hieroglyphs?
And why is the Easter Island script so similar to the Indus valley script
of more than 5,000 years ago in ancient Pakistan? Or the carvings of
balsa-wood sailing craft found on recently-excavated pyramids at Tecume,
in Peru, so similar to the Easter Island craft: "almost identical",
to use Thor Heyerdahl1 s words faxed to the Kon-Tiki Museum, Norway,
on 5th March 1992. Why, also, is the newly - discovered script of Mystery
Hill, New Hampshire, U. S. A. , so similar to ancient Cretan script?
back to top
18. "THE SHINING ONES" — THE
GARDEN OF EDEN & THE RE-FOUNDERS OF CIVILIZATION
Christian O'Brien, a remarkable scholar, retired in 1970 as head of
the Iranian oil industry and became a full-time researcher into prehistory.
He was kind enough to give our Wessex Research and Schools and Universities
Networks groups several fascinating talks in 1984, Turnstone Press,
part of the Thorsons Group, published his two impressive books, "The
Megalithic Odyssey: A Search for the Master Builders of the Bodmin Moor
Astronomical Complex of Stone Circles and Giant Cairns" in 1983,
and "The Genius of the Few: The Story of Those Who Founded the
Garden in Eden" in 1985. This was a major publishing event, and
I remember the sheer excitement as the immensity of the implications
of the thesis sank in.
Many gigantic stone structures, the thesis runs, were built within a
space of only two centuries in the Third Millennium B.C., in a sudden
spurt of precision building that suddenly came from previously primitive
cultures: among them the Pyramids of Egypt, the great works at Avebury
and Silbury Hill, the first part of Stonehenge, the early ziggurats
of Mesopotamia and the advanced cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in
the Indus Valley. The first book argues for the advent in history of
a race of master builders, a group originating before Sumeria,, regarded
in orthodox circles as the oldest advanced Middle Eastern culture which
suddenly and mysteriously learned the arts of civilization. These master
builders traversed much of the World guiding, instructing and inspiring
local populations, not only with building techniques but with advanced
astronomical and philosophical wisdom, as is shown by the Bodmin Moor
complex which O'Brien and his wife, Joy, discovered in 1978. The linguistic
evidence for this is impressively assembled, with amazing similarities
of place-names on their overseas journeys, including Britain, compared
in detail with their Sumerian originals.
The second book, written with Joy O'Brien, is even more fascinating.
It goes back to 8,000 B.C. — almost, be it noted, Atlantean times.
According to Sumerian scripts which they translated in a logical, scientific
way without the usual religious bias, a group of wise sages appeared,
known as the "Annanage" to the Sumerians and the "Elohim"
("Shining Ones") to the early Middle East people. They settled
in a fertile basin in the Southern Lebanese mountains and set up an
agricultural, crop and animal genetic research centre. This was not
only for their own survival but to breed a superior genetic strain of
humanity and teach them the elements of civilization. Passages in the
Biblical Garden of Eden story of, for example, the creation of man and
woman, the apple, the serpent, the temptation and the Fall, are compared
with the very similar Sumerian passages based, it seems, on the same
events. These sages seem to have been exploring what was for them an
unknown world. According to the O'Briens, they were inevitably made
into gods by the people, in their absence, thousands of years after
these "creation" events; so that, for example, the words that
could be translated in a matter-of-fact way as "The Shining Ones
looked on the highlands and the lowlands with pleasure" were given
the far more cosmic rendering of "God made the Heaven and the Earth"
— "Elohim", literally plural "the Shining Ones"
(i.e. O'Brien1s sages), becoming the singular "God". They
went on, say the O'Briens, to found (by their genetic work) the Hebrew
race, whose purity was supposed to be maintained by fierce injunctions
to maintain cleanliness, eat pure foods, and not intermix with other
races. The Hebrews carried the tribal memory of their homeland as the
Garden of Eden, and of their benefactors as "angels" (literally
Greek "angelos" — "messengers"),
If this thesis is correct, and there was a confusion, (I would say at
times only), between "The Shining Ones" and the concept of
"God", I do not think this in any way prejudices the existence
of a very real, universal true God, nor of its revealing itself genuinely
in the Biblical (or other) scriptures; the most inspired passages very
definitely show an awareness of this all-embracing consciousness, of
which, surely, the sages or "Shining Ones" themselves were
aware, as were most of the other great teachers of history. My concern
is where these apparently very physical and scientific sages came from.
One clear possibility is that they came from other planets; another,
that they densified from higher planes of matter. But there is a clear,
more Earthly possibility: that they came from the remnants of a once-great
advanced civilization right here on this planet, and had saved sufficient
of their scientific knowledge (especially of genetics) to perform the
great commission, perhaps left them by their dying forefathers, of re-starting
advanced life on a planet now recovering from a worldwide cataclysm.
Here one point is crucial. The O'Briens put the appearance of the first
generation of these beings as at 8,000 BC. This leaves a convenient
500-1,500 years for Earth to recover from the catastrophe and the advanced
remnant to reconvene, in some remote safe area, and reassemble its knowledge.
What better, then, than to found a genetically advanced race which can
lead the recovery, and then tour much of the world teaching how to re-found
the arts of civilization with the "appropriate technology"
of the time (megaliths, astronomy, agriculture, etc.)? Much of that
tour led back to areas (western Europe, Britain) that would have been
colonies of the sunken mother-land of which they would have had a vague
but affectionate racial memory. When we consider the similarity with
the persistent worldwide legends of ancient founding god-like figures
like Quetzalcoatl or Atlas himself, who came from oceanic or Eastern
lands, or from remote highlands or even "the Sun" or "the
Heavens", the relevance to the Atlanteans, the "Sons of the
Sun", becomes compelling. back
to top
19. "THE LOST SHIP OF NOAH"? —
THE ARARAT SHIP REMAINS
Also in the Middle East, the Biblical flood legend has been the subject
of massive speculation and literature. The story of Noah's epic survival
of a massive flood, with his family and two of each animal, in a gigantic
"ark", has long fascinated us, but had been assumed to be
mythical. In early 1994 this assumption was shattered. On 30th January
Jill Parsons wrote an article in "The Mail on Sunday" entitled
"Is this Noah's Ark? Why scientists believe they are proving a
Biblical legend", "The mountain-top site that may be one of
the most sensational archaeological finds ever"; and on 13th February,
Channel 4 opened their "Encounters" series with one of those
programmes that really do make history, entitled "The Quest for
the Ark". An archaeological team including the American, Vendyl
Jones, who has devoted his life to the Ark quest, had examined a massive
ship-shaped imprint near the peak of the El Judi mountain, 7,000 feet
up in Turkey.
Not only is this a mere 17-20 miles from Mount Ararat (and on the same
mountain range), where the Bible says the Ark was grounded after the
flood subsided, but the Koran, the Muslim Holy Book, is more specific:
it actually names the El Judi mountain and says the Ark landed near
the peak. In Genesis, in the Bible, God instructed Noah to build an
Ark 300 cubits (450 feet) long and 50 cubits (75 feet) wide, exactly
the dimensions of the imprint. Even more astonishing, as given in Jill
Parsons's article, these measurements are repeated in an ancient Greek
account of Noah's life, according to Jones and a shipwreck specialist
member of his archaeological team, David Fasold. This Greek text also
gave them an ancient map reference which, together with other ancient
texts, clearly indicated the Ararat range as the site for the Ark. Further,
the imprint was once made of wood held together by plaster, and although
the wood has rotted away, samples of the plaster remain.
The Channel 4 programme adds important details. An ancient Babylonian
text is mentioned, giving directions to the Ark. Ancient stones in the
area were found, with holes in the top very similar to, but much larger
than, stones found on ancient sunken ships in the Mediterranean, used
to stabilize the vessels by being towed behind them. On these stones
are remarkable carvings: crosses, said locally to denote the presence
nearby of the Ark; an ancient script; and stylised plants like olive
leaves, said to portray the olive sprig which the dove brought back
to Noah to show that, at last, land had appeared after his apparently
unending ordeal on the waves. A nearby town is given a name which translates
as "crow on the land", which could refer to the crow in the
Noah story. Although not permitted to excavate as yet for fear of damaging
the site, a team was filmed using special radar which could penetrate
25 feet down into the soil, It traced what could be the eerie fossilised
shape of the timbers of a large ship, of exactly the Ark's size: the
timbers had rotted away, but the shape of them was still visible. The
Turkish government takes this all very seriously: it has declared the
site an area of outstanding natural and historical interest, and has
finally given permission for a proper excavation, which will happen
for the first time in summer 1995.
The Biblical side is given very well in "The Ark on Ararat",
by Tim LaHaye and John Morris, published by Thomas Nelson and Creation
Life in the USA, 1976, and by Lakeland in Britain in 1979. They point
out that the original Hebrew word which is translated "flood"
implies more than this: an earth- changing cataclysm. In fact, it is
the root from which we get such a concept. They also describe how Ararat
remains were first sighted as early as 1856, from which time there have
been increasing reports of them by about 200 individuals, all of whose
stories have many conimon details, with no possibility of collusion,
and despite the glacial changes that periodically alter the ice that
usually has hidden the Ark imprint from view. Most strikingly, three
men have found hand-hewn timbers in that area (150 miles from the nearest
tree).
In "The Lost Ship of Noah: In Search of the Ark at Ararat",
a very valuable book published by W. H. Alien in 1987, Charles Berlitz
gives further details of the Ararat imprint. Wood fragments were found
there when parts of it were dynamited in 1960. An unusual, gigantic
stone slab has been found nearby with stratified lines that may be an
actual fossilised part of the Ark : this, according to Fasold, was an
enormous reed structure, built round a timber framework, over which
a form of cement was poured to waterproof it, of a type which we know
the ancient Akkadians had, Berlitz also tells the story of Fernand Navarra,
the French industrialist and author of "J'ai Trouve 1'Arche do
Noe", perhaps the equivalent for the Ark of Heinrich Schlieraann
who discovered Troy.
It was 1955, the year of the greatest thaw point in decades: the almost
perpetual ice glaciers which covered the Ararat range would be easier
to penetrate than usual. After several attempts and a heroic four days
and nights on the blizzard - swept western slope of Ararat, Navarra
succeeded in finding evenly cut and obviously hand - tooled wooden beams
under a half-melted glacier. He selected one, but found it attached
to others, on what he considered the hull of the Ark, the more complete
pattern of which he could see through the ice. He cut off a five-foot
section. On analysis, the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture said the
wood was oak. The term "gopherwood" for the Ark's wood in
Genesis is thought by scientists to mean white oak. There is no white
oak within 600 miles of Ararat, so it must have come by, or as part
of, a vessel. They also dated it at 5,000 BC, a date later confirmed
(4-5,000) through carbon-14 and other tests by the universities of Bordeaux
and Madrid. Although two American universities gave much later dates,
we can be fairly confident of the early dates in view of the now known
tendency of carbon-14 techniques seriously to underestimate the age
of objects, as described in Professor Colin Renfrew's "Before Civilization:
The Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe", published by
Jonathan Cape in 1973. In fact, in view of this, 4-5,000 is possibly
an underestimate, especially since the deep freeze and covered condition
of the wood may have inhibited the carbon-14 decay.
Excitingly, this leaves open a possible date of Atlantean or near- Atlantean
antiquity. Anything of 5,000 BC or before may be relevant, since the
period of global instability may have continued for as much as thousands
of years after the initial asteroid impact and sinking of Atlantis.
We can imagine starkly the upheaval of the tectonic plates, the giant
dust cloud in the upper atmosphere only gradually dissipating, severe
disruption to weather patterns, rising sea level and possible further
impacts by other, lesser asteroids, comets or large meteors. There may
have been, in other words, several lesser deluges following the Atlantean
one (as some legends, e.g. the Hopis' of Arizona, suggest). Perhaps
there were several arks, vessels carrying survivors, or ships plying
an ancient seaborne trade which survived, or was rebuilt after, the
catastrophe.
It seems likely that Navarra1's glaciated "hull" is one of
these, as it is not the same as the Mt. El Judi imprint covered in the
Channel 4 programme, which is 17-20 miles from Ararat. The widespread
distribution of such wooden beams is a further indication of this. Navarra
later seems to have found them in different positions on Ararat. Apparently,
moreover, similar beams to Navarra1 s have frequently been found by
local Kurdish or Turkish mountaineers, but are not usually reported
because the presence of a great ship, or ships, on Mount Ararat is a
matter of common knowledge in the area. In 1948, a "shiplike"
shape was reportedly forced up by an earthquake in the field of a local
farmer, Resit Sarihan, in a village to the south
of Ararat called Mahser: since this meant "doomsday" and the
"ship" was thought to be a bad omen, the village name was
later changed to Uzengili! back
to top
20. "LOST SURVIVORS OF THE DELUGE":
WORLDWIDE FLOOD LEGENDS
Another invaluable work, "Lost Survivors of the Deluge" by
Gerhard von Hassler, was translated by Martin Ebon and published in
English by Signet Books in 1978. Amongst other things, he points out
that the Sumerians, In the "Epic of Gilgamesh", describe a
huge ship similar in proportions to Noah's Ark, a great flood similar
to Noah's, and explores the possibility that Gilgamesh sailed from Africa
to the mouth of the Amazon in search of his ancestors. He describes
how legends worldwide, of Greece and India, of the Incas, Mayas, Aztecs,
and North American Indians, all speak of a Great Deluge which destroyed
all but a few remnants of humanity — but that these remnants included
the "gods" and heroes who re-taught the arts of civilization.
These re-founded arts are vividly shown in two of the most ancient cities
yet uncovered, dating approximately from the time of the end of Atlantis:
Catal Huyuk in Anatolia, little over 1,000 kilometres from Mount Ararat,
and Jericho, c, 1,200 kilometres away. So the Ararat region, clearly,
as we have seen, the home of the best-known of the remnants, could have
been the seed for perhaps the most prominent, but far from the only,
revival. Remember, also, that the 0'Briens say their "sages"
first appeared not far away, in the Lebanon highlands, and at about
the same time, 8,000 BC.
Here we have, then, extraordinary evidence for the world's best-known
flood and cataclysm story. God's reasons for the Flood, given in Genesis
chapter six, were strikingly similar to Zeus's reasons for submerging
Atlantis in Plato's account: "The imaginations of men were evil
continually", including violations of God's marriage statutes;
people were "lovers of violence", disobedient to, and unbelieving
in, God; they refused to believe Noah, until too late, that judgement
was about to come, just as Zeus appears to have caught the Atlanteans
unrepentant and unprepared.
Was Noah's Flood, then, the same event that sank Atlantis in probably
8 -10,000 BC? Remember that, to Noah and his people, "the World"
would have meant the Middle Eastern world as they knew it, so we do
not have to read the account to mean Noah's family were the sole survivors
on the whole planet. If it were the same event, it does not mean Noah
was an Atlantean; he was suffering the effects of the catastrophic continuous
deluge, lasting over a month, that would probably have followed the
impact of Otto Muck's six-mile diameter asteroid in the Atlantic. Vast
amounts of water would have been instantly vaporised and boiled, reached
the upper atmosphere, and been carried by the tornado-strength winds
all round the planet. On cooling it would have come down in violent
torrential sheets, wiping out most civilization as it did so.
Flood legends of incredible antiquity throughout the world, including
ancient China and America, show that everywhere it was regarded as a
cosmic cataclysm, a judgement, a destruction followed by a renewal.
These legends, and other fascinating evidence, are given comprehensively
by Charles Berlitz in "Mysteries from Forgotten Worlds" (1972)
and "Doomsday 1999 AD" (1981) published by Souvenir Press,
as well as his Atlantis books and "The Lost Ship of Noah".
These works did much to assemble the evidence and pave the way for the
recent revelations. In "Doomsday 1999 AD" Berlitz relates
it to apocalyptic beliefs more generally, and gives valuable analyses
of the way some people and groups are currently trying to "hitch"
catastrophe legends in support of their expectation of a similar world
nemesis at the forthcoming end of this millennium.
There were survivors all over the planet, but as the Egyptian priests
told Solon in Plato's account, most were so devastated that they lost
the structure of their civilization, including the art of writing. I
say "most", because a few were probably better placed, either
because of their technology, or because like Noah they were forewarned
in some way, or because of geography. Possibly, even, some of them were
not primarily based on this planet, or in this time-space frequency,
at all — or were rescued by those who were not. Were these better-placed
people — for whatever reason — the ancestors of the 0'Briens1
"sages", or Manco Capac, or Quetzalcoatl, or other wise figures
whose appearance to the forlorn remnants of humanity re-founded world
civilizations and gave them the name of "gods"? back
to top
21. THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX
Are the remains of the Ark, Catal Hüyük and Jericho, the Atlantic
underwater finds and Hapgood’s ancient maps the only physical,
as opposed to literary or legendary, evidence of Atlantean-period advanced
civilization? Until 27th November 1994, most people would have said
yes. On the evening of that day, however, everything changed. The BBC-2
"Timewatch" programme for that evening was a bombshell. Entitled
"The Age of the Sphinx", it featured an adventurous, spiritually-minded
and unorthodox American Egyptologist, John Anthony West, who until then
had been best known for an excellent study of Ancient Egypt, "Serpent
in the Sky", published by Turnstone in 1979. He started by proving,
to his own satisfaction and that of a police identification expert,
that the face on the Sphinx was not that of the son of Chephren, the
Pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid, and through whom the Sphinx has
received its orthodox dating in the 3rd Century BC, He went on to ask
Robert Schoch, Professor of Geology at Boston University, specialising
in rain erosion, to examine the Sphinx.
Schoch quite independently put its date at 5-7,000 BC, since the erosion,
previously overlooked, could not have happened with the very slight
rainfall in Egypt after that time. Schoch points out (as given in an
"Independent" article in 1992) that stone remains of this
period have been found elsewhere, in Turkey and Palestine; and further
states that it may be before this period, since erosion rates often
happen "non-linearly"; in other words, the deeper the weathering,
the slower it may progress, since it is protected by the outer layer
of the stone. This is revolution enough, and we are already in the near-Atlantean
period, when re-founded or surviving remnants of Atlantean civilization
may have been widespread and powerful: quite enough so to have brought
about the worldwide seaborne trade that Hapgood's ancient maps, the
Ararat timbers, and cities like Catal Huyuk and Jericho, suggest. In
other words, we have a civilization quite advanced enough to have built
the Sphinx and, if it did so, clearly it was the precursor of the Ancient
Egypt we know so well.
West himself is not content with this: he dates it at the earliest at
8-10,000 BC, when the precession of the equinoxes would have been such
that the paws would have been pointing to the midsummer sunrise. This
was a point of great importance to the Egyptians, as well as to the
builders of great monuments elsewhere, such as Stonehenge, (John Ivimy,
in "The Sphinx and the Megaliths", published by Turnstone
in 1974, thinks that the importance was indeed so great that the ancient
Egyptians themselves brought the practice to the western megaliths,
including (midwinter sunrise) to Newgrange near Dublin in Ireland, which
is at least 4,500 BC, ) But for West, even 8-10,000 BC is latest possible
date for the Sphinx. He claims (as reported in the "Independent"
article, 1992) that its extreme water weathering patterns suggest it
already existed during the climatic conditions that followed the break-up
of the Ice Age between about 15,000 and 10,000 BC. If this is true,
we have a sensation, overturning all orthodox preconceptions; a real
Atlantean-period Sphinx -- an advanced prehistoric Egypt. This was probably
not a colony of Atlantis (as Ignatius Donnelly and others had suggested),
but co-existed with it, standing proudly independent, as did prehistoric
Greece. This would be striking confirmation of the literal truth of
Plato's account based, remember, on what the Egyptian priests of Saïs
told Solon, reading from their own hieroglyphs ancient even then, written
on a stone column.back to top
22. THE REALLY ANCIENT WORLD: THE EGYPTIAN
PRIESTS' ACCOUNT
The first part of their account is often overlooked. One of the best
translations and commentaries is in Otto Mück1 s "Secret of
Atlantis", first chapter. It tells us vital information about the
really ancient world before the catastrophes, and the catastrophes themselves.
The priests said the Greeks (of 571 BC, when Solon visited them) were
all like children, for they had no really ancient knowledge. Many disasters
have hit humanity, in various ways ("and it will continue in the
future"), of which the greatest are by fire and water and the lesser
ones by "a thousand other causes". The Greek legend of Phaëthon
and Helios, in which Phaëthon caused a terrible conflagration on
Earth by failing to control the sun chariot and falling to Earth struck
by Zeus' s thunderbolt, was, they said, not mere fable but an account
of "the deviation from their courses of the stars in the heavens
that revolve round the Earth" and "the destruction by much
fire of everything on Earth". When it is thus by fire the uplanders
are the main victims, but Egypt is saved from this "as it is in
all other things" by the Nile, which bursts its banks. When the
disaster is by deluge, the town and coastal people, like the Greeks,
suffer, but again Egypt is saved, or less affected, since there are
no hills or mountains from which the water can sweep down and carry
them away to the sea as elsewhere.
In other words, the Egyptian priests tell us that they have an unusually
safe land, which is "why the tradition preserved among us is considered
the most ancient", and all the "beautiful, great, or significant
events that take place among you, or us, or anywhere else" is recorded
"wholly and fully in our temples", as word is received, and
"preserved for posterity". But "with you [Greeks] and
the others" [who, we wonder!] everything has only recently started
again through written documents and the mechanisms of the state. After
a regular period "the heavens open up on mankind again" and
sweep away all but the ignorant, and "you will be as it were made
young again", knowing nothing of the ancient past.
The Greeks in particular, the priests said, remember only one deluge,
although there have been many previous ones; therefore forgetting their
own ancient, most glorious race, because they have gone for many generations
without written records. These were the Greeks who, after all others
had defected, beat the Atlanteans and restored the freedom of all those
in the Mediterranean area, after which came the "violent earthquakes
and floods" which destroyed the Greeks, as well as Atlantis "in
a single dreadful day and a single dreadful night". They said Atlantis
had ruled Libya (North Africa) "as far as the borders of Egypt",
Europe "as far as Tyrrhenia" and "parts" of the
"continent" (America) on the "other side" of and
"enclosing" the "sea which may properly be called an
ocean" beyond the "Pillars of Hercules" (Straits of Gibraltar).
Compared with this, they said, all that is situated on this side of
the Straits (Gibraltar) "appears like a bay with a narrow entrance".
We can now see the priests' account, as reported in Plato, as not merely
the story of Atlantis. It is an outline of the Mediterranean and Atlantic
ancient world more generally, and the frequent cataclysms that affected
it, increasingly being confirmed by new research. We do not need to
speculate too much. The Greeks have conveniently translated for us the
account written in stone, by the civilization which had taken it upon
itself to be the chroniclers of civilization. The picture that emerges
is one of a vigorous, varied and prosperous world, with extensive seaborne
trade, large armies and navies, advanced agriculture, metal-working,
writing, sophisticated astronomy including knowledge of the spherical
Earth, largely accurate world maps, and advanced forms of government.
There were evidently many smaller states and at least three major regional
powers — Atlantis, Greece and Egypt. It is clear from the account
that Egypt was not an Atlantean colony at that time, but bordered the
eastern edge of the Atlantean empire. Most, with some exceptions including
Egypt, were subject to periodic destruction by planetary bodies, earthquakes
and floods.back to top
23. ANCIENT INDIA AND CHINA
Further east, India and China, their legends suggest, were also advanced,
before suffering catastrophes, after which they were reconstructed.
India has extraordinary legends of unknown antiquity in the "Mahabharata"
and "Ramayana", including great civilizations, heroes and
heroines both godlike and more fallible, descriptions of flying machines
and how to make them, and terrifying accounts of cataclysms and warfare
with exotic weapons, some of the effects of which suggest nuclear war.
Rene Noorbergen, in "Secrets of the Lost Races", published
by New English Library in 1978, gives extensive evidence for China and
the Pacific region. He gives accounts of Chinese experimental flying
craft (pages 107-8), ancient patches of fused quartz suggesting nuclear
detonations (page 125) and, evidence from an ancient geographical treatise.
Called the "Shan Hai King", "The Classic of Mountains
and Seas", and dated 2,250 BC, it includes detailed surveys of
Western North America, with recognizable items like the Rocky Mountains
and even the Grand Canyon.
Most significant, however, are legends of lost races of distant epochs
who were in some way punished or removed, often by floods. The ancient
Chinese realized that before them were "giants", "men
twice as tall as us", who once lived in the "realm of delight",
but lost this by not living "by laws of virtue" (page 34);
also there was a race of primitive degenerates who "troubled the
Earth" and had to be exterminated (page 152). A familiar theme
already: but on pages 14 and 15 Noorbergen quotes legends that all Chinese
are direct descendants of an ancient ancestor called Nu-wah, who overcame
a great flood: this has given the Chinese language several words that
can only be traced to Nu-wah and the flood. Nu-wah reconstructed the
world after its destruction by the flood. This is just one of over thirty
flood legends Noorbergen says have been discovered in the Orient. back
to top
24. "THE SUNKEN CONTINENT OF THE PACIFIC":
THE LOST LEMURIA?
The Pacific itself is rich in them. Hawaiians, for example, also have
a similar legend, this time of Nu-u, who was the one righteous man allowed,
with his family, to escape, by building a great canoe with a house on
it, after the Hawaiian god had destroyed the Earth. As with the Noah
legend, a rainbow was the sign of the waters subsiding, and Nu-u and
his three sons repopulated the Earth. The similarity with the Biblical
and Sumerian legends is beyond coincidence. The Pacific is also, of
course, home to the greatest lost-continent legend outside Atlantis:
that of Lemuria, or Mu, the fabled ancient lost land which broke up
and sank probably millennia before Atlantis. Lacking a reliable account
like Plato's, we have to depend on myth and circumstantial evidence:
this has been described by Colonel James Churchward in his series of
"Mu" books published by Neville Spearman, The best single
analysis of it is probably in Lewis Spence1 s excellent and now rare
book "The Problem of Lemuria: The Sunken Continent of the Pacific",
published by Rider in 1933. He presents evidence attesting the existence
of now-vanished inhabited islands and larger land-masses, and the actual
survival of a native white Pacific race which may be the descendants
of the Lemurians. He believed there were several sub-continental land-masses.
One, near Easter Island, was the most advanced, and was known to Polynesian
tradition as "Motu Matira Hiva": it had affinities with Ancient
Peru. The second one has New Zealand as its remnant; the third stretches
from New Caledonia to Sumatra. There were, he said, several lesser ones.
He found great similarities with Atlantis. back
to top
