From Atlantis

to the Sphinx
Colin Wilson
To
John West,
Graham Hancock
and
Robert Bauval-
friends without whose
help this book could
not have been written.
First published in Great Britain in 1996 by
Virgin Books
an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd
332 Ladbroke Grove
LONDON W10 5 AH
Reprinted 1996
Copyright Colin Wilson 1996
The right of Colin Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed
upon the subsequent purchaser.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 1 85227 526 X
Phototypeset by Intype London Ltd
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent
Analytical Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
viii
Acknowledgements
ix
Introduction
1
Schwaller de Lubicz and the age of the Sphinx - was it
built by 'Atlanteans'? Hapgood's ancient maps. The
Atlantis film script. Schoch's conference at San Diego.
Scepticism of 'the experts'. Robert Graves and Mr Gunn.
Mathematical prodigies. I meet John West. Graham
Hancock and Rand Flem-ath. Bauval's Orion Mystery.
Andr VandenBroeck' s Al-Kemi. Publication of
Fingerprints of the Gods. What does it all mean? The
search for 'the intensity experience'. What can 'the
ancients' teach us?
1 Egyptian Mysteries
11
The Hancocks scale the Great Pyramid at dawn. How was
it built? The Sign and the Seal. Was the Sphinx eroded by
water? Serpent in the Sky. Schwaller de Lubicz and
alchemy. Death of Fulcanelli. Schwaller in Luxor. Andr
and Goldian Vanden-Breck visit Schwaller. A different
kind of knowledge. Gurdjieff on the Sphinx. Pythagoras
and music. Schwaller on ancient Egypt
2 The New Race
31
Robert Schoch agrees to look at the Sphinx. Who carved
the Sphinx? Schoch agrees the Sphinx is weathered by
water. How did the Egyptians move 200-ton blocks?
Flinders Ptrie discovers
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
'the New Race' then changes his mind. Unknown
techniques of carving. Christopher Dunn on the granite
sarcophagus. A drill that works 500 times faster than a
modern drill. Schoch announces his results at San Diego.
The BBC proves Schoch correct about rock layers at Giza.
The Sphinx Temple and the Oseirion. The 'Cyclopeans'.
The Inventory Stela. Frank Domingo declares the Sphinx
is not Chefren
3 Inside the Pyramid
49
Al-Mamun breaks into the Great Pyramid. The missing
mummy. The 'other entrance'. Davison's Chamber.
Howard-Vyse 'proves' that Cheops built the Great
Pyramid. Sitchin throws doubt on Howard-Vyse. Did the
Egyptians know the size of the earth? Was the Great
Pyramid an observatory? Robert Bauval reads The Sirius
Mystery. How did the Dogon know Sirius was a double
star? The Pyramid Texts. The pyramids and the belt of
Orion. Edgar Cayce on Atlantis. Were there pyramids
planned in 10,500 bc? Mendelssohn on the pyramids.
Boats. Thor Heyerdahl on Egyptian shipbuilding
4 The Forbidden Word
81
Hapgood's Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings. The great Ice
Ages. The Piri Re'is map. The significance of Syene. How
Eratosthenes worked out the size of the earth. Earth's
Shifting Crust. A worldwide maritime civilisation in 7000
BC? Plato and Atlantis. Ignatius Donnelly. The Bimini
Road. Randy Flemming begins a novel on Atlantis. When
the Sky Fell. Is Atlantis in Antarctica?
{
5 The Realm of the White Gods
99
Cortes and the conquest of Mexico. Careri and the Aztecs.
Stephens discovers a jungle city. Why did the Mayas
disappear?. Brasseur de Bourbourg on the 'great
cataclysm'. Charnay in Mexico. Palenque, 'City of the
Serpents'. Augustus le Plongeon learns the Mayan
language. Evidence for Atlantis. Queen Moo. James
Churchward and Mu. Thompson and Chichen Itza. He
dives in the sacrificial well. Hoerbiger and the World-Ice
theory. Velikovsky and catastrophes. The mystery of
Tiahuanaco. The
Analytical Table of Contents
Hancocks in Tiahuanaco. Posnansky on the place of the
Standing Stones. Was Tiahuanaco built in 15,000 bc? The
fish gods. Teotihuacan. Corts fights his way out of
Tenochtitlan. Batres excavates the Pyramid of the Sun.
Gerald Hawkins on Teotihuacan. The Nazca lines. Did
they expect Viracocha to return by air? The move towards
caution. Why did the Egyptians and the Mayans both
regard Sirius as sacred?
6 The Antiquity of Man
135
Scheuchzer' s ' Ol d Si nner' . The begi nni ng of
palaeontology. Maillet's theory of evolution. Cuvier on
catastrophes. Lyell's Principles of Geology. A brief
history of the earth. How man developed from a tree
shrew. Darwin sails on the Beagle. The survival of the
fittest. The Missing Link. Piltdown Man. The discovery
of Neanderthal Man. Cro-Magnon Man. Don Marcelino
and the Altamira cave. Did man exist five million years
ago? Dubois and Java Man. The Olduvai Gorge and
Reek's skeleton. Peking Man. Leakey and the Kanjera
skulls. Dart and the Taung baby. The killer ape. Leakey
and Homo habilis. Johanson and Lucy
7 Forbidden Archaeology
163
How old is man? Michael Cremo studies palaeontology.
Von Ducker and the Pikermi bones. Pliocene sharks' teeth
with holes bored in them. Ribeiro and the River Tagus
beds. Bourgeois's flints - artefacts or naturefacts?
Ragazzoni and Pliocene man. 'Conventional history' - a
summary. The wheel. The implications of 'alternative
history'. What caused the brain explosion? Language?
Maerth's cannibalism theory. The Romantic theory of
evolution
8 More Forbidden Archaeology
183
Why is man a religious animal? Cave art and ritual
magic. Shamans and 'miracles'. The Wizard of the Upper
Amazon. Manuel Cordova is kidnapped. The 'collective
mind' of the Amahuaca Indians. Grimble and the 'calling
of the porpoises'. 'Mental radio'. Mavromatis and
hypnagogia. Why has man evolved so quickly?
Neanderthal man. Julian Jaynes and the
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
'bicameral mind'. The right and left brain. Did man
become a 'left brainer' in 1250 bc? Schwaller on
hieroglyphics. The Egyptian mentality. Harvalik and
dowsing. Alternative history of man. Pygmy hunting ritual
9 Of Stars and Gods
211
Alexander Thorn and the Callanish stone circle. Megaliths
as observatories. Anne Macaulay on the ancient 'code' of
Apollo. Cro-Magnon man as a star-gazer. Marshack's
Roots of Civilisation, Robert Graves and The White
Goddess. Maurice Cotterell and The Mayan Prophecies. Is
the Mayan calendar based on sunspot activity? Santillana
and Hamlet's Mill. The precession of the equinoxes. The
mill of the sky. Ancient civilisation in India. The date of
the Rig-Veda. A new theory of human evolution. Hunting
magic. Bauval and Hancock reconstruct the sky in 10,500
bc. Why did the Sphinx builders wait eight thousand years
to build the pyramids of Giza? Osiris's voyage up the
Milky Way. The journey to Rostau. Osiris returns to
Orion. The 'Followers of Horus'. Does the secret lie below
the rear paws of the Sphinx?
10 The Third Force
239
Edward T. Hall and the Hopi Indians. Monochronic time
and polychronic time. 'A different kind of perception'. The
Hopi and Mother Earth. Quiche time. Zen and archery.
Children in a school playground - the dance of life. Basic
rhythms. Mike Hayes and DNA. The mysterious 64. The
I-Ching and its 64 hexagrams. Pythagorianism. The third
force. The number it. The tetrad. The Luxor temple.
Synchronicity. The Chinese rain maker. Jacques Valle and
Melchizedek. Ross Salmon and the condor. Egyptian
magic. Ancient Egypt and the Nile. How man evolved.
How did Egyptians move 200-ton blocks? Ed Leedskal-
nin and Coral Castle. The sheet of iron found in the Great
Pyramid. How did Egyptian artists light the tombs? Egypt
as a 'collective' civilisation. Electronic ping pong in Las
Vegas. Boris Yermolayev suspends a cigarette packet in
the air. Lifting a man with four index fingers. The
drawbacks of group consciousness. The Chalice and the
Blade - a matriarchal civilisation? Wells's Experiment in
Autobiography. Are we human? The need for a 'third force'
to achieve the next step in evolution. Maslow and
Analytical Table of Contents
peak experiences. The importance of insights into past
civilisations. The 'next step' has already happened
Notes
283
Bibliography
285
Index
287
Illustrations
All pictures from The Art and Architecture Collection
except where credited otherwise
Map of Atlantis from Mundus Subterraneus by Athansius
Kircher (The
Charles Walker Collection)
Neanderthal Man (Hulton Deutsch Collection)
Java Man (Hulton Deutsch Collection)
The Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt
The pyramids at Giza
The sarcophagus of Cheops in the King's Chamber, the
Great Pyramid
The Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid
The Sphinx and the Pyramid of Chefren at Giza
,
The Sphinx
The Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Mexico
View of the ruins at Teotihuacan
Cave painting, Lascaux, France
Cave painting of urus, Lascaux
viii
Acknowledgements
Many friends have helped in the writing of this book -
primarily the three to whom it is dedicated: John Anthony
West, Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval. The latter was
particularly helpful with astronomical information, while
Graham Hancock patiently printed up spare copies of the
typescripts of Fingerprints of the Gods and Keeper of
Genesis for me. It was Graham's uncle Jim Macaulay who
lent me the important book Time Stands Still by Keith
Critchlow, and also introduced me to the ideas of Anne
Macaulay (no relative), who was kind enough to allow me
to read her unpublished typescript Science and Gods in
Megalithic Britain. Rand and Rose Flem-ath allowed me
to see their (then) unpublished typescript of When the Sky
Fell which, in my opinion, solves the problem of the
present whereabouts of 'Atlantis'.
My old friend Eddie Campbell, for whom I used to
write reviews when he was literary editor of the London
Evening News, lent me Andr VandenBroeck's Al-Kemi
several years ago, and in due course, Schwaller de
Lubicz's American publisher, Ehud Spurling, was able to
give me Andre's address. He also sent me copies of all
Schwaller's books in English. (The Temple of Man is
unfortunately still awaiting publication.) Christopher
Bamford has also been extremely helpful in providing me
with information on Schwaller - of which, as it turned out,
I-was able to use only a fraction in this book. The same is
true of the vast amount of material with which Andr
VandenBroeck provided me, and which I am still hoping
to use in some future book. Christopher Dunn has also
been unstintingly helpful in trying to help me find possible
answers to Egyptian scientific mysteries. Detective Frank
Domingo, of the New York Police Department, also
provided me with valuable information on his facial
reconstruction techniques.
Paul Roberts was responsible for introducing me to the
work of David Frawley on ancient India, and my friend
Georg Feuerstein sent
ix
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
me the book he co-authored with Frawley and Subhash
Kak, The Roots of Civilisation.
An old acquaintance, Carole Ann Gill, introduced me to
the work of Zechariah Sitchin. Graham Hancock was able
to provide me with Sitchin's address, and Sitchin was kind
enough to answer my innumerable questions with kindly
patience. I must also thank my old friend Martin Burgess,
who proved to be a Sitchin devotee, and who was able to
answer my many questions about him.
It was Alexander Imich who recommended me to read
Forbidden Archaeology, and its author, Michael Cremo,
was also kind enough to enter into correspondence.
Readers who know Herbert Wendt's books on
palaeontology will note my indebtedness to them in
Chapter 6.
Other friends who have read parts of the book in
typescript form and made valuable suggestions are
Howard Dossor, Maurice Bassett, Ted Brown, Gary
Lachman and Donald Hotson.
I am grateful to Mike Hayes for sending me his book
The Infinite Harmony, which had been lying around my
untidy house for six months before I happened to read it,
and realised that it provided some of the answers I had
been looking for.
A casual visit from Frank and Carina Cooper led to my
reading of Kevin Kelly's Out of Control, which arrived
with a perfect timeliness which looked remarkably like
synchronicity. But then, the whole writing of this book
has involved a series of synchronicities that left me
slightly incredulous.
x
Introduction
M
y own part in this quest began in July 1979, when I received a
review copy of a book called Serpent in the Sky, by John
Anthony West. It was basically a study of the work of a
maverick Egyptologist called Ren Schwaller de Lubicz, and its
central argument was that Egyptian civilisation - and the Sphinx
in particular - was thousands of years older than historians
believe. Sch-waller had devoted the latter part of his life to
demonstrating that the ancient Egyptians possessed 'a grand,
interrelated and complete system of knowledge'. The passage
that excited me so much was on page 198:
Schwaller de Lubicz observed that the severe erosion of
the body of the Great Sphinx at Giza is due to the action
of water, not wind and sand.
If the single fact of water erosion of the Sphinx could be
confirmed, it would in itself overthrow all accepted
chronologies of the history of civilisation; it would force a
drastic re-evaluatibn of the assumption of 'progress' - the
assumption upon which the whole of modern education is
based. It would be difficult to find a single, simple
question with graver implications. The water erosion of the
Sphinx is to history what the convertibility of matter into
energy is to physics.
The problem is that although this final chapter of the book is
called 'Egypt: Heir to Atlantis', it actually says very little about
such a possible link. The most important comment about this
occurs in the Introduction:
Following an observation made by Schwaller de Lubicz, it
is now possible virtually to prove the existence of another,
and perhaps
1
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
greater civilisation ante-dating dynastic Egypt - and
all other known civilisations - by millennia. In other
words, it is now possible to prove 'Atlantis', and
simultaneously, the historical reality of the Biblical
Flood. (I use inverted commas around 'Atlantis' since
it is not the physical location that is at issue here, but
rather the existence of a civilisation sufficiently
sophisticated and sufficiently ancient to give rise to
the legend.)
So West was not, in fact, necessarily talking about
Plato's mythical Atlantis, but simply about this possibility
that civilisation may be millennia older than historians
accept. In which case, there is a sense in which what has
been called
c
the dreaded A word' (which entails the instant
assumption that its user is a member of the lunatic fringe)
may not be necessary at all. We are not talking about the
fictional Atlantis of Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues
Under the Sea or Conan Doyle's Maracot Deep, but
simply about the possibility that human culture may be far
older than we believe.
Now, at the same time as I received Serpent in the Sky,
another publisher sent me the reissue of a book called
Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, subtitled Advanced
Civilisation in the Ice Age, by Charles Hapgood, a
professor of the history of science in New England. Like
West and Schwaller, Hapgood had also come to accept the
notion of an ancient civilisation that pre-dated dynastic
Egypt. Hapgood had arrived at his conclusion by a
completely different route. He had studied medieval
navigation maps called portolans, and concluded from
certain of them that they had to be based on far, far older
maps, and that the South Pole had been mapped in the
days before it was covered with ice, possibly as long ago
as 7000 bc - three and a half thousand years before the
Great Pyramid. But Hapgood takes great care not to
suggest that his ancient maritime civilisation might be
Atlantis, or even to breathe the word.
Hapgood's quest began with the so-called Piri Re'is
map, dating back to 1513, which shows the coast of South
America and the South Pole - many centuries before the
latter was discovered. I had heard of the Piri Re'is map via
a popular bestseller called The Morning of the Magicians,
by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier - the book that had
started the 'occult boom' in 1960 - as well as in the work
of Erich von Daniken: both had tried to use the map to
prove that earth must have been visited by spacemen in
the remote past. I was perfectly willing to be open-minded
about the possibility - as I still am - but it seemed
2
Introduction
to me that their arguments were simply untenable, and in
Daniken's case, often absurd and dishonest. Now I was
interested to learn that the argument for an Ice-Age
civilisation did not depend on ancient astronauts, and that
Hapgood's reasoning was cautious, sound and logically
irrefutable. As far as I could see, he had proved, once and
for all, that there had been a maritime civilisation in the
days before the South Pole was covered with ice.
But I had other work to do - for example, writing an
enormous Criminal History of Mankind - and pushed aside
the whole question of 'Atlantis'.
In the autumn of 1991,1 was approached by the
Hollywood producer Dino de Laurentiis, who was
thinking of making a film about Atlantis, and who wanted
to try to give it a realistic historical approach. He and his
associate Stephen Schwartz commissioned me to write an
outline. Naturally, I decided immediately that I would base
it on John West's theory.
In November 1991 I found myself in Tokyo, taking part
in a symposium on communication in the twenty-first
century. In the Press Club, I spoke about my Atlantis
project to some friends, and mentioned Schwaller's theory
that the civilisation of ancient Egypt was the heir to
Atlantis, and that the Sphinx could date thousands of years
earlier than 2400 bc, which is when the pharaoh Chefren is
supposed to have built it. At which point my host, Murray
Sayle, remarked that he had recently read a paragraph in
the Mainichi News that claimed there was new evidence to
support this view. Naturally, I was excited, and asked him
if he could find me the item. He promised to try, but was
unsuccessful.
A week later, in the Savage Club in Melbourne, I
mentioned the elusive paragraph to Creighton Burns, the
ex-editor of the Melbourne Age, who said that he had also
seen the story about the Sphinx. He tracked it down in a
recent issue of the Age, and was able to give me a
photostat.
It was from the Los Angeles Times of 26 October 1991,
and read:
EGYPT SERVES UP NEW TWIST TO MYSTERY OF THE SPHINX
San Diego, Wednesday
New evidence that Egypt's Great Sphinx may be
twice as old as had been thought has triggered a fierce
argument between geologists who say that it must be
older and archaeologists who say that such a
conclusion contradicts everything we know about
ancient Egypt.
3
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Geologists who presented their results at the
Geological Society of America Convention yesterday
found that weathering patterns on the monument were
characteristic of a period far older than had been
believed. But archaeologists and Egyptologists insist
that the Sphinx could not be much older because
people who lived there earlier could not have built it.
Most Egyptologists believe that the Sphinx was
built during the reign of the 'Pharaoh* Kafre
[Chefren] in approximately 2500 bc. But scientists
who conducted a series of unprecedented studies at
the Giza site said their evidence shows that the
Sphinx was already there long before Kafre came to
power.
The evidence suggests that Kafre simply refurbished
the Sphinx.
Boston geologist Robert Schoch said his research
suggests that the Sphinx dates back to between 5000
bc and 7000 bc. That would make it double the age of
the Great Pyramid and make it the oldest monument
in Egypt, he said.
But California archaeologist Carol Redmount, who
specialises in Egyptian artefacts, said, 'There's just no
way that could be true.
5
The people of that region would not have had the
technology or the will to have built such a structure
thousands of years earlier, she said.
Other Egyptologists said that they cannot explain
the geological evidence, but they insist that the theory
simply does not match up with the mountains of
archaelogical research they have carried out in that
region. If the geologists are right, much of what the
Egyptologists think they know would have to be
wrong.
So it seemed that there was evidence, after all, that the
Sphinx might be far older than anyone thought.
Back in England I wrote my outline based on
Schwaller's idea in the form of a kind of novel, and sent if
off to Hollywood. What happened to it then I am uncertain
- probably it was handed to half a dozen other script
writers to improve. But it seemed to me that I had
succeeded in writing a basically realistic film instead of
the usual scenario with Greek temples, white bearded
priests, and beautiful blondes wearing togas like linen
bathrobes. And once again, I shelved the problem of
'Atlantis' in favour of other projects.
It was almost two years later, in the autumn of 1993,
that I was approached by an old friend, Geoffrey Chessler,
who had commissioned one of my earlier books,
Starseekers. He was now working for a publisher who
specialised in illustrated books on 'occult' subjects - like
4
Introduction
Nostradamus - and who wanted to know if I might have
some suitable suggestion. My mind was a blank, but since
I expected to be passing through London a few days later,
I agreed to meet him for dinner at a mutually convenient
spot, which happened to be a hotel at Gatwick airport.
There we exchanged various ideas and possibilities, and I
casually mentioned my interest in the Sphinx. Geoffrey
was immediately interested, and as I expanded my ideas -
how it seemed to me that Hapgood's 'lost civilisation'
would probably have a totally different mode of thinking
from that of modern man - suggested that I should write
him an outline of a book about it.
Now I should explain that, in the late 1960s, I had been
asked by an American publisher to write a book about 'the
occult'. The subject had always interested me, but I was
inclined to take it with a pinch of salt. When I asked the
advice of the poet Robert Graves about it, his answer was
'Don't'. Yet it was in Graves's own White Goddess that I
found a basic distinction that served as a foundation for
the book - between what he called 'solar knowledge' and
'lunar knowledge'. Our modern type of knowledge -
rational knowledge - is solar; it operates with words and
concepts, and it fragments the object of knowledge with
dissection and analysis. Graves argues that the knowledge
system of ancient civilisations is based upon intuition,
which grasps things as a whole.
In a story called 'The Abominable Mr Gunn', Graves
offers a practical example. When he was at school, a
fellow pupil named Smilley was able to solve complex
mathematical problems merely by looking at them. Asked
by the master - Mr Gunn - how he did this, he replied: 'It
just came to me.' Mr Gunn disbelieved him; he thought he
had simply looked up the answers in the back of the book.
When Smilley replied that the answer got two of the
figures wrong, Mr Gunn sent him to be caned. And he
forced him to do his sums 'the normal way' until Smilley
lost his strange ability.
Now it could be objected that Smilley was merely a
freak, a prodigy with a mind like a computer. But this
explanation will not suffice. There are certain numbers
called primes, which cannot be divided exactly by any
other number - 7, 13 and 17 are examples. But there is no
simple mathematical method of finding out whether a
large number is a prime, except by painfully dividing
every smaller number into it. Even the most powerful
computer has to do it this way. Yet in the nineteenth
century, a calculating prodigy was asked whether some
vast ten-digit number was a prime, and replied after a
moment's thought: 'No, it can be divided by 241.'
5
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Oliver Sacks has described two mentally subnormal
twins in a New York asylum who can sit swapping
twenty-figure primes. Scientifically speaking - that is,
according to our system of rational 'solar knowledge' - it
cannot be done. Yet calculating prodigies do it. It is as if
their minds hover like a bird above the whole number
field, and see the answer.
This can mean only one thing: that although our solar
knowledge system seems to us comprehensive and all-
sufficient, there must be some other means of obtaining
knowledge that achieves its results in a 1 completely
different way. The idea is baffling - like trying to imagine f
another dimension apart from length, breadth and height.
We know that f modern physics posits other dimensions,
yet our minds are incapable of conceiving them. Yet we
can imagine some tiny, blind, wormlike creature who is
convinced that the world consists of surfaces, and who
cannot even begin to imagine what we mean by height. As
offensive as it is to human dignity, we have to recognise
that, where knowledge is concerned, we are blind,
wormlike creatures.
So I had no problem with the notion that Hapgood's
pre-Ice Age civilisation might differ from our own in
some absolutely basic manner. I recalled an observation
by the archaeologist Clarent Weiant, to the effect that
when the Montagnais Indians of eastern Canada wish to
make contact with a distant relative, they go into a hut
in the forest and build up the necessary psychic energy
through meditation: then the relative would hear his
voice. And Jean Cocteau records that when his friend
Professor Pobers went to study the same phenomenon in
the West Indies, and asked a woman 'Why do you
address a tree?', she replied: 'Because I am poor. If I
were rich I would use the telephone.'
The implication would seem to be that by using
telephones - and the rest of the paraphernalia of 'solar
knowledge' - we have lost some abilities that our remote
ancestors took for granted.
When I met Geoffrey Chessler at Gatwick airport, I was
en route to Melbourne again, for the annual Literary
Festival, after which I intended to meet John West in New
York. By total coincidence, West had written to me out of
the blue a few weeks earlier, enclosing a magazine with
an article he had written about the latest developments in
his \ investigation - including the facial 'reconstruction' by
Detective Frank Domingo which demonstrated that the
face of the Sphinx was nothing i like Chefren's. We had
never had any contact - although I had recently reviewed
his book The Case for Astrology - and he had no idea I
was
6
Introduction
interested in the Sphinx. I wrote back immediately,
mentioning that I would be in New York in a few weeks'
time, and we arranged to meet.
John West proved to be a thin, bespectacled man of
immense enthusiasm, and information poured out of him
in great spurts, like water from a village pump. I found
that, like all genuine enthusiasts, he was generous with his
ideas and his time; there was none of the mistrustfulness
that I have occasionally encountered in people who seem
to believe that all other writers are waiting for an
opportunity to steal their ideas. He had with him a first
'rough cut' of the videotape of his programme about the
Sphinx, and we were able to watch it in the home of
playwright Richard Foreman, who found it as exciting as I
did. Later, John came out to dinner with my family - my
children had met us in America ^ and with the writer on
ancient megaliths Paul Devereux. We discussed my
projected book on the Sphinx, and John mentioned that I
ought to contact another writer, Graham Hancock, who
was also writing a book to prove that civilisation is far
older than we assume. He also threw off another name -
Rand Flem-ath - who was writing a book arguing that
Atlantis was situated at the South Pole. This made sense -
Hapgood had argued that his ancient maritime civilisation
was probably situated in Antarctica, and, now I thought
about it, the idea seemed almost self-evident.
And so when I returned to England, I wrote to both
Graham Hancock and to Rand Flem-ath. I had heard of
Graham, because I had seen a television programme about
his search for the Ark of the Covenant. Now he sent me
the vast typescript of his book Fingerprints of the Gods,
and as soon as I began to read it, I wondered whether it
would be worth going ahead with my own book on the
Sphinx. Graham had already gone into the whole question
that John West had dealt with in his television programme,
screened in America soon after I returned.
Moreover, Graham also knew all about Rand Flem-ath
and his Antarctica theory, and made it virtually the climax
of his own book. I had by this time received the typescript
of When the Sky Fell by Rand and Rose Flem-ath, and
learned that they had been inspired by Hapgood's Maps of
the Ancient Sea Kings, as well as by his earlier book
Earth's Shifting Crusty which I lost no time in borrowing
from the London Library. I was able to play a small part in
persuading a Canadian publisher to accept When the Sky
Fell by offering to write an introduction.
I was still in two minds about whether it was worth
writing my own book. But it seertied to me that there had
been such a chain of coin-
7
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
cidence and synchronicity since I first came across
Schwaller's water-weathering theory that it would be
absurd not to persist.
During the next few weeks - in January 1994 - two
more pieces of the jigsaw fell into place. I received for
review a copy of The Orion Mystery by Robert Bauval,
and learned of his belief that the pyramid complex at
Giza was planned as early as 10,450 bc. I was, at this
time, still reading Graham Hancock's vast typescript,
and had not yet reached the section on Bauval. But
Bauval's brief mention of Atlantis led me to comment in
my review that his own conclusions seemed to support
the theories of Schwaller and John West. I wrote Bauval
a letter telling him that he ought to contact John West,
and I sent West a copy of The Orion Mystery.
Second, I had also succeeded in obtaining my own copy
of a book called Al-Kemi by Andr VandenBroeck, an
American artist who had become a student and close
friend of Schwaller de Lubicz in his last years. A couple of
years earlier, when I had been researching Schwaller, my
old friend Eddie Campbell (whom I had known since he
was literary editor of the London Evening News) had lent
me the book, but I had found it very hard going. Now I
had my own copy, I settled down to reading it slowly and
carefully, sometimes reading difficult pages two or three
times. And as I read on, I became absolutely certain that
my own book had to be written. For what emerged from
Al-Kemi was
%
the certainty that Schwaller believed that
the ancient Egyptians had a J completely different
knowledge system from modern man - not simply '
something like the odd ability to communicate with far-off
relatives by telepathy, but a different way of seeing the
universe. And what caused me particular excitement was
VandenBroeck's statement that Schwaller believed that this
different 'way of seeing' could somehow make possible a
greatly accelerated rate of human evolution.
I succeeded in contacting Andr VandenBroeck, and
we launched into correspondence by fax. With immense
patience, he did his best to explain to me many of the
things I had failed to understand. And I contacted
Schwaller's American publisher, Ehud Spurling, who
was kind enough to send me the seven books currently
in print. These proved to be even more of a headache
than Al-Kemi, yet equally rewarding -particularly the
last book, Sacred Science. (Schwaller's major work, the
three-volume Temple of Man, has been translated into
English but not yet published.) Little by little, I felt I
was beginning to understand -although at times it was
like walking through a pitch-black night lit only by the
occasional lightning flash.
8
I
n
t
r
o
d
u
c
t
i
o
n
When it appeared in April 1995, Graham Hancock's
Fingerprints of i
the Gods climbed immediately to the top of the British
bestseller charts, f
leaving no doubt that an enormous number of people are
fascinated by \
this question of a pre-Ice Age civilisation. But for me this
only under
lined the question: what difference does it make? Whether
civilisation
is 5000 or 15,000 or 100,000 years old can surely make no
practical
difference to our lives?
Is
On the other hand, if we are talking about a different
knowledge system, a system that is as valid as our own
and yet unthinkably different in approach, then it could
be of unimaginable importance. The kind of knowledge
possessed by modern man is essentially fragmented. If
some future visitors from outer space landed on earth,
and found vast empty cities full of libraries and
museums and plantariums, they would conclude that
men of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries must
have been intellectual giants. But as their scholars
studied our encyclopaedias of science and philosophy
and technology and every other conceivable subject,
they would quickly recognise that no single mind could
even begin to grasp what it was all about. We have no
essential knowledge system - no way of seeing the
universe as a whole and making sense of it.
But if Schwaller is right, and the ancient Egyptians
and their predecessors possessed some comprehensive
knowledge system that offered them a unified view of
the universe and human existence, then the insights of
Hapgood and Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock
would only be a halfway house. The really important
question would lie beyond their conviction that
civilisation may be thousands of years older than we
suppose. It would lie in the question: What does it all
mean?
One implication, according to Schwaller, is that there
must be some method of accelerating the pace of human
evolution. The reason this statement excited me so
much was because it has been the underlying theme of
all my own work. I had noticed, as a child, that at
Christmas the whole world seems to be a far richer and
more wonderful place than we normally recognise. But
of course, what I meant was that consciousness itself
can be far more intense than the everyday consciousness
we accept as 'normal'. This 'intenser' form of
consciousness often appears accidentally, in moments of
relaxation or relief when a crisis disappears, yet when
we experience it, we recognise that it is somehow
'normal', merely a different way of seeing things and
responding to them. $Pne of the basic characteristics of
this state of 'heightened
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
consciousness' is that it seems to involve the proper use
of our mental energy, instead of wasting it. Normal
consciousness is like a leaky bucket, or a tyre with a
slow puncture. In certain moods we seem to get the
'trick' of closing the leaks, and when that happens,
living ceases to be hard work, and turns into a continual
glow of satisfaction and anticipation, like the feeling we
get when setting out on holiday. I sometimes call this
'duo-consciousness', because it depends on being
conscious of two realities at once, like a child sitting in
front of a warm fire and listening to the patter of rain on
the windows, or the feeling we get lying in bed on a
freezing winter morning, when we have to get up in five
minutes, and the bed has never seemed so warm and
comfortable.
Our personal development depends upon what might be
called 'intensity experiences'. Such experiences may be
pleasant or unpleasant, like the experiences of Paris in
Helen's arms, or the experience of a soldier under fire; but
they certainly have the effect of causing some kind of
minor yet permanent transformation of awareness. Yet it
seems a pity that our development depends upon the
chance of having such experiences, when consciousness is
a state, not a mere product of what happens to us. A cook
can make jellies and cakes; a carpenter can make tables
and cupboards; a pharmacist can make sleeping draughts
or pick-me-ups. Why should we not be able to make our
states of consciousness by understanding how they come
about? ! Did the ancients understand this process? I
doubt it - at least in the I sense I am discussing. What I am
fairly certain they understood is some I secret of cosmic
harmony and its precise vibrations, which enabled j them
to feel an integral part of the world and nature, instead of I
experiencing the 'alienation' that Karl Marx declares to be
the lot I of modern man. Deeper insight into the process
of conscious evolution I depends, to some extent, on
having experienced the process of alienation * and
leained how to transform it.
What can emerge will emerge as a result of passing
beyond alienation, and grasping once again this 'ancient
knowledge' - which, according to Schwaller, has been
long forgotten, although it has been transmitted down
the ages in some symbolic form in the great religions.
The aim of this book is to try to grasp once again the
nature of this forgotten knowledge.
10
1 Egyptian Mysteries
A
t 4.30 in the morning of 16 March 1993, Graham
Hancock and his wife Santha prepared to scramble up
the side of the Great Pyramid. It had to be this early
because climbing the Pyramid had been strictly
forbidden since 1983, when an incautious tourist broke
his neck. Hancock had bribed the guards with $150, but
they refused to stay corrupt, and before he was allowed
to climb the Pyramid, he had to bribe them all over
again.
The first thing the Hancocks discovered was that
climbing the Pyramid was not like walking up a flight of
steps. The sides of the Pyramid are shaped like steps -
and have been since its limestone 'facing' vanished
centuries ago - but some of them are chest-high. On the
other hand, the flat jSfet of the step is often only six
inches deep, which explains why a tourist who
overbalances is unlikely to stop until he reaches the
bottom. The Pyramid is 203 'steps' high and slopes at 52
degrees, so by the time the Hancocks were less than a
quarter of the way up, they were winded and exhausted,
and ready for a long rest;
7
but this was out of the
question, since it would be dawn in about an hour, and
they would become visible to cruising police cars.
At the 35th course, they noted that the blocks were
particularly huge
{ - each weighing between 10 and 15 tons - and found
themselves
\ wondering why the builders had decided to put such
immense stones
so high up the Pyramid, instead of putting them in the
obvious place,
| near the ground - and saving the smaller blocks (around
6 tons each)
i for higher up.
In fact, now they were actually climbing the
Pyramid, they became aware of many mysteries that
fail to strike you or me when we look at a postcard of
these picturesque objects against a blue sky. To begin
with, at over six million tons, the Pyramid is the largest
edifice ever built by man. It contains more masonry
than all the medieval cathedrals,
11
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
I churches and chapels built in Europe added together.
Which raises the question: how did the builders get these
massive blocks up the side of the Pyramid and into place?
Imagine that you are a building contractor, and that the
Pharaoh has approached you to build the Great Pyramid.
He hands you the measurements, and explains that the
four sides of the Pyramid must face north, east, south and
west, and that each side must be 755 feet long, and the
height must be 481 feet. (You find out later that this gives
the same ratio as the circumference of a circle to its
radius.) He will provide you with as many blocks as it
takes, and with an unlimited number of workmen.
This doesn't sound too difficult. You work out that, in
order to meet his requirements, the sides will have to
slope at an angle of 52 degrees. So you will start off by
laying the first course, consisting of a 755-foot solid
square, constructed of roughly cubical blocks, with
weights varying between 6 and 30 tons. The size of the
second course must obviously be slightly smaller, with an
angle of 52 degrees between the edge of the first course
and the edge of the second.
The stones for the second course have to be
manhandled on to the top of the first course, but that is
easy enough - you build a gently sloping ramp of earth
and stone, with wooden planks on top, and each block is
heaved up the ramp by twenty of so workmen hauling on
ropes. And when you have finished the second course,
you repeat the procedure with the third . . .
But now you begin to see a problem. As the ramp gets
higher, you either have to increase its slope - which would
defeat its purpose - or extend it much further back. You
quickly calculate that, by the time you have reached the
top of the Pyramid, the ramp is going to have to be about
a mile long, and to contain around three times as much
material as the Pyramid itself. Moreover, if the ramp is
not to collapse under its own weight, it will have to be
built of massive blocks like those used in the Pyramid.
The alternative is some kind of lifting gear, rather like a
modern crane, but built, of course, of wood. But here the
same problem applies. To raise blocks weighing several
tons to a height of nearly five hundred feet would require
a crane built of several of those gigantic trees found in
American forests. Such trees do not exist in Egypt, or
even in Europe.
There is another possibility. Assuming you have plenty
of time, you might use smaller lifting gear, and move it
from step to step of the
12
1 Egyptian Mysteries
Pyramid, raising each block a step at a time. In fact,
according to Herodotus, this was the method used:
The pyramid was built in steps, battlement-wise, as
it is called, or, according to others, altar-wise. After
laying the stones for the base, they raised the
remaining stones to their places by machines
formed of short wooden planks. The first machines
raised them from the ground to the top of the first
step. On this there was another machine, which
received the stone upon its arrival, and conveyed it
to the second step, whence a third machine
advanced it still higher.
The notion of raising six-ton blocks with planks
sounds difficult enough, but the idea of manoeuvring
such blocks on ledges sometimes only six inches wide
sounds impossible. Moreover, to move more than two
and a half million blocks in this way, at the rate of 25 a
day, would take about 150 years. And if the workmen
were only working part-time, during the season when
they did not have to tend their farms, it
^ could be twice that period.
! In fact, in the 1980s, the Japanese had tried to build a
smaller replica
I of the Great Pyramid as a showpiece. Even with modern
equipment,
/ the problem defeated them, and it was abandoned. -
Reluctantly, I suggest, you would tell the Pharaoh to find
another construction engineer, and would go off to seek
some simpler project, like building the Empire State
Building or Brooklyn Bridge.
And what had led the Hancocks to embark on this risky
project? The answer dates back eleven years, when
Graham Hancock was an economics journalist in
Ethiopia, and went to see the film Raiders of the Lost
Ark. It aroused his curiosity about the Ark of the
Covenant, the sacred wooden chest lined with gold that
the Hebrews carried into battle, and which had vanished
from history many centuries before Christ. He was
intrigued to learn that Ethiopian Christians believed that
the Ark of the Covenant was preserved in a chapel in the
centre of the town of Axum, near the Red Sea. Scholars
and archaeologists - inevitably - dismissed the claim as
absurd. Hancock felt that this attitude was based on
arrogance and stupidity, and set out to prove them
wrong. What he had to establish was how the Ark of
Axum had got from Jerusalem - twelve hundred miles to
the north - down to Ethiopia, and what it was doing
there.
Study of biblical sources convinced him that the Ark
had vanished
13
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
from Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem in the reign of the
bloody and brutal king Manasseh, who occupied the
throne from 687 bc to 642 bc; he had rejected Judaism,
and defiled the Temple by installing a 'graven image' of
Baal. There seemed every reason to believe that the
priests had been ordered to remove the Ark by
Manasseh. But why had it been taken as far as Ethiopia?
A vital clue was handed to him by a Jewish scholar,
who mentioned that there had once been a Jewish temple
on the island of Elephantine, in the upper Nile. This was
unusual; the Jews had believed that foreign soil was
unclean. A visit to Elephantine, and the discovery that its
temple - now destroyed - had been of exactly the same
dimensions as Solomon's Temple, convinced Hancock
that this had been the first major staging post on the
journey of the Ark. The Jews had been forced to move
on because of a clash with their Egyptian neighbours,
who worshipped a ram-headed deity in a nearby temple,
and objected to the Hebrew sacrifice of rams. Slowly,
Hancock established that the Ark had been moved to
Meroe, in Sudan, then to the island of Tana Kirkos, on
Lake Tana, and finally to Axum.
1 The Sign and the Seal (1992) tells the fascinating story
of how Hancock tracked down the route of the Ark from
Jerusalem to Axum. The quest took him to many
countries, including Egypt, and it was there in April 1990
that he succeeded in spending some time alone in the
King's . Chamber of the Great Pyramid. The experience
deeply impressed him, and his subsequent study of the
Pyramid's history brought to a head his increasing
conviction that the ancient engineers possessed far more
knowledge than has been attributed to them. Far from
being - as one authority expressed it - 'technically
accomplished primitives', they seemed to possess a level
of scientific accomplishment that we have still not
reached. / This second visit to the Pyramid in 1993
deepened that conviction. I Studying the baffling yet
incredibly precise mathematics of its corridors | and
chambers, he concluded that the science that had been
responsible I for this construction must have been far, far
older than professional \> Egyptologists will admit. The
history books tell us that Egyptian civilis-| ation came into
existence about 2925 bc, and that a mere four centuries -
later, it was building monuments like the Sphinx and the
Giza pyramids. To Hancock this seemed absurd. There had
to be some ancient, 'lost' ! civilisation that dated back
thousands of years earlier.
This was a view supported by a guide book he had
been using since his first visit to Egypt: The Traveller's
Guide to Egypt, by John Anthony
14
1 Egyptian Mysteries
West. This differed from the standard guide books in that it
discussed the mysteries associated with the pyramids; and
temples, a subject more orthodox travel writers shy away
from. And in this book, West had mentioned the view of a
highly unorthodox Egyptologist named R. A. Schwaller de
Lubicz, to the effect that the Sphinx had not been eroded
by wind-driven sand, but by water. Schwaller de Lubicz
had argued that since the Sphinx is protected from the
west by its 'enclosure' wall, and that in any case, it has
spent most of its life buried up to its neck in sand, wind
erosion is unlikely. But there has obviously been no
significant rainfall in Egypt for thousands of years -
otherwise the Sahara desert would not exist.
Now, according to modern historians, the Sphinx was
built at about the same time as the second Giza pyramid,
around 2500 bc, probably by the Pharaoh Chefren, the son
(or brother) of Cheops, who is supposed to the builder of
the Great Pyramid. This assumption is based on the fact
that Chefren's cartouche - the 'box' bearing the name of the
pharaoh - was found on the stela between the paws of the
Sphinx. But this view is comparatively recent. In 1900, Sir
Gaston Maspero, director of the Department of Antiquities
in the Cairo Museum, suggested that Chefren simply
excavated or repaired the Sphinx, which was already old.
If, in fact, it is eroded by water, not by sand, it must
obviously be a great deal older - perhaps thousands of
years.
What is more, if the Sphinx is older than modern
historians believe, the same could well apply to the Great
Pyramid - a thought that had occurred to Graham Hancock
after his first visit. He found the idea at once exciting and
disturbing. His academic training inclined him to caution
and scepticism. But in studying the Ark of the Covenant,
he came upon reference after reference to its 'miraculous'
powers - to strike people dead, to destroy cities, to level
mountains, to cause burns and cancerous tumours. The old
monk who claimed to be the Ark's present guardian
explained that it was wrapped in thick cloths when it was
carried in religious processions - not to protect the Ark, but
to protect other people from its powers. It sounded rather
like atomic radiation, or perhaps Wilhelm Reich's 'orgone
energy'. And as he read through every available primary
source on the Ark, all of which referred to the same
powers, Hancock found himself speculating that it
sounded like some kind of 'device' or machine. The idea
seemed altogether too much like the wilder assertions of
that high priest of the improbable, Erich von Daniken. And
it was von Daniken who, in explaining how
15
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
the pyramids were built by visitors from outer space,
managed to multiply the weight of the Great Pyramid by
five. Hancock had no desire to get himself classified as a
member of the lunatic fringe. Yet everything about the
Giza complex deepened his certainty that it had not been
built by 'technically accomplished primitives'.
The search for a lost civilisation was to take him on a
journey to see the Nazca lines of Peru, the 'lost' Inca city
of Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca and Tiahuanaco, and the
great Aztec temples of Central America. Here again, the
evidence - which we shall review later -seemed to point to
far greater antiquity than the guide books assert. He was
also intrigued by legends of a white god - or gods - who
brought civilisation to South America: he was sometimes
called Viraco-cha, sometimes Quetzalcoatl, sometimes
Kukulkan, and he was represented as having fair skin and
blue eyes - as Osiris was represented in ancient Egyptian
statues. By the time he returned to Egypt, to make that
early morning climb of the Great Pyramid, the
sophistication required to construct these monuments had
convinced Graham Hancock beyond all doubt either that
the civilisation of the Incas and the Aztecs extended back
thousands of years earlier than the history books claim, or
that there had once been an unknown civilisation that has
been lost to history.
It was in Canada, while publicising his book The Sign and
the Seal -which had become a bestseller - that Graham
Hancock met a friend of John Anthony West, and
mentioned his admiration for the Traveller's Guide to
Ancient Egypt. The friend - writer Paul Roberts - asked:
'Ah, but have you read his Serpent in the Sky?
9
Hancock
admitted his ignorance. 'Then take it and read it,' said
Roberts, offering a copy.
Serpent in the Sky proved to be as fascinating and as
startling as West's Traveller's Guide. It was basically a
study of the ideas of Schwal-ler de Lubicz, and the
argument was simple. Schwaller had spent fifteen years
studying ancient Egyptian monuments, particularly the
temple at Luxor, and had concluded that - in West's words:
Egyptian science, medicine, mathematics and
astronomy were all of an exponentially higher order
of refinement and sophistication than modern
scholars will acknowledge. The whole of Egyptian
civilisation was based upon a complete and precise
understanding of universal laws ... Moreover, every
aspect of Egyptian knowl-
16
1 Egyptian Mysteries
edge seems to have been complete at the very
beginning. The sciences, artistic and architectural
techniques and the hieroglyphic * system show virtually
no sign of a period of 'development'; indeed, many of
the achievements of the earliest dynasties were never
surpassed or even equalled later on. This astonishing
fact is readily admitted by orthodox Egyptologists, but
the magnitude of the mystery it poses is skilfully
understated, while its many implications go
unmentioned.
West goes on to ask: 'How does a complex civilisation
spring fullblown 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 there right at the start.' It is rather
as if the first motor car was a modern Rolls-Royce.
Then West goes on to drop his bombshell. According to
Schwaller, Egyptian civilisation did not begin - as the
history books say - around 3000 bc with the legendary
King Mens. Thousands of years earlier, Egypt was
populated by survivors of Atlantis, who had crossed a
(then fertile) Sahara and settled in the valley of the Nile.
The great temples and pyramids of Egypt are a legacy of
these survivors.
Atlantis . . . the very word is enough to make an
academic historian bury his head in his hands and groan,
'Oh no!' And even though West tries to disinfect it by
placing it in quotation marks, suggesting that he is
referring simply to some great lost civilisation of the past -
but not necessarily in the Atlantic - the name itself is
enough to place anyone who uses it beyond the pale of
intellectual respectability.
The fact remains that Schwaller de Lubicz believed that
the answer to the mystery of Egyptian civilisation lies in
the fact that it was founded by survivors from the great
lost continent which, according to Plato (our sole source),
perished about 9500 bc in a volcanic cataclysm. It was
these survivors who built the Sphinx, and who designed -
and perhaps even built - the Giza pyramids. And it was
Schwaller who led John West to begin his quest for the age
of the Sphinx by trying to establish whether it was eroded
by wind-blown sand or by rainfall.
Who precisely was Schwaller de Lubicz, and what right
had he to pronounce on such matters?
Ren Schwaller was born in Alsace in 1887, into a
wealthy bourgeois family. His father was a pharmaceutical
chemist, and Ren spent his
17
&
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
childhood dreaming in the forests, and painting and
conducting chemical experiments. From the beginning, he
was equally fascinated by art and science, a combination
whose significance for his life-work can hardly be
underestimated. At the age of seven, his wife tells us, he
received a 'revelation regarding the nature of the divine,
and seven years later, another illumination regarding the
nature of matter.'
As a teenager he went to Paris to study painting under
Matisse. Matisse himself was at this time under the
influence of the philosopher Henri Bergson, who
emphasised the inadequacy of the intellect to grasp reality
- which slips through it like water through the holes in a
fishnet - and again, his own tendency to mistrust 'mere
science' was reinforced. Yet, typically, he also plunged
into the study of modern physics, which at the time was
undergoing the great revolutions of Einstein and Planck.
He joined the Theosophical Society - its founder,
Madame Blavatsky, had died when he was four - and was
soon delivering lectures and writing articles for its
journal. In the first of these he paid homage to science,
which 'leads to all progress, fecundates every activity,
nourishes all humanity', while at the same time attacking
it for its conservatism and nihilism. Yet by nature,
Schwaller was far more hard-headed and pragmatic than
the Theosophists. He was setting himself a difficult task:
to undermine rationalism with rational thought.
1
The next step seems to have been an interest in
alchemy, the 'science' of the transmutation of matter, and
the pursuit of the 'philosophers' stone'. But Schwaller was
not interested in trying to turn lead into gold; he believed -
as Jung later came to believe - that alchemy is basically a
mystical quest whose aim is 'illumination', and of which
the transmutation of metals is a mere by-product. He soon
extended his alchemical studies to stained glass and the
geometry of Gothic cathedrals, convinced that their
geometry and measurements concealed some secret
knowledge of the ancients.
The 'occult' tradition is based upon the notion that there
existed in the past a science that embraced religion and
the arts - including architecture - and that this knowledge
was restricted to a small caste of priests and initiates, and
was 'encoded' by medieval stonemasons in the great
Gothic cathedrals. One of the classic expositions of this
idea, The Canon by William Stirling (published in 1897)
states:
From the times of ancient Egypt this law [the Canon]
has been a sacred arcanum, only communicated by
symbols and parables, the making of which, in the
ancient world, constituted the most
18
1 Egyptian Mysteries
important form of literary art; it therefore required for
its exposition a priestly caste, trained in its use, and
the guilds of initiated artists, which existed
throughout the world till comparatively recent times,
were instructed in it. Nowadays, all this has
changed...
The essence of this art, says Stirling, is 'working
symbolically'.
Schwaller was in his early twenties when he met, in the
Closerie des Lilas, in Montparnasse, an alchemist who
called himself Fulcanelli (and whose real name seems to
have been Champagne) and they discussed the 'Oeuvre',
the Great Work of transmutation. Fulcanelli was
surrounded by a circle of disciples, who called themselves
The Brothers of Heliopolis; all were dedicated students of
the works of Nicolas Flamel and Basil Valentinus. They
combed the second-hand bookshops of Paris looking for
old alchemical texts. In an ancient volume he was
cataloguing for a Paris bookshop, Fulcanelli had come
across a six-page manuscript written in faded ink, and stole
it. It indicated that colour played an important part in the
secret of the alchemists. But Fulcanelli, whose approach to
alchemy was materialistic, failed to understand it. Schwal-
ler was able to help him in his interpretations. He also
showed Fulcanelli his own manuscript on medieval
cathedrals, at which Fulcanelli became excited, and offered
to help find a publisher. In fact, Fulcanelli borrowed the
manuscript for a long time, and eventually stole most of its
central insights for his own Mystery of Cathedrals,
published in 1925, which has achieved the status of a
modern classic.
Schwaller had meanwhile become friendly with a
French poet - who was also a Lithuanian prince - called
Luzace de Lubicz Milosz. During the First World War,
Schwaller worked as a chemist in the army, and after the
war Milosz bestowed on him a knighthood for services to
the Lithuanian people, and the right to add 'de Lubicz' to
his name. (It is not clear what right Milosz had to go
around bestowing knighthoods.) At this point Schwaller
also received the 'mystic name' AOR. He and Milosz
founded a political organisation called Les Veilleurs
('watchmen' or 'vigilant ones') based upon Schwaller's
notions of elitism, of which Rudolf Hess was at one time a
member (as well as of a German magical order called the
Thule Society). But Schwaller seems to have grown tired
of involvement in politics - recognising, like most mystics,
that it is a form of entrapment - and moved to Suhalia, in
Switzerland, to pursue his esoteric studies with a group of
like-minded friends, particularly studies relating to stained
glass. This lasted until 1934,
19
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
when financial problems led to the dissolution of the
Suhalia community.
By this time, Fulcanelli was dead. According to
Schwaller, he had invited Fulcanelli to his home in Grasse,
in the south of France, to attempt the magnum opus, and
they were wholly successful. Convinced that he now knew
how to bring about the alchemical transformation,
Fulcanelli returned to Paris and repeated the experiment
several times - failing each time. The reason, said
Schwaller later, was that he had chosen the right moment
and the right conditions for the experiment, and Fulcanelli
was ignorant about such matters. Fulcanelli now decided
to break the vow of silence he had taken, and to
communicate what he had learned to his disciples. He
ignored Schwaller's pleas and turned down his offer of
renewed financial support in exchange for silence. But he
became ill, and died of gangrene the day before he was
going to divulge the 'secret
5
to his disciples. Schwaller
declared that this was an inevitable consequence of
breaking the alchemical vow of secrecy.
Schwaller spent the next two years on his yacht,
apparently at something of a loose end. His wife Isha -
who had come to him as a disciple in the early days
(drawn to him, she claims, by some telepathic link) -had
always been fascinated by ancient Egypt, but Schwaller
had failed to share her interest. Now, in 1936, he allowed
himself to be persuaded to go ashore in Alexandria to look
at the tomb of Rameses IX. There he was struck by a
revelation as he looked at a picture of the pharaoh
represented in the form of the hypotenuse of a right-
angled triangle whose proportions were 3:4:5, while the
upraised arm represented an additional unit. Clearly, the
Egyptians knew about Pythagor-as's theorem centuries
before Pythagoras was born. Suddenly, Schwaller realised
that the wisdom of the medieval craftsmen stretched back
to ancient Egypt. For the next fifteen years, until 1951, he
remained in Egypt, studying its temples - particularly the
temple at Luxor. The result was his massive geometrical
opus The Temple of Man, in three volumes, and his last
book The King of Pharaonic Theocracy, translated into
English as Sacred Science.
All this will undoubtedly strengthen in the reader's mind
the suspicion that John Anthony West must have been
slightly insane - or perhaps only appallingly misguided -
to take Schwaller's judgement on the erosion of the
Sphinx seriously, although in his defence it might be
argued that a devotion to mystical ideas does not
necessarily imply that
20
1 Egyptian Mysteries
there was anything wrong with Schwaller's eyesight. In
fact, Schwaller's observation was based upon his
conviction - already noted - that Egyptian civilisation had
to be thousands of years older than 3000 bc, because the
knowledge encoded in the temples could not have
developed in a mere six hundred years. The comment
about water erosion was thrown off rather casually in
Sacred Science, and his friend and disciple Andr
VandenBroeck, the author of the remarkable memoir Al-
Ketni, gathered the impression that Schwaller thought the
erosion had occurred when the Sphinx was submerged
under the sea. Whatever the misunderstanding, it
awakened in West the conviction that water erosion was a
notion that could provide the scientific confirmation or
refutation of Schwaller' s theory about Egyptian
civilisation.
But Schwaller's significance goes far beyond his
theories about the age of the Sphinx. After all, there is a
sense in which it hardly matters whether the Sphinx is five
or ten thousand years old. It would certainly be interesting
to know that there was a great civilisation that pre-dated
ancient Egypt, but surely it would make no practical
difference to our lives - the kind of difference that was
made by splitting the atom or the invention of the
microchip?
If Schwaller is correct, such a view represents a total
failure to grasp what lies behind the Egyptian temples and
the medieval cathedrals. Hermetic tradition claims that
this knowledge was kept hidden for thousands of years -
and why should it be kept hidden if it has no practical
value?
The sceptic will reply: because the ancient priests
deceived themselves about the practical value of their
religious nonsense - or wished to deceive other people.
To which Schwaller would reply: you are wrong. This
knowledge is practical. You wish me to give you an
example? Then consider the stained red and blue glass of
Chartres cathedral. Scientific analysis has been unable to
identify the pigments used. This is because there is no
pigment. The staining involved an alchemical process
which involved liberating the colour from the metals that
contained it...
(In fact, there is reason to believe that this was the
'oeuvre' completed by Schwaller and Fulcanelli at Grasse.)
Schwaller was careful to make no such statement in his
books. This information was passed on verbally to Andr
VandenBroeck in 1960 -the year before Sehwaller died, in
December 1961. During the final decade of his life,
Sehwaller lived in retirement in Grasse, not far from
Cannes, his name totally unknown to the general public.
Andr
21
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
VandenBroeck, an American artist living in Bruges, came
upon one of Schwaller's early books, Symbol and the
Symbolic, published in Cairo in 1951, and was instantly
fascinated. It seemed to VandenBroeck that Schwaller was
talking about a question that had absorbed him for years:
that of precisely what art represents.
It might simplify the matter it we translate this into
musical terms. No one has any doubt that the music of
Beethoven is 'saying' more than the music of Lehar. But
how would we answer a Martian who asked us: 'What is it
saying?' Beethoven remarked to Elizabeth Brentano:
'Those who understand my music must be freed from all
miseries that others drag around with them. Tell Goethe to
listen to my symphonies, and he will see that I am saying
that music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher
worlds of knowledge .. .' Beethoven had no doubt that his
music represented knowledge, yet quite clearly it would
be impossible to take a single bar of his music and
declare: 'What this is saying is .. .'
Now, VandenBroeck had been influenced by a friend,
Andrew Da Passano, who tried to 'prove' the existence of
higher states of consciousness by referring to the work of
Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg. VandenBroeck had been
reading Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica,
and it seemed to him that his own idea about knowledge
might be expressed in mathematical terms. Most
knowledge is a function of the method you use to achieve
it; for example, if you want to know how many people
there are in a room, you count them, and the knowledge
you arrive at is a function of counting. But, reasoned
VandenBroeck, you simply cannot say that the 'higher
knowledge' Beethoven was talking about was arrived at
by some ' method' like counting or reasoning.
VandenBroeck felt that this insight was an important
breakthrough, and he wrote a short paper in which he tried
to express this notion of a knowledge that precedes
method in terms of symbolic logic, i
Schwaller had begun his book on symbols and
symbolism by remarking that there are two ways of
reading ancient religious texts: the 'exoteric' and the
'esoteric'. The 'exoteric' consists of meanings, which you
could look up in a dictionary or work of history; but this
only serves as a foundation for the esoteric meaning,
which Schwaller calls the 'symbolique' - that is to say, a
system of symbols.
Clearly, Schwaller's 'symbolic system' was what
VandenBroeck meant by higher knowledge, the
knowledge that comes from the depths of the soul, and is
not achieved by 'method'. Yet Schwaller appeared to be
22
1 Egyptian Mysteries
saying that this knowledge was not some religious insight
- the equivalent of 'Love your neighbour' - but is practical
and scientific. Vanden-Broeck was so excited that he lost
no time driving from Bruges to the south of France, and
presenting himself on Schwaller's doorstep.
He found Schwaller living on an impressive country
estate that left no doubt that he had a considerable private
income. It was a curious household, made up of the tall,
grey-haired, 72-year-old sage, his 'psychic' wife Isha, who
made VandenBroeck think of a gypsy fortune teller, and
Isha's two children from a former marriage, Dr Jean Lamy
and his sister Lucie, who had devoted her life to being
Schwaller's amanuensis. Isha assumed that VandenBroeck
had come there to speak to her about her 'occult' ideas - an
understandable mistake, since her husband was virtually
unknown, whereas she - by reason of a skilful novel about
ancient Egypt called Chick Pea - had a considerable
reputation.
VandenBroeck and his wife were invited to lunch,
where Isha continued to assume that VandenBroeck was
there to sit at her feet, and to monopolise the conversation.
Yet the few words he managed to exchange with
Schwaller convinced VandenBroeck that they were on the
same wavelength, and that Schwaller had a great deal to
teach him. He decided to leave Bruges and move to
Grasse.
On his way back to Bruges, VandenBroeck stopped at
Lyon and bought a copy of The Temple of Man. Although
slightly taken aback by the geometrical diagrams,
VandenBroeck was soon absorbed in the first volume,
which brought him a continual sense of 'vistas on to a
well-known but forgotten landscape'... 'We spoke the same
language.'
Back in Grasse, the VandenBroecks were soon regular
visitors in the Schwaller household. It took some weeks as
Isha's student - reading the Chick Pea novels, and listening
to her reading from her latest opus, a work of 'esoteric
fiction' - before his sense of her 'gentle imposure', and his
inborn distaste for 'spiritual' mumbo-jumbo led him to
detach himself tactfully and spend more time with
Schwaller (whom everyone addressed as 'Aor'.)
There was also in Schwaller 'a grey zone of speculation
where true and false did not apply' - for example, in his
conviction that mankind has not evolved, but 'devolved',
from 'giants who once walked the earth to a near-animal
state... vowed to cataclysmic annihilation, while an
evolving lite gathers all of human experience for a
resurrection in spirituality.' Schwaller was also convinced
that the Nile is a man-made river, deliberately directed
into the Nile valley, to form the basis of Egyptian
civilisation. But VandenBroeck felt that he could take or
leave
23
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
such beliefs. Far more important was Schwaller's insight
into the nature of the knowledge system of the ancient
Egyptians. This was also elitist in conception: 'at its head,
the enlightened priesthood, the perfect identity of science
and theology, its main duties cognition of the present
moment' This Schwaller saw as the 'Absolute from which
we constantly draw our power'.
This notion is central to Schwaller's ideas, perhaps their
most significant feature. One way of explaining it would
be to say that human beings imagine they live in the
present, yet their basic mental state might be described as
'elsewhereness', like a schoolboy looking out of a window
instead of paying attention to the lesson. It is, in fact,
incredibly difficult to be 'present', since we live in an
interpreted world. We cannot even 'see' without
preconception - 'that is so and so'. Our most basic frame of
mind is that of spectators; we look out at the world like
someone in a cinema. When a man awakens to present
reality - as Dostoevsky did when stood in front of a firing
squad - the whole world changes. Everything suddenly
becomes reaL But his vision of himself also changes: he
becomes aware of himself as a dynamic force rather than
as a passive entity.
This, VandenBroeck discovered, is also the essence of
Schwaller's notion of alchemy. Alchemy, according to
Schwaller, is derived from Kemi, the Greek word for
Egypt, with the Arabic 'aP appended. In ancient Egypt, the
pharaoh, the god-king, was the symbol of this 'absolute
from which we draw our power'. And alchemy, or the
transmutation of matter into spirit - of which the
transmutation of base metals into gold is a mere by-
product - depends upon this 'moment of power', of being
wholly present in the present moment. He seems to be
speaking of what Shaw once called 'the seventh degree of
concentration'.
Schwaller dismisses Jung's notion of alchemy as a
modern intellectual fashion. Jung thought that the true aim
of alchemy was the state he called 'individuation', unity of
being, but that in trying to achieve this, the alchemist
'projects' his own visions into external reality - in other
words, sees hallucinations. One text describes how, when
seven pieces of metal are heated in a crucible with a
fragment of the philosophers' stone, fire will fill the room
and the starry firmament will appear overhead. Jung
believed that the alchemist 'projects' such visions as if,
without knowing it, he is a cinema projectionist.
Schwaller rejected this with scorn. Alchemy, he told
VandenBroeck, depends on laboratory results. These
results, he seems to imply, are
24
1 Egyptian Mysteries
achieved ultimately by a kind of mind-over-matter. As
VandenBroeck expresses it:
There could be no other than this unique act of total
apprehension beyond words which is knowledge
itself, where the particular disappears and only the
greatest generality remains, stark and devoid of
content. In this utter silence words would form
meanings in the most natural fashion, without our
interference. Here the universe would speak, not the
cerebral cortex. This is the act, the state of
knowledge. There is no referent for knowledge.
Knowledge is knowledge in itself, it is primitive, and
cannot refer to a previous self.
In other words, it is total objectivity, an escape from the
shadow-house of personality.
What Schwaller is talking about, in short, is a different
kind of knowledge. In The White Goddess, Robert Graves
speaks about 'lunar' and 'solar' knowledge. Our modern
type of knowledge - rational knowledge - is 'solar'; it
operates with words and concepts, and it fragments the
object of knowledge with dissection and analysis. But
ancient civilisations had iunar' knowledge, an intuitive
knowledge that grasped things as a whole.
What is at issue might be made clearer by a reference to
another 'esoteric' thinker of the twentieth century, George
Ivanovich Gurdjieff. In 1914, Gurdjieff told his disciple
Ouspensky that there is a fundamental difference between
'real art' and 'subjective art'. Real art is not just an
expression of the artist's feelings; it is as objective as
mathematics, and will always produce the same
impression on everyone who sees it.
The great Sphinx in Egypt is such a work of art, as
well as some historically known works of
architecture, certain statues of gods, and many other
things. There are figures of gods and of various
mythological beings that can be read like books, only
not with the mind but with the emotions, providing
they are sufficiently developed. In the course of our
travels in Central Asia we found, in the desert at the
foot of the Hindu Kush, a strange figure which we
thought at first was some ancient god or devil. At first
it produced upon us simply the impression of being a
curiosity. But
25
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
after a while we began to feel that this figure
contained many things, a big, complete and complex
system of cosmology. And slowly, step by step, we
began to decipher this system. It was in the body of
the figure, in its legs, in its arms, in its head, in its
eyes, in its ears; everywhere. In the whole statue there
was nothing accidental, nothing without meaning.
And gradually we understood the aim of the people
who built this statue. We began to feel their thoughts,
their feelings. Some of us thought that we saw their
faces, heard their voices. At all events, we grasped the
meaning of what they wanted to convey to us across
thousands of years, and not only the meaning, but all
the feelings and the emotions connected with it as
well. That indeed was art!
2
According to Schwaller, this is precisely what the
Egyptians were aiming at in their temples, monuments and
statues.
In A New Model of the Universe, a book written after he
had become Gurdjieff's disciple, Ouspensky had written of
the Sphinx: 'As a matter of fact the Sphinx is older than
historical Egypt, older than her gods, older than the
pyramids, which, in their turn, are much older than is
thought.' This sounds like a piece of information acquired
direct from Gurdjieff.
But how could a work of art make the same impact on
everybody -even if their emotions are 'sufficiently
developed'? Surely art appeals to what is 'personal' in us?
To understand why this is not so, it is necessary to speak
of the founder of Greek mathematics, Pythagoras, who
lived between 582 and 507 bc. According to a typical entry
in a modern encyclopaedia, Pythagoras believed in
reincarnation, and Tythagoreans believed that the essence
of all things was number and that all relationships could be
expressed numerically. This view led them to discover the
numerical relationship of tones in music and to some
knowledge of later Euclidean geometry.'
3
Pythagoreanism
is sometimes described as 'number mysticism', and the
mathematician Lancelot Hogben dismissed all such
notions as the 'dark superstitions and fanciful puerilities
which entranced people who were living through the
childhood of civilisation'.
4
But that is to miss the point. The Pythagoreans were
entranced by such things as the shape of crystals and the
patterns made by frost. They suspected, rightly, that there
is a mathematical reason for this. Again, consider the fact
that women have two breasts, and that in
26
1 Egyptian Mysteries
female animals, the number of teats is always a multiple
of two, never an odd number. Again, the Pythagoreans
suspected that the processes of living nature are governed
by mathematical laws, and they were right.
Let us return to an earlier question: what is music
'saying'? Why do certain musical phrases fill us with a
curious delight? Around 1910, a Viennese composer
named Arnold Schoenberg decided that, since he could see
no obvious answer to the problem of why music touches
our feelings, the answer must lie in the word 'habit' - or
conditioning. Schoenberg decided that he would create a
different tone scale, and write music that was based on a
number of notes arranged in arbitrarily chosen order -
rather than one that 'appeals' to the ear. But he proved
mistaken in his assumption that music is 'arbitrary'. Almost
a century later, his works and those of his disciples still
sound strange and dissonant - although their dissonance is
undeniably successful in expressing neurosis and tension -
and their inclusion in a modern concert programme is
enough to guarantee a decline in ticket sales. Any
Pythagorean could have told him that his theory was based
on a fallacy - a failure to grasp that there is a hidden
mathematical reason why a certain order of notes strikes
us as harmonious, and why arbitrary notes fail to convey a
sense of musical meaning.
It is when the same insights are applied to the realm of
living things that we begin to grasp the essence of
Egyptian thought. Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 popularised the
idea that a computer might develop human feelings; and,
in fact, many computer scientists argue that a sufficiently
complex computer would be alive - that if it was complex
enough to behave like a living thing, then by any sensible
definition it would be a living thing. In The Emperor's
New Mind, Oxford scientist Roger Penrose expended a
great deal of ingenuity in demonstrating that this is a
fallacy - that even if a computer was more complex than a
human being, it would still not be 'alive'.
Most biologists now accept the view that life evolved
accidentally with the action of sunlight on carbon
compounds: that these compounds 'accidentally' built up
into cells that could reproduce themselves, and that these
cells were the first sign of 'life' on earth. Penrose's
arguments about computers apply equally to this theory.
No matter how complex an arrangement of carbon
molecules, it would still not be alive.
The Egyptians would have found these ideas about
'living' computers and carbon molecules unutterably
perverse. For them there were two distinct realities: matter
and spirit. In living beings the two interact,
27
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
and the laws that govern the interaction are mathematical.
It is not meaningless to ask why carrots are long and
pointed, and melons are round, and marrows are long and
round. Life obeys unknown mathematical laws.
Gurdjieff also attached great importance to the concept of
alchemy. In his major work, Beelzebub's Tales to his
Grandson, he explains that what is generally called
alchemy is a pseudo-science, but that there was - and is - a
genuine alchemy, a 'great science', that was known to the
ancients before man began to degenerate.
It may also be noted that, in Beelzebub's Tales,
Gurdjieff makes Beelzebub - a higher being from a solar
system in the Milky Way -explain that Egypt was
originally populated by survivors from Atlantis, which
was destroyed in two cataclysms, and that the Sphinx and
the Giza pyramids were built by the Atlanteans.
(Beelzebub, it should be noted, was written before
Schwaller discovered ancient Egypt, so there was no
mutual influence.) Some time later, around the time of
dynastic Egypt, there occurred a spiritual 'cataclysm' that
caused mankind to degenerate to a lower level. Man began
to believe that the material world is the only reality, and
that the spiritual is a mere reflection of the material. This
would seem to echo Schwaller's conviction that mankind
has degenerated from 'giants ... to a near-animal state'.
It seems ironic that Schwaller's interest in the age of the
Sphinx -and the other great Egyptian monuments - was
virtually a by-product of his interest in 'alchemy', and its
bearing on human evolution. What he believed he had
found in ancient Egypt was a completely new mode of
thought - a mode that cannot be expressed in the
analytical concepts of language, but only shown in myth
and symbolism.
This knowledge also involved a highly sophisticated
technology, capable of such incredible feats as moving
200-ton blocks (used in building the Sphinx temples) and
placing them on top of one another.
In short, Schwaller believed that ancient Egypt
possessed a knowledge system that had been inherited
from a far older civilisation, whose modes of thought
were fundamentally different from those of modern man.
The secret of this knowledge system he believed lay in
ancient Egypt.
It was probably because Schwaller was anxious not to
undermine the reputation of his mathematical studies on
the temple of Luxor that he took care not to be too
specific about his view of the age of the Sphinx.
28
1 Egyptian Mysteries
But in Sacred Science, in the chapter in which he discusses
the legends of Egyptian prehistory, he speaks about
ancient traditions that refer to the days before the Nile
delta existed - before, that is, the Nile had brought down
the billions of tons of mud that now form the delta. He
continues:
A great civilisation 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 Gizeh, that
Sphinx whose leonine body, except for the head,
shows indisputable signs of aquatic erosion.
He goes on to say: 'We have no idea how the submersion
of the Sphinx took place ...', which seems to make it plain
that he is thinking in terms of a Sphinx submerged beneath
the sea. But when he read these sentences, John Anthony
West was struck by the obvious fact that this notion - of
erosion by water - ought to be scientifically testable. He
expressed this conviction in 1978, in Serpent in the Sky, his
study of Schwaller and ancient Egypt. During the next
decade, he tried to interest scholars in the problem. For
example, he asked an Oxford geologist if he would mind if
he played a trick on him, then showed him a photograph of
the Sphinx in which the head and other identifying features
had been hidden by masking tape, so that it looked like a
fragment off cliff. 'Would you say this is wind-erosion or
water erosion?' The geologist said without hesitation:
'Water erosion.
5
Then West stripped off the tape, revealing
the head and the paws. The geologist stared at it and said:
'Oh.' And after more reflection he added: 'I don't want to
say any more. You see, I'm not a desert specialist.' Other
scientists to whom West wrote did not even reply.
It was several years more before he found a geologist
who was sufficiently open-minded to go and look at the
Sphinx. It was the beginning of an important new phase in
the search for Atlantis.
29
2 The New Race
T
he problem of finding an open-minded scientist, West has
remarked (with understandable bitterness), is about as easy
as finding a fundamentalist Christian who loves Madonna.
But in 1985, a friend at Boston University remarked: 'I
think I might know someone.'
The 'someone' was Robert Schoch, a geologist at Boston
University, and his entry in Who's Who made it clear that
he would be the ideal supporter. Although still in his
twenties, he had published four books, and was a highly
respected stratigrapher - a geologist who studies layers of
sedimentary rock - and palaeontologist. But to begin with,
it looked as if he was going to be as evasive as the Oxford
geologist. West was advised not to try approaching him
directly in case he scared him off. Periodically, reports
came back: Schoch had been approached, Schoch was
willing to look at the material, Schoch's first reaction had
been scepticism... Eventually, after studying all the
material West could muster, Schoch began to express a
cautious interest. But he was up for tenure, and it would
have been insane to jeopardise this by espousing an
opinion that would be sure to enrage his academic
colleagues. Yeats went by with these occasional reports,
until, at last, West travelled to Boston to meet him.
He had taken a boxful of slides, and when they had
looked at them, and they had discussed the whole
question, Schoch admitted what was worrying him. 'From
the photograph, it looks like water weathering. It looks so
obvious. If you're right, I can't believe that no one would
have noticed it before.'
Clearly, he would have to go to Egypt to see for
himself. But that would have to wait until he had tenure.
That finally came in April 1990. Two months later they
were in Cairo. West was in a state of tension as they
approached the Giza site,
31
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
half-expecting Schoch to point out some geological gaffe
that would destroy his whole theory. But Schoch seemed
quietly impressed. At first sight, he could see nothing that
undermined West's belief in water-weathering. The Sphinx
enclosure - the walls of limestone that surrounded the
Sphinx on two sides - certainly showed the typical
undulating pattern of rain weathering. But he felt that he
needed a more detailed study, together with the aid of a
geophysicist, as well as up-to-date seismographic
equipment.
It seems probable that the original rock that formed the
head of the Sphinx was an outcrop that once rose above
the ground beside the Nile. Schoch theorised that it may
have been carved into some kind of face - either human or
animal (such as a lion) at some remote date when the
surrounding countryside was still green. Then, at some
later date, it was decided to add a body. For this purpose,
its makers sliced into the softer limestone below and
around the head - creating a two-sided wall or enclosure ~
thus giving themselves elbow room to work. The great
blocks they removed - 200 tons each - were used to
construct two temples in front of the Sphinx. These
ancient architects worked in a style that might be called
'Cyclopean', using absurdly large blocks -which could far
more conveniently have been carved into a dozen smaller
ones - and erecting them into structures as simple and
underrated as Stonehenge.
The next step was to hack out roughly the chunk of rock
that would form the body of the Sphinx - which would
eventually be 240 feet long, and 66 feet high, as tall as a
six-storey building. From the point of view of posterity, it
is a pity that the whole Sphinx was not carved out of the
same type of rock, for the limestone body has eroded far
more than the harder head and shoulders. The present
damage to the Sphinx's head was done in 1380, by a
fanatical Arab sheikh, and later by the Mamelukes, who
used it for target practice.
And what evidence have we about the age of the
Sphinx? Oddly enough, it is not mentioned by Herodotus,
and so we must assume either that it was covered with
sand when Herodotus visited Egypt around 450 bc, or that
the outcrop of badly eroded rock sticking up above the
surface bore so little resemblance to a face that he did not
even notice it.
When the sand - which buried it up to its neck - was
cleared away in 1817, a small temple was revealed
between the paws. This contained the statue of a lion and
three stelae; the one against the Sphinx's breast bore the
date of King Thutmose IV, who came to the throne in
1425
32
2 The New Race
BC. The main stela told how King Thutmose IV had fallen
asleep near the Sphinx when out hunting, and how the
Sphinx - who was inhabited by the god Khepera (a form of
the sun god Ra), creator of the universe - spoke to him in a
dream and asked him to clear away the sand that buried
him. Thutmose not only cleared away the sand, but made
extensive repairs to the body. Apparently this was not the
first time; the same stela bore the name of the Pharaoh
Chefren - although its surrounding writing was flaked
away, so that its significance was not clear. Sir Gaston
Maspero assumed that Chefren had also performed the
same service of clearing the sand, and possibly repaired
the Sphinx - the rear of the Sphinx contains repairs that
have been dated to the Old Kingdom, which lasted about
450 years (2575-2130 bc).
But this obviously raises a basic question. If the Sphinx
was built by Chefren around 2500 bc, then why should it
need repairs in the course of the next three and a half
centuries? It was well protected, and was no doubt buried
in sand most of the time since it was built. Dr Zahi
Hawass, the keeper of the Cairo Museum and a bitter
opponent of West's theory, was to argue that the limestone
of which the Sphinx was built was so poor that it began to
erode as soon as the monument was completed. West's
reply was that this would involve erosion at the rate of a
foot every hundred years, and that if that was the case, the
Sphinx would have vanished completely about five
centuries ago.
On the other hand, if Maspero was correct, then Chefren
had merely repaired the Sphinx and cleared away the sand;
Maspero actually stated that this was proof that 'the Sphinx
was already covered with sand during the time of Khufu
[Cheops] and his predecessors'. In fact, it was a
commonplace among nineteenth-centry Egyptologists to
state that the Sphinx was far, far older than the pyramids.
It has only been during the twentieth century, on the
evidence of the name of Chefren on the stela of Thutmose
IV, that Egyptologists have decided that the Sphinx was
built by Chefren, and that its head is supposed to be a
portrait of Chefren. They have reached that conclusion on
precisely the same evidence that made Maspero decide the
Sphinx was far older than the pyramids.
Another obvious question arises. Most of the Sphinx -
as already stated - is below ground level, so it would have
been clear to its builder that it would soon be buried in
sand. (It seems to take about twenty years.) Does this not
suggest that, when the Sphinx was built, the Sahara was
still green, which would explain how the Sphinx came to
be eroded by rainfall? We know that the Sahara was once
green and
33
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
fertile, and that it has been slowly eroded over the
millennia. No one is certain when it was last green, but a
conservative guess is 3500 bc. It is
9
of course, even
possible that it was still green in the time of Chefren;
1
but
then, even if it was built by Chefren in a green Sahara in
2500 bc, this still fails to explain why it needed repairs so
soon.
Now West had the task of trying to prove that Maspero
and the other nineteenth-century scholars had been right,
and that the Sphinx was already old in the time of
Chefren. If he could prove that the body of the Sphinx,
and the Sphinx enclosure, had been eroded by water, not
by wind-blown sand, then he would certainly have taken a
major step in that direction. His first task would be to set
about finding the necessary finance to take a team of
experts to look at it. Boris Said, a maker of videos,
coordinated the project, and Thomas L. Dobecki, a
geophysicist, also signed on, with two geologists, an
architect and an oceanographer. After an interminable
struggle to persuade the authorities to grant permission,
they were finally ready to start.
Now that Schoch could study it all at close quarters, his
doubts vanished. If the Sphinx was the same age as the
rest of the Giza site, why was it so weathered, when
nearby Old Kingdom tombs were so much less weathered
- and, what is more, so obviously weathered by wind-
blown sand? Surely the Sphinx had to be older?
The wind-weathering on these other tombs provided a
convenient comparison. Limestone is a sedimentary rock,
made of particles glued together; and, as everyone knows,
such rocks come in strata, like layer cake. When wind-
blown sand hits the side of the layer cake, the softer layers
are worn away, while the harder layers stick out above and
below them. The result is a series of parallel layers, with a
profile of humps and hollows like the profile of a club
sandwich.
When a rock face is eroded by rain water, the effect is
totally different. The rain runs down in streams, and cuts
vertical channels into the rock. The softer rock is still
eroded more deeply than the harder, but the effect is quite
distinct from wind-weathering - it can look like a series of
bumps, not unlike a row of naked buttocks. The team
agreed that both the body of the Sphinx and the Sphinx
enclosure showed this type of weathering, not the
smoother effect of wind-weathering.
The two temples in front of the Sphinx - known as the
Valley and the Sphinx Temples - provided additional
evidence for this thesis. If, of course, they had been left
untouched, they should have exhibited pre-
34
2 The New Race
cisely the same weathering as the Sphinx and its
enclosure. But there is clear evidence that they were
repaired by the ancient Egyptians, who set out to prevent
further damage by facing them with granite slabs. Many of
these granite slabs were removed by later generations,
who used them in their own building. And the outer walls
left exposed by this removal are so irregular that any self-
respecting architect would blush with shame.
What happened seems clear. These walls were deeply
weathered, like the Sphinx, but so that they could be
repaired, they were cut back to provide convenient flat
surfaces. Since they were going to be covered up with
granite, it was unimportant if they looked a mess.
In fact, where the granite facing has been removed,
these limestone blocks show the same undulatory
weathering as the Sphinx and its enclosure. The rear sides
of some of the granite facing-slabs have even been carved
into an undulatory pattern to fit the eroded limestone.
Again, it looks as if the people who repaired the temples
found them deeply water-eroded - a relic of the earlier
'Cyclopean' age, standing alone, except for the Sphinx, on
an empty plateau.
These temples in front of the Sphinx raised another
problem that has been ignored by orthodox Egyptologists.
As already noted, their architecture is quite unlike that of
most Egyptian temples, with their cylindrical columns and
wealth of carvings. Here there are simply bleak
rectangular pillars surmounted by similar blocks, bare and
uncarved, as if they belonged to a completely different
epoch from the great Egyptian temples.
Again, why had the ancient builders chosen to build the
Sphinx temples of blocks weighing 200 tons each? The
explanation that suggests itself is that, like the Sphinx, the
temples were regarded as so sacred that anything smaller
would have been an insult to the god for whom they were
raised. King Thutmose dreamed that the 'god' who
inhabited the Sphinx was Khepera, creator of the universe
and father of all the other gods. If this was true, then it was
certainly appropriate that the Valley and Sphinx temples
should be plain and bare.
Finally, there was the most baffling question of all: how
had the builders succeeded in moving and raising 200-ton
blocks? West consulted various modern engineers with
experience in building huge structures; they admitted to
being baffled. Graham Hancock's research assistant
learned that there are only three cranes in the world big
enough to move such blocks.
What does that suggest? This, at least, is undeniable: that
whoever
35
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
carved the Sphinx and built the two temples possessed
some highly / sophisticated technology. Even the Great
Pyramid contains no such blocks. The conclusion would
seem to be that if the Sphinx and its I temples were built
centuries - or perhaps thousands of years - earlier than
Cheops and Chefren, the builders were more, and not less,
technically accomplished.
I This brings us to another question about the 'know-
how' of these f ancient people.
j In 1893, Flinders Ptrie had excavated the village of
Naqada, 300
; miles south of Cairo, and found pottery and vases that
revealed a high
| level of skill. The pottery showed none of the striated
marks that would
j indicate a potter's wheel, yet were so perfectly rounded
that it was hard
| to believe they were made by hand. The level of
workmanship led
j him to assume that they must date from the 11th Dynasty,
around 2000
bc. They seemed so un-Egyptian that he called their
creators 'the New
j Race'. When some of these 'New Race' vases were found
in tombs of
j the 1st Dynasty, dating from about a thousand years
earlier, he was so
| bewildered that he dropped the Naqada vase from his
chronology, on
/ the principle that what you cannot explain you had
better ignore.
j In fact, the Naqadans were descendants of Palaeolithic
peoples from
/ North Africa who began raising crops (in small areas)
some time after
I 5000 bc. They buried their dead in shallow pits facing
towards the
[ west, and seem to have been a typical primitive culture
of around
the fourth millennium. But the vases that puzzled Ptrie
seemed too
, j sophisticated to have been
made by primitives.
/ When he examined the great red granite sarcophagus
that was found
/ in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid (of which
there will be
more in the next chapter), Ptrie found himself once again
puzzling
about ancient craftsmen. It seemed to present insuperable
technical
problems. Measurement revealed that its external volume
- 2,332.8
litres - is precisely twice that of its internal volume. That
meant cutting
! with incredible precision. But with what tools?
Flinders Ptrie thought
that it must have been sawn out of a larger block with
saws 'eight feet
or more in length'. Such saws, he thought, would have to
be made of
1 bronze set with diamonds. No one has ever seen such a
saw, and no
ancient text describes it, but Ptrie could see no
other solution.
But what tools were used to hollow out its inside?
Ptrie makes the extraordinary suggestion that the
ancient Egyptians had created some
36
2 The New Race
kind of circular - or rather tubular - saw which 'drilled
out a circular
groove by its rotation'. This notion of tubular saws with
diamonds
somehow inserted into the points sounds like science
fiction. And even
if such saws could have been made - and the diamonds
set so firmly
that they did not shoot out when the saw was used, or
get driven back
into the bronze that held them - how did the Egyptians
make them
'spin'? We assume that, at this early stage of technology,
drills had to
be 'spun' by hand - or perhaps with a bowstring wound
around thei
shaf t . I t sounds, qui t e si mpl y, i mpossi bl e.
(
Ptrie also speaks about granite slabs and diorite
bowls incised with quite precise inscriptions. The
characters, says Ptrie, are not 'scraped or ground out,
but are ploughed through the diorite, with rough edges
to the line'. Diorite, like granite, is incredibly hard.
Graham Hancock had also seen various kinds of
vessels of diorite,
\ basalt and quartz, some dating from centuries before the
time of
I Cheops, neatly hollowed out by some unknown
technique. The most baffling of all were 'tall vases with
long, thin, elegant necks and finely
I flared interiors, often incorporating fully hollowed-out
shoulders'. (More than 30,000 were found beneath the
Step Pyramid of Zoser at Saqqara.) The necks are far
too thin to admit a human hand - even a child's - some
too narrow even to admit a little finger, Hancock points
out that even a modern stone carver, working with
tungsten-carbide drills, would be unable to match them,
and concludes that the Egyptians must have possessed
some tool that is totally unknown to, and unsuspected
by, Egyptologists. It sounds, admittedly, too
preposterous to suggest that they had some kind of
electric drill. Yet when we consider Petrie's comment
about grooves 'ploughed through the diorite', it seems
\ obvious that they must have had some means of making
the bit spin at
j a tremendous speed. A potter's wheel, with suitable
'gears', might just do it.
In fact, a modern toolmaker, Christopher P. Dunn,
studied Petrie's book in an attempt to make sense of his
descriptions, and in an article
1 called 'Advanced Machining in Ancient Egypt', reached
some astonish-
I ing conclusions. He comments:
1 The millions of tons of rock that the Egyptians had
quarried for
\ their pyramids and temples - and cut with such
superb accuracy -
\ reveal glimpses of a civilisation that was technically
more advanced
\ than is generally believed. Even though it is thought
that millions
of tons of rock were cut with simple primitive hand
tools, such as
37
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
copper chisels, adzes and wooden mallets, substantial
evidence shows that this is simply not the case. Even
discounting the argument that work-hardened copper
would not be suitable for cutting igneous rock, other
evidence forces us to look a little harder, and more
objectively, when explaining the manufacturing
marks scoured on ancient granite by ancient stone
craftsmen.
He discusses the puzzle of how these craftsmen cut the
43 giant granite beams, weighing between 45 and 70 tons
each, and used in the King's Chamber.
Although the Egyptians are not given credit for the
simple wheel,
2
the machine marks they left on the
granite found at Giza suggests a much higher degree
of technical accomplishment. Petrie's conclusion
regarding their mechanical abilities shows a
proficiency with the straight saw, circular saw, tube-
drill and, surprisingly, even the lathe.
He goes on to mention the two diorite bowls in Petrie's
collection which Ptrie believed must have been turned on
a lathe, because they could 'not be produced by any
grinding or rubbing process'. Ptrie had detected a
roughness in one of the bowls, and found that it was
where two radii intersected, as if a machinist had failed to
'centre' the bowl correctly on the lathe, and had re-centred
it more precisely.
Examining blocks that had been hollowed out - with
some kind of drill - in the Valley Temple, Dunn states that
the drill marks left in the hole show that it was cutting into
the rock at a rate of a tenth of an inch for every revolution
of the drill, and points out that such a phenomenal rate
could not be achieved by hand. (Ptrie thought it could,
but only by applying a pressure of more than a ton on the
drill - it is not clear how this tould be achieved.) An
Illinois firm that specialises in drilling granite told Dunn
that their drills - spinning at the rate of 900 revs per
minute - only cut into it at one ten thousandth of an inch
per revolution, so in theory the ancient Egyptians must
have been using a drill that worked 500 times faster than a
modern drill.
Another aspect of the problem began to provide Dunn
with a glimmer of a solution. A hole drilled into a rock
that was a mixture of quartz and feldspar showed that the
'drill' had cut faster through the quartz than the feldspar,
although quartz is harder than feldspar. The solution that
he suggests sounds almost beyond belief. He points out
that modern
38
2
The
New
Race
ultrasonic machining uses a tool that depends on
vibration. A jackham-mer used by navvies employs the
same principle - a hammer that goes up and down at a
tremendous speed, raining hundreds of blows per
minute on the surface that has to be broken. So does a
pneumatic drill. An ultrasonic tool bit vibrates
thousands of times faster.
Quartz crystals are used in the production of
ultrasonic sound, and conversely, respond to ultrasonic
vibration. This would explain why the 'bit' cut faster
through the quartz than the feldspar.
What is being suggested sounds, admittedly, absurd: that
the Egyptians had some force as powerful as our modern
electricity, and that this force was based on sound. We all
know the story of Caruso breaking a glass by singing a
certain note at high volume. We can also see that-^ if a
pointed drill was attached to one of the prongs of a giant
tuning fork, it could, in theory, cut into a piece of granite
as easily as a modern rotating drill. Dunn is suggesting, in
effect, a technology based on high-frequency sound. But I
must admit that precisely how this force could have been
used to drive the 9-foot bronze saw blade that cut the
sarcophagus in the King' s Chamber eludes my
comprehension. Possibly some reader with a more
technically-oriented imagination can think up a solution.
Unfortunately, the vibration theory fails to explain
Dunn's observation about the drill rotating five hundred
times as fast as a modern drill. We must assume that, if
he is correct, the Egyptians knew how to use both
principles.
In the course of making a television programme,
Christoper Dunn demonstrated the incredible technical
achievement of the Egyptian engineers to another
engineer, Robert Bauval, by producing a metal
instrument used by engineers to determine that a metal
surface has been machined to an accuracy of a
thousandth of an inch, and holding it against the side of
the benben stone in the Cairo Museum. He then applied
the usual test - shining an electric torch against one side
of the metal, and looking on the other side to see if any
gleam of light could be seen. There was none whatever.
Fascinated by the test, Bauval took him to the Serapeum
at Saqqara, where the sacred bulls were entombed in
giant sarcophagi made of basalt. These proved to have
the same incredible accuracy. Why, Bauval asked me
when telling me about all this, should the ancient
Egyptians have needed accuracy to the thousandth of an
inch for a sarcophagus? Moreover, how did they achieve
it without modern engineering techniques?
The notion of ultrasonic drills at least provides a
possible answer to
3
9
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
the otherwise insoluble riddle of Hancock's swan-necked
vases into which it was impossible to insert a little finger.
Dunn says that the technique is used 'for the machining of
odd-shaped holes in hard, brittle materials'. The technique
for hollowing out such vases, even with a long drill, down
a long and narrow neck still defies the imagination. But
with Dunn's suggestions, it begins to seem slightly less
absurd.
Ptrie would have been even more embarrassed about
his Naqada vases if he had known that vessels of the same
type had been discovered in strata dating from 4000 bc -
at a time when Egypt was supposed to be full of nomads
in tents, and that these include the swan-neck vases.
It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that, even if the
Naqada people were not the technically accomplished
super-race of our speculations, Petrie's 'New Race'
nevertheless really existed, and that it predated pharaonic
Egypt by at least a thousand, possibly several thousand
years. These vases seem to be the strongest evidence so far
for Schwaller de Lubicz's 'Atlanteans'.
Dobecki, West's geophysicist, was also making some
interesting discoveries. One of the basic methods of
studying deeper layers of rock is through vibration. A
metal plate is struck with a sledgehammer, and the
vibrations go down through the rock, and are reflected
back by various strata. These echoes are then picked up by
'geophones' placed at intervals along the ground, and their
data interpreted by a computer. One of the first discoveries
Dobecki made was that a few metres under the front paws
of the Sphinx there seems to be some kind of underground
chamber - possibly more than one. Legend has always
asserted the existence of such chambers, containing
'ancient secrets', but they are usually cited by writers who
might be dismissed as cranks - for example,*'a book called
Dramatic Prophecies of the Great Pyramid, by Rodolfo
Benvenides, published in 1969, contains a drawing of the
Sphinx with a kind of temple underneath it. (The
'prophecies' - based on the measurements inside the Great
Pyramid - include little green spacemen landing in 1970,
and a world war between 1972 and 1977.) Dobecki's
discovery at least seemed to confirm that some of the
stranger legends about the Sphinx are not pure fantasy.
Then, in October 1994, Associated Press reported that
workers repairing the Sphinx had discovered an unknown
passageway leading down below its body. The Giza
plateau authorities immediately announced that further
exca-
40
2 The New Race
varions by international teams would be delayed until
1996, because repairs to the Sphinx were their primary
concern ...
One of Dobecki's other discoveries had momentous
implications concerning the age of the Sphinx. Vibration
technology can also be used to investigate 'subsurface
weathering', the weathering that penetrates below the
surface when porous rocks are exposed to the elements.
Dobecki discovered a strange anomaly. At the front of the
Sphinx, the subsurface weathering penetrated about eight
feet. Yet at the rear, it was only four feet deep. The
implication seemed to be that the front of the Sphinx had
been carved out first, and the rear end thousands of years
later. So even if we assume that the rear end was carved in
the time of Chefren, 4,500 years ago, it would seem that
the front part of the Sphinx is twice that age. And if the
rear part of the Sphinx was carved long before Chefren,
then the front part could be far, far older.
As far as Schoch could see, West was basically correct.
The weathering of the Sphinx - compared to that of the
Old Kingdom tombs only 200 yards away - meant that it
had to be thousands of years older than the tombs, and
therefore than the pyramids. The two Sphinx temples
pointed clearly to the same conclusion; their weathering
was also far more severe than that of the Old Kingdom
tombs, as well as being of a different kind - rain as
opposed to wind weathering.
At this point Schoch decided that the time for academic
caution was at an end; it was time to go public. He
submitted an abstract of his findings to the Geological
Society of America, and he was invited to present his case
at the annual convention of the Society in October 1992; it
was being held that year in San Diego, California.
Geologists are not slow to express disagreement, and he
anticipated being given a hard time. To his pleasant
surprise, far from raising objections, the audience listened
with obvious interest, and afterwards no less than 275
enthusiastic geologists came up to him and offered to help
on the project; many expressed astonishment that no one
had noticed earlier what now struck them as obvious - that
the Sphinx was weathered by water.
But then, they were geologists, not Egyptologists; they
had no vested interest in denying that the Sphinx could be
older than Chefren. Egyptologists, when the news leaked
out, were indignant or dismissive. 'Ridiculous!' declared
Peter Lacovara, assistant curator of the Egyptian
Department of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in the
Boston Globe.
41
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
There's just no way that could be true,' said archaeologist
Carol / Redmount in the Los Angeles Times. Others asked
what had happened to the evidence for this earlier
Egyptian civilisation - its other monuments and remains.
For West and Schoch, the answer to that was obvious: it
was underneath the sand.
One of the sceptics was Mark Lehner, an American
who had been investigating the Sphinx since 1980. Yet it
was Lehner who had inadvertently encouraged West's
belief that the Sphinx predated Chefren. In the careful
survey he had conducted with L. Lai Gauri, a stone
conservation expert, Lehner had reached the odd
conclusion that although the earliest repairs to the flanks
of the Sphinx looked typical of the Old Kingdom (i.e. the
time of Chefren), they were actually from the New
Kingdom period, about a thousand years later. Why, West
wondered, should New Kingdom repairers make their
work look like Old Kingdom? What is more, if the early
repairs - the first of three lots - were as recent as 1500 bc,
the Sphinx must have sustained two or three feet of
erosion (the depth of the repairs) in a thousand years,
during most of which it had been covered in sand.
On the other hand, if those early repairs were - as they
looked - Old Kingdom, this completely ruled out the
notion that Chefren built the Sphinx; for even if the
repairs had been at the very end of the Old Kingdom, this
would still only allow a century or so for two or three feet
of erosion.
And if, of course, the repairs were Old Kingdom, this
meant that Chefren could not possibly be its builder. He
was simply its repairer, as the stela between its paws
seemed to suggest. And the Sphinx must have been built
several thousand years earlier than Chefren's reign to
have eroded three feet - Schoch's conservative estimate
was 7000 bc.
This was the estimate Schoch had put forward at San
Diego, and which caught the attention of the world press:
it made the Sphinx exactly twice the usual estimate:
about nine thousand years old.
West also pointed out that the mud-brick tombs around
the Step Pyramid of Saqqara, dating back about a century
before the Great Pyramid, show none of the weathering
features of the Sphinx - yet are a mere ten miles away
(and so subject to the same climate) as well as being
softer. Why have they not weathered like the Sphinx?
When Schoch presented his case at the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, Mark
Lehner was chosen as the champion of
42
2 The New Race
the academic opposition. He raised the now familiar
objection - that if the Sphinx had been built by a far older
civilisation than the Egyptians, around 7000 bc, what had
happened to the remains of this civilisation? 'Show me a
single potsherd.' West was not allowed to take part in the
debate; since he was not an accredited academic, he had to
listen from the audience. But he was not slow to point out
afterwards that Lehner's objection was illogical. He and
Schoch had demonstrated by evidence that the Sphinx was
older than the surrounding tombs; it was Lehner's job to
refute that evidence, not to ask for more evidence which
has not yet been found. It was, West pointed out, like
objecting to Magellan's plan of sailing round the world by
saying: 'Show me someone who has done it before.'
Lehner also implied that Schoch was incompetent as a
geologist. 'I don't think he's done his geological work yet...
One of the primary pillars of his case is that if you
compare the Sphinx to Old Kingdom tombs, they don't
show the same rain weathering, therefore the Sphinx must
be older. But he's comparing layers in the Sphinx to other
layers.' According to Lehner, the 'Sphinx layers' run under
the tombs, so the tombs are made of a different limestone -
Lehner implied afar harder limestone - and weather more
slowly.
If this was true, then it struck a deadly blow at Schoch's
case. When the BBC decided to present the programme
made by West and Boris Said, they hired an independent
expert to decide whether Lehner was correct. Their expert
looked closely at a tomb only a hundred yards from the
Sphinx, and known to date from the same time as the
pyramids. He found that the tombs were made of the very
same flaky limestone as the Sphinx, and contained exactly
the same types of fossil. The tomb layer was the same
layer that the Sphinx was carved from. And Schoch and
West had scored a major victory for their cause. It was
now up to Lehner - and Dr Hawass of the Cairo Museum -
to explain why the tombs had weathered so little in
comparison to the Sphinx and its enclosure and temples.
West had another argument for his 'New Race' civilisation.
The Sphinx Temple is - as we have already noted - built in
a far more simple and bleak form of architecture than later
Egyptian temples. There is in upper Egypt one other
temple that has the same bare style - the Oseirion, near
Abydos. During the nineteenth century, the only famous
temple in this area was the Temple of Osiris, built by the
Pharaoh Seti I (1306-1290
43
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
bc), father of Rameses II, who figures as the oppressor of
the Israelites in the Bible. But the Greek geographer
Strabo (c. 63 bc-c. ad 23) had mentioned another temple
nearby, and in the early twentieth century, Flinders Ptrie
and Margaret Murray began clearing away the sand -to
reveal a temple that stood below the temple of Seti I. It
was not until 1912 that Professor E. Naville cleared away
enough sand to make it clear that this temple was built of
megalithic blocks in a style like that of the Sphinx
Temple, virtually bare of decoration. One block was 25
feet long. Naville was immediately convinced that it dated
from the same time as the Sphinx Temple, and that it
could well be 'the most ancient stone building in Egypt'.
Like the Sphinx, it had been excavated out of the solid
rock, and had no floor, so that it soon turned into a kind of
swimming pool when the excavation was finished in the
early 1930s. Naville even thought that it might be some
primitive waterworks. But seventeen small 'cells', about
the height of a man, also hinted at a monastery.
Because of delay due to the First World War, the
Oseirion was not excavated by Naville, but by a younger
man named Henri Frankfort. Frankfort soon concluded
that it must have been built by Seti I because Seti had
written his name twice on the stone, and because a broken
potsherd was found with the words: 'Seti I is of service to
Osiris'. There were also some astronomical decorations on
the ceilings of two 'transverse chambers' which were
outside the temple itself; these were undoubtedly carved
by Seti or his son.
Yet Frankfort's assumptions were highly questionable.
A more straightforward scenario might be as follows.
When Seti I came to build his temple around 1300 bc, he
found the Oseirion temple buried under the sand, a simple
and massive structure dating from the same time as the
Sphinx, built of massive blocks. Its presence certainly
added dignity to his own temple, so he built two
'transverse chambers' at either end - and outside the
temple itself - carving them with his own astronomical
designs. He also had his own name carved in two places
in the granite of the inner temple. The potsherd with its
inscription about being 'of service to Osiris' simply meant
what it said: he assumed that this ancient temple was built
for Osiris, and he was being 'of service' by adding to it
and repairing it.
Margaret Murray doubted whether Frankfort was
correct in dating it to 1300 bc, pointing out that pharaohs
were fond of adding their own names to monuments of
the past. But by that time, she was also regarded with
some doubt by scholars, for she had created controversy
44
2 The New Race
with her Witch Cult in Western Europe, which argued that
witches were actually worshippers of the pagan 'horned
God' (Pan) who preceded Christianity, and her objections
were ignored.
The Oseirion raises an interesting question. If it was
totally buried in the sand - as the Sphinx was at one point -
is it not conceivable that other monuments built of
'Cyclopean blocks' by some ancient people lie buried
beneath the sand? It was almost certainly not built in
honour of Osiris.
The way that Frankfort had decided that the Oseirion
was more recent than anyone thought is reminiscent of
how Egyptologists came to decide that the Sphinx was
built by Chefren because his name was mentioned - in
some unknown context - in the inscription placed between
its paws by Thutmose IV. It might also remind us of how
the 'Valley Temple' - next to the Sphinx Temple - came to
be attributed to Chefren. Throughout most of the
nineteenth century it was assumed to date from far earlier
than Chefren, because of the bareness of its architecture,
and the fact that it is built with giant stone blocks removed
from the Sphinx enclosure. But when a number of statues
of Chefren were discovered buried in the temple precincts,
Egyptologists revised their views; if statues of Chefren
were found in the temple precincts, surely this proved that
Chefren built it?
The reasoning of course is flawed. The fact that Chefren
set up statues of himself in the temple only proves that he
wanted his name to be associated with it. If Chefren had
built it, would he not have filled it with inscriptions to
himself?
Meanwhile, there is one more interesting piece of
evidence that needs to be mentioned. One of the major
discoveries of Auguste Mariette -the first great
'conservationist' among nineteenth-century archaeologists
- was a limestone stela he uncovered in the ruins of the
Temple of Isis, near the Great Pyramid, in the mid-1850s.
The inscription declares that it is erected by the Pharaoh
Cheops, to commemorate his repairs to the Temple of Isis.
It became known as the Inventory Stela, and would
certainly be regarded as one of the most important of all
Egyptian records - for reasons I shall explain in a moment
- if it were not for one drawback: its hieroglyphics clearly
dated it from around 1000 BC, about 1500 years after
Cheops.
Now scholars would not normally question the
authenticity of a record merely because of its late date, for,
after all, the stela was
45
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
obviously copied from something dating much earlier.
Another valuable record of early kings is contained on a
block of basalt known as the Palermo Stone (because it
has been kept in Palermo since 1877). This contains a list
of kings from the 1st to the 5th Dynasties (i.e. about 3000
bc to 2300 bc), and is known to date from about 700 bc,
when it was copied from some original list. But the fact
that this is 1500 years later than the last king it mentions
causes Egyptologists no embarrassment, for they take it
for granted that it is an accurate copy of the original.
Indeed, why should it not be accurate? Scribes copying in
stone are likely to be more accurate than scribes writing
with a pen.
Then why are they suspicious about Cheops's Inventory
Stela - to the extent of denouncing it as an invention, a
piece of fiction? Because its 'facts' sound too preposterous
to be true. Referring to Cheops, it says 'he found the house
(temple) of Isis, mistress of the pyramid, beside the house
of the Sphinx, north-west of the house of Osiris.'
The implications are staggering. Cheops found the
Temple of Isis, 'mistress of the pyramid', beside the
Temple of the Sphinx. In other words, both the Sphinx
and a pyramid were already there on the Giza plateau at
least a century or so before Cheops.
This is all very puzzling. If Isis is the 'mistress of the
pyramid', then presumably one of the Giza group must be
her pyramid. Which? Cheops also mentions that he built
his pyramid beside the Temple of Isis, and that he also
built a pyramid for the Princess Henutsen. Now we know
that Henutsen's pyramid is one of the three small
pyramids that stand close to the Great Pyramid. It is
therefore just conceivable that one of its sister pyramids is
the pyramid of Cheops.
In any case, what it amounts to is that we do not know
for certain that the Great Pyramid was built by Cheops. It
may have been, but on the other hand it may not have
been. In the next chapter we shall look at the one rather
slender piece of evidence that connects it with Cheops.
Meanwhile, one thing seems clear: that according to the
Inventory Stela, the Sphinx was already there in the time
of Cheops, and so was a 'Pyramid of Isis'. It is hardly
surprising that Egyptologists are anxious to consider the
stela an 'invention'.
It was after the discovery of an undamaged statue of
Chefren that Egyptologists decided that there was a strong
resemblance between its face and that of the Sphinx - in
fact, another statue was even in the form of a sphinx.
46
2 The New Race
At the height of the controversy that followed the San
Diego geological conference, Mark Lehner launched an
attack on West in the National Geographic magazine,
which included a computer image of the face of the
Sphinx merged with a photograph of the face of an
undamaged statue of Chefren from the Valley Temple.
This, Lehner claimed, proved that the face of the Sphinx
was Chefren. To West's eyes, this was absurd - the Sphinx
looked nothing like Chefren. But, for better or worse,
computer models make impressive arguments. West
decided to counterattack. And the producer of the video,
Boris Said, came up with an inspired idea: get a trained
police artist to work on it.
Enquiries about who was the best in New York pointed
them towards Detective Frank Domingo, senior forensic
artist with the New York City Police Department.
Since he joined the Department in 1966, Domingo had
been right up through the ranks, and ended as a major
consultant in any kind of case that involved facial
reconstruction. Sometimes they were straightforward
criminal cases - like that of the nun who was raped,
sodomised and tattooed with dozens of cross-shaped cuts
by two intruders. Domingo went to see her in hospital,
drew the faces of the burglars from her descriptions, and
was able to provide the lead that led to the arrest and
conviction of both suspects.
As his reputation spread, he was at various times called
in by archaeologists and historians. A fragment of broken
potsherd showed the mouth and chin of a man
archaeologists thought might be Alexander the Great, but
there is no accredited portrait of Alexander - only many
idealised portraits. Domingo looked at every one
available, and made a kind of composite - which was
found to match closely the mouth and chin of the
potsherd. He was even asked to undertake the
reconstruction of the face of the crystal 'Skull of Doom',
on the supposition that it was an exact copy of the skull of
some ancient princess. In another case - that of an old
daguerreotype photograph whose proud owner thought it
might be the young Abraham Lincoln - Domingo had to
disappoint: he took one look at the photograph and said:
'Definitely not.'
There are times when a police artist can achieve such an
astonishing likeness to the suspect - based purely on the
description of witnesses -that it raises the suspicion that he
must be telepathic. But in cases like the identification of
Chefren, the technique requires only scientific precision.
When West asked Domingo if he was willing to go to
Giza and decide
47
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
whether the Sphinx and Chefren were one and the same,
Domingo asked: 'What if I decide it is Chefren?'
'If that's what you come up with, that's what I'll publish.'
On this promise, Domingo went to Cairo, and took many
photographs of the Sphinx and of the statue of Chefren in
the Cairo Museum. His conclusion was that the chin of the
Sphinx is far more prominent than that of Chefren.
Moreover, a line drawn from the ear to the corner of the
Sphinx's mouth sloped at an angle of 32 degrees. A similar
line drawn on Chefren was only 14 degrees. This, and
other dissimilarities, led Domingo to conclude that the
Sphinx is definitely not a portrait of Chefren.
48
3 Inside the Pyramid
W
hen Herodotus visited the Great Pyramid in 440 bc, it was
a white, gleaming structure that dazzled the eyes. At that
time, its limestone casing was still intact; the blocks were
so precisely cut that the joints were virtually invisible. Just
over four centuries later, in 24 bc, the Greek geographer
Strabo also visited Giza, and reported that on the north
face of the Pyramid, there was a hinged stone that could be
raised, and which revealed a passage a mere four feet
square, which led downward to a vermin-infested pit 150
feet directly below the Pyramid. Herodotus had said that
there were several underground chambers, intended as
'vaults', built on a sort of island surrounded by water that
flowed from the Nile. The reality, it seemed, was a small,
damp chamber, and no sign of an island or a canal.
Eight centuries passed, and in Baghdad there reigned the
great Haroun Al-Rashid, the caliph of the Arabian Nights.
In fact, Haroun was not particularly great; he received his
honorific title Al-Rashid ('one who follows the right path')
as a teenager for winning a war against Constantinople
under the direction of more experienced generals. His
elder brother, who became caliph before him, died under
mysterious circumstances suggesting murder. Haroun
succeeded to a vast empire stretching from the
Mediterranean to India, and he increased his wealth by
permitting regional governors and princes to pay him
yearly payments in exchange for semi-independence. It
was his vast wealth arid conspicuous consumption that
impressed his contemporaries. Tales of him roaming the
streets in disguise, with his Grand Vizier Jafar and
executioner Mazrur may well be true; so are tales of his
uncertain temper: he had Jafar and his whole family
executed for reasons still unclear. He died in his mid-
forties from a disease picked up while on his way to
repress a revolt in Persia.
49
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Haroun divided his empire between his two sons, Al-
Amin and Al-Mamun, further contributing to the
dissolution of his empire. It is Abdullah Al-Mamun who
concerns us here, for when he became caliph in ad 813, at
the age of 27, he set out to turn Baghdad into a centre of
learning like ancient Alexandria. Haroun had been a
connoisseur of art and poetry, but Al-Mamun was also
interested in science, and founded a library, called the
House of Wisdom, intended to rival the great library of
ancient Alexandria. He also had an observatory built, and
commissioned the first atlas of the stars. This amazing
man was curious about the circumference of the earth, and
doubted Ptolemy's estimate of 18,000 miles. So he had his
astronomers marching north and south over the flat sandy
plain of Palmyra until their astronomical observations told
them that the latitude had changed by one degree, which
had occurred in just over 64 miles. Multiplied by 360, this
gave 23,180 miles, a far more accurate figure than
Ptolemy's. (The actual circumference at the equator is
roughly 24,900 miles.)
When Al-Mamun heard that the Great Pyramid was
supposed to contain star maps and terrestrial globes of
amazing accuracy - not to mention fabulous treasures - he
resolved to add them to his collection. In ad 820, the
seventh year of his reign, he landed in Egypt -which was
part of his empire - with an army of scholars and
engineers. Mamun has left us no account of the
expedition, but it has been described by a number of later
Arab historians.
Unfortunately, the location of the 'hinged trapdoor' had
been forgotten in the past few centuries and the gleaming
limestone of the Pyramid offered no clue to its
whereabouts. So he decided to break his way in by sheer
force. The limestone casing proved impervious to chisels -
days of work only produced shallow depressions. Al-
Mamun decided on a cruder method - to build huge fires
against the limestone, and then cool the red-hot surface
with buckets of cold vinegar. The cracked limestone wa
then levered and battered out.
After tunnelling through eight feet of hard limestone,
the workmen found themselves confronting the inner
blocks of the Pyramid, which proved just as hard. It took
months to tunnel a hundred feet into it, and by that time,
Al-Mamun concluded that it was solid throughout and was
about to give up when one of his workmen heard a dull
thud coming from somewhere to the left. They changed
direction, and finally broke into a narrow and low passage
that seemed to have been made for dwarfs. On its floor lay
a prism-shaped stone from the ceiling, which had made
the thud.
50
3 Inside the Pyramid
They crawled up the slope, and finally discovered the
original entrance to the Pyramid, ten courses above the
entrance Al-Mamun had forced. It had cunningly been
placed 24 feet left of centre, and was invisible behind
huge limestone gables. Arab historians claim that the
hinged stone - which required two men to move it - was
still there -it vanished centuries later, when the limestone
casing was purloined by builders.
Now they retraced their steps and crawled down the
passage. This simply led them to Strabo's Vermin-infested
pit', with an irregular (and obviously unfinished) floor. On
the further side of this there was a low passage that ended
in a blank wall. Clearly, this had been abandoned.
Again, luck favoured Mamun. The stone that had fallen
from the ceiling revealed the end of a granite plug which
looked as if it blocked a passage that sloped upward. This
again proved too hard for their chisels, so Mamun told his
men to cut into the softer limestone to the right of it. But
when they came to the end of it, there was another plug,
and at the end of that, yet another - each of the plugs about
six feet long. Beyond this there was a passage blocked
with a limestone plug, which they cut their way through
with grim persistence. Beyond that there was another, then
still another. The workmen were now eager, for they felt
that whoever had taken so much trouble to block the
passageway must certainly have concealed some
marvellous treasure ...
A long crawl up another low passageway finally led to a
space where they could stand upright. Facing them was
another low corridor - less than four feet high - that ran
horizontally due south. They scrambled along this for
more than a hundred feet, then found that the floor
suddenly dropped in a two-foot step, enabling them at last
to stand upright. But why a two-foot step at that point?
The Pyramid would prove to be full of such absurd and
arbitrary mysteries - so many that it is hardly surprising
that, in later centuries, cranks would read profound
significance into its strange measurements, such as
detailed prophecies of the events of the next 5000 years.
Now Al-Mamun - who took care to go first - found
himself standing in a rectangular room with plastered
walls and a gabled roof, like a barn. It was completely
bare and empty. In the east wall there was a tall niche that
looked as if it had been carved for a large statue, but it was
also empty. The floor was rough, and looked unfinished.
Because the Arabs buried their women in tombs with
gabled ceilings (and men in tombs with flat ceilings), Al-
Mamun arbitrarily labelled this the Queen's Chamber. But
it contained no artefact - or anything else - to associate
5
1
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
it with a woman; Bafflingly, the walls were encrusted
with a half-inch layer of salt.
The measurements of the room were puzzling -
although Al-Mamun was probably too chagrined at the
lack of treasure to pay much attention to them. It was not
quite square, which was odd, since the pyramid builders
showed themselves obsessed with precision and accuracy,
and the wall niche was slightly off-centre. In the
nineteenth century another puzzle would become apparent
when an explorer named Dixon, tapping the walls, noticed
a hollow sound, and got a workman to cut into the wall
with a chisel. This revealed an 'air vent' sloping upwards.
Yet the air vent - and an identical one in the opposite wall
- failed to reach the outside of the Pyramid. Why should
the architect of the Pyramid build two 'air vents' that
failed to reach the outside air, and then seal them off at the
lower end so they were not visible? It sounds like Alice's
White Knight:
But I was thinking
of a plan To dye
one's whiskers
green, Then always
use so large a fan
That they could not
be seen.
Did these ancient builders have a sense of humour like
Lewis Carroll?
There is another puzzle. The 'Queen's Chamber' looks
as if it was left unfinished. If so, then why did the
workmen continue to construct the 'air vents' as they went
on building upwards? Is the chamber part of some curious
bluff?
Al-Mamun ordered his workmen to hack into the wall
behind the niche, in case it was a secret doorway into
another chamber, but after a few feet, gave up. Instead,
they retraced their steps to the end of the horizontal
passage, where they could stand upright, and raised their
torches above their heads. They could now see that the
level 'step' they were standing on had not always been
there. The low ascending passage they had climbed had
once continued upward in a straight line; this was proved
by joist holes in the walls which had once supported it.
Standing on one another's shoulders, they heaved
themselves up the side of the 'step', and into the
continuation of the ascending passage. As they held their
torches aloft and saw what lay ahead, they must have
gasped with astonishment. There was no longer a lack of
headroom - the ceiling of this long ascending tunnel was
far above them. And ahead of them, rising at the same
angle as the ascending passage
52
3 Inside the Pyramid
behind them (26 degrees), the tunnel ran up into the heart
of the Pyramid. This marvellous structure would be
christened the Grand Gallery.
This gallery, about seven feet wide at floor level,
narrowed to about half this width at the ceiling, about 28
feet above. Against the wall on either side is a two-foot
high step or ramp, so that the actual floor is a sunken
channel or slot, just less than three and a half feet wide.
Why there has to be a sunken channel between two low
walls, instead of a flat floor, is another of those unsolved
mysteries of the Pyramid.
A long scramble of 153 feet up the slippery limestone
floor brought them to a huge stone higher than a man; the
top of a doorway was visible behind it. When they had
clambered over this, and down another short passageway,
they found themselves in the room that was obviously the
heart of the Pyramid. It was far larger than the 'Queen's
Chamber' below, and beautifully constructed of red
polished granite; the ceiling above them was more than
three times the height of a man. This, obviously, was the
King's Chamber. Yet, except for an object like a red granite
bathtub, it was completely empty.
Al-Mamun was baffled; his workmen were enraged. It
was like some absurd joke - all this effort, to no purpose
whatsoever. The 'bathtub' - presumably a sarcophagus -
was also empty, and had no lid. The walls were
undecorated. Surely this had to be the antechamber to
some other treasure chamber? They attacked the floor, and
even hacked into the granite in one corner of the room. It
was all to no avail. If the Pyramid was a tomb, it had been
looted long ago.
Yet how was this possible? No one could have been in
here before them. And the sheer bareness of the room, the
lack of any debris or rubbish on the floor, suggested that
there had never been any treasure, for robbers would have
left something behind, if only useless fragments of their
loot.
Oral tradition describes how Al-Mamun pacified the
angry workmen by having treasure carried into the
Pyramid at night, and then 'discovered' the next day and
distributed among them. After that, Al-Mamun, puzzled
and disappointed, returned to Baghdad, where he devoted
the remaining twelve years of his reign to trying - entirely
without success - to reconcile the Sunni and Shi'ite
Muslims. Like his father, he died when on campaign.
In 1220, the historian and physician Abdul Latif was one
of the last to see the Pyramid still encased in limestone.
Two years later much of Cairo was destroyed by a great
earthquake, and the limestone - 22
53
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
acres of it - was removed to rebuild the city's public
buildings. The 'Grand Mosque' is built almost entirely
from the casing of the Pyramid. But it is a pity that the
builders did not retain its inscriptions. Abdul Latif said
that the hieroglyphics on its surface were so numerous
that they would have occupied thousands of pages. In that
case, we would presumably know the answer to the riddle
of the Pyramid.
As it happened, Al-Mamun was wrong in believing that
there was no other entrance to the Pyramid. It was almost
rediscovered in 1638 by an English mathematician called
John Greaves, who went out to Egypt armed with various
measuring instruments. After struggling through a cloud of
huge bats, and staggering out of the Queen's Chamber
because the stench of vermin made him retch, he made his
way up the smooth ramp of the Grand Gallery, and
surveyed the King's Chamber with the same bafflement as
Al-Mamun; it seemed incomprehensible that this vast
structure should be built merely to house this red-granite
room with its granite bathtub. On his way back down the
Grand Gallery, just before it rejoined the narrow ascending
passage, he noticed that a stone was missing from the
ramp on one side. Peering down into the hole, he
concluded that there was a kind of well that descended
into the heart of the Pyramid. He even had the courage to
lower himself into this well, and to descend about 60 feet -
at which point it had been enlarged into a small grotto. He
dropped a lighted torch into the continuation of the well,
and realised that it came to an end when the torch lay
flickering somewhere in the depths. But the fetid air and
the presence of bats drove him out again. Back in England,
his book Pyramidographia brought him celebrity, and an
appointment as Professor of Astronomy at Oxford.
Two centuries later, an intrepid Italian sea captain - and
student of the hermetic arts - named Giovanni Battista
Caviglia gave up the sea to devote himself to the mystery
of the Great Pyramid. Like Al-Mamun, he believed that
there must be a secret room that would reveal why the
Pyramid had been built.
In fact, a kind of 'secret chamber' had been discovered
in 1765 by an explorer named Nathaniel Davison, who
had observed a curious echo at the top of the Grand
Gallery, and raised a candle on two joined canes to look at
the wall above him. At ceiling-level he had seen a hole in
the wall, and investigated it with the aid of a shaky ladder.
He crawled down a tunnel almost blocked with bat dung,
and found himself
54
3 Inside the Pyramid
in a 'chamber' that was only about three feet high, whose
irregular floor was formed of the blocks that made the
ceiling of the King's Chamber, directly below it. But it
proved to be quite empty.
In his search for a secret chamber, Caviglia paid a gang
of workmen to dig a tunnel out of 'Davison's Chamber',
while he used the Chamber itself as a bedroom. It seems to
have occurred to him that there might well be more hidden
chambers above this one, but he lacked the resources to
search for them. Instead, he decided to explore the mystery
of the 'well'. He went twice as far as John Greaves, but
found the bottom blocked with rubble, and the air so fetid
that his candle went out.
He tried removing the rubble by having his workmen
pull it up in baskets; but they soon refused to work in such
appalling conditions, choked with foul air and powdered
bat dung. He tried clearing the air with burning sulphur,
but since sulphur dioxide is a deadly poison, this only
made it worse.
Caviglia returned to the descending passage that ran
down to the 'vermin-infested pit' under the Pyramid. It was
still full of limestone debris from the entrance cut by Al-
Mamun's workmen. Caviglia had this removed, and
crawled on down the passage. The air was so foul and hot
that he began to spit blood; but he pressed on. A hundred
and fifty feet further down, he found a low doorway in the
right-hand wall. When he smelt sulphur, he guessed that he
had found the lower end of the well. His workmen began
to try to clear the debris, and suddenly had to retreat as it
fell down on them - bringing the basket they had left at the
bottom of the well. This was the secret entrance to the
heart of the Pyramid.
In a sense, this raised more problems than it solved. The
obvious explanation was that the builders of the Pyramid
had used it to escape after they had blocked the ascending
passageway with granite plugs and so sealed the Pyramid.
But that theory demanded that they should slide the granite
plugs down the ascending passageway like pushing corks
down the neck of a bottle; the sheer size and weight of the
plugs would have made this impossible. It was far more
sensible to assume that the plugs were inserted as the
Pyramid was being built - in which case, the builders
would not need an escape passage, because they could
walk out via the still unfinished top.
The truth is that, where the pyramids are concerned, there
are no
55
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
absolute certainties: only certain established ideas that the
'experts' have agreed to accept because it is convenient to
do so.
One of these established ideas is the 'certainty' that the
Great Pyramid was built by a pharaoh called Cheops or
Khufu. As a cautionary tale, it is worth telling how this
particular 'certainty' came about.
In 1835, a British officer, Colonel Richard Howard-
Vyse - according to one writer, 'a trial to his family', who
were anxious to get rid of him
1
- came to Egypt and was
bitten by the 'discovery' bug. He approached Caviglia,
who was still exploring the Pyramid, and offered to fund
his researches if Caviglia would give him credit as the co-
discoverer of any major find; Caviglia rejected this.
In 1836 Howard-Vyse returned to Egypt and managed
to obtain a firman - permission to excavate - from the
Egyptian government. But, to Howard-Vyse's disgust, this
named the British Consul, Colonel Campbell, as a co-
excavator, and Caviglia as supervisor. Howard-Vyse paid
over a sum of money to finance the investigation, and
went off on a sightseeing tour. When he returned, he was
infuriated to find that Caviglia was looking for mummies
in tombs instead of investigating the Great Pyramid for
secret chambers, which is what Howard-Vyse wanted,
Caviglia had told him that he suspected that there might
be more hidden rooms above Davison's Chamber.
On the night of 12 February 1837, Howard-Vyse
entered the Pyramid at night, accompanied by an engineer
named John Perring, and went to examine a crack that had
developed in a granite block above and to one side of
Davison's Chamber; a three-foot reed could be pushed
straight through it, which suggested there might be
another chamber above. The very next morning, Howard-
Vyse dismissed Caviglia, and appointed Perring to his
team.
Howard-Vyse's workmen now began to try to cut their
way through the granite at the side of Davison's Chamber.
It proved more difficult than he had expected, and a
month later he had still made little headway. Royal
visitors came, and Howard-Vyse had little to show them
except 'Campbell's Tomb', which Caviglia had discovered
near one of the other Giza pyramids. (He also tried boring
into the shoulder of the Sphinx, looking for masons'
markings, but was unsuccessful.) Finally, in desperation,
he employed small charges of gunpowder - which made
granite fly around like shrapnel - and managed to open a
small passage up from out of Davison's Chamber.
Oddly enough, Howard-Vyse then dismissed the
foreman of the
56
3 Inside the Pyramid
workmen. The next day, a candle on the end of a stick
revealed that Caviglia had been right; there was another
hidden chamber above.
The hole was further enlarged with gunpowder. The first
to enter it was Howard-Vyse, accompanied by a local
copper mill employee and well-known 'fixer' named J. R.
Hill. What they found was another low chamber - only
three feet high - whose irregular floor was covered with
thick black dust, made of the cast-off shells of insects. To
Howard-Vyse's disappointment, it was completely empty.
Howard-Vyse decided to call it Wellington's Chamber.
The hole was enlarged yet again, and the next time
Howard-Vyse entered it, with John Perring, and another
engineer named Mash, they discovered a number of marks
painted in a kind of red pigment, daubed on the walls.
These were 'quarry marks', marks painted on the stones
when they were still in the quarry, to show where they had
to go in the Pyramid. Conveniently enough, none of these
marks appeared on the end wall, through which Howard-
Vyse had smashed his way. But there was something more
exciting than mere quarry marks - a series of hieroglyphs
in an oblong-shaped box (or cartouche) - which meant the
name of a pharaoh. Oddly enough, Howard-Vyse had
failed to notice these when he first entered the chamber.
From the fact that Wellington's Chamber was almost
identical with Davison's underneath it, Howard-Vyse
reasoned that there must be more above. It took four and a
half months of blasting to discover these - three more
chambers on top of one another. The topmost chamber,
which Howard-Vyse called 'Campbell's Chamber', had a
roof that sloped to a point, like the roof of a house. All the
chambers had more quarry markings, and two of them -
including Campbell's Chamber - had more names in
cartouches. As in Wellington's Chamber, these marks were
never on the wall through which Howard-Vyse had
broken...
The purpose of these chambers was now apparent: to
relieve the pressure of masonry on the King's Chamber
below. If there was an earthquake that shook the Pyramid,
the vibration would not be transmitted through solid
masonry to the King's Chamber. In fact, there had been an
earthquake, as the cracks in the granite revealed, and the
secret chambers had served their purpose and prevented
the King's Chamber from collapsing.
When copies of the quarry marks and inscriptions were
sent to the British Museum, the hieroglyphics expert
Samuel Birch testified that one of the names written in a
cartouche, and found in Campbell's
57
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Chamber, was that of the Pharaoh Khufu. So, at last,
someone had proved that Cheops built the Great Pyramid,
and Howard-Vyse had earned himself immortality among
Egyptologists.
But Samuel Birch admitted that there were certain
things about the inscriptions that puzzled him. To begin
with, many were upside-down. Moreover, although the
script was - obviously - supposed to be from the time of
Cheops, around 2500 bc, it looked as if many of the
symbols came from a much later period, when
hieroglyphics had ceased to be 'pictures', and become
something more like cursive writing. Many of the
hieroglyphs were unknown - or written by someone so
illiterate that they could hardly be deciphered. This in
itself was baffling. Early hieroglyphic writing was a fine
art, and only highly trained scribes had mastered it. These
hieroglyphs looked as if they had been scrawled by the
ancient Egyptian equivalent of Just William.
Most puzzling of all, two pharaohs seemed to be named
in the cartouches - Khufu and someone called Khnem-
khuf. Who was this Khnem-khuf ? Later Egyptologists
were agreed that he was supposed to be another pharaoh -
and not just some variant on Khufu - yet the puzzling
thing was that his name appeared in chambers lower than
Campbell's Chamber, implying that Khnem-Khuf had
started the Pyramid and Khufu had completed it (since a
pyramid is built from the bottom up). It was an
embarrassing puzzle for archaeologists.
The answer to this puzzle has been suggested by the
writer Zechariah Sitchin. Unfortunately, his solution will
never be taken seriously by scholars or archaeologists,
because Mr Sitchin, like Erich von Daniken, belongs to
the fraternity who believe that the pyramids were built by
visitors from outer space, 'ancient astronauts'. Sitchin's
own highly individual version of this theory is expounded
in a series of books called The Earth Chronicles. These
have failed to achieve the same widespread impact as
Daniken's because Sitchin is almost obsessively scholarly;
he can read Egyptian hieroglyphics, and he overloads his
chapters with archaeological details that sometimes make
them hard going. But no matter how one feels about his
theory that 'gods' came to earth from a '12th planet' nearly
half a million years ago, there can be no doubt that he has
an extremely acute mind, and that his erudition is
enormous. And what he has to say about Howard-Vyse
goes straight to the point.
Sitchin points out that no marks of any kind were found
in Davison's Chamber, discovered in 1765 - only in those
discovered by Howard-Vyse. And, noting that Howard-
Vyse dismissed Caviglia the day after his secret visit to
Davison's Chamber, and his foreman on the day
58
3 Inside the Pyramid
the workmen broke through into Wellington's Chamber, he
concludes reasonably that Howard-Vyse preferred not to
be observed by anyone who had his wits about him. He
notes that Hill was allowed to wander in and out of the
newly discovered chambers freely, and that it was he who
first copied the quarry marks and other inscriptions.
The atmosphere that surrounded Vyse's operations in
those hectic days is well described by the Colonel
himself. Major discoveries were being made all
around the pyramids, but not within them. Campbell's
Tomb, discovered by the detested Caviglia, was
yielding not only artefacts but also masons' markings
and hieroglyphics in red paint. Vyse was becoming
desperate to achieve his own discovery. Finally he
broke through to hitherto unknown chambers; but
they only duplicated one after the other a previously
discovered chamber (Davison's) and were bare and
empty. What could he show for all the effort and
expenditure? For what would he be honoured, by
what would he be remembered?
We know from Vyse's chronicles that, by day, he
had sent in Mr Hill to inscribe the chambers with the
names of the Duke of Wellington and Admiral
Nelson, heroes of the victories over Napoleon. By
night, we suspect, Mr Hill also entered the chambers,
to 'christen' the pyramid with the cartouches of its
presumed ancient builder.
2
The problem was that in the 1830s, knowledge of
hieroglyphics was still minimal (the Rosetta Stone, with
its parallel inscriptions in Greek and ancient Egyptian, had
only been discovered in 1799). One of the few books that
Hill might have consulted would be Sir John Wilkinson's
Materia Hieroglyphic^, and even Wilkinson was uncertain
about the reading of royal names.
Sitchin suggests that what happened is that Hill
inscribed the name that Wilkinson thought was Khufu, and
then Howard-Vyse heard that a new work by Wilkinson,
the three-volume Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Egyptians, published earlier that year, had just reached
Cairo. Howard-Vyse and Hill did some frantic - and
unexplained -commuting between Giza and Cairo soon
after the discovery of the chamber named after Lady
Arbuthnot. They must have been dismayed to find that
Wilkinson had changed his mind about how Khufu was
spelt, and that Hill had inscribed the wrong name in the
lower chambers. They hastened to put right this appalling
blunder in the newly
59
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
discovered Campbell's Chamber, and at last the correct
spelling of Khufu appeared.
But what they did not know was that Wilkinson was
still incorrect. The 'Kh' of Khufu should be rendered by a
symbol like a small circle with lines hatched across it - a
sieve. Wilkinson, and a Frenchman named Laborde (who
had also written about hieroglyphs in a travel book) made
the mistake of rendering this as a sun-disc - a circle with a
dot in the middle. In fact, this was the name for the sun
god Ra. So instead of writing 'Khufu', the forger wrote
'Raufu'. No ancient Egyptian would have made such an
appalling and blasphemous error.
But what about the red paint? Would it not be obvious
that the inscriptions were modern, and not more than four
thousand years old? No. The same red ochre paint was
still used by the Arabs, and Perring noted that it was hard
to distinguish ancient quarry marks from new ones. (In
the same way, many Cro-Magnon cave paintings look as
fresh as if they were made yesterday.)
Sitchin notes that Mr Hill, who had been a mere copper
mill employee when Howard-Vyse met him, became the
owner of the Cairo Hotel when Howard-Vyse left Egypt,
and that Howard-Vyse thanks him effusively in his book.
Howard-Vyse himself had spent ten thousand pounds
- an incredible sum - on his excavations. But the black
sheep was able
to return to his family as a famous scholar and discoverer.
It is Sitchin's intention to try to prove that the Great
Pyramid was built in some remote age, at the time of the
Sphinx. This would seem to be a reasonable assumption -
except that carbon-dating tests on organic material found
in the mortar of the Great Pyramid seem to indicate that
its date was - give or take a century or so - the middle of
the third millennium bc. (We shall see later that there is
another reason
the astronomical alignment of the 'air vents' in the King's
Chamber
for accepting the conventional dating.) It is nevertheless
worth bearing in mind the curious tale of how
Egyptologists came to accept that the Great Pyramid was
built by Khufu, and to draw from it the moral that, where
ancient civilisations are concerned, nothing should be
taken for granted unless it is based on hard scientific
evidence.
Mr Hill, at least, had one genuine discovery to his credit.
John Greaves had noted two nine-inch openings in the
walls of the King's Chamber, and speculated that they
were air vents. It was Hill who, two centuries
60
3 Inside the Pyramid
later, clambered up the outside of the Pyramid and found
the outlets that proved that they were air vents. When they
were cleared of debris, a cool breeze rushed down them,
keeping the King's Chamber at a constant 68 degrees
Fahrenheit, no matter what the temperature outside. Again,
this only seemed to increase the mystery. Why should the
ancient Egyptians want a chamber kept at exactly 68
degrees? One of the scholars Napoleon had taken with him
to Egypt in 1798, Edm-Franois Jomard, speculated that
the Chamber might be a storage place for measuring
instruments, which would need to be kept at a constant
temperature. But this theory failed to explain why, in that
case, the King's Chamber had to be virtually inaccessible.
Or why it had to be approached by a long, slippery gallery
of smooth limestone rather than a sensible staircase.
It is difficult for a reader, who has to rely on facts and
figures printed in a book, to realise how much more
baffling the Great Pyramid is when confronted in its
overwhelming reality. In Fingerprints of the Gods,
Graham Hancock conveys something of his own
bewilderment as he repeats: 'All was confusion. All was
paradox. All was mystery.' For the inner architecture of the
Pyramid simply fails to make sense. Everything has an air
of precision, of some exact purpose; yet it is impossible to
begin to guess the nature of this purpose. For example, the
'walls' or ramps on either side of the 'slot' at the centre of
the Grand Gallery have a series of slots cut into them.
These could be to help the climber. But why are the holes
of two different lengths, alternately long and short, and
why do the short ones slope, while the long ones are
horizontal? And why does the sloping length of the short
holes equal the horizontal length of the long holes? It is as
if the place had been designed by an insane
mathematician.
To see these vast blocks - some weighing as much as 70
tons - all laid in place as neatly as if they were ordinary-
sized builder's bricks, brings an overwhelming sense of
the incredible skill involved. Medieval cathedrals were
built by masons who devoted their lives to the study of
their craft, and who apparently incorporated as many
mysterious measurements as the Great Pyramid. But
cathedral building lasted for centuries, and there were so
many that the masons had plenty of time to practise their
craft. The pyramids of Giza were preceded - according to
the history books - by a few cruder examples like the Step
Pyramid at Saqqara and the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur.
Where did the Great Pyramid's craftsmen learn their skill?
Again, why was the Great Pyramid so bleak and bare,
like a
6
1
? opninx
geometrical demonstration? Why were there none of the
wall decorations that we associate with Egyptian temples?
As we saw in the last chapter, even an object as simple
as the sarcophagus in the King's Chamber presented
impossible technical problems, so that Flinders Ptrie
speculated that it had been cut out of the granite by bronze
saws studded with diamonds, and hollowed out by some
totally unknown 'drill' made of a tube with a saw edge
tipped with diamonds. Moreover (as we saw in the last
chapter), swan-necked vases, cut out of basalt, quartz and
diorite with some unknown tool, seem to prove
conclusively that there was a highly sophisticated
civilisation in Egypt long before the First Dynasty. This is
not some Daniken-like crankery, but hard evidence that
Egyptologists refuse to face squarely.
The first scientific theory of the purpose of the Great
Pyramid was put forward by a London publisher named
John Taylor in 1864. He wondered why the builders of the
Pyramid had chosen to make it slope at an angle of almost
52 - 51 51'. When he compared the height of the
Pyramid with the length of its base he saw the only
possible answer: it had to slope at that exact angle if the
relation of its height to the length of its base should be
exactly the relation of the radius of a circle to its
circumference. In other words, the builders were revealing
a knowledge of what the Greeks would later call tt (pi).
Why should they want to encode tt in the Pyramid? Could
it possibly be that they were really speaking about the
earth itself, so the Pyramid was supposed to represent the
hemisphere from the North Pole to the equator?
In fact, towards the end of the second century bc, the
Greek grammarian Agatharchides of Cnidus, the tutor of
the pharaoh's children, was told that the base of the Great
Pyramid was precisely one eighth of a minute of a degree
in length - that is, it was an eighth of a minute of a degree
of the earth's circumference. (A minute is a sixtieth of a
degree.) Intact, if the length of the Pyramid's base is
multiplied by eight, then sixty, then 360, the result is just
under 25,000 miles, a remarkable approximation of the
circumference of the earth.
Taylor concluded that, being unable to build a huge
dome, the Egyptians had done the next best thing and
incorporated the earth's measurements into a pyramid.
So it was possible - indeed, highly likely - that the
ancient Egyptians possessed knowledge that was
thousands of years ahead of their time.
62
3 Inside the Pyramid
Unfortunately, this was Taylor's sticking point. Rather than
give the ancient Egyptians credit for knowing far more
than anyone thought, he concluded that the only way these
ignoramuses could have known such things was from
Divine Revelation - God had directly inspired them. That
was too much even for the Victorians, and his work was
received with derision.
When the Scottish Astronomer Royal, Charles Piazzi
Smyth - who was also a friend of Taylor's - visited the
Pyramid in 1865 and made his own measurements, he
concluded that Taylor was fundamentally correct about ir.
But being, like Taylor, a Christian zealot, he was also
unable to resist the temptation to drag in Jehovah and the
Bible. Not long before, a religious crank named Robert
Menzies had advanced the theory that the Great Pyramid
contained detailed prophecies of world history in its
measurements. Piazzi Smyth swallowed this whole, and
concluded that the Pyramid revealed that the earth was
created in 4004 bc, and that it contains all the major dates
in earth history, such as the Flood in 2400 bc. He also
came up with a staggeringly simple explanation of why the
Grand Gallery is so different from the narrow ascending
passage that leads to it: its beginning symbolises the birth
of Christ. The Second Coming, he concluded, will happen
in 1911. All this was again received by his scientific
contemporaries with scepticism, although his book had
considerable popular success.
Later, the founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Charles
Taze Russell, would embrace the prophecy theory of the
Great Pyramid, and a group called the British Israelites,
who believed that the British are the ten lost tribes of
Israel, elaborated it even further.
3
More sober theories of the Pyramid's purpose included
the suggestion that it was intended as a landmark for
Egyptian land surveyors, and that it was a giant sundial.
This latter led to the most interesting and plausible theory
so far: that it was intended as an astronomical observatory.
This had been stated as fact by the fifth-century Byzantine
philosopher Proclus, who mentioned that the Pyramid was
used as an observatory while it was under construction. In
1883 it was again advanced by an astronomer, Richard
Anthony Proctor.
Proctor realised that one of the prime necessities for an
agricultural civilisation is an accurate calendar, which
involves precise observation of the moon and stars. What
they would need, to begin with, is a long narrow slot
pointing due north (or south), through which the passage
of stars and planets could be observed and noted down in
star tables.
The first necessity, said Proctor, was to determine true
north, then
63
prom Atlantis to the Sphinx
align a tube on it. Nowadays we point a telescope at the
Pole star; but in ancient Egypt, this was not in the same
place, due to a phenomenon called 'procession of the
equinoxes' (a term to note, since it will play a major part
in later arguments). Imagine a pencil stuck through the
earth from the North to the South Pole; this is its axis. But
due to the gravity of the sun and moon, this axis has a
slight wobble, and its ends describe small circles in the
heavens, causing the north end of the pencil to point at
different stars. In ancient Egypt, the Pole star was Alpha
Draconis.
Now the stars appear to describe a semicircle above our
heads, from horizon to horizon. Those directly overhead
(at the meridian) describe the longest circle, those nearest
the Pole the smallest. If the ancient Egyptians had wanted
to point a telescope at Alpha Draconis, they would have
had to point it at an angle of 26 17' - which, Proctor
noted, happens to be precisely the angle of the descending
passage.
He also noted that if the 'vermin-infested pit'
underneath the Pyramid had been filled with water, the
light of the then Pole star, Alpha Draconis, would shine
down it on to the 'pool', as into the mirror of a modern
astronomer's telescope. The flat top of the Great Pyramid
was, according to Proctor, an observatory platform.
Proctor's theory had the advantage of suggesting the
purpose of the Grand Gallery, and the peculiar oblong
holes in its 'ramp'. If, said Proctor, an ancient astronomer
wanted an ideal 'telescope' to study the heavens, he would
probably ask an architect to devise a building with an
enormous slot in one of its walls, through which he could
study the transit of the stars. Proctor thought that the top
end of the Grand Gallery was originally such a slot.
Astronomers stationed on scaffolding above the Grand
Gallery - with the scaffolding based in the oblong holes -
would be able to observe the transits of stars with great
accuracy. The bricks in the apex of the Grand Gallery are
removable, and this would also enable them to study the
stars overhead.
The obvious objection is that the Grand Gallery at
present ends halfway across the Pyramid, and that the
King's Chamber with its 'secret chambers' lies beyond it.
The present King's Chamber would have completely
blocked the 'slot'. But is it not conceivable, said Proctor,
that the Pyramid remained in its half-finished state for a
long time before it was finished? In fact, once the heavens
had been minutely mapped, the unfinished pyramid would
have served its purpose, and could be completed. Proctor
envisaged that it would take about ten years before the
builders were ready to move beyond the Grand Gallery,
64
3 Inside the Pyramid
and by that time the priests would have completed their
work of making star maps and calendars.
In retrospect, it seems clear that Proctor had come the
closest so far to suggesting a reasonable theory of the
Great Pyramid. Since The Great Pyramid, Observatory,
Tomb and Temple, we have become increasingly aware of
the astronomical alignments of great monuments like the
Egyptian temples and Stonehenge. In fact, it was only ten
years after Proctor's book, in 1893, that the British
astronomer Norman Lockyer (later Sir Norman), who
identified helium in the sun, went on to demonstrate
precisely how Egyptian temples could have been used. On
holiday in Greece, the young Lockyer found himself
wondering if the Parthenon was aligned astronomically -
recalling, as he said later, that the east windows of many
English churches face the sunrise on the day of their
patron saint. Since Egyptian temples had been measured
and documented so carefully, he turned to them to seek
evidence for his thesis. He was able to show that temples
were astronomically aligned, so that the light of a star or
other heavenly body would penetrate their depths as it
might have penetrated a telescope. He noted, for example,
how the light of the sun at the summer solstice entered the
temple of Amen-Ra at Karnak and penetrated along its
axis to the sanctuary. Lockyer was also the first to suggest
that Stonehenge had been constructed as a sort of
observatory - a view now generally accepted.
The significance of Lockyer's method was that it
enabled him to date Stonehenge to 1680 bc, and the
Karnak temple - or at least its original plan - to about 3700
bc. He noted that sun temples were designed to catch the
sun at the solstice (when the sun is furthest from the
equator) or the equinox (when the sun is above it), and star
temples to catch the star's heliacal rising (just before
dawn), again at a solstice. But he also noted that a sun
temple could serve as a 'calendar' for much longer than a
star temple. This is because a star temple is subject to the
precession of the equinoxes already mentioned. Although
it amounts to a tiny fraction -
l
/
71
of a degree per annum
(causing the stars to rise twenty minutes later each year) it
obviously adds up over the centuries, coming a full circle
every 25,920 years. The result was that star temples had to
be realigned every century or so - Lockyer pointed out
evidence that the Luxor temple had been realigned four
times, explaining its curious and irregular shape, to which
Schwaller de Lubicz was to devote so many years of
study.
According to Lockyer, the earliest Egyptian temples, at
Heliopolis and Annu, were oriented to northern stars at the
summer solstice, while
65
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
the Giza pyramids were built by 'a new invading race'
who were far more astronomically sophisticated, and used
both northern and eastern stars.
But why should the Egyptians take such a deep interest
in the heavens? One reason, as we have already observed,
is that farmers need a calendar - in 3200 bc, the 'dog star'
Sirius became the most important star in the heavens
because it rose at dawn at the beginning of the Egyptian
New Year, when the Nile began to rise. But for the
Egyptians, the stars were not merely seasonal indicators.
They were also the home of the gods who presided over
life and death.
And it was this recognition that would form the basis of
one of the most interesting insights into the Great Pyramid
since the days of Proctor.
In 1979, a Belgian construction engineer named Robert
Bauval was on his way to Egypt, and bought at London's
Heathrow Airport a book called The Sirius Mystery by
Robert Temple.
The book had caused some sceptical reviewers to
classify Temple with Erich von Daniken; but this is hardly
fair. Temple's starting point was a genuine scientific
mystery: that an African tribe called the Dogon (in Mali)
have known for a long time that the dog star Sirius is
actually a double star, with an 'invisible' companion.
Astronomers had suspected this companion, Sirius B,
since the 1830s, when Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel noted the
perturbations in the orbit of Sirius, and reasoned that there
must be an incredibly dense but invisible star - what we
now call a white dwarf, in which atoms have collapsed in
on themselves, so that a piece the size of a pinhead weighs
many tons. According to the Dogon, their knowledge of
Sirius B - which they called the Digitaria star - was
brought to them by fishlike creatures called the Nommo,
who came from Sirius thousands of years ago. It was not
until 1928, when Sir Arthur
(
Eddington postulated the
existence of 'white dwarfs', that knowledge of Sirius B
ceased to be the province of a few astronomers. It seems
inconceivable that some European traveller could have
brought such knowledge to the Dogon long before that. In
any case, the Dogon possessed cult masks relating to
Sirius, stored in caves, some of them centuries old.
As Temple discovered when he went to Paris to study
with anthropologist Germaine Dieterlen - who, with
Marcel Griaule, had spent years among the Dogon - the
Dogon seemed to have a surprisingly detailed
66
3 Inside the Pyramid
knowledge of the solar system. They knew the planets
revolved around the sun, that the moon was 'dry and dead',
and that Saturn had rings and Jupiter had moons. Dieterlen
noted that the Babylonians also believed that their
civilisation was founded by fish gods.
Since the dog star (so called because it is in the
constellation Canis Major) was the sacred star of the
Egyptians after 3200 bc (called Sothis and identified with
the goddess Isis), Temple speculated that the Dogon
gained their knowledge from the Egyptians, and that the
fact that the goddess Isis is so often to be found in boat
paintings with two fellow goddesses, Anukis and Satis,
could indicate that the ancient Egyptians also knew that
Sirius is actually a treble system, consisting of Sirius,
Sirius B, and the home of the Nommo.
But, surely, such knowledge would be contained in
hieroglyphic inscriptions from ancient Egypt? Temple
disagreed, pointing out that Griaule had had to be initiated
into the religious secrets of the Dogon after ritual
preparation. If the Egyptians knew about Sirius B, such
knowledge would be reserved for initiates.
'Ancient astronaut' enthusiasts would suggest - and have
suggested - that this 'proves' that the ancient Egyptian
civilisation was also founded by 'gods from space', but
Temple is far more cautious, merely remarking on the
mystery of a primitive African tribe having such a
sophisticated knowledge of astronomy.
Reading Temple's book reawakened Bauval's interest in
astronomy, and he pursued it during his time in the Sudan,
and subsequently in Saudi Arabia. Back in Egypt, in his
home town Alexandria, in 1982, he drove at dawn to Giza,
where he was startled to see a desert jackal near the third
pyramid, that of Menkaura (or Mycerinos). These animals
are seldom seen, and this reminded him of the curious
story of how one of the most amazing discoveries in
Egyptology came about. In 1879, the head of a gang of
workmen at Saqqara had noticed a jackal near the pyramid
of Unas, last pharaoh of the 5th Dynasty (c. 2300 bc), and
when the jackal vanished into a low passage of the
pyramid, the workman followed, probably hoping to find
treasure. His light showed him that he was in a chamber
whose walls and ceiling were covered with beautiful
hieroglyphics. This was astonishing, as the pyramids of the
Giza complex were devoid of inscriptions.
These became known as the Pyramid Texts and - like
the later Book of the Dead - contained rituals concerning
the king's journey to the afterlife. Five pyramids proved to
contain such texts. They are probably the oldest religious
writings in the world.
67
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Now Bauval drove on to Saqqara, to renew his
acquaintance with the pyramid texts of Unas, and found
himself reflecting on passages in which the king declares
that his soul is a star. Did he mean simply that his soul
was immortal? Or did he mean - as J. H. Breasted had
once suggested - that his soul would literally become a
star in heaven? One of the texts says: 'Oh king, you are
this great star, the companion of Orion, who traverses the
sky with Orion ...' The constellation of Orion was sacred
to the Egyptians, since it was regarded as the home of the
god Osiris. In the sky slightly below Orion - and to the left
- stands Sirius, the star of Osiris's consort Isis. Bauval
found himself reflecting on the mystery of the Pyramid
Texts, and why they appear only in five pyramids dating
from the 5th and 6th Dynasties - that is, over a period of
about a century. The Egyptologist Wallis-Budge, noting
the sheer confusion of some of the texts, remarked that the
scribes themselves probably did not understand what they
were writing, and that therefore the texts were probably
copies of far older documents ...
The visit to Saqqara was still fresh in Bauval's mind the
next day when he visited Cairo Museum. There he noticed
a large poster with an aerial photograph of the Giza
pyramids. Now he was suddenly struck by the fact that the
third pyramid is oddly out-of-line with the other two. The
four sides of each pyramid point precisely to the four
points of the compass, and it would be possible to take a
gigantic ruler and draw a straight line from the north-
eastern corner of the Great Pyramid to the south-western
corner of the Chefren pyramid. You would expect this line
to extend on to the corners of the Menkaura pyramid; in
fact, it would miss it by about two hundred feet. Why this
dissatisfying lack of symmetry?
Bauval was struck by another question. Why is the
third pyramid so much smaller than its two companions,
when the Pharaoh Menkaura was just as powerful as his
two predecessors?
More than a yar later, in November 1983, Bauval was
in the desert of Saudi Arabia on a camping expedition. At
3 a.m., he woke up and stared overhead at the Milky Way,
which looked like a river flowing across space. And to its
right there was a tiara of bright stars which he recognised
as Orion, which the ancient Egyptians identified with
Osiris. He went to the top of a dune, and was joined by a
friend who was also interested in astronomy, and who
proceeded to explain to him how mariners find the rising
point of Sirius above the horizon by looking at the three
stars in Orion's 'belt'. (Orion, the Hunter, is shaped
roughly like an hour-glass, and the belt goes around its
'waist'.) 'Actually,'
68
3 Inside the Pyramid
added the friend, 'the three stars of Orion's belt are not
perfectly aligned - the smallest is slightly offset to the
east.' At this point Bauval interrupted him with a shout of:
'Je tiens l'affaire' - Tve got it!' These were the words
uttered by the Egyptologist Champollion when he realised
that the Rosetta Stone had handed him the key to
hieroglyphics.
What Bauval had 'got' was an answer to his question
about why Menkaura's pyramid was smaller than the other
two, and offset to the east. They were intended to
represent the stars of Orion's belt. And the Milky Way was
the River Nile.
What Bauval did not know at this time was that a
connection between the Great Pyramid and Orion's Belt
had been the subject of a paper in an academic journal of
Oriental studies as long ago as 1964. The author was an
American astronomer named Virginia Trimble, and she
had been asked by an Egyptologist named Alexander
Badawy to help him verify his theory that the southern 'air
shaft' in the King's Chamber pointed straight at Orion at
the time the Great Pyramid was built, round about 2550
bc. Virginia Trimble had done the necessary calculations,
and was able to tell Badawy that he was correct: the air
shaft had pointed straight at Orion's Belt around 2550 bc.
In other words, if you had been thin enough to lie in the
air shaft, you would have seen Orion's belt pass directly
overhead every night. Of course, hundreds of other stars
would also pass - but none of this magnitude.
If the pyramids of Giza were supposed to be the three
stars of Orion's Belt - Zta, Epsilon and Delta - was it not
possible that other pyramids might represent other stars in
Orion? In fact, Bauval realised that the pyramid of Nebka
at Abu Ruwash corresponded to the star at the Hunter's left
foot, and the pyramid at Zawyat al-Aryan to the star at his
right shoulder. It would, of course, have been utterly
conclusive if the 'hour-glass' shape had been completed by
two other pyramids, but unfortunately these had either
never been built, or had long since vanished under the
sand.
But what did it all mean} Badawy had surmised that the
southern shaft of the King's Chamber was not an air vent,
but a channel to direct the dead pharaoh's soul to Orion,
where he would become a god. In other words, the ritual
ceremony to release the pharaoh's soul from his body
would take place when the shaft was targeted, like a gun
barrel, on Orion, and the pharaoh's soul would fly there
like a missile.
One thing bothered Bauval. Virginia Trimble's
calculations seemed to show that the gun barrel was
targeted on the middle star of Orion's Belt - the one that
corresponded to Chefren's pyramid - when it should
69
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
have been targeted on the southern star, Zeta Orionis,
which corresponded to the Great Pyramid. This problem
was finally solved by a German engineer named Rudolf
Gantenbrink, who had been hired to de-humidify the
Pyramid, and who had made a tiny tractor-like robot that
could crawl up the shafts. His robot had revealed that the
shafts were slightly steeper than Flinders Ptrie had
thought. Ptrie had estimated the southern shaft at 44 30',
when it was actually 45. This new measurement meant
that the gun barrel was directly targeted on Zeta Orionis -
although a century later than is generally believed. If
Bauval was correct, the Pyramid was built between 2475
bc and 2400 bc.
Bauval's curiosity now centred on the 'air shafts' in the
Queen's Chamber - shafts, in fact, that could not have
been intended as air vents because they were closed at
both ends. With the aid of a computer Bauval worked out
where the southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber had
been pointing when the Pyramid was built. It confirmed
his speculations: the shaft was targeted on Sirius, the star
of Isis.
What was emerging was a highly convincing picture of
the purpose of the Great Pyramid: not a tomb, but a ritual
building - a kind of temple - whose purpose was to send
the soul of the Pharaoh Cheops flying to Zeta Orionis -
called by the Egyptians al-Nitak - where it would reign for
ever as Osiris.
And what was the purpose of the Queen's Chamber?
From the alignment of its shaft on Sirius, Bauval believed
that it was a ritual chamber for an earlier part of the
ceremony: that in which the son of the dead pharaoh
performed a ritual called 'the opening of the mouth',
designed to restore life to the pharaoh. He had to open the
mouth using an instrument called the sacred adze, which
was made of meteoric iron. (Iron in ancient Egypt was an
extremely rare metal, found only in meteorites; since it
came from the skies, the Egyptians believed that the bones
of the gods were made of iron.) In illustrations of this
ceremony, the king is shown with an erect phallus, for a
part of the ceremony concerned him copulating with the
goddess Isis - hence the alignment of the shaft on Sirius,
the star of Isis.
Now all this had one extremely interesting implication.
According to the usual view, the three pyramids of Giza
were built by three separate pharaohs as their tombs. But
if they represented the stars of Orion's Belt, then the
whole lay-out must have been planned long before the
Great Pyramid was started. When?
To understand how Bauval approached this problem,
we must return to the precession of the equinoxes - the
wobble on the earth's axis that
70
3 Inside the Pyramid
causes its position in relation to the stars to change -
one degree over 72 years, and a complete circle every
26,000 years. Where Orion was concerned, this
wobble causes the constellation to travel upwards in
the sky for 13,000 years, then downwards again. But
as it does this, the constellation also tilts slightly - in
other words, the hour-glass turns clockwise, then back.
Bauval noted that the only time the pattern of the pyramids
on the
ground is a perfect reflection of the stars in Orion's Belt -
and not tilted
sideways - was in 10,450 bc. This is also its lowest point
in the sky.
After this, it began to rise again, and will reach its highest
point about
{ ad 2550. In the year 10,450 bc, it was as if the sky was
an enormous
I mirror, in which the course of the Nile was 'reflected' as
the Milky
I Way, and the Giza pyramids as the
Belt of Orion.
And it is at this point in his book The Orion Mystery
that Bauval raises a question whose boldness - after so
many chapters of precise scientific and mathematical
argument - makes the hair prickle. 'Was the Giza
Necropolis and, specifically, the Great Pyramid and its
shafts, a great marker of time, a sort of star-clock to
mark the epochs of Osiris and, more especially, his
First Time?'
This 'First Time' of Osiris was called by the
Egyptians Zep Tepi, and it was the time when the gods
fraternised with humans - the equivalent of the Greek
myth of the Golden Age.
The date 10,450 bc has no meaning for historians, for it is
'prehistoric', about the time when the first farmers
appeared in the Middle , East. But Bauval reminds us
that there is one date in mythology that is i reasonably
close. According to Plato's Timaeus, when the Greek
statesman Solon visited Egypt around 600 bc, Egyptian
priests told him the story of the destruction of Atlantis,
about nine thousand years earlier, / and how it had sunk
beneath the waves. The story was generally I discounted
because it also told how the Atlanteans had fought against
I the Athenians, and Athens was certainly not founded
as long ago as 9600 bc. Yet - as we know - the Atlantis
story has haunted the European imagination ever since.
Bauval points out that, in the Timaeus, Plato not only
reports Solon's account of Atlantis, but adds that Plato
also says that God made 'souls in equal number with
the stars, and distributed them, each soul to a different
star... and he who should live well for his due span of
time should journey back to the habitation of his
consort star.' This certainly sounds a typically
Egyptian conception. Having risked offending the
Egyptologists by raising the subject of
7
1
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Atlantis, Bauval now goes further,
and mentions that the clairvoyant
Edgar Cayce stated that the Great
Pyramid was planned around 10,400
bc. Amusingly enough, the authority
he quotes on this matter is none other
than the arch-enemy of West's Sphinx
thesis, Mark Lehner. It seems that
Lehner was (and possibly still is)
financed by the Cayce Foundation,
and began his career as a follower of
Cayce; in The Egyptian Heritage,
Lehner argued that the 'Atlantis
events' in ancient Egypt (i.e. the
arrival of the Atlanteans) probably
occurred in 10,400 bc. (It should be
added that Lehner has now spurned
these early divagations, and reverted
to orthodoxy - he is now regarded as
the leading expert on the pyramids.)
a Edgar Cayce (pronounced Casey) is a
strange and puzzling figure. Born
on a farm in Kentucky in 1877, he
seems to have been a fairly normal
I child except for one odd ability - he
could sleep with his head on a
I book, and wake up knowing
everything in it. When he left the farm
he
i married and embarked on life as a
salesman - although it had always
j been his ambition to become a
preacher. When he was 21, his voice
j suddenly disappeared, and the fact
that it came back under hypnosis,
j but vanished again when he woke up,
suggested that the problem was
\ mental rather than physical - in fact,
that Cayce was unconsciously
! longing to give up his job as a
salesman. Placed under hypnosis again
\ by a man named Al Layne, Cayce
accurately diagnosed his own problem
:and prescribed its cure. Layne then
decided to consult Cayce - again
under hypnosis - about his own
medical problems, and Cayce
explained
plow they should be treated. When he
woke up and looked at the notes
(Layne had made, he insisted that he
had never heard of most of the
{medical terms.
After that, Cayce discovered that
he had the ability to diagnose -and
prescribe for - illness when he was in
a hypnotic trance, and his celebrity
spread.
In 1923, when he was in his mid-
forties, he was shocked to learn lone
day that he had been preaching the
doctrine of reincarnation while \in his
trance state. A devout and orthodox
Christian, he nevertheless icame to
accept the idea that human beings are
reborn again and again. \ It was when
he was describing the past life of a
fourteen-year-old boy that Cayce
declared that the boy had lived in
Atlantis about 10,000 Ac. From then
until the end of his life, Cayce
continued to add fragments arjbout
Atlantis. Some of these comments
seemed designed to cause
72
1
3 Inside
the
Pyramid
sceptics to erupt into fury, and to arouse doubts even in the
most open-minded student of the past. According to
Cayce, Atlantis occupied a place in the Atlantic Ocean
from the Sargasso Sea to the Azores, and had a flourishing
civilisation dating back to 200,000 bc. The Atlanteans'
civilisation was highly developed, and they possessed
some kind of 'crystal stone' for trapping the rays of the
sun; they also possessed steam power, gas and electricity.
Unfortunately, their prosperity finally ; made them greedy
and corrupt, so they were ripe for the destruction ! that
finally came upon them. This occurred in periods, one
about 15,600 f bc, and the last about 10,000 bc. By then,
Atlanteans had dispersed to \ Europe and South America.
Their archives, Cayce says, will be found \ in three parts of
the world, including Giza. He forecast that Atlantis j
would begin to rise again, in the area of Bimini, in 1968
and 1969. He } also forecast that documents proving the
existence of Atlantis would ; be found in a chamber below
the Sphinx.
Cayce's biographer Jess Starn has stated that his
'batting average on predictions was incredibly high,
close to one hundred per cent', but this is hardly borne
out by the facts. It is true that a few of his trance
statements have proved weirdly accurate - such as that
the Nile once flowed west (geological studies have
showed it once flowed into Lake Chad, halfway between
the present Nile and the Atlantic ocean), that a
community known as the Essenes lived near the Dead
Sea (verified by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls
two years after his death), and that two American
presidents would die in office (as Roosevelt and
Kennedy did). But critics point out the sheer vagueness
of many of his prophecies, and the fact that so many of
them quite simply miss the mark. Asked in 1938 if there
would be a war that would involve the United States
between 1942 and 1944, he missed a golden opportunity
to prove his prophetic credentials by answering that this
depended on whether there was a desire for peace. Asked
what might cause such a war he replied: 'Selfishness' -
which, in view of Hitler's anti-Semitism, and his desire
to see the Aryan race conquering the world, seems to be
oversimplification. Asked about China and Japan, he
explained that 'the principle of the Christian faith will be
carried forward through the turmoils that are a part of
events...', which is again so wide of the mark as to count
as a definite miss. Asked about Spain, then nearing the
end of its murderous civil war, he declared that its
troubles were only just beginning; in fact, Franco's rule
would bring many decades of peace, followed by a
peaceful transition to democracy. Asked about Russia he
was exceptionally vague, merely declaring that
7
3
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
'turmoils' would continue until freedom of speech and the
right to religious worship was allowed. Asked about the
role of Great Britain, Cayce replied with Delphic
obscurity: 'When its activities are set in such a way as to
bring consideration of every phase, Britain will be able to
control the world for peace ...', which must be again
counted a fairly wide miss.
Some of Cayce's more alarming prophecies were that
the earth would be subject to a period of cataclysm
between 1958 and the end of the century, that Los
Angeles, San Francisco and New York would all be
destroyed, while Japan would vanish beneath the Pacific;
in fact, although there is still time (writing in 1995) for
Cayce to prove correct, there have so far been no more
cataclysms than in any other similar period of history.
Anyone who is familiar with the history of the
paranormal will recognise Edgar Cayce as a typical
example of a highly gifted psychic - with all the
disadvantages that seems to entail. Psychical research
seems to be subject to a curious limitation which might be
labelled 'James's Law', after the philosopher William
James, who declared that there always seems to be just
enough evidence to convince the believers, and never quite
enough to convince the sceptics. All the great psychics
and clairvoyants have had enough successes to prove their
genuineness, and enough failures to prove that they are
highly fallible. Cayce is clearly no exception.
It must be admitted that, at this point in this book, Cayce
is something of a digression - Bauval makes only a brief
and passing reference to him - and to 'The Atlantis events'
- in The Orion Mystery. Yet the curious coincidence of the
date - 10,400 bc - raises an important question: why
should the pyramid builders arrange the Giza pyramids to
reflect the position of Orion's Belt in 10,450 bc? It is hard
to disagree with Bauval that they wished to indicate this
date as an important time in their history - probably as the
beginning of their epoch, their 'Genesis'.
The Giza pyramids took at least three generations to
build: Cheops, Chefren and Menkaura, extending over
about a century. It seems, then, that Chefren and
Menkaura were building according to a plan. It is possible
that this plan was drawn up by Cheops and his priests.
But, as Bauval has shown, it is arguable that the plan was
there from the beginning - 10,450 bc. There is
evidence that the great Gothic
74
3 Inside the Pyramid
cathedrals were planned centuries before they were built;
Bauval is suggesting that this is also true of the pyramids
of Giza.
And if we accept the arguments of West and Schoch
about the water-weathering of the Sphinx, then it seems
likely that West is correct in assigning the Sphinx to
10,450 bc.
Let us, then, merely for the sake of argument, assume
that both West and Bauval are correct. Let us suppose that
the survivors of some catastrophe came to Egypt in the
middle of the 11th millennium bc, and began trying to
reconstruct a fragment of their lost culture in exile. They
begin by carving the front part of the Sphinx from an
outcrop of hard limestone on the banks of the Nile. It
faced sunrise on the spring (vernal) equinox. At some
subsequent period they go on to excavate the limestone
below it, and carve the lion's body.
Why a lion? Because, suggests Graham Hancock, the
age in which the Sphinx was built was the Age of Leo. We
have seen that the wobble of the earth's axis - which
causes the precession of the equinoxes -means that it
moves like the hour hand of a clock, pointing to a different
constellation every 2,160 years. The Age of Leo lasted
from 10,970 to 8810 bc. Hancock clinches his argument
by asking if it is coincidence that in the Age of Pisces (our
present age) the symbol of Christianity is the fish, that in
the preceding Age of Aries, we find rams sacrificed in the
Old Testament, and an upsurge of the ram god Amon in
Egypt, while in the previous Age of Taurus the Egyptians
worshipped Apis, the bull, and the bull-cult flourished in
Minoan Crete.
So these proto-Egyptians began to plan their great sky
temple in the 11th millennium bc, and continued for the
next thousand years or so, probably building the Sphinx
Temple and the Valley Temple with the giant blocks
removed from around the Sphinx. They may also have
built the Oseirion near Abydos, and many other
monuments that have now vanished beneath the sand.
In that case, it seems incredible that they failed to make
a start on the pyramid complex. Hancock points out that
the lower half of the Chefren pyramid is built of
'Cyclopean blocks', while halfway up it changes to smaller
blocks, which may suggest that it was started at a much
earlier stage. West also remarks: 'On the eastern side of
Chefren's pyramid the blocks are particularly huge, as
much as 20 feet (6.4 m) long and one foot (.3 m) thick ...'
But if part of Chefren's pyramid was built, it seems
unlikely that the Great Pyramid remained in blueprint. The
heart of the Great Pyramid, according to Iodden Edwards
in The Pyramids of Egypt, consists of 'a
75
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
nucleus of rock, the size of which cannot be precisely
determined'. This could have been a mound of
considerable size, possibly a 'sacred mound'. Possibly the
lower chamber was also cut out of the rock at this time,
forming a kind of crypt. And if the pyramids were
intended to mirror the stars in Orion's Belt, then it seems
more likely that a start was also made on the third
pyramid, of Menkaura. It is even possible that was
another sacred mound on this site.
Why should these proto-Egyptians not have gone on to
complete all three pyramids?
The obvious suggestion is that if only a small group of
them arrived in Egypt - perhaps a hundred or so - then
they simply lacked the manpower. What they needed, to
begin with, was simply a religious centre - the equivalent
of St Peter's in Rome or St Paul's in London. The Sphinx
and the sacred mound - or mounds - would have provided
this.
But, as we shall see in a later chapter, Robert Bauval
and Graham Hancock have produced a far more
interesting and plausible suggestion - a suggestion based
on computer-created simulations of the skies over Egypt
between 10,500 and 2500 bc.
We have no way of guessing what might have happened
between these two dates. Few civilisations flourish for
more than a few thousand years, and so it seems unlikely
that this proto-Egyptian civilisation lasted until pharaonic
times. As a civilisation, it may not even have lasted until
the sixth or fifth millennium bc, when (according to
Encyclopaedia Britannica) Stone Age people began to
migrate into the Nile valley and grow crops. The notion
that Stone Age cultures (the Tasian, Badarian and
Naqadan) could exist side by side with the remains of
proto-Egyptian culture suggests that the proto-Egyptians
were nothing more than a priestly remnant - perhaps
living, like the Essenes of a later age, in some equivalent
of the Dead Sea caves, and preserving their knowledge as
the monasteries of the Dark Ages preserved European
learning.
As we shall see later, there is a certain amount of
evidence for the existence of this priestly cast - sometimes
referred to as 'the Companions of Osiris' - in the millennia
between 10,500 and 2500 bc.
What we do know is that - perhaps as early as 4000 bc -
Egypt began to unite into a nation. A work called the Turin
Papyrus - unfortunately badly damaged when it was sent
to the Turin Museum without proper packing - mentions
nine dynasties of kings of Egypt before Mens. Before
that, it says, Egypt was ruled by gods and demigods -
76
3 Inside the Pyramid
the latter may mean some priestly caste. The Palermo
Stone mentions 120 kings before Mens. The third-
century bc Egyptian priest Manetho also produced a list
which reaches back to a distant age of gods, and covers
nearly 25,000 years.
What seems clear, if Schwaller de Lubicz is correct, is
that there came a point when the 'demigods' or priests
became the mentors of early pharaonic civilisation, and
taught them geometry, science and medicine.
But were they mentors in any practical sense? If they
were, then we have to answer some difficult historical
puzzles.
About a century before Cheops, the pharaoh Zoser built
an impressive funeral complex at Saqqara, including the
famous Step Pyramid. This was supervised by the
legendary architect Imhotep, who was also Zoser's Grand
Vizier, and probably High Priest. The Greeks called him
Aesclepius, and made him the god of medicine. He sounds
as if he might well be a descendant of the 'New Race'. The
Step Pyramid was started as a mastaba - a mud-brick tomb
covered with stucco - and then enlarged literally step by
step, until it was six 'storeys' high. It seems to have
provided the Old Kingdom Egyptians with the idea of
creating pyramids.
Two generations after Zoser came the Pharaoh Snofru
(or Snefru), the father of Cheops, whom the ancient
Egyptians believed ordered the construction of a pyramid
at Meidum (in fact, it is now believed to have been built
by Huni, the last of the 3rd Dynasty pharaohs), which
looks unfinished. All that stands now is a huge square
tower (in two stages) on the top of what looks like a hill. It
was not until 1974 that a German physicist named Kurt
Mendelssohn pointed out why the pyramid is unfinished: it
collapsed before it was completed - probably with
immense loss of life. The 'hill' on which it appears to be
standing is a pile of rubble. The pharaoh started by
building a seven-storey pyramid, then added an eighth. At
this point, it was decided to convert it into what is almost
certainly the first smooth pyramid by adding packing
blocks, and a layer of heavy casing stone. Bad
workmanship was probably responsible for one of the
casing stones being squeezed out of place by the
accumulated sideways thrust of the pyramid, and the
remainder must have collapsed like an avalanche within
seconds.
This, Mendelssohn argues,
4
is why another pyramid,
the so-called Bent Pyramid at Dahshur, changes to a less
steep angle halfway up. In all probability, it too was built
by Snofru, and the fact that its angle becomes less steep
suggests that its architect had profited from the earlier
disaster.
77
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Mendelssohn's central argument is that the pyramids
were not built as tombs, but in order to unite many tribes
into a nation-state by giving them a common task. It is an
interesting argument, but it sounds like the theory of a
modern liberal who was a pupil of Einstein (as
Mendelssohn was), rather than that of an Egyptologist.
Why did Snofru not get them to do something more
practical, like construct a Nile dam, or vast granaries? We
feel intuitively that, whatever the purpose of the pyramids,
it had something to do with Egyptian religion.
The fiasco at Meidum seems to contradict Schwaller's
theory that the swift emergence of pharaonic civilisation
was due to its Atlantean legacy. Admitting that the skill
shown in the building of the Great Pyramid suggests an
ancient and highly sophisticated civilisation, we are still
entitled to ask: where were the Atlanteans when Snofru's
architect was revealing his incompetence?
The answer could nevertheless be simple. If the Sphinx-
builders had lived for thousands of years in the same
isolation as monks in the Dark Ages, nothing is more
likely than that they had lost their constructive skills, and
had to learn them all over again.
Then why assume they played any part in pharaonic
Egypt? Is it not conceivable that they had vanished from
the face of the earth, leaving behind only a library of
mouldering papyri that few people could decipher? Why
should we assume that they emerged from their isolation
and began to play a practical part in the religion of the
pharaohs?
Well, there is, to begin with, one intriguing piece of
evidence. Boats.
In May 1954, an archaeologist named Kamal el-
Mallakh discovered a rectangular pit on the south side of
the Great Pyramid - 103 feet long and 17V
2
feet deep. Six
feet down there was a ceiling of huge limestone roofing
blocks, some weighing 15 tons. Under this roof lay a
dismantled boat made of cedar wood. When reconstructed
- it took fourteen years - the result was a ship 143 feet
long, as large as those that carried the Vikings across the
Atlantic. John West describes it as 'a far more seaworthy
craft than anything available to Columbus'. Thor
Heyerdahl disagrees; speaking of this same craft in The Ra
Expeditions, he says that 'the streamlined hull would have
collapsed on its first encounter with ocean waves'. It was
built, he says, for 'pomp and ceremony', and was intended
for use of the pharaoh in the afterlife. Yet he also
acknowledges that 'he had built it on architectonic lines
which the world's leading seafaring nations never
surpassed. He had built his frail river boat to a pattern
created by shipbuilders from a people with a long, solid
tradition of sailing on the open sea' (My italics.)
78
3 Inside the Pyramid
Now Heyerdahl, if anyone, should recognise the design
of a seagoing craft when he sees it. In fact, it is his
contention that these early Egyptians could have sailed
across the Atlantic on a ship made of papyrus reeds. But
he can scarcely be said to have proved it, for his papyrus
ship was virtually under water by the time it reached
Barbados.
Obviously, this raises a central question. If Khufu's ship
was designed 'to a pattern created by shipbuilders from a
people with a long, solid tradition of sailing on the open
sea', who were these shipbuilders? There was very little
timber in Egypt, until large quantities began to be
imported towards the end of the 3rd Dynasty - Khufu's
father Snofru built a fleet of 60 ships.
5
But during the
early dynasties, they could hardly be described as a people
with a long tradition of sailing the open sea; after all, they
had been - according to orthodox history - wandering
nomads only a few centuries earlier.
When Graham Hancock was at Abydos, he was
reminded of another facet of this mystery when he went to
see a whole graveyard of boats buried in the desert eight
miles from the Nile - no less than a dozen ships, some of
them 72 feet long. This is only about half the length of the
Khufu ship - but then, they date from five centuries earlier
-Hancock quotes a Guardian report (21 December 1991)
which states that they are 5000 years old. Again, the
design was of seagoing ships, not Nile boats.
Agreeing that these ships - and another found in a
second pit near the Great Pyramid - were purely ritual
objects, intended for the use of the dead pharaoh, where
did the ancient Egyptians get the design from}
According to Schwaller de Lubicz - and West - the
answer is: from survivors from Atlantis, who arrived in
ships. But is there any evidence of the use of seagoing
ships before the age of the pharaohs?
As it happens, there is.
79
4 The Forbidden Word
I
n 1966, an American professor of the history of science
named Charles H. Hapgood caused widespread
controversy with a book called Maps of the Ancient Sea
Kings. The reason becomes clear from the title of his final
chapter: A Civilisation that Vanished', which begins:
The evidence presented by the ancient maps appears
to suggest the existence in remote times, before the
rise of any known cultures, of a true civilisation, of an
advanced kind, which either was localised in one area
but had worldwide commerce, or was, in a real sense,
a worldwide culture. This culture, at least in some
respects, was more advanced than the civilisations of
Greece and Rome. In geodesy, nautical science, and
mapmaking it was more advanced than any known
culture before the 18th century of the Christian Era. It
was only in the 18th century that we developed a
practical means of finding longitude. It was in the
18th century that we first accurately measured the
circumference of the earth. Not until the 19th century
did we begin to send out ships for exploration into the
Arctic or Antarctic Seas and only then did we begin
the exploration of the bottom of the Atlantic. The
maps indicate that some ancient people did all these
things.
It was unfortunate for Hapgood that in the following
year, 1967, these same ancient maps figured prominently
in a book called Chariots of the Gods} by Erich von
Daniken, whose purpose was to demonstrate that they
proved the earth had been visited in remote ages by
visitors from outer space. How otherwise, Daniken asked,
could ancient man have accurately plotted the coast of
South America, and the North and South Poles, unless
they had seen them from the air? Von Daniken's
81
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
many inaccuracies, and the sensational nature of his
theories, caused a violent reaction among serious
scholars, who decided that the whole thing was a bubble
of absurdity. And as Daniken's inaccuracies were exposed
(for example, multiplying the weight of the Great
Pyramid by five), the idea gradually got around that the
whole question of the 'maps of the ancient sea kings' was
an exploded myth.
This was totally untrue. More than a quarter of a
century after its publication, the evidence of Hapgood's
book remains as solid and as unshaken as ever.
In September 1956, Hapgood had been deeply involved
in the study of another mystery, that of the great Ice Ages,
when he heard of an intriguing puzzle that sounded as if it
might have some bearing on his enquiries. On 26 August
1956, there had been a radio discussion of an ancient map
known as the Piri Re'is map, which had been the property
of a Turkish pirate who had been beheaded in 1554. A
panel of respectable academics and scientists had
supported the view that this map appeared to show the
South Pole as it had been before it was covered with ice.
The controversy had arisen because earlier that year, a
Turkish naval officer had presented the US Navy
Hydrographie Office with a copy of the Piri Re'is map,
whose original had been found in the Topkapi Palace in
Istanbul in 1929. It was painted on parchment and dated
1513, and showed the Atlantic Ocean, with a small part of
the coast of Africa on the right, and the whole coast of
South America on the left. And, at the bottom of the map,
what looked like Antarctica.
The map was passed on to the Hydrographie Office's
cartographic expert, W. I. Walters, who in turn had shown
it to a friend named Captain Arlington H. Mallery, who
studied old Viking maps. It was after he had studied the
map at home that Mallery made the astonishing statement
that he believed it showed the coast of Antarctica as it had
been before it was covered by thick ice. It appeared to
show certain bays in Queen 'Maud Land as they had been
before they were frozen over. In 1949 an expedition
mounted by Norway, Sweden and Britain had taken sonar
soundings through the ice - which in places was a mile
thick - and discovered these long-vanished bays.
It was amazing enough that a sixteenth-century map
should show Antarctica, which had not been discovered
until 1818, but that it should show Antarctica as it had
been in prehistoric times seemed preposterous. Indignant
scholars had said as much, which is why the panel of
experts had gathered at Georgetown University, in
Washington DC, to defend
82
4 The
Forbidden
Word
Mallery. All this excited Hapgood, for he had been arguing
that the /
polar ice caps had built up fairly quickly - over thousands
rather than 1
millions of years - and that they caused the earth to
wobble and the f
continents to move around. He had gone on to suggest that
great masses \
of dislodged ice caused major catastrophes, and that the
last of these \
catastrophes had occurred about fifteen thousand years
ago, when Ant- /
arctica was 2,500 miles closer to the equator.
/
Hapgood contacted Captain Mallery, who impressed
him as sincere and honest. He learned from him that the
Library of Congress had already possessed facsimiles of
the Piri Re'is map even before the officer brought a copy
to the Hydrographie Office, and that it possessed many
more such maps. They were called portolans - meaning
'from port to port' - and were used by mariners in the
Middle Ages. And Hapgood was startled to learn that
these maps had been known to scholars for centuries,
but that no one had paid much attention to them. He
thereupon decided to involve his students at Keene
State College, New Hampshire, in a full-scale study of
the maps.
Why had no one paid much attention to them? To
begin with, because they had been made by medieval
mariners, and were assumed to be full of errors and
inaccuracies. Why take the trouble to compare them
with more modern maps?
But at least one scholar - E. E. Nordenskiold, who
compiled an atlas of portolans in 1889 - was convinced
that they were based on charts that were far more
ancient than the Middle Ages. They were too accurate
to have been drawn by medieval sailors. Moreover,
charts dating from the sixteenth century showed no sign
of development from those of the fourteenth century,
which sounded as if both were based on older maps.
Moreover, Nordenskiold also noted that the portolans
were more accurate than the maps of the great
geographer and astronomer Ptolemy, who was active in
Alexandria around ad 150. Was it likely that ordinary
seamen could surpass Ptolemy, unless they had ancient
maps to guide them?
Hapgood's students decided that the simplest way of
attacking the problem would be to put themselves in the
position of the original mapmakers (or, in some cases,
mapmaker - for it often looked as if many later maps
had been based on the same original chart). As everyone
knows, the first problem in creating a map is that the
world is a globe, and a flat piece of paper is bound to
distort its proportions. In 1569, Gerald Mercator solved
the problem by 'projecting' the globe on to a flat
surface, and dividing it up into latitude and longitude,
the
8
3
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
method we still use. But this is because we know the
whole globe. How would an ancient mapmaker, who
knew perhaps only his own country, go about it?
The sensible way, the students decided, would be to
choose some centre for the map, draw a circle around it,
then subdivide this circle into various segments, like a
cake - sixteen seemed to make sense. Then if they had to
extend beyond the circle, they would probably stick
squares on the edge of every 'slice'.
Piri Re'is had admitted that he had combined twenty
maps together, and he had often allowed them to overlap -
or fail to overlap. So he had shown the Amazon river
twice, but left out a 900-mile stretch of the coastline of
South America. Hapgood and his students had - so to
speak - to reason their way back to the original twenty
maps.
The first question was: where was the original 'centre'?
Long study left them to
c
conclude that it was off the map,
but that it was probably in Egypt. Alexandria seemed the
obvious choice. Hapgood involved a friend who was a
mathematician, to try to find the answer by trigonometry
(fortunately, he had not been told that experts thought the
charts were not based on trigonometry). It took three years
to find the solution. When it finally became clear that the
place they were looking for had to be situated on the
Tropic of Cancer, they realised that only one ancient city
seemed to fit the requirements - Syene, now known as
Aswan, the site of the modern dam.
Syene, in upper Egypt, has one interesting distinction; it
was the place from which the Greek scholar Eratosthenes,
head of the Library of Alexandria, had worked out the size
of the earth around 200 bc.
Eratosthenes happened to hear that on 21 June every
year, the sun was reflected at the bottom of a certain deep
well in Syene - that is, it was directly overhead, so towers
did not cast a shadow. But in Alexandria they did. All he
had to do was to measure the length of a shadow in
Alexandria at midday on 21 June, and work out from that
the angle at which the sun's rays were striking the tower.
This proved to be l
x
fi degrees. And since the earth is a
globe, then the distance from Syene to Alexandria must be
7V
2
degrees of the earth's circumference. Since he knew
the distance from Syene to Alexandria was 5000 stadia (or
500 miles), the rest was easy: 7% goes into 360 forty-
eight times, so the circumference of the earth must be 500
times 48 - 24,000 miles. (As we have seen, it is actually
closer to 25,000, but Eratosthenes was amazingly close.)
Now, Eratosthenes had made a small error, and increased
the circum-
84
4 The Forbidden Word
ference of the earth by 4V
2
degrees. Hapgood discovered
that if he allowed for this error, Piri Re'is's map became
even more accurate. This made it virtually certain that the
map was based on ancient Greek models after
Eratosthenes.
But, reasoned Hapgood, when the geographers of
Alexandria made their maps, it is unlikely that they sailed
off to look at the various places they were mapping. They
almost certainly used older maps -and then introduced the
error. So the older maps must have been even more
accurate than those of Alexandria.
As we saw in the last chapter, a tutor of one of the late
Ptolemies, Agatharchides of Cnidus, was told that the base
of the Great Pyramid was an eighth of a minute of a
degree in length. And from this it is possible to work out
that the pyramid builders knew that the circumference of
the earth was just under 25,000 miles, which is even more
accurate than the estimate of Eratosthenes. This evidence
leaves us in no doubt that the ancient Egyptians not only
knew that the earth was a globe, but knew its size to
within a few miles.
Clearly, this would seem to indicate one of two things:
ei t her t he Egypt i ans had a navy capabl e of
circumnavigating the globe, or they had access to
information from someone who did possess such a navy.
(The third possibility - astronauts from the stars - seems,
on the whole, rather lower on the scale of probability than
the other two.) But we have already seen that one of the
first pharaohs to possess a navy was Snofru, father of
Cheops, and there would hardly have been time for his
ships to sail around the earth and map it in detail before
the Pyramid (with its boat pits) was built. Margaret
Murray points out that some of the pre-dynastic people of
Egypt, the Gerzeans (around 3500 bc) represented ships in
their pottery decorations; but these ships have banks of
oarsmen, and it seems unlikely that the Gerzeans (possibly
Cretans) rowed around the world. So we are left with the
possibility that there were seafarers who crossed the
oceans long before dynastic Egypt.
How long before? The Piri Re'is map of Queen Maud
Land, at the South Pole, shows bays before they were
covered with ice, and Hapgood estimated that the last time
Antarctica was free of ice was some time before 4000 bc.
(Core samples taken by the Byrd Antarctic Expedition of
1949 showed that the last warm period in the Antarctic
ended then; the indications are that it began about 13,000
bc.) Someone had mapped Antarctica at least six thousand
years ago, and possibly long before that. But a map is no
use without some kind of writing on it,
85
---.* w ne opninx
and the official date for the invention of writing is about
3500 bc (in Sumeria). Moreover, mapmaking is a
sophisticated art, requiring some knowledge of
trigonometry and geometry. Again, we seem to be
positing a highly developed civilisation existing before
4000 bc. And since civilisations take a long time to
develop, it seems possible that we are speaking of
thousands of years before this date.
In November 1959, Hapgood made an appointment to
look at other portolans at the Library of Congress. When
he got into the conference room, he was embarrassed to
find literally hundreds of maps. He passed days looking
over them, and discovered that many of them showed a
southern continent. (In fact, Mercator had shown it - but
that was only because he believed it was there, not
because he knew of it.) When he saw a map drawn by a
man called Oronteus Finaeus in 1531, he was suddenly
transfixed. This not only showed the complete South Pole,
as if seen from the air, but looked startlingly like the South
Polar continent on modern maps. It showed the same bays
without the ice, rivers flowing to the sea, and even
mountains that are now buried under the ice.
There was only one problem. Oronteus Finaeus had
made Antarctica far too large. Then Hapgood discovered
what seemed to be the explanation. For some odd reason,
Oronteus Finaeus had drawn a small circle in the middle
of his Antarctica and labelled it 'Antarctic Circle'. The real
Antarctic Circle goes around Antarctica, in the sea. Then
Hapgood realised that the circle he had drawn on his own
map to represent the 80th parallel was in the centre of his
normal-sized version of the Antarctic, just about where
Oronteus had drawn his own Antarctic Circle. Obviously,
some earlier copyist of the original map had mistaken the
80th parallel for the Antarctic Circle and mis-labelled it;
the result of such a mistake would be to make Antarctica
about four times its proper size - just as Oronteus Finaeus
had done. Hapgood also concluded that the errors in the
map showed that Oronteus Finaeus had constructed it out
of many smaller overlapping maps. Again, his reasoning
pointed to far earlier - and more accurate - maps.
The conclusion seemed to be inescapable. Some
mapmaker had drawn Antarctica in the days when it was
free of ice. Moreover, the thoroughness of the map
showed that the mapmaker had spent some time there.
The logical conclusion seemed to be that he was, in fact,
an inhabitant
86
4 The Forbidden Word
of Antarctica in the days when it was warm and habitable -
and possibly had a navy capable of sailing round the
world.
Now this fitted in comfortably with a theory Hapgood
had been developing since the early 1950s, and had put
forward in a book called Earth's Shifting Crust (1959),
whose evidence so impressed Einstein that he wrote a
preface to it. The purpose of the book had been to explain
abrupt changes in the earth's climate - what one
palaeontologist called 'sudden and inexplicable climatic
revolutions', often involving great extinctions of creatures
like mammoths. The Beresovka mammoth, found in
Siberia in 1901, had frozen in an upright position with
food in its mouth, and spring plants - including buttercups
- in its stomach. Hapgood devotes a whole chapter to such
'great extinctions'.
Hapgood's theory was that the crust of the earth is rather
like the skin that forms on cold gravy, and can be literally
pulled around by great masses of ice at the poles. It was
not until the 1960s that scientists became aware of the
earth's tectonic plates, and Hapgood took these into
account in a later edition of his book called The Path of
the Pole. His argument was still that ice could cause the
whole crust - tectonic plates and all - to move as one. He
cites scientific evidence that Hudson Bay was once at the
North Pole, and quotes a study of magnetism in British
rocks made in 1954 that shows that the British Isles were
once more than two thousand miles further south. Soviet
scientists have stated that the North Pole was as far south
as 55 degrees latitude sixty million years ago, and that it
was in the Pacific, to the south-west of southern
California, three hundred million years ago. Moreover,
India and Africa were once covered with a sheet of ice,
while - incomprehensibly - Siberia escaped. Is it not
possible, Hapgood suggested, that an Ice Age does not
cover the whole earth simultaneously, but only those parts
that move into polar regions? He goes on to argue that,
before the last 'catastrophic event' of 15,000 years ago, the
Antarctic continent was 2,500 miles further north.
So it did not surprise Hapgood to find in the Oronteus
Finaeus map evidence that the South Pole was once free
of ice, and probably contained cities and ports.
A Turkish map of 1559, five years before the birth of
Shakespeare, shows the world from a northern 'projection',
as if hovering over the North Pole. Again, the accuracy is
incredible. But what may be its most interesting feature is
that Alaska and Siberia seem to be joined. Since this
projection shows a heart-shaped globe, with Alaska on one
side of the 'dimple' and Siberia on the other, this could
merely indicate that the
87
... *-*iaiiti to me sphinx
mapmaker did not have space to show the Bering Strait
which divides the continents. If this is not so, the
consequences are staggering; a land-bridge did exist in
the remote past - but it may have been as long as 12,000
years ago.
Other early 'portolans' were equally remarkable for
their accuracy -the Dulcert Portolano of 1339 shows that
the cartographer had precise knowledge of an area from
Galway to the Don basin in Russia. Others showed the
Aegean dotted with islands that do not now exist -
presumably drowned by melting ice - an accurately drawn
map of southern Great Britain, but without Scotland, and
with indications of glaciers, and a Sweden still partially
glaciated.
A map of Antarctica published by the eighteenth-
century French cartographer Philippe Buache in 1737
shows it as divided into two islands, one large, one small,
with a considerable area of water between them. The 1958
survey showed that this is correct. On modern maps,
Antarctica is shown as one solid mass. Even Oronteus
Finaeus showed it as a solid mass. The implication is that
Buache used maps that were far older than those used by
Oronteus Finaeus - possibly thousands of years older.
Perhaps the most interesting piece of evidence
uncovered by Hapgood is a map of China which he found
in Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, dating
from 1137, and carved on stone. Hapgood's studies of Piri
Re'is and other European portolans had made him familiar
with the 'longitude error' mentioned above; now he was
astonished to find it on this map of China. If he was
correct, then the Chinese had also known the 'original'
maps on which Piri Re'is was based.
All this explains why Hapgood reached the startling
conclusion that there was a flourishing worldwide
maritime civilisation on earth before 4000 bc, and that its
centre was probably the Antarctic continent, then free of
ice. He says in the final chapter of Maps of the Ancient
Sea Kings: 'When I was a youth I had a plain simple faith
in progress. It seemed to me impossible that once man had
passed a milestone of progress in *one way that he could
ever pass the same milestone again the other way. Once
the telephone was invented, it would stay invented. If past
civilisations had faded away it was just because they had
not learned the secret of progress. But Science meant
permanent progress, with no going back ...' And now the
evidence of his Vanished civilisation' seemed to contradict
that conclusion. He quotes the historian S. R. K. Glanville
as saying (in The Legacy of Egypt): 'It may be, as some
indeed suspect, that the science we see as the dawn of
recorded
88
4 The Forbidden Word
history was not science at its dawn, but represents the
remnants of the science of some great and as yet untraced
civilisation.'
Hapgood, of course, does not mention Atlantis - it would
have been more than his academic reputation was worth.
Yet the story of Atlantis can hardly fail to occur to the
minds of his readers - after all, his great catastrophe of
fifteen thousand years ago sounds as if it might have been
the beginning of the disaster that, according to Plato,
engulfed the continent.
The problem, as we have seen, is that Plato's account of
Atlantis is - to put it mildly - hard to accept. In the
Timaeus he tells us that Atlanteans were warring
aggressively against Europe in 9600 bc, and conquered
Europe as far as Italy and North Africa as far as Libya. It
was the Athenians who, according to Plato, fought on
alone, and finally conquered the Atlanteans - after which
both Atlantis and Athens were engulfed by floods. But
since archaeological investigation shows no sign of
occupation of the site of Athens before 3000 bc (when
there seems to have been a fairly sophisticated Neolithic
settlement on the site of the Acropolis), this must be
regarded as myth rather than history (although some of the
surprises we have encountered in ancient Egyptian history
suggest we should keep an open mind).
In his fragmentary dialogue Critias, of which only a
few pages exist, Plato tells us that the Atlanteans were
great engineers and architects; their capital city was built
on a hill, surrounded by concentric bands of land and
water, joined by tunnels large enough for a ship to sail
through. The city, eleven miles in diameter, contained
temples (to the sea god Poseidon - or Neptune) and
palaces, and there were extensive harbours and docks. A
canal, a hundred yards wide and a hundred feet deep,
connected the outermost ring of water to the sea. Behind
the city was an oblong plain, three hundred by two
hundred miles, on which farmers grew the city's food
supply; this was surrounded by mountains that came down
to the sea, and which were full of villages, lakes and
rivers. Plato goes into considerable detail about the
architecture - even to the colour of the stones of the
buildings - and the communal dining halls with hot and
cold fountains make it sound like some Utopian fantasy of
H. G. Wells.
But as a result of interbreeding - presumably with
immigrants - the Atlanteans gradually began to fall away
from their god-like origins, and to behave badly. At this
point Zeus decided they needed a lesson
89
.--!- v nts opninx
to 'bring them back into tune', and called a meeting of the
gods ... At which point, the fragment breaks off, and the
rest of the history of Atlantis - which once continued in a
third dialogue ~ is lost.
The editors of the Bllingen edition of Plato explain
that Plato was 'resting his mind ... making up a fairy tale,
the most wonderful island that could be imagined.' But if
it was intended as a fable or fairy tale, the motive is
obscure; it seems far more likely that it is an old story that
was told to Plato by Socrates. And if it was fiction, why
did Plato insert his first brief account of Atlantis in the
Timaeus, his account of the creation of the universe,
which Benjamin Jowett called 'the greatest effort of the
human mind to conceive the world as a whole...' if it was
merely a fairy tale?
In the second half of the nineteenth century, ships of the
British, French, German and American navies began
soundings of the floor of the Atlantic, and discovered the
'Mid-Atlantic Ridge', a mountain range running from
Iceland almost to the Antarctic Circle, which is at one
point 600 miles wide. This has proved to be an area of
great volcanic activity. Understandably, the discovery
caused considerable excitement, and drew the attention of
an American congressman named Ignatius Donnelly,
whom L. Sprague de Camp has described as 'perhaps the
most erudite man ever to sit in the House of
Representatives'. On losing his seat in 1870, when he was
39, Donnelly retired to write Atlantis: The Antediluvian
World, based upon extensive studies in the Library of
Congress; it appeared twelve years later, and became an
instant bestseller. The success was deserved; the book
shows considerable learning, and even today is as readable
as when it was written. Donnelly shows a wide knowledge
of mythology and anthropology, and quotes in Greek and
Hebrew. He studies flood legends from Egypt to Mexico,
pointing out their similarities, and argues that ancient
South American civilisations like the Incas and the Maya
bear interesting resemblance to early European
civilisations. His suggestion that the Azores may be the
mountain tops of the sunken continent so impressed the
British Prime Minister Gladstone that he tried -
unsuccessfully - to persuade the British Cabinet to allot
funds to send a ship to search for Atlantis.
Like Schwaller de Lubicz, Donnelly was struck by how
quickly Egyptian civilisation seems to have attained a
high degree of sophistication; like Schwaller, he
suggested that this was because its civilisation originated
in Atlantis. In his book Lost Continents (1954), L.
Sprague de Camp asserts that 'most of Donnelly's
statements of fact... either were wrong when he made
them, or have been disproved by subsequent
90
4 The Forbidden Word
discoveries.' Yet his list of Donnelly's mistakes - such as
his views on Egyptian civilisation - only emphasises that
Donnelly had a remarkably acute nose for interesting
evidence from the past.
It was unfortunate for the budding science of
'Atlantology' that it ran into the same problem that
Hapgood would encounter when he published Maps of the
Ancient Sea Kings and found himself classified with Erich
von Daniken and other advocates of the 'ancient astronaut'
theory. Five years before Donnelly's Atlantis appeared, a
Russian 'occultist' named Helena Blavatsky had published
an enormous work of ancient mythology called Isis
Unveiled, which became an unexpected bestseller; one of
its fifteen hundred pages deals briefly with Atlantis,
declaring that its inhabitants were 'natural mediums',
whose childlike innocence had made them an easy prey
for some malevolent entity who turned them into a nation
of black magicians; they started a war that led to the
destruction of Atlantis.
Madame Blavatsky died in London in 1891, having
became the founder of the Theosophical Society; her final
enormous work, The Secret Doctrine, claimed to be a
commentary on a religious work called The Book of
Dzyan, written in Atlantis. According to Madame
Blavatsky, the present human race is the fifth race of
intelligent beings on earth; its immediate predecessor, the
fourth 'root race', was the Atlanteans.
A leading Theosophist named W. Scott-Elliot followed
this up with a work called The Story of Atlantis (1896),
which achieved widespread popularity. Scott-Elliot
claimed that he gained his knowledge directly from his
ability to read 'the Akasic records', the records of earth
history that are imprinted on a kind of 'psychic ether', and
which are accessible to those possessing psychic
sensitivity. He later went on to write a similar book about
Lemuria, another 'lost continent' that is supposed to have
been located in the Pacific. (Donnelly had pointed out
there there is evidence that Australia is the only visible
part of a continent that stretched from Africa to the
Pacific, and the zoologist L. P. Sclater christened it
Lemuria, noting that the existence of lemurs from Africa
to Madagascar seemed to suggest a continuous land mass.)
One of the most influential theosophists around the turn
of the century was the Austrian Rudolf Steiner, and in
1904 he produced a work called From the Akasic Records,
which described the evolution of the human race. Like
Madame Blavatsky, he taught that man began as a
completely etherialised being, who has become more solid
with each step in his evolution. The Lemurians were the
third 'root race',
9
1
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
the Atlanteans the fourth. Like Plato, Steiner declares that
the Atlante-ans became increasingly corrupt and
materialistic, and that their use of destructive forces led to
the catastrophe (which Steiner places around 8000 bc)
that caused the disappearance of Atlantis beneath the
waves.
The annexation of Atlantis by occultists caused the
whole subject to fall into disrepute. In the 1920s, a
Scottish newspaper editor named Lewis Spence tried to
reverse this trend by returning to Donnelly's purely
historical approach in The Problem of Atlantis (1924). He
argued for the existence of a great Atlantic continent in
Miocene times (25 to 5 million years ago), which
disintegrated into islands, the two largest of which were
close to the coast of Spain. Another island called Antillia
existed in the region of the West Indies. The eastern
continent began to disintegrate about 25,000 years ago
and disappeared about 10,000 years ago. Antillia survived
until more recent times. Cro-Magnon man came from
Atlantis, and wiped out the European stock of
Neanderthal man about 25,000 years ago. Later
Atlanteans, known as Azilian man, founded the
civilisations of Egypt and Crete, while other Atlanteans
fled westward and became the Mayans.
Like so many Atlantis theorists, Spence became
obsessed by his subject, and later works like Will Europe
Follow Atlantis} and The Occult Sciences in Atlantis show
a decline in standards of intellectual rigour.
In the late 1960s, a Greek archaeologist, Professor
Angelos Galano-poulos, proposed the startling theory that
Atlantis was the island of Santorini, north of Crete. This
was blown apart around 1500 bc by a tremendous
volcanic explosion, which probably also destroyed most
of the Greek islands and the coastal plains of Greece and
Crete. But how could the small island of Santorini have
been Plato's enormous continent of Atlantis, with its 300-
mile inland plain? Galanopoulos suggests that the scribe
simply multiplied the figures by ten - and that this also
applies to the date - Plato's 9000 years earlier should
actually be 900 (i.e. about 1300 bc). Surely, says
Galanopoulos, a canal 300 feet wide and 100 feet deep is
absurd; 30 feet wide and 10 feet deep sounds more
reasonable.
The chief objection to this theory is that Plato states
clearly that Atlantis was beyond the Pillars of Hercules -
Gibraltar. Galanopoulos argues that since Hercules
performed most of his labours in Greece, the Pillars of
Hercules could refer to the two southernmost
promontories of Greece. But Plato also says that the
Atlanteans held sway over the country as far as Egypt and
the Tyrrhenian sea, and these are certainly not within the
Greek promontories. In spite of these objections, the
92
4 The Forbidden Word
tourist board of Santorini has taken full advantage of the
theory to
display notices declaring itself to be the
original Atlantis.
j^ In 1968, it looked as if Edgar Cayce's prophecy that
Atlantis would
*** rise again in 1968 and 1969 was about to be fulfilled.
A fishing guide
^ /called Bonefish Sam took the archaeologist and
underwater explorer
>%> JA- Dr J. Manson Valentine to a place where there
was a regular pattern
j i| JL of enormous underwater stones that looked man-
made. Valentine con-
/ ^|f eluded that this was part of a ceremonial road leading
to a sacred site,
^1 built by 'the people who made the big spheres of
Central America, the
V| huge platforms of Baalbek in Lebanon, Malta in the
Mediterranean,
//fj Stonehenge in England, the walls of OUantaytambo
in Peru, the standing
%- I stone avenues of Brittany, the colossal ruins of
Tiahuanaco in Bolivia,
4 J and the statues of Easter Island - this was a
prehistoric race that could
(
"
v
* transport and position cyclopean stones in a way
that remains a mystery #. to us.' When Valentine
leaned of Edgar Cayce's prophecy that Atlantis would
begin to reappear near Bimini, he was startled and
impressed. For a while, the 'Bimini road' was the
subject of much speculation, and an expedition led
by Dr David Zink spent months studying the stones.
Yet the result was inconclusive. Although a grooved
building block and a stylised head weighing over 200
pounds seemed to contradict the sceptics who
declared that the blocks were natural formations, no
positive evidence was ever discovered to link the
road with a vanished civilisation; the stones may be
merely remains dating from the past thousand years.
No wonder, then, that Hapgood had no intention of
exposing himself to ridicule by mentioning
Atlantis. In later life, he showed remarkable
courage in publishing a book called Voices of
Spirit, a series of interviews - or rather 'sittings' -
with the trance medium Elwood Babbitt, in which
Hapgood was appar ent l y abl e t o hol d
conversations with -among others - Nostradamus,
Queen Elizabeth I, William Wordsworth, Abraham
Lincoln, Gandhi, John R Kennedy, Albert Einstein
and Adlai Stevenson. But by then Hapgood was
retired and didn't care what the academic world
thought about him. The book is a vehicle for
expressing his conviction that the next step in
man's evolution will be in the realm of the psychic
and paranormal.
However, Hapgood's notion that the earth's
crust might be capable of 'slipping' came to
intrigue a young Canadian named Randy Flem-
ming, who lived in British Columbia. In the
1970s, waiting to hear
93
.mis lo ine 5pnnx
whether he had secured a librarian's job at the University
of Victoria, Hemming decided to distract himself by
writing a science fiction novel about Atlantis, set in
10,000 bc. He decided that the present site of Antarctica
would make a good location for Atlantis.
Having obtained the job, he came upon Hapgood's
Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, and saw the ice-free map
of Antarctica (p. 93), which immediately reminded him of
the map of Atlantis drawn by the seventeenth-century
Jesuit archaeologist Athanasius Kircher. Now he launched
into serious research on Atlantis, with the help of the
university library. A major step forward occurred when his
wife Rose - also a librarian - gave him a National Atlas of
Canada that revealed that the northern Yukon and some
Arctic islands were free of ice during the last Ice Age. It
was while puzzling on this curious anomaly that he heard
of Hapgood's theory of the earth's shifting crust. When he
saw that Hapgood's theory would place the Antarctic
continent 2,500 miles closer to the equator around 15,000
bc, he left the library 'jumping for joy'. Suddenly, it began
to look as if his science fiction novel might be based on
fact.
Fl emmi ng began wor k on a paper f or t he
Anthropological Journal of Canada on the problem of
why agriculture seems to have begun all over the world
around 9000 bc. His own suggestion was that Hapgood's
'Earth Crustal Displacement' occurred some time before
9000 bc, and made large areas of the globe uninhabitable,
trapping people who would normally have been mobile in
small areas. Since wild food would soon become scarce
under these conditions, they were forced to learn to grow
their own food ...
He also wrote to Hapgood to discuss Earth's Shifting
Crust, and Hapgood, unaware that the Flemmings already
knew his Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, sent them a
copy.
Some time around now - 1977 - the Flemmings had the
romantic idea of hyphenating a combination of their
surnames - Flemming and De'Ath - to make Flem-Ath;
Randy Flemming was later to admit ruefully that 'it
Seems mainly to have resulted in getting us lost in the file
of every bureaucracy in Canada'.
With considerable rashness, the Flem-Aths decided
they had to move to London, so that they could continue
their researches in the British Museum. It was a highly
fruitful period, which ended with their return to Canada in
the 1980s, and continuation of researches into 'earth's
shifting crust' which led to the writing of When the Sky
Fell (1995).
I heard of the Flem-Aths from John West during a
meeting in New
94
4 The Forbidden Word
York in 1994. I wrote to them, and as a consequence,
received a copy of the typescript of When the Sky Fell.
Their starting point was Plato - not just the accounts of
Atlantis, but
I the remark in Laws (Book 3) that world agriculture
originated in high-
| land regions after some great flood catastrophe that
destroyed all low-
\ land cities. Plato, of course, had already given the date
of the destruction
\ of Atlantis as 9600 bc. The Flem-Aths note that the
Soviet botanist
f Nikolai Ivanovitch Vavilov collected over fifty thousand
wild plants
{ from around the globe, and concluded that they came
from eight centres
I of origin, all in mountain ranges. They also note that
the modern
I scientific account of the origin of agriculture dates it
roughly from this
j period. One of the major sites of origin was Lake
Titicaca in Peru, the
I highest freshwater lake in the world. (We shall have
more to say of
| Lake Titicaca in the next chapter.) Oddly enough,
another mountain
| area known as a site where agriculture originated at
about the same
S time lies in the highlands of Thailand, exactly on the
opposite side of
the earth from Lake Titicaca. Hapgood's theory had, in
fact, pinpointed
these two places as areas of stability after the great
upheaval that he
posited.
'After hundreds of thousands of years of living by
hunting and gathering, humankind turned to
experimenting with agriculture on opposite sides of the
earth at the same time. Is this likely without the
intervention of some outside force?'
Egypt had been tropical before the crust
displacement; now it became temperate. So, according
to Hapgood, did Crete, Sumeria, India and China. All
became places where civilisation flourished.
In the pages that follow, the Flem-Aths discuss the
catastrophe myths of many tribes of American Indians -
the Utes, the Kutenai, the Okana-gan, the A'a'tam, the
Cahto, the Cherokee, and the Araucanians of Peru. All
have legends of violent earthquakes followed by floods
which caused widespread disaster. The Utes tell a story
of how the hare god fired a magic arrow at the sun,
causing it to shatter into pieces and earthquakes and
floods to engulf the earth. Many similar legends suggest
that some great catastrophe was preceded by some
change in the face of the sun that made it look as if it
was shattered; a Spanish chronicler remarks on the
terror of the Incas at an eclipse of the sun - while
another comments that the Araucanians rush to the
highlands whenever there is an earth tremor.
There are also many legends of survival that bear a
family resemblance to Noah's Ark. The Haida of north-
west Canada have a flood
95
Miiantis to the Sphinx
myth which is virtually identical with the flood myth of
Sumeria in the Middle East.
From all corners of the earth the same story is told.
The sun deviates from its regular path. The sky falls.
The earth is wrenched and torn by earthquakes. And
finally a great wave of water engulfs the globe.
Survivors of such a calamity would go to any lengths
to prevent it from happening again. They lived in an
age of magic. It was natural and necessary to
construct elaborate devices to pacify the sun-god (or
goddess) and control, or monitor its path.
Hence, according to the Flem-Aths, the many strange
magical customs connected with the sun which
anthropologists have observed all over the world.
The Flem-Aths go on to review the evidence that many
areas of the earth were believed to be buried deep under
ice during the last Ice Age. Wolf bones found in Norway
north of the Arctic Circle revealed that this area must have
had a temperate climate 42 thousand years ago, when it
was supposed to be in the grip of an Ice Age. 'Of the
thirty-four species known to have lived in Siberia before
9600 bc, including mammoths, giant deer, cave hyena and
cave lions, twenty-eight were adapted to temperate
conditions', indicating that Siberia's climate was then
much warmer than today. At this time, two vast ice sheets
lay across Canada. Yet the evidence shows that there was
an ice-free corridor between them. Why? Hapgood's
answer is that, at this time, the Gulf of Mexico was in the
east and the Yukon in the west, so the sun melted the snow
along this corridor as fast as it fell.
The Flem-Aths cite evidence that an earth crust
displacement around 91,600 bc moved Europe within the
Arctic Circle, while another around 50,600 bc moved
North America into the polar zone.
All this evidence, the Flem-Aths submit, points to the
present Antarctica as the site of the legendary Atlantis.
(They also cite Hapgood's map evidence to reinforce the
point.) Some shift in the earth's crust, beginning about
15,000 bc, ended in violent upheaval in 9600 bc, the time
when, according to Plato, Atlantis and Athens suffered
catastrophic upheavals.
And how did the seventeenth-century Jesuit Athanasius
Kircher come upon the map of Atlantis that first struck
Randy Flemming as being so similar to Antarctica? In the
first volume of his encyclopaedic work Mundus
SubterraneuSy published in 1665, Kircher claimed that
the map
96
4 The Forbidden Word
he had discovered in his researches was stolen from Egypt
by the Roman invaders. The original of the map has not
been discovered, but it seems unlikely that a Jesuit scholar
would have concocted it, particularly in a scientific work.
As the Flem-Aths point out, both the shape and the size of
the map correspond remarkably to Antarctica as we now
know it from seismic soundings - or even to Antarctica as
it is now shown on most globes.
For Graham Hancock, the Antarctica theory of the Flem-
Aths came as a kind of deliverance. A few months into
work on his book about the problem of a lost civilisation,
he received a letter of resignation from his researcher. It
explained that, as far as he could see, the search was quite
pointless, since such a civilisation would have to be
enormous -at least two thousand miles across, with rivers
and mountains, and a considerable history of long-term
development. There was no known land mass in the world
that could have accommodated such a civilisation. As to
the notion that it could lie at the bottom of the Atlantic, the
floor of the Atlantic Ocean, now so thoroughly mapped,
showed no sign of a lost continent. The same was true of
the floor of the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. So in spite
of all the evidence for some earlier civilisation - such as
that contained in Hapgood's maps - it looked as if there
was nowhere its remains might be lurking.
In fact, the answer was in Hapgood, and in the belief
that he states in Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings - that the
maps of Antarctica show that someone living in the
continent, at a time when it was free of ice, must have
been responsible for mapping it.
Yet I can hardly blame Graham Hancock for failing to
draw the obvious conclusion. I was also thoroughly
familiar with Hapgood's book, and had discussed it at
length in an 'encyclopaedia' of unsolved mysteries, and I
had also failed to see what was staring me in the face. It
took Randy Flemming's chance decision to write a science
fiction novel in which - purely as a fictional hypothesis -
he assumed that Antarctica was Atlantis, to start the chain
of reasoning that led him to the 'Eureka' experience.
As to why Hapgood himself failed to label his iost
civilisation' Atlantis, the answer is that - quite apart from
his wish not to expose himself to the ridicule of academic
colleagues - he felt that it hardly mattered what the lost
civilisation was called; he told the Flemmings in a letter of
August 1977: 'It may well be that after examining this
book
97
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
(Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings) you may decide to
reduce somewhat your emphasis on Atlantis, that is on
the myths, for the book contains enough hard evidence to
stand on its own.' Which is, of course, true. But then,
Hapgood had not studied the rich evidence of catastrophe
myths all over the world, or the physical evidence of sites
like Tiahuan-aco. If he had, he might have decided that it
was worth a little academic ridicule to be able to claim
precedence in associating his ancient maps with the
forbidden word ..,
98
5 The Realm of the White Gods
I
N March 1519, the conquistador Hernando Corts landed
in Mexico with 508 soldiers. The Aztecs, under their king
Montezuma, had tens of thousands of warriors. Yet in just
over two years the Spaniards had defeated them and
destroyed the Aztec empire. The Indians were enslaved,
Christian churches were built on the site of Aztec temples,
the name of the capital was changed from Tenochtitlan to
Mexico City, and that of the country to New Spain.
Why did the Spanish succeed with such relative ease?
Because the Aztecs mistook them for descendants of the
god Quetzalcoatl, a cross between a snake and a bird
known as 'the plumed serpent'. (Elsewhere in South
America he is known as Viracocha, Votan, Kukulkan and
Kon-Tiki.) The legend states that Quetzalcoatl, a tall,
bearded, white man, came from somewhere in the south,
soon after some catastrophe that had obscured the sun for a
long time; Quetzalcoatl brought back the sun, and he also
brought the arts of civilisation. (We are naturally inclined
to wonder: was the arrival of Quetzalcoatl connected with
the obscuring of the sun? Could he have been fleeing from
the catastrophe that caused it?) After an attempt to kill him
by treachery, the 'god' returned to the sea, promising one
day to return. By coincidence, Corts had landed close to
the spot where Quetzalcoatl was expected, which is why
the superstitious Montezuma allowed Corts to take him
prisoner. One reason why the Spaniards felt no
compunction at slaughtering the Aztecs was that they were
appalled at their tradition of human sacrifice. The Aztec
priest would carefully slice an incision in the ribs with a
flint knife, while several men held the victim down on the
altar by his (or her) arms and legs, and then plunged in his
hand and tore out the beating heart. When - as in many
cases - the victim was a baby, it was unnecessary to hold it
down. Such victims were often despatched by the dozen,
and even - when prisoners were taken - by the hundreds
99
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
or thousands. The Spaniards saw this, rightly, as a custom
of appalling barbarity. What they did not know is that it
dated back thousands of years, and that it was designed to
prevent the gods from bringing about the end of the world
in some violent catastrophe, as they had done in the
remote past.
In 1697, when an Italian traveller named Giovanni
Careri visited Mexico, he found a country exploited by
greedy Spanish merchants and fanatical and ignorant
priests who were busily destroying signs of the old
civilisation. 'We found a great number of books,' says one
chronicler, 'but as they contained nothing but superstitions
and falsehoods of the Devil, we burned them.' But in
Mexico City Careri met a priest who was an exception:
Don Carlos de Siguenza, scientist and historian, who
could speak the language of the Indians and read their
hieroglyphs. From ancient manuscripts, Siguenza had
concluded that the Aztecs had founded the city of
Tenochtitlan - and the Aztec empire
- in 1325. Before them there was a race called the Toltecs,
and before
them, the Olmecs, who lived in the tropical lowlands, and
who, accord
ing to legend, had come over the sea from the east -
Siguenza believed
from Atlantis.
Form Siguenza, Careri learned that the Indian
civilisation also had its great pyramids, including one at
Cholula that was three times as massive as the Great
Pyramid at Giza (which Careri had visited on his way to
South America). On Siguenza's recommendation, Careri
went to the town of San Juan Teotihuacan, and was
impressed by the magnificent Pyramid of the Moon and
the Pyramid of the Sun, even though both were partly
buried in earth. What puzzled him was how the Indians
had succeeded in transporting enormous blocks from
distant quarries; no one was able to tell him. Neither could
anyone suggest how the Aztecs had carved great stone
idols without metal chisels, or how they had raised them
to the summit of pyramids.
When, in 1719, Careri published the story of his round-
the-world voyage in nine Volumes, he was greeted with
incredulity and hostility; his critics spread the story that
he had never left Naples. One of the main reasons for this
hostility was Careri's descriptions of the civilisation of the
Aztecs; Europeans simply refused to believe that savages
could have created a culture that ranked with those of
ancient Egypt and Greece.
Many distinguished travellers visited Mexico and
described its ruins
- including the great Alexander von Humboldt - but
somehow their
descriptions failed to make an impact outside academic
circles. It would
not be until the mid-nineteenth century that a wider
audience would
100
5 The Realm of the White Gods
become aware of the legacy of South America. In 1841, a
three-volume work called Incidents of Travel in Central
America became an unexpected bestseller, and brought its
author - a young New York lawyer named John Lloyd
Stephens overnight celebrity in Europe as well as
America. Stephens had already explored the archaeology
of the Old World, in Egypt, Greece and Turkey. And when
he came across a report by a Mexican colonel of huge
pyramids buried in the jungles of Yucatan - on the Gulf of
Mexico - he succeeded in using his political connections
to get himself appointed to the post of charg d'affaires in
Central America. He took with him an artist named
Frederick Catherwood.
Landing at Belize, Stephens and Catherwood made their
way inland along the Honduras-Guatemala border. It
proved to be more dangerous and uncomfortable than
travelling in the Middle East. The country was in the grip
of a civil war, and they spent one night under arrest while
drunken soldiers fired off rifles into the air. After that they
plunged into deep forest where the trees met overhead, and
the stifling air was full of mosquitoes. They breathed in
the stench of vegetable decay, and the horses often sank up
to their bellies in the swamp. Stephens had almost lost
faith when one day they came upon a wall of stone blocks,
with a flight of steps leading up to a terrace. Their Indian
guide attacked the lianas with his machete, and tore them
away to reveal a kind of statue like an immense totem
pole, standing more than twice the height of a man. A
blank face with closed eyes looked down on them; the
decorations were so rich and finely carved that it might
have been some statue of the Buddha from India. There
could be no doubt whatsoever that this was the product of
a highly sophisticated civilisation. Within the next few
days, Stephens realised that he was on the edge of a
magnificent city, almost totally buried in the jungle. It was
called Copan, and it contained the remains of huge step
pyramids - not unlike the one at Saqqara - that were part of
a temple complex.
The owner of the site, an Indian called Don Jos Maria,
at first showed signs of irritation at the intruding
foreigners, but quickly became amenable when they
offered to buy the jungle city for a vast sum that exceeded
all his expectations. In fact, their offer - $50 -convinced
him that they were fools, but he accepted without
revealing his bafflement that they should want to purchase
such a worthless piece of property. Stephens threw a party
and offered everyone - including the women - cigars.
Stephens's Travels in Central America was the first that
the civilised world had heard of an ancient people called
the Maya, who preceded
101
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
(and overlapped with) the Toltecs, and who had built
Copan around ad 500; their cities had once spread from
Chichen Itz - in Yucatan -to Copan, from. Tikal in
Guatemala to Palanque in Chiapas. Their temples were as
magnificent as those of Babylon, their cities as
sophisticated as eighteenth-century Paris or Vienna, their
calendar as complex and precise as that of ancient Egypt.
Yet the Mayas also represented a great mystery. There
is evidence that, around ad 600, they decided to abandon
their cities; their method, apparently, was to move to a
new location in the jungle, where they would build
another city. The first attempt at an explanation was that
they were driven out by enemies. But as knowledge of
their society increased, it became clear that they had no
enemies; in their own territory they were supreme. Some
natural catastrophe - like earthquake or floods - also had
to be ruled out, since there was no sign of any kind of
destruction. And if the explanation was some kind of
plague, the graveyards would have been full, and this was
not true either.
The likeliest theory is the one put forward by the
American archaeologist Sylvanus Griswold Morley, who
believed that Maya origins went back as far as 2500 bc.
Morley noted that the Mayan cities suggested a rigid
hierarchical structure, with the temples and the palaces of
the nobility in the centre, and the huts of the peasants
scattered around the edges. The Mayas had no 'middle
class', only peasants and aristocrats - the latter including
the priests. The task of the peasants was to support the
upper classes with their labour - particularly the growing
of maize. But their agricultural methods were primitive -
dropping seed into a hole made with a stick. They seemed
to know nothing about allowing certain fields to 'rest' and
grow fallow. So the soil surrounding the cities gradually
became infertile, requiring a move to another site.
Moreover, because the social structure was so rigid, the
ruling class received no new blood. So as the farming land
lost its strength, and the peasant population increased, and
the rulers became increasingly decadent, the society went
into a slow collapse - and a once-great people drifted into
primitivism, confirming Hapgood's suspicion that history
can go backwards.
Stephens's book inspired a French abb named Charles
Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg to follow in his footsteps
across Mexico. In Guatemala he found the sacred book of
the Quiche Indians, the Popol Vuh, which he translated
into French and published in 1864. In the same
102
5 The Realm of the White Gods
year he brought out a translation of the Account of Yucatan
by Bishop Diego de Landa, a work of immense value by
one of the original Spanish 'conquistadors', which had been
languishing in the Madrid archives. His four-volume
History of the Civilisation of Mexico and Central America
was immediately recognised as the most important work
so far on the subject. But one of his most interesting
discoveries was a Mayan religious book known as the
Troano Codex (which later, when a second part was found,
became the Codex Tro-Cortesianus), owned by a
descendant of Cortes, for it was in this book that Brasseur
found mentions of some great catastrophe that had
convulsed Central America in the remote past - Brasseur
declared that the year could be identified as 9937 bc - and
destroyed much of its civilisation. Brasseur had met
natives who still had an oral tradition about the destruction
of a great continent in the Atlantic ocean, and had no
doubt, like the Codex, they were referring to the
destruction of Atlantis. He went on to speculate that it was
from Atlantis that the civilisations of Egypt and of South
America originated. This seemed to be confirmed by an
account of a great cataclysm described in the writings of
the Nahuatl tribe, whose language Brasseur had learned
directly from a descendant of Monte-zuma. He suggested
that Quetzalcoatl, the white god who came from the sea,
was an inhabitant of the lost Atlantis.
In the College of San Gregorio, in Mexico City,
Brasseur discovered a manuscript in Nahuatl (which he
called the Chimalpopoca Codex), in which he learned that
the immense upheaval had occurred around 10,500 bc, but
that it was not one catastrophe, as described by Plato, but
a series of at least four, each of which was caused by a
temporary shifting of the earth's axis.
Such unscholarly notions could hardly be excused, even
in one whose knowledge of the culture of Central America
was greater than that of most of the professors, and in his
later years Brasseur came in for more than his share of
derision. Yet many of his theories would later be supported
by Hapgood's 'maps of the ancient sea kings' (while
Graham Hancock cites Nature to the effect that the last
reversal of the earth's magnetic poles occurred 12,400
years ago - in other words, about 10,400 bc). Brasseur
believed that there was an ancient seafaring civilisation
long before the first cities appeared in the Middle East,
and that its sailors carried its culture throughout the world.
He also believed that their religion involved a cult of the
dog star Sirius - thus anticipating the discoveries made by
Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen among the Dogon
in the 1930s.
103
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Between 1864 and 1867, the history of Mexico took a
turn in the direction of comic opera when the French
government, under Napoleon III, sent a military
expedition led by Archduke Maximilian of Hapsburg,
brother of Emperor Franz Joseph, to bring an end to the
civil war by claiming the throne. A gentle liberal,
Maximilian encouraged the arts, subsidised investigation
of the pyramids of Teotihuacan, and did his best to cope
with the total corruption that was part of the Mexican way
of life. Betrayed by Napoleon III, who decided to
withdraw his army, Maximilian was captured by the rebel
General Porfirio Diaz and shot by a firing squad. His
empress Carlota went insane and remained so for the
remainder of her long life (she died in 1927). But
Maximilian left a rich legacy for historians when he
purchased from a collector named Jos Maria Andrade a
library of five thousand books on Mayan culture, which
were sent to Europe.
Among Europeans to flee Mexico when Maximilian
was executed was a young Frenchman named Desire
Charnay, who had been the first to photograph the ruins
with a camera obscura. It was while his assistants were
setting up the camera that Charnay prodded idly in the soil
with his dagger, and unearthed pottery and bones, a find
that was to inspire a lifelong passion for excavation. He
would return to Mexico in 1880, searching for Tollan, the
legendary capital of the Toltecs. Convinced that it lay
beneath the Indian village of Tula, fifty miles north of
Mexico City, Charnay began to dig there, and soon came
upon six-foot-long blocks of basalt, which he took to be
the feet of huge statues intended to support a large
building. He called these statues 'Atlanteans' - from which
it may be deduced that, like so many Central American
archaeologists, he had come to believe that the
civilisations of South America originated in Atlantis. This
was enough to make the academic world regard him with
deep suspicion.
Charnay went on to study the ruins of another Maya
city, Palenque in Chiapas, discovered in 1773 by Friar
Ramn de Ordonez, who had then gone on to write a book
in which he declared that the 'Great City of the Serpents'
had been founded by a white man called Vptan who had
come from somewhere over the Atlantic in the remote
past. Ordonez claimed to have seen a book written (in
Quiche) by Votan -and burned by the Bishop of Chiapas in
1691 - in which Votan identified himself as a citizen of
'Valim Chivim', which Ordonez believed to be Tripoli in
ancient Phoenicia.
In the steaming heat of the 'City of the Serpents',
Charnay had to content himself with taking papier-mache
casts of the friezes, which
104
5 The Realm of the White Gods
were already being destroyed by the vegetation. In the
Yucatan city of Chichen Itz, built by the Mayas as they
abandoned cities they had built in Guatemala - and here
Charnay was confirmed in his belief that Mayan
civilisation had the same roots as that of Egypt, India and
even China and Thailand - the step pyramids reminded
him of Angkor Wat. But Charnay was inclined to believe
that the Toltecs originated in Asia. Later, in one of the
least-explored of Mayan ruins at Yaxchilan (which
Charnay renamed after his patron Lorillard), he was
deeply impressed by a relief showing a man kneeling
before a god, and apparently passing a long rope through a
hole in his tongue - reminding Charnay that the
worshippers of the Hindu goddess Shiva also pay homage
by drawing a rope through their pierced tongues.
Back in France, Charnay published a book called
Anciennes Villes du Nouveau Monde, but it failed to
improve his reputation among academics, and he retired to
Algiers to write novels, dying in 1915 at the age of 87.
Charnay's contemporary Augustus Le Plongeon was even
less concerned about his academic reputation, with the
result that his name is seldom found in books on Central
America (although one modern authority pauses long
enough to describe him as an 'argumentative crackpot').
By the time he was in his mid-forties, Le Plongeon had
been a gold prospector in California, a lawyer in San
Francisco and the director of a hospital in Peru, where he
became interested in ancient ruins. He was 48 when he
sailed, with his young English wife Alice, from New York
for Yucatan in 1873.
By this time, Mexico was firmly in the grip of Porfirio
Diaz, who had encouraged the corruption that so dismayed
his predecessor Maximilian; in fact, Mexico had reverted
to the days of the Mayas, with an all-powerful ruling class
and a browbeaten class of peasants, whose land was
confiscated and given to the rich. The result was that the
Indians in remoter parts - like Yucatan - frequently
rebelled, and when the Le Plongeons first went to Chichen
Itz, they had to be protected by soldiers. But Le Plongeon
learned the Mayan language, and soon began exploring
the forest alone. He found the Indians to be friendly and
polite, and he was soon known as the Great Black Beard.
From oyster shells in the region of Lake Titicaca, on the
border of Bolivia and Peru, Le Plongeon had concluded
that at some point in the remote past, the lake must once
have been at sea level, and that therefore
105
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
some great upheaval must have raised it two and a half
miles to its present location. Now, among the Indians of
Yucatan, he again heard tales of this great catastrophe.
He learned from these forest Indians that they still
preserved an occult tradition. Peter Tompkins states (in
Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids):
Like Carlos Castaneda in our day, Le Plongeon
learned that the native Indians in his day still
practised magic and divination, that their wise men
were able to surround themselves with clouds and
even appear to make themselves invisible,
materialising strange and amazing objects.
Sometimes, says Le Plongeon, the place where they
were operating would seem to shake as if an
earthquake were occurring, or whirl around and
around as if being carried off by a tornado ... Beneath
the prosaic life of the Indians ... Le Plongeon
concluded that there flowed a rich living current of
occult wisdom and practice, with its sources in an
extremely ancient past, far beyond the purview of
ordinary historical research.
Le Plongeon felt that occasionally the mask was lowered
sufficiently for him to glimpse 'a world of spiritual reality,
sometimes of indescribable beauty, again of inexpressible
horror'.
Le Plongeon learned to decipher Mayan hieroglyphs
from a 150-year-old Indian. Scholars were to cast doubt
on Le Plongeon's readings of these glyphs, yet his ability
is attested by his discovery of a statue buried 24 feet under
the earth of Chichen Itza, whose location he found
described in a Mayan inscription on a wall. The
inscription referred to the buried object as a chacmool
(meaning 'jaguar paw'); it proved to be the huge figure of a
man reclining on his elbows, his head turned at 90
degrees. With the aid of his team of diggers, Le Plongeon
raised it to the surface. But his hopes of sending it for
exhibition in Philadelphia were frustrated by the Mexican
authorities, who seized it before it had got beyond tHe
local capital. Chacmools are now recognised as ritual
figures - probably representing fallen warriors who act as
messengers to the gods - and the receptacle often found on
the chest is intended for the heart of a sacrificial victim.
The result of Le Plongeon's studies of ancient Mayan
texts were convictions that in many ways echoed those of
Brasseur and Charnay, but went even further. Charnay had
been inclined to believe that civilisation had reached
South America from Asia or Europe, Brasseur that it
originated in Atlantis. Le Plongeon thought that it had
begun in South
106
5 The Realm of the White Gods
America and moved east. He cited the Ramayana, the
Hindu epic written by the poet Valmiki in the third century
bc, declaring that India had been peopled by seagoing
conquerors in remote antiquity. Valmiki called these
conquerors the Nagas, and Le Plongeon pointed out the
similarity to the word Naacal, Mayan priests or 'adepts'
who, according to Mayan mythology, travelled the world
as teachers of wisdom. Like Brasseur, Le Plongeon cited
the Mesopotamian myth that civilisation was brought to
the world by creatures from the sea called 'oannes', and
pointed out that the Mayan word oaana means
c
he who
lives in water'. In fact, Le Plongeon spent a great deal of
space on the similarities between Mayan and the ancient
languages of the Middle East. (In both Akkadian and
Mayan, kul is the word for the behind, and kun for the
female genitalia, suggesting a common origin for words
we still use.)
But Le Plongeon's most controversial contribution was
his translations from the Troano Codex, first studied by
Brasseur. Like Brasseur, he agreed that this contained
references to the catastrophe that destroyed Atlantis -
although, as far as Le Plongeon could determine, the
Mayas had apparently referred to Atlantis as Mu. The text
spoke of terrible earthquakes that continued for thirteen
chuen ('days'?), causing the land to rise and sink several
times before it was torn asunder. The date given by the
codex - 'the year six Kan, and the eleventh Mulac' - means
(according to both Brasseur and Le Plongeon) 9500 BC.
Le Plongeon later claimed that he had discovered in the
ruins of Kabah, south of Uxmal, a mural that confirmed
this date, and at Xochicalco yet another inscription about
the cataclysm.
Le Plongeon's reputation for romantic flights of fancy
seemed to be confirmed by his book Queen Moo and the
Egyptian Sphinx (1896) in which he argued that the
Mayas' legendary Queen Moo and Prince Aac are the
origin of the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, and that the
evidence of the Troana Codex indicates that Queen Moo
originated in Egypt and later returned there. He also
speculates that the fact that Atlantis sank in the thirteenth
chuen may be the origin of the modern superstition about
the number thirteen; he suggests, more plausibly, that this
may explain why the Mayan calendar is based on the
number thirteen.
Such speculations obscured some of Le Plongeon's
more important observations, such as that the relation of
the height to the base of Mayan pyramids represented the
earth - as in the case of the Great Pyramid of Giza. He also
argued that the Mayan unit of measurement was one forty-
millionth of the earth's circumference - a suggestion that
107
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
might be regarded as absurd if it were not for the fact that
the Egyptians also seemed to be aware of the length of the
equator.
The Le Plongeons spent twelve years in Central
America, returning to New York in 1885. He was hoping
for a triumphant homecoming; in fact, the remaining 23
years of his life were to be a continuous disappointment.
To the academic establishment he was a crank who
believed in magic and in a chronology that struck them as
absurd (for everyone knew that the very first towns were
built around 4000 bc -it would be another seventy years
before that estimate was pushed back to 8000 bc, and even
that was fifteen hundred years later than Le Plongeon's
dating of Atlantis). Museums were not interested in
Mayan artefacts, or even Mayan manuscripts; the
Metropolitan Museum accepted Le Plongeon's casts of
Mayan friezes but relegated them to the storage basement.
So Le Plongeon lived on to 1908, and died at the age of
82, still regarded as an argumentative crackpot.
One of the few friends he made in these last years was a
young Englishman named James Churchward, who had
been (according to his own account) a Bengal Lancer in
India. (Peter Tompkins states that he was a civil servant
with connections with British Intelligence.) According to
Churchward, writing more than forty years later, he had
already stumbled on the trail of ancient Mayan ('Naacal')
inscriptions in India, when a Brahmin priest had showed
him - and allowed him to copy -tablets covered with
Mayan inscriptions. These, according to the priest, were
accounts of the lost continent called Mu, which was not
situated in the Atlantic, as Le Plongeon had assumed, but
in the Pacific, just as the zoologist P. L. Sciater had
suggested in the 1850s when he noticed the similarity
between flora and fauna of so many lands between India
and Australia. But Churchward's Lost Continent of Mu
would not be published until 1926, and then it would be
dismissed by historians as a kind of hoax. After all, Sciater
had christened his lost continent Lemuria, and it was after
this that Le Plongeon had discovered 'Mu' in the Troano
Codex.
Churchward seems to have been inspired to write his
Mu books (five in all) by contact with a friend named
William Niven, to whom he dedicated the first of them.
Niven was, like Le Plongeon, a maverick archaeologist - a
Scots mining engineer who worked in Mexico as early as
1889. At Guerrero, near Acapulco, he explored a region
that contained hundreds of pits, from which the building
material of Mexico
108
5 The Realm of the White Gods
City had been mined. Digging in these pits, Niven claimed
to have come across ancient ruins, some of which were
full of volcanic ash, suggesting that, like Pompeii, they
had been suddenly overwhelmed. From their depth - some
were 30 feet below the surface - Niven estimated that
some of them dated from 50,000 years ago. One
goldsmith's shop contained around 200 clay figures that
had been baked into stone. He also found murals that
rivalled those of Greece or the Middle East.
In 1921, in a village called Santiago Ahuizoctla, he
found hundreds of stone tablets engraved with curious
symbols and figures, not unlike those of the Maya,
although Maya scholars failed to recognise them. Niven
showed some of these tablets to Churchward, who said
they confirmed what he had learned from the Hindu priest.
These tablets, said Churchward, had been inscribed by
Naacal priests who had been sent out from Mu to Central
America, to disseminate their secret knowledge.
Churchward was to claim that these tablets revealed that
the civilisation of Mu was 200,000 years old.
Understandably, then, Churchward's Mu books have
been dismissed as a fraud. It must be confessed that this
was largely his own fault; he is so vague about the temple
where he claims to have seen the Naacal tablets, and offers
so little proof of his various assertions, that it is hard to
take him seriously. On the other hand, if Brasseur, Le
Plongeon and Niven can be taken seriously when they
speak of Mayan inscriptions referring to 9500 bc, then it is
possible that we may eventually discover that Churchward
was more truthful than we suspect.
Le Plongeon was a severe disappointment to the American
Antiquarian Society, which for a time published his
reports from Mexico in its journal. But his speculations
about Atlantis, and his habit of sniping at the Church for
its unsavoury record of torture and bloodshed, became
finally too much for the New Englanders, and they
dropped him.
Amusingly enough, the young man they chose to be
their representative in Mexico had started his career by
publishing an article in Popular Science Monthly called
'Atlantis Not a Myth', which argued that although there is
no scientific evidence for Atlantis, a tradition so
widespread must surely have some basis in fact, and that
this lost civilisation seems to have made its mark on the
land of the Mayas. He then went on to cite the legend of
light-skinned, blue-eyed people, with serpent emblems on
their heads, who had come from the east in remote
antiquity. His article came out in 1879, three years before
Donnelly's
109
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
book on Atlantis. He pointed out that the leaders of the
Olmecs were known as Chanes, Serpent Wise Men, and
among the Mayas as Canob, People of the Rattlesnake.
Edward Herbert Thompson's article attracted some
scholarly attention, as a result of which he found himself,
in his mid-twenties, in Mexico as American consul. It was
1885, the year Le Plongeon left.
As a student, Thompson had read a book by Diego de
Landa, the Spanish bishop who began his career by
destroying thousands of Mayan books and artefacts, and
ended by carefully collecting and preserving the remains
of Mayan culture. Landa had described a sacred well at
Chichen Itza, where sacrificial victims were hurled during
times of drought or pestilence. The story fascinated him,
just as, four decades earlier, a picture book showing the
vast walls of Troy had fascinated a seven-year-old named
Heinrich Schliemann, who thereupon decided that he
would one day discover Troy. Forty-four years later, in
1873, he did precisely that.
Diego de Landa's descriptions of the sacrificial
ceremonies would have been regarded by most scholars in
the 1880s as fiction; like Schliemann, Thompson was
determined to establish how much truth lay behind it.
Another account, by Don Diego de Figueroa, described
how women were hurled into the well at dawn, with
instructions to ask the gods who dwelt in its depths
questions about when their master was to undertake
important projects. The masters themselves fasted for 60
days before the ceremony. At midday, the women who had
not drowned were heaved out by means of ropes, and were
dried out in front of fires in which incense was burned.
They would then describe how they had seen many people
at the bottom of the well - people of their own race - and
how they were not allowed to look at them direct in the
face -they were given blows on the head if they tried. But
the well-people answered their questions and told them
when their masters' projects should be undertaken ...
Thompson lost no time in visiting Chichen Itza to look at
the sinister well; he found it as morbidly fascinating as he
had expected. The sacrificial well, or cenote, was an oval
water hole, 165 by 200 feet, surrounded by vertical
limestone cliffs that soared 70 feet above the surface. It
certainly looked grim enough. The water was green and
slimy, almost black, and no one was sure of its depth, for
there was undoubtedly a thick layer of mud at its bottom.
Finally, more than a decade after his first visit, Thompson
succeeded
110
5 The Realm of the White Gods
in purchasing Chichen Itz as Stephens had purchased
Copan. Now, in effect, he owned the well. But how could
he explore it?
He decided on an extremely dangerous expedient: to go
down in a diving suit. Realising that everyone would try to
talk him out of it, he started by going to Boston and taking
lessons in deep-sea diving. Then he was ready to approach
the American Antiquarian Society, and his patron Stephen
Salisbury. As he expected, Salisbury reacted with horror,
and told Thompson he would be committing suicide. But
Thompson persisted, and finally raised the funds he
needed.
Next he dangled a plumb line into the well until it
seemed to touch bottom; from this he determined that the
water was about 35 feet deep. But how to know where to
look for human skeletons in about 3000 square feet of
water? He solved this by throwing logs weighing as much
as a human body from the top, and noting the spot where
they fell.
Next, he positioned a dredge, with a long steel cable, at
the edge of the cliff, and watched the gaping steel jaws
plunge under the dark surface. The men at the winch
lowered the dredge into the dark water and turned the
handle until the cable became slack. Then they closed the
steel jaws, and heaved the dredge back up. As it came out
above the surface, the water boiled, and great bubbles of
gas surged up. On a wooden platform, the jaws deposited a
load of black leaf mould and dead branches. Then it
plunged back again into the water.
For days this continued, and the pile of black sludge
grew larger -one day it even brought up a complete tree,
'as sound as if toppled into the pit by a storm of yesterday'.
But Thompson began to worry. Supposing this was all he
was going to find? Suppose Landa had been allowing his
imagination to run wild? He would be subjected to
merciless ridicule. Even fragments of pottery did nothing
to raise his spirits. After all, boys might have used flat bits
of broken pots to skim across the surface of the well.
Then, one early morning, he staggered down to the
cenote, his eyes heavy with lack of sleep, and looked
down into the 'bucket' formed by the closed jaws as it rose
out of the water. In it he noticed two large blobs of some
yellow substance, not unlike butter. They reminded him of
the balls of 'bog butter' found by archaeologists in ancient
settlements in Switzerland and Austria. But the ancient
Maya had no cows or goats - or any other domestic
animals - so this could not be butter. He sniffed it, then
tasted it. It was resin. And suddenly, Thompson's heart
became light. He threw some of the resin on to a fire, and
the air was permeated
i
l
l
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
by a fragrant smell. It was some kind of sacred incense,
and it meant that the well had been used for religious
purposes.
From then on, the well began to yield up its treasures -
pottery, sacred vessels, axe and arrow heads, copper
chisels and discs of beaten copper, Maya deities, bells,
beads, pendants and pieces of jade.
Thompson had moored a large, flat boat below the
overhang of the cliff, alongside a narrow 'beach' with
lizards and giant toads. One day he was sitting in the boat,
working at his notes, when he paused to stare meditatively
down into the water. What he saw startled him. He seemed
to be looking down a vertical wall with 'many deeps and
hollows', as described by the women who had been hauled
up. It was, he quickly realised, the reflection of the cliff
above him. And the workmen looking over the cliff were
also reflected in the water, giving the impression that
people were walking about below.
He had also read that the water in the cenote sometimes
turned green, and sometimes became clotted blood.
Observation over a period revealed that these comments
were also based on fact. Algae sometimes turned the water
bright green, and red seed capsules made it look like
blood.
Finally, it was obvious that the dredge had reached the
bottom of the mud and slime - about 40 feet below the
original 'bottom' - and that no more artefacts would be
found. Now it was time to begin diving.
Thompson and two Greek divers descended to the flat-
bottomed scow in the dredge bucket, and changed into
diving gear, with huge copper helmets. Finally, Thompson
climbed over the edge of the boat - the boys who would
work the air pump solemnly shaking hands with him, in
case he failed to reappear - and clambered down the wire
ladder. At the bottom he let himself go, and his iron-soled
shoes and lead necklace carried him downward. Yellow
water changed to green, then purple, then black, and pains
shot through his ears. When he opened the air valves,
letting out the pressure, these disappeared. Finally, he
stood on the rock bottom. Here he was surrounded by
vertical mud walls left by the dredge, eighteen feet high,
with rocks sticking out of them.
Another diver joined him and they shook hands.
Thompson discovered that, by placing his helmet against
that of his companion, they could hold intelligible
conversations, although their voices sounded like ghosts
echoing in the darkness. They soon decided to abandon
their flashlights and submarine telephone - these were
useless in water as thick as pea soup. It was not hard to
move around, since they were
5 The Realm off the White Gods
almost weightless, like astronauts; Thompson soon
discovered that if he wanted to move to a spot a few feet
away, he had to jump cautiously, or he would shoot
straight past it.
Another danger came from the huge rocks jutting out of
the mud walls that the dredge had excavated. Sometimes
these would break loose and fall down. But they sent a
wave of water-pressure ahead of them, which gave the
divers time to move. So long as they kept their air-lines
and speaking tubes away from the walls, they were
relatively safe. 'Had we incautiously been standing with
our backs to the walls, we would have been sheared in two
as cleanly as if by a pair of gigantic shears.'
The natives were convinced that giant snakes and
lizards swam in the pool. There were snakes and lizards -
but they had fallen into the pool and were desperate to get
out.
Thompson did have one bad experience. Digging in a
narrow crevice in the floor, a Greek diver beside him, he
suddenly felt the movement of something gliding down on
him. A moment later, he was being pushed flat against the
bottom. For a moment he remembered the legends of
strange monsters. Then the Greek diver began to push at
the object, and as Thompson helped him, he realised that it
was a tree that had been dislodged from above.
On another occasion, gloating over a bell that he had
found in a crevice, he forgot to open his air valves to let
the air out. Suddenly, as he rose to change his position, he
began to float upwards like a balloon. This was highly
dangerous, for a diver's blood is charged with air bubbles,
like champagne, and unless these are released with a slow
ascent, they cause a disorder known as decompression
sickness or the 'bends', in which a man can die in agony.
Thompson had the presence of mind to open the valves
quickly; but the accident permanently damaged his
eardrums.
The bottom of the cenote yielded the treasure he had
hoped for: human bones and skulls, proof that Landa had
been telling the truth, and hundreds of ritual objects of
gold, copper and jade. They even found the skull of an old
man - probably a priest dragged down by a struggling girl
as she was hurled into the pool.
Only the treasure of Tutankhamen surpassed
Thompson's discoveries at Chichen Itza. The treasures of
the sacred well, and the incredibly dramatic story of their
recovery, made Thompson famous. When he died in 1935,
at the age of 75, he had - as he admitted - squandered most
of his fortune on his Maya excavations; but it had been the
kind
113
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
of rich and exciting life of which every schoolboy dreams.
His article on Atlantis had led him to a lifetime of
adventure, a real-life version of Indiana Jones, who had
originally inspired Graham Hancock's first excursion into
historical detection.
Chichen Itz holds an important lesson for those who
want to make sense of Meso-America's bloody past. When
I was sixteen, I read Prs-cott's Conquest of Mexico, and
was shocked by his account of the Aztec sacrifices. Yet the
maidens of Chichen Itz were not thrown into the pool by
sadistic priests to pacify cruel gods; they were thrown in
as messengers whose purpose was to speak to the gods, to
beg the gods to avert some catastrophe. Then they were
pulled out. Admittedly, a sacrificial victim whose ribs
have been sliced open with a flint knife so that his heart
can be torn out cannot expect to survive. But the Mayas,
like the ancient Egyptians and Tibetans, seem to have
believed that the passage to the underworld is long and
perilous - these sacrificial victims were being offered a
swift and safe passage. The priests thought that they were
doing them a favour, and no doubt most of them prepared
themselves for death in a perfectly calm frame of mind,
instructed in precisely what to say to the gods by a grave
and friendly priest.
Whether or not we can accept the notion of a geological
cataclysm that destroyed Atlantis and Mu (there seems a
general agreement that their destruction occurred
contemporaneously), there can be little doubt about the
evidence for great catastrophes in the remote past. In fact,
'catastrophism' was a respectable scientific theory in the
mid-eighteenth century. Its chief exponent was the
celebrated naturalist Count Georges Buffon, an early
evolutionist. Buffon's explanation of how so many species
had become extinct was that they had been destroyed in
great catastrophes, such as floods and earthquakes. Fifty
years later, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the
Scottish geologist James Hutton suggested that geological
changes occur slowly over immense epochs, but since at
this time most scientists accepted Archbishop James
Ussher's view that the earth was created in 4004 bc (a
view arrived at by adding together all the dates in the
Bible), his view made little headway - until another
geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, produced convincing proofs
of the immense age of the earth in his Principles of
Geology (1830-33). Science, as usual, lost no time in
rushing to the opposite extreme, and declaring that
catastrophism was a primitive superstition.
In the twentieth century, as Hapgood pointed out in his
'Great Extinc-
114
5 The Realm of the White Gods
tions' chapter of Earth's Shifting Crust, this view was
modified by discoveries like that of the Beresovka
mammoth in 1901, with fresh flowers still in its stomach.
Ignatius Donnelly had devoted many chapters to deluge
legends - and evidence - in Atlantis, and even more in its
successor, Ragnarok, The Age of Fire and Gravel (1883),
which argued that the Pleistocene Ice Age (which started
1.8 million years ago) was brought about by a collision of
the earth with a comet. In Atlantis he cites Brasseur to
show that the Mayas preserved legends of the destruction
of Atlantis.
Around the year 1870, a ten-year-old German named
Hans Hoerbiger arrived at the curious conclusion that the
moon and planets are covered with a thick layer of ice - in
the case of the moon, 125 miles deep. Later, as an
engineer, he saw the effect of molten iron on waterlogged
soil, and concluded that some similar explosion had
caused the Big Bang that created the universe. He came to
believe that the earth has experienced a series of violent
catastrophes, which have been caused by the capture of a
series of 'moons'. According to Hoerbiger, all the planetary
bodies in the solar system are slowly spiralling in towards
the sun. As the smaller bodies move faster than the larger
ones, they inevitably pass close to the planets, and are
'captured'. This, he said, has happened to our earth at least
six times, and our present moon is only the latest in the
series. Once captured, the moons spiral in on the earth
until they crash on it, causing cataclysms. The last one was
captured about a quarter of a million years ago, and as it
came closer, its gravity caused all the water of the earth to
bunch around its equator. Because of the lighter gravity,
men became giants - hence the biblical quotation about
'giants in the earth'. Finally it crashed, releasing the waters
and causing great floods, such as those described in the
Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Hoerbiger's book Glacial Cosmology (1912, with
Phillipp Fauth) caused a sensation, although astronomers
derided it. In due course it was enthusiastically taken up
by the Nazis, and Hitler designated Hoerbiger one of the
world's three greatest astronomers, together with Ptolemy
and Copernicus, and proposed to build an observatory in
his honour. But in spite of all this approval, Hoerbiger
remained distinctly paranoid, and told astronomer Willy
Ley, 'Either you believe in me and learn, or you must be
treated as an enemy.' His disciple Hans Schindler Bellamy,
an Austrian, continued to propagate his theories after
Hoerbiger's death in 1931, and made even more of the
evidence for earth cataclysms. It was not until the flight of
Apollo 11 in 1969, and the
115
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
moon landing, that millions of Hoerbiger disciples finally
conceded that the Master had somehow been mistaken.
In the 1930s, a Russian-Jewish psychiatrist named
Immanuel Velikovsky became interested in ancient history
through reading Freud's Moses and Monotheism - which
had proposed that Moses and the pharaoh Akhnaton were
contemporaries, not separated by a century, as historians
believe. Velikovsky's research led him to conclude that a
great deal of the dating of ancient history is hopelessly
wrong.
His research convinced him that some great catastrophe
had befallen the earth in the distant past. For a while he
believed that Hoerbiger's 'captive moon' theory might be
correct, but finally rejected it. Then he came upon texts
that seemed to indicate that the planet Venus was not
mentioned by ancient astronomers before 2000 bc. Could
it be that Venus had not been in its present position before
the second millennium bc? But if Venus was 'born', as
many ancient texts seemed to indicate, where was it born
from? According to Velikovsky, Greek myth gives us the
answer: Venus was born from the forehead of Zeus - that
is, of Jupiter. According to Velikovsky, around 1500 bc,
some great internal convulsion caused Jupiter to spew
forth a fiery comet, which fell towards the sun. It came
close to Mars, dragging it out of its orbit, then passed
Earth, causing the catastrophes described in the Bible (and
many other ancient texts, all meticulously cited). It went
around the sun, and returned 52 years later, causing more
catastrophes; then it settled down as the planet Venus.
How did Velikovsky arrive at what sounds like a
farrago of pure nonsense? By reading hundreds of ancient
texts, including many from Mayan history (he cites
Brasseur repeatedly). The bloody sacrifices of the Aztecs,
which so appalled the Spaniards (and which they cited as
an excuse for their own massacres) were, according to
Velikovsky, aimed at preventing a repeat of the 52-year-
interval catastrophe.
Velikovsky's success - Worlds in Collision became an
instant bestseller in spring 1950 - was understandable; his
scholarship is awesome. For example, in speaking of the
rain of blood mentioned in Exodus ('there was blood
throughout the land of Egypt'), he argues that this was
actually a red meteoric dust or pigment, and cites a dozen
myths and ancient texts, including the Egyptian sage
Ipuwer, the Mayan Quiche Manuscript (as quoted by
Brasseur), the Finnish Kalevala, Pliny, Apollo-
116
5 The Realm of the
White Gods
dorus, and several modern historians - all in the course of
less than three pages.
Although scientists derided Velikovsky's ideas - and
forced the publisher to hand over the book to a
publisher with no academic list to worry about -
Velikovsky has scored some triumphs. He predicted
that Jupiter would emit radio waves, and he proved
correct. He predicted that the sun would have a
powerful magnetic field and proved correct; one critic
declared that such a field would have to be 10 to the
power of 19 volts; in fact, this is the figure that has now
been calculated. He also suggested that the close
approach of celestial bodies causes Earth to reverse its
magnetic poles; the cause of such reversals (nine in the
past 3.6 million years) is still unknown, but scientists
now admit that Velikovsky's explanation could be the
right one.
Yet no sooner has the reader conceded that
Velikovsky appears to know far more than his critics
than he also has to admit that the notion that the fall of
the walls of Jericho and the parting of the Red Sea
were caused by a passing comet is too absurd to be
taken seriously. Velikovsky's thought is bold and
exhilarating, but in the last analysis fails to add up to
common sense.
Where Velikovsky cannot be faulted is in his premise
that, at some
time in the past, there were great catastrophes that
convulsed the surface
of the earth and killed millions of people and animals. In
this sense,
perhaps his most impressive book is the third in the series,
Earth in
Upheaval, which is simply a 300-page account of evidence
for great
catastrophes and extinctions. Rather like that maverick
opponent of
scientific orthodoxy, Charles Fort, Velikovsky simply
collected hundreds

of strange facts - for example, the Columbia Plateau, the

puzzling I
sheet of lava - 200,000 square miles in extent, and often a
mile deep - 1
that covers the northern states of America between the
Rocky Moun- \
tains and the Pacific coast. Then he mentions that in 1889,
during the ^
drilling of an artesian well at Nampa, Idaho, a figurine of
baked clay \
was found at a depth of 320 feet in this lava. His intention
is to )
prove that the lava flood occurred in the past few thousand
years (
(the implication being about 1500 bc). But his evidence
could also be f
construed to mean that the human race - and 'civilisation' -
could [
be far, far older than we assume. In fact, a remarkable book
called \
Forbidden Archaeology by Michael A. Cremo and Richard
L. Thomp- j
son (which will be more fully examined later) does
precisely that, I
arguing that the Nampa figurine was found in a layer
where the Pliocene f
age gives way to the Pleistocene - about two million years
ago.
!*
* * *
1
1
7
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Like Brasseur and Le Plongeon (and Bellamy),
Velikovsky speaks of the mystery of Tiahuanaco and
Lake Titicaca, in the Andes. Titicaca is the world's
largest freshwater lake, 138 miles long and in places 70
miles wide. Bellamy writes in Moon, Myths and Man:
It is a pity that the Peruvians have not preserved
any myths of the time when the waters of the
girdle-tide (caused by the moon) ebbed off. Near
Lake Titicaca we find a very interesting
phenomenon: an ancient strand line which is
almost 12,000 feet above sea level. It is easily
verifiable as an ancient littoral (coast line) because
calcareous deposits of algae have painted a
conspicuous white band upon the rocks, and
because shells and shingle are littered about there.
What is even more remarkable is that on this strand
line are situated the cyclopean ruins of the town of
Tiahuanaco, enigmatic remains which show five
distinct landing-places, harbours with moles, and
so on, while a canal leads far inland. The only
plausible explanation is that the town was once
situated on the shores of a girdle-tide, for no one
can easily believe that the Andes have risen some
12,000 feet since the town was founded.
But if we reject Hoerbiger's belief that the moon came so
close to Earth
that it caused a permanent 'girdle-tide* round the equator,
then we are
left with the only other explanation: that the Andes have
risen more
than two miles above sea level. The presence of various
sea creatures -
including sea horses - in Lake Titicaca leaves no doubt it
was once part
of the sea.
. It was the problem of Lake Titicaca - and the city of
Tiahuanaco -
that drew Graham Hancock to South America at the start
of his search
| for evidence of an ancient civilisation that predated
dynastic Egypt by
I
thou
sand
s of
year
s.
i The city of Tiahuanaco was once a port, as is revealed
by its vast
docks - one wharf big enough to take hundreds of ships.
The port area
; is now twelve miles south of the lake and more than a
hundred feet
: higher. The old port is located at a place called Puma
Punku (Puma
j Gate), and dozens of huge blocks lying around in chaos
indicate that it
| had been subject to some earthquake or other
disturbance. This, as the
j great authority on Tiahuanaco, Professor Arthur
Posnansky, observed,
j caused a flood that drowned part of Tiahuanaco,
leaving behind human
j skeletons
and those of
fish.
j In Tiahuanaco, Graham Hancock came upon the
Viracocha legend -
5 The Realm of the White Gods
the white god from the sea - except that here he was
known as Thunupa. Hancock was also intrigued to see that
the reed boats of Lake Titicaca looked exactly like those
he had seen in Egypt; local Indians declared that the
design had been given to them by the Viracocha people. A
seven-foot statue, carved out of red sandstone, is generally
supposed to be of Viracocha (or Thunupa), a man with
round eyes, a straight nose, and a moustache and beard -
clearly not an Indian, since the South American Indians
have little facial hair. Curious animals, unlike any known
to zoology, were carved on the side of his head.
Here, as in Egypt, Hancock was baffled by the sheer
size of the building blocks, many 30 feet long and 15 feet
wide. One of the construction blocks weighed 440 tons -
more than twice as much as the vast blocks of the Sphinx
Temple at Giza - again raising the question of how these
primitive people handled such blocks, and why they chose
to work with them rather than with ordinary-size blocks.
Hancock found a quotation in a Spanish chronicler, Pedro
Cieza de Leone, in which local Indians told him that the
city had been built in a single night. Another Spanish
visitor was told that the stones had been transported
miraculously 'to the sound of a trumpet'. This recalls not
only the biblical story of the walls of Jericho being
demolished by the sound of trumpets, but may also remind
us of Christopher Dunn's strange speculation that the
Egyptians may have used ultrasonic sound in drilling the
granite sarcophagus in the King's Chamber of the Great
Pyramid.
One of the main ritual areas of ancient Tiahuanaco was a
large enclosure known as the Kalasasaya, Place of the
Standing Stones -roughly 150 by 130 yards - whose name
came from the stockade of dagger-like stones, more than
twelve feet high, that surround it. Posnan-sky argued that
the purpose of the enclosure was astronomical - that, in
other words, it was an observatory.
It was while studying its astronomical alignment that
Posnansky noticed there was something odd about it. Two
observation points in the enclosure marked the winter and
summer solstices, the points at which the sun is directly
overhead at the Tropic of Cancer or Capricorn. In our day,
the two tropics are exactly 23% degrees (23 degrees and
30 minutes) north and south of the equator. In fact, our
earth rolls slightly, like a ship, and over a cycle of 41,000
years, the position of the tropics changes from 22.1
degrees to 24.5. (This change is known as 'the obliquity of
the ecliptic', and should not be confused with the
precession of the equinoxes.) And Posnansky realised that
the two 'solstice points' in the Kalasasaya revealed that
when they were made, the two tropics
119
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
were positioned at 23 degrees, 8 minutes and 48 seconds
from the equator. Working this out with a table of
astronomical positions, he concluded that the Kalasasaya
must have been built in 15,000 bc, at a time when,
according to historians, man was still a primitive hunter
pursuing mammoths and woolly rhinos with spears, and
immortalising this activity in the cave paintings of
Lascaux. Clearly, Posnansky's dating challenged some of
the most fundamental assumptions of historians.
That estimate had stunned his academic colleagues, who
preferred a more conservative estimate of ad 500 - roughly
the time King Arthur was driving the Saxons out of
England. And although Posnansky's estimate was based on
nearly half a century of study of Tiahuanaco, he was
dismissed by his colleagues as a crank. Fortunately, his
calculations drew the attention of a four-man German
Astronomical Commission whose purpose was to study
archaeological sites in the Andes. This, team, led by Dr
Hans Ludendorff of the Potsdam Astronomical
Observatory, studied the Kalasasaya between 1927 and
1930, and not only confirmed that it was an 'observatory',
but also decided that it had been constructed in accordance
with an astronomical plan that, at the very least, predated
the time of King Arthur by many thousands of years - they
suggested 9300 bc.
Even this struck the scientific community as
outrageous. One of the commission, Dr Rolf Mller,
reworked the calculations, deciding that if Posnansky was
wrong about the solstice points in the enclosure, and other
possible variants were taken into account, the date could
be reduced to 4000 bc. Posnansky finally made his peace
with the establishment by conceding that the correct date
could be either 4500 bc or 10,500. The latter, of course,
might suggest that the catastrophe that destroyed the port
of Tiahuanaco and cracked the Gate of the Sun in two was
the legendary cataclysm that destroyed Atlantis ...
For Hancock, the Kalasasaya was fascinating for
another reason: two massive pieces of statuary - again
carved in red sandstone - whose lower half was covered
with fish scales, bringing to mind again the fish gods
who, according to the Babylonian historian Berossus,
brought civilisation to Babylonia. The stories of the fish-
god Oannes sound curiously like those of Viracocha and
Kon-Tiki.
Finally, the Hancocks stood before the most famous of
the Tiahuanaco ruins, the 'Gateway of the Sun', a smaller
version of the Arc de Triomphe, 10 feet high and 12V!
feet wide, covered with mysterious carvings. Above the
gate is a menacing figure with a weapon in one hand and
a thunderbolt in the other - almost certainly Viracocha.
120
5 The Realm of the White Gods
Below this, Hancock was intrigued to see the form of an
elephant in the complex frieze - for elephants are unknown
on the American continent, and there have been no such
beasts since about 10,000 bc, when a creature with tusks
and trunk, called the Cuvieronius, became extinct.
Looking more closely, he saw that the elephant was
actually formed of crested condors - the design was a kind
of visual pun, of the same kind that appeared elsewhere on
the frieze, where a human ear might turn out to be a bird's
wing. Among other animals portrayed on the gateway was
a toxodon, a hippopotamus-like creature that vanished
from the Andes at about the same time as the elephant-like
Cuvieronius - in fact, there were no less than 46 toxodons.
There are also toxodons on Tiahuanaco pottery, and even
in sculptures. All this certainly suggested that Posnansky
was probably right in his chronology of Tiahuanaco.
But the Gateway had never been finished. Something
had interrupted the sculptor and snapped the gate in two -
and the scattered stone blocks made it obvious that it was
an earthquake. Posnansky believed that this catastrophe
had occurred in the eleventh millennium bc, temporarily
drowning the city of Tiahuanaco. This had been followed
by a series of seismic disturbances that had lowered the
level of the lake and made the climate colder. And at this
point, the survivors had built raised, undulating fields on
the land now rescued from under the water. The farming
technique, according to a source quoted by Hancock,
revealed a remarkable sophistication, so the fields could
out-perform fields using modern farming techniques,
producing three times as many potatoes as a similar
modern plot. Potatoes in experimental plots created in this
ancient pattern by modern agronomists also survived
frosts and droughts that would normally ruin the crop.
Hancock clearly suspects that these agricultural
innovations - as well as techniques for detoxifying the
poisonous potatoes of these high regions - were brought to
Tiahuanaco after the 'catastrophe' that flooded the city, a
speculation that seems to be in line with the notion that
Viracocha and his many namesakes - Quetzalcoatl, Kon-
Tiki, Votan, Thunupa - arrived after the 'darkening of the
sun'.
Hancock proceeds to an even bolder speculation. The
language of the Indians around Lake Titicaca is called
Aymara (while the language spoken by the Incas of Peru
was Quechua). Aymara has the interesting characteristic of
being so simple and unambiguous in its structures that it
can easily be translated into computer-language. 'Was it
just coincidence that an apparently artificial language
governed by a computer-friendly syntax should be
spoken today in the environs of
1
2
1
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Tiahuanaco? Or could Aymara be the legacy of the high
learning that all the legends attribute to Viracocha?'
One thing seems clear: that if Viracocha landed on the
east coast of Central America, as the Aztec legends
affirm, and his influence was equally powerful across the
other side of the continent, then the civilisation that he
brought must have been as vast as the present-day
civilisation of Europe or North America. And it is
unlikely that a civilisation as widespread as this would
remain confined to one continent: it was probably
worldwide - the great maritime civilisation posited by
Charles Hapgood.
Graham Hancock went on to travel all over South and
Central America, and his first-hand experience of ancient
sites confirmed his belief that he was dealing with a
civilisation that preceded the devastation of Tiahuanaco
(some time in the eleventh millennium bc), and which
was the common ancestor of dynastic Egypt, as well as
of the Olmecs, the Mayas and the Aztecs. Let me
summarise his main conclusions.
Again and again he was impressed - and baffled - by
the sheer size of the stones used in some of the ancient
structures. In the citadel of Sacsayhuaman (not far from
Cuzco, Peru)...
... 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 j 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
1 huge and problematic polygonal blocks, some of them
positioned
I 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
i a height of tfwenty-eight feet and was calculated to
weigh 361 tons (roughly the equivalent of five
hundred family-sized automobiles),
\ it seemed to me that a number of fundamental
questions were
] crying out for answers.
He experienced the same sense of bafflement in
Machu Picchu, the 'lost citadel' hidden away on the top
of a mountain, and forgotten for centuries. The Incas,
under their leader Manco Capac, had retreated from the
Spaniards in 1533, after Pizzaro's treacherous murder of
122
5 The Realm of the White Gods
Manco's brother, King Atahualpa. From Machu Picchu -
perhaps one of the most beautiful and spectacular sights in
the world - they harassed the Spaniards for years, even
laying siege to Cuzco. And although they came within a
few miles, the Spaniards never discovered their hideout I
on the inaccessible mountain top. When the Incas finally
gave up the
! struggle, Machu Picchu remained deserted for almost
four centuries, until the American explorer Hiram
Bingham was'led to it by a local
1 Indian in 1911.
\ Machu Picchu was not built by Manco. Although
dated by historians
| to about the end of the fifteenth century ad, Professor
Rolf Mller of iPotsdam - one of the team who studied
Posnansky's results at Tiahuan-|aco - concluded from its
astronomical alignments that it was built between 4000
and 2000 bc.
Here, as in Sacsayhuaman, Hancock was staggered by
the sheer Magnitude of the achievement. Whoever built
Machu Picchu had leployed the same kind of labour
force as the pharaohs who built the yramids, and had
devoted to it the same care and precision - giant locks
laid together with such exactitude that it was often
impossible to Lsert a sheet of paper between them. 'One
smoothly polished polygonal lonolith was around
twelve feet long by five feet wide by five feet :hick, and
could not have weighed less than 200 tons. How had the
ancient builders managed to get it up here?'
From Peru, the Hancocks travelled to Central
America. In Chichen Itz, in Yucatan, Hancock was
intrigued by the design of the great pyramid of
Kukulcan (one of the many names of Viracocha). It has
365 steps, and in some mysterious way, these are so
arranged that on two days of the year - at the spring and
autumn equinoxes - patterns of light and shadow
combine to create the illusion of a huge serpent writhing
up the staircase; it lasts precisely 3 hours and 22
minutes. Such a feat is, in its way, as impressive as the
construction of the Great Pyramid. In fact, the great
pyramid of the Mayas at Cholula, near Mexico City, is
three times as massive as the Great Pyramid of Giza,
covering an area of 45 acres - the largest building on
earth.
Thirty miles to the north-east of Mexico City lie the
ruins of the sacred Toltec city of Teotihuacan. The first
Europeans to see it were Corts and his soldiers, and the
circumstances were - to say the least - unpro-pitious.
On 8 November 1519, Corts had entered the capital
city of the
123
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
\ Aztecs, Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), and been awed by
its size and
1 beauty. This city of vast pyramids and temples, palaces and
canals, was
1 built in the centre of a huge lake, and was as sophisticated as
Madrid
! or Venice. These people were clearly not savages, but the
product of an
\ ancient civilisation. The Aztecs declared that it was modelled
on the
! original capital of their lost homeland, standing in the middle
of a lake
^ and surrounded by concentric canals - which inevitably brings
to mind
P
la
to
's
A
tl
a
nt
is
.
Corts took the first opportunity to seize the friendly
emperor Monte-zuma, who would die as the Spaniards'
captive. It was when they massacred the Aztecs during one
of their religious ceremonies that they reaped the whirlwind.
It was on the night of 1 July 1520 that the Aztecs caught the
Spaniards trying to flee, and slaughtered about five hundred
of them and four thousand of their Mexican allies. The
Spaniards called it 'La Noche Triste' - The Night of Sorrows.
Corts and the survivors escaped north, and found
themselves in a valley near an Indian village named
Otumba; all around them stretched the ruins of an ancient
city that seemed to be buried under tons of earth. There they
camped between two great mounds.
Two days later, they found themselves confronting an
immense army of Mexican Indians. Here Corts revealed
his military genius. He realised that a richly dressed man in
the centre of the enemy must be the chief, and plunged
straight at him with his small band of warriors. The sheer
ferocity of the attack took the Indians by surprise, and the
chief was killed. As the news spread, the Indian armies -
who outnumbered the Spaniards by about a hundred to one -
fled.
The city with the buried pyramids was the ancient capital
of Teotihua-can. The local Indians knew nothing about its
origin - they said that it had already been there when the
Aztecs came. The two vast mounds were two pyramids,
called the House (or Temple) of the Sun and the House of
the Moon. These were joined by a great avenue that the
Indians called the Way of the Dead, because they thought
the mounds on either side of it were tombs. (They proved to
be wrong.) Further in the distance there was another great
mound, the Temple of Quetzalcoatl. Charnay had started to
excavate it in 1883, but gave up. However, he noticed one
thing that was to strike later observers: that the faces
portrayed on pottery and masks had an incredible variety:
Caucasian, Greek, Chinese, Japanese and Negro. (A later
observer also noted that there were Mongoloid faces, and
every kind of white person, particularly Semitic types.) It
seemed that, at some point in its history,
124
5 The Realm of the
White Gods
the land of the Aztecs and the Mayas had been a
cosmopolitan centre like Constantinople.
In 1884, an ex-soldier named Leopoldo Batres
persuaded his brother- . in-law, the infamous dictator
Porfirio Diaz, to appoint him Inspector of Monuments, and
allow him to excavate Teotihuacan. Batres was less
interested in archaeology than in finding treasure, or
pottery and artefacts that could be sold to European
museums. He was puzzled by the sheer quantity of earth
and rubble that covered the city - as if, he speculated, the
inhabitants had deliberately buried it to protect it from
sacrilegious invaders. His excavations revealed that the
city had probably been abandoned after some catastrophe
that had set it on fire; many buildings were full of charred
skeletons.
Batres's highly profitable excavations continued for
more than two decades. He managed to represent himself
as a serious archaeologist by publishing a dozen or more
worthless books arguing with fellow archaeologists, but
continued to plunder wherever he got the chance.
His one indisputable contribution to archaeology was
his excavation of one of the great triangular mounds
under which Corts had camped nearly four hundred
years earlier. He hired large gangs of workmen at a few
cents a day - even his skilled stonemasons were only paid
25 cents a day - with donkeys and baskets, and they were
soon moving up to a thousand tons of earth a day. Later,
he even laid a railway at the bottom of the mound, and
hauled the earth away in wagons. And what soon began
to emerge was a magnificent step pyramid, the area of
whose base was roughly the same as that of the Great
Pyramid at Giza (although it was only half as high).
Between two of the upper levels of the pyramid, Batres
found two layers of mica - a glass-like mineral which can
be split into extremely fine sheets. Since this vast
quantity was worth a great deal of money, Batres lost no
time in removing it and selling it.
The pyramid left no doubt that tales of sacrifice were
true. In each corner of each 'step' the seated skeleton of a
six-year-old child was found, buried alive; most
crumbled to dust as soon as they were unearthed.
On the flat top of the pyramid there were the remains
of a temple, now virtually destroyed by centuries of
vegetable growth. Under the rubble he found a large
number of human figures carved out of jade, jasper,
alabaster and human bone, which convinced him that this
was a sun temple dedicated to the god Quetzalcoatl (or
Viracocha). He also
1
2
5
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
found a kind of flute that produced a seven-note scale
unlike the European scale.
Batres's idea of excavation would make any modern
archaeologist weep. His aim was simply to create an
impressive-looking monument. But the builders of the
Sun Pyramid had not - like the builders of the Giza
pyramids - used solid blocks; they had used a mixture
of adobe and stones. In their enthusiasm, Batres's
workmen often hacked straight through what had
probably been the outer wall, with the result that three
of the faces of the pyramid are half a dozen metres
further in than they should be.
Fortunately, Batres was unable to finish his work of
vandalism. The pyramid was intended to be finished in
time to celebrate the dictator's re-election in 1910, but
work had still some way to go when Diaz was overthrown,
and had to flee to France. Batres soon found himself
vigorously denounced by archaeologists and scholars,
particularly an American lady named Zelia Nuttal, who -
now Diaz was deposed -was able to detail the sins of
Leopoldo Batres with a wealth of embarrassing detail that
came from years of observation. Like his brother-in-law
the President, the Inspector of Monuments had a great fall,
and -mercifully - vanished from the history of archaeology.
I Further excavation of Teotihuacan has made it clear
that the site is ] as mysterious as Giza. The first and most
obvious observation is that I the actual lay-out of its three
major monuments - the Pyramids of the I Sun and Moon,
and the Temple of Quetzalcoatl - has much in common !
with the curious lay-out of the pyramids of Cheops,
Chefren and Men-! kaura. The great square of the
'Citadel' (or religious complex) and the I Temple of the
Sun are in a direct line along the so-called Street of I the
Dead, while the Temple of the Moon is at the end of the
Street, and / therefore out of alignment with the other
two.
Graham Hancock visited Teotihuacan, and pondered on
its mysteries. Like many recent authorities, he had no
doubt that the lay-out is astronomical. Gerald Hawkins,
author of Stonehenge Decoded, points out in Beyond
Stonehenge that, while the streets are laid out on a grid
system (four miles across), they intersect at angles of
89 degrees instead of 90. Moreover, the grid is not, as
you might expect, aligned to the four points of the
compass, but is twisted sideways so that the Street of
the Dead runs north-north-east, pointing at the setting
of the Pleiades. Another discovery of Hawkins may
strike us as even more significant. Feeding the data into
his computer, he discovered an alignment with the dog
star Sirius - which, as we saw earlier, is associated in
Egypt
126
5 The Realm of the
White Gods
with Isis, and which the Dogon of Mali know to have an
invisible companion, Sirius B. And in his book The Sirius
Mystery, Robert Temple points out that the 'Nommo' - the
amphibian gods from whom the^ Dogon claim to have
acquired their knowledge of Sirius B - sound very like
the alien amphibians whom the historian Berosus claims
founded Babylonian civilisation, and whose leader was
called Oannes. We have already noted the observation
made by Le Plongeon regarding the similarity between
this god's name and the Mayan word 'oaana', meaning
'He who has his residence in water'. If he is correct, this
would seem to argue a connection between Central
America and the lands of the Middle East. If we also
recollect Robert Temple's suggestion that the Dogon
derived their knowledge from ancient Egypt, then we
once more have what looks like a plausible link between
Egypt and South America.
Le Plongeon had also noted that many of the
pyramids of Yucatan were 21 metres in height, and that
their vertical planes (i.e. the plane that would be formed
if the pyramid was sliced in half with a huge knife)
could be inscribed in a semi-circle - in other words, that
the height was the radius of a circle whose diameter was
the base. This led him to suspect that these pyramids
were intended to represent the earth - or rather, the upper
half of the globe. We have already noted John Taylor's
discovery that the height of the Great Pyramid, when
compared with its base, is precisely the radius of a half-
sphere compared to the circumference of its base, and
his speculation that the Pyramid was intended as a
representation of the earth. In other words, the Maya
method would seem to be cruder, but is just as effective
a method of suggesting the earth.
Hawkins learned of Teotihuacan from a scholar named
James Dow, who theorised that the city was built on a
'cosmic framework'. Another scholar, Stansbury Hagar, has
also suggested that Teotihuacan is a 'map of heaven', and
that the Street of the Dead is intended to play the part of
the Milky Way - as, according to Robert Bauval, does the
Nile ; with reference to the Orion 'stars' of the Giza
pyramids. (Graham \ Hancock speculates that the Way of
the Dead was originally filled with ; water, which would
have made it even more like the Nile.) And an j engineer
named Hugh Harleston, who surveyed Teotihuacan in the
60s ; and 70s, concluded that it might well be a model of
the solar system, j with the Temple of Quetzalcoatl as the
sun, and the planets all repre- \ sented at proportionally
correct distances, right out to some so-far \ unexcavated
mounds representing Neptune and Pluto. This, of course,
j sounds totally absurd, with its suggestion that the
builders of I
i
1
2
7
[
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
/ Teotihuacan - perhaps ad 500, but perhaps even as long
ago as 2000
I bc - might have known not only the relative distances of
the planets,
/ but even about planets not then discovered. Yet it is no
more nor less
! absurd than Temple's observation that the Dogon knew
that Sirius was
a double star, that the moon was dry and dead, and that
Saturn had a
ring around it.
I
Harleston went on to work out that the basic unit used in
Teotihuacan was 1.059 metres. Noting also the frequency
of the figure 378 metres i (for example, between boundary
markers along the Way of the Dead), I Harleston observed
that 1.059 multiplied by 378, then by 100,000, I gives a
very accurate figure for the Polar radius of the earth, and
seems | to support Le Plongeon's speculation that the
pyramids were designed
I as scale models of the earth.
i
All this sounds like an argument in favour of von
Daniken's space visitors. But what Schwaller de Lubicz
and John West and Graham /Hancock and Robert Bauval
are all suggesting is rather less controls versial: that
ancient peoples probably inherited their knowledge from
a / civilisation that knew a great many things. Whether
these things were I originally brought to earth by
'Nommo' from the stars is, for our I purposes, irrelevant.
If ever any evidence for it turns up, then it might '
become relevant. But for the moment, there is a far more
fascinating problem: what these remote people knew, and
how they applied their knowledge. This is something we
can investigate.
But where Teot i huacan i s concerned, our
investigations still leave the subject steeped in mystery.
We do not know the date it was built. If it was built by
the Toltecs, then its date could be anything between ad
500 and 1100. But some carbon dating has yielded a
date at the beginning of the Christian era - which is
earlier than the Toltecs. The Aztecs themselves declared
that Teotihuacan was built at the beginning of the Fifth
Age, in 3113 bc, by Quetzalcoatl. Their previous four
ages (or 'suns') lasted, respectively, 4008 years, 4010
years, 4081 years and 5026 years, which adds up to
17,125 years before the beginning of the Fifth Sun. In
other words, the Aztecs date the 'beginnings' of
civilisation back to 20,238 bc. (They also anticipated its
end, in violent earthquakes, on 24 December 2012.)
At the moment, there is so much unexcavated in
Teotihuacan that it is impossible to say when the
original site was laid out - it may well be that, as in the
case of Stonehenge, it was built at widely separated
periods. We must take into account the possibility that it
may have already been there when the Toltecs came,
just as it was when the
128
5 The Realm of the
White Gods
Aztecs discovered it. All we know is that, like the interior
of the Great Pyramid, it seems to have been laid out with a
weird and baffling precision. And why did the builders of
the Sun Pyramid want to install .
t
a layer of mica? The
same applies to a building known as the Mica j Temple
not far from the Sun Pyramid. Under its floor are two
enormous sheets of mica, 90 feet square. It is fortunate that
Batres was dead by the time the Mica Temple was
discovered, for it enabled archaeologists to discover a
curious fact: that the chemistry of the mica reveals that it is
not local mica, but that it came from Brazil, two thousand
miles away. Why? And how were 90-foot sheets of mica
transported? Moreover, why was it then placed under the
floor? What purpose did it serve there? Graham Hancock
points out that mica is used as an insulator in condensers,
and that it can be used to slow down nuclear reactions, but
it is hard to see how an underfloor layer of mica could
serve any i scientific purpose.
Teotihuacan means 'City of the gods', or more literally
'City where men become gods'. This makes it sound as if
it served some important ritual purpose, perhaps
analogous to Bauval's notion that the 'air shafts' of the
Great Pyramid are intended to direct the soul of the
pharaoh into the sky, where he becomes a god.
So, like the Giza complex, the city of Teotihuacan
remains a mystery. At the moment, its complex
measurements and the arrangement of its strange
buildings make no sense. All that seems reasonably
certain, once again, is that it was built with astronomical
alignments in mind, and that to the Toltecs - or whoever
built it - it symbolised some divine mystery, whose
nature has been long forgotten.
The same is true of South America's most famous
enigma, the Nazca lines. These were discovered in 1941
by an American professor of history named Paul Kosok,
who happened to be flying over the desert near the town
of Nazca, Peru, looking for irrigation channels. What he
saw from the air was a series of hundreds of amazing
drawings in the sand - giant birds, insects, fishes,
animals and flowers, including a spider, a condor, a
monkey and a whale. They had never been seen before
because they cannot be seen from ground level - 200
square miles of plateau. At ground level, they proved to
be made by moving the small stones that form the
surface of the desert to reveal the hard soil underneath.
There are also huge geometrical figures, and long lines
1
2
9
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
stretching to the horizon, some of which end abruptly on
mountain tops.
The Nazca plain is windy, but the stones on its surface
absorb sufficient heat to cause rising air, which protects
the ground level. Rain is extremely rare. So the giant
drawings have remained undisturbed for centuries,
possibly millennia. Some organic remains from the area
have been carbon dated to a period between ad 350 and
600, and pottery to as early as the first century bc, but the
lines themselves cannot be dated.
Erich von Daniken would later suggest that the long
lines were intended as runways for the aircraft of ancient
space travellers, but this overlooks the fact that an
aeroplane would blast the stones in all directions; the same
applies to a spacecraft rising vertically.
On 22 June 1941, Kosok saw the sun setting at the end
of one of the lines stretching into the distance across the
desert. It was the midwinter solstice in southern Peru - that
is, the time the sun hovers over the Tropic of Capricorn
and prepares to return north. This convinced Kosok that
the lines had some astronomical purpose.
But when Gerald Hawkins fed the various alignments
into his computer, looking at a period from 5000 bc to ad
1900, he was disappointed; none of the lines pointed
conclusively at certain stars at significant times - such as
the solstice or equinox. Kosok, it seemed, was wrong.
But a later investigator, Dr Phyllis Pitluga, of Chicago's
Adler Planetarium, discovered that this was not entirely
true. Her researches demonstrated that the giant spider was
intended as a model of the constellation of Orion, and that
the series of straight lines around it were designed to track
the three stars of Orion's Belt. So the Nazca spider, like the
Giza pyramids, is associated with Orion's Belt.
Tony Morrison, a zoologist who studied the lines with
Gerald Hawkins, concludes his book Pathways to the Gods
(1978) with a quotation from a Spanish magistrate, Luis de
Monzon, who wrote in 1586 about worked stones and
ancient roads near Nazca:
The old Indians say that.. . they have knowledge of
their ancestors, that in very old times, before the Incas
ruled over them, there came to the land another people
they call Viracochas, not many of them, and they were
followed by Indians who came after them listening to
their word, and now the Indians say they must have
been saintly persons. And so to them they built paths
which can be seen today.
130
5 The Realm off the
White Gods
And here, surely, we have the key to the mystery of the
Nazca lines: the legendary hero-teacher Viracocha, also
called Quetzalcoatl and Kon-Tiki, whose return was still
expected when Corts landed. 'The old Indians' constructed
the great figures, because they expected Viracocha ' to
return - this time from the air - and the figures were
intended as a marker.
How did they make the figures? Many writers hve
speculated that the Indians must have possessed hot-air
balloons. But even if this were true, it would hardly be of
much use to the Indians on the ground. You cannot make
a 900-foot figure from a thousand feet above it.
On the other hand, the construction of giant drawings is
not beyond the skill of a group of dedicated workers
guided by priests. It is simply a question of constructing a
huge version from a small drawing or plan. Ancient
Britons faced a similar task when they carved huge
figures in the chalk of the Downs, and the same is true of
Gutzon Borglum, the artist who carved the giant faces of
American presidents at Mount Rushmore. Neither is it
entirely true that lines on the desert cannot be seen from
ground level - there are many hills and mountains in the
Nazca area that would enable the artists to gain a sense of
perspective. Tony Morrison has pointed out that although
the stones of the Nazca figures are weathered to a dark
colour, the tracks left on the desert by a motor car are
bright yellow, and the Nazca lines must originally have
been highly visible.
It is unlikely, of course, that the lines and figures were
intended solely as markers. They may also have had some
significance as fertility figures, and may have been the site
of ritual dances. Yet Luis de Monzon's comment, in 1586,
that the Indians built paths to Viracocha, surely offers the
most obvious and straightforward explanation of the
purpose of the lines.
We have seen how, at the end of the nineteenth century,
many respectable archaeologists believed that the Sphinx
was far, far older than the pyramids, and how modern
Egyptologists have moved steadily in the direction of
caution, substituting a kind of dispassionate classicism for
what they feel to be irresponsible romanticism. The same
thing happened to South American archaeology. In 1922,
Byron Cummings, of the University of Arizona, noticed a
large overgrown hill off the road from Mexico City to
Cuernavaca, covered with a coating of solid lava. He
removed the lava cover - often using dynamite - and
discovered
1
3
1
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
that it was a truncated pyramid, probably the earliest known.
It was the Mexican version of the Step Pyramid of Zoser. A
New Zealand geologist placed the age of the lava field
between 7,000 and 2,000 years, and Byron Cummings
decided that 7,000 years was probably accurate. Modern
scholars prefer to date it between 600 bc and ad 200. In his
book on archaeology in the Americas, Conquistadores
Without Swords (1967), Leo Deuel states that although there
may have been human beings in Mexico ten thousand or
more years ago, farmers and builders made their appearance
around 2000 bc.
In general he echoes the attitude of most archaeologists:
that it is pure romanticism to link the pyramids of South
America with those of Egypt, because there are several
thousand years between them. Yet, as we have seen, this may
be missing the point - which is the question of the age of the
tradition to which the Olmecs and Toltecs and Mayas
belonged. The ruins of Tiahuanaco seem to demonstrate
more clearly than others that civilisation in South America
may be far older than we suppose.
Graham Hancock makes the same point when discussing the
Maya calendar, which came in turn from the Olmecs (who
made the giant negroid heads that curiously resemble the face
of the Sphinx). The European calendar estimates the length of
the year to be 365
3
4 days. The correct length is 365.2422. But
the Mayas estimated it at 365.2420 - immeasurably more
accurate than our western calendar. They estimated the time
taken by the moon to revolve around the earth almost as
accurately as a modern computer - 29.528395 days. Their
astronomy \ shows a sophistication comparable to our own. Yet
these were the people of whom one scholar asks how they can
have failed to grasp I the principle of the wheel. The answer,
suggests Hancock, is that Maya I astronomy was not their own
creation, but a legacy from the distant I past.
All that we know of the civilisations of Central and South
America suggests that they did not grow up in isolation from
the rest of the world. There was a point when they were
connected with Europe and the Middle East, perhaps even
with India. The legends suggest that civilisation was brought
to South America by white men, soon after some great
catastrophe that obscured the sun. Documents and traditions
suggest that such a catastrophe occurred around 10,500 bc.
If we cannot be dogmatic about the date of the
catastrophe that struck Tiahuanaco in the Andes, we do
know the date of a catastrophe that struck Egypt.
Archaeological evidence shows that agriculture began
132
5 The Realm of the
White Gods
several millennia before the age we usually assign to the
first farmers. Before 1300 bc, sickle blades and corn-
grinding stones appear in late Paleolithic tool-kits. The
absence of fish remains at this period suggests that man
had learned to feed himself by agriculture. Then, it seems,
a * series of natural disasters, including tremendous floods
down the Nile Valley, put an end to the 'agricultural
revolution' in about 10,500 bc. This is the date when, West
speculates, the destruction of 'Atlantis' occurred, and
survivors came to Egypt and built the earliest version of
the Sphinx. This is the date when, according to Bauval,
the 'proto-Egyptians' planned, and possibly began
building, the Giza pyramids. This is also the date given by
Nature in 1971 and The New Scientist in 1972 as that of
the last reversal of the earth's magnetic poles.
All this at least suggests that the date when the 'white
gods' came from the east to Mexico was 10,500 bc. If
that is true, and the tradition that Viracocha founded the
sacred city of Teotihuacan has a basis in fact, then
Teotihuacan was also at least 'planned' at the same time
as the Giza pyramids, and whatever knowledge is
embodied in its geometrical lay-out was brought from a
civilisation in the throes of destruction.
Now we know that the Egyptians attached special
importance to the dog star Sirius, and to the constellation
of Orion, at whose heel it ) stands. We also know that the
Abb Brasseur was convinced that Sirius was the sacred
star of the Maya. We have reason to believe that the spider
on the Nazca plain represents the constellation of Orion,
which was of equal importance to the Egyptians. As
'coincidences' like these continue to pile up, it becomes
increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that the
civilisations of North Africa and Central and South
America had some common origin, and that this common
origin lies so deep in the past that our only chance of
understanding it lies in deciphering the faint - almost
invisible - signs it has left behind.
i
1
3
3
J
I i
- \
i
i
I
J
6 The Antiquity of Man
T
he small town of Altdorf, near Nuremberg, is ignored in
most encyclopaedias and gazetteers, which include only its
better-known namesake in Switzerland, where William
Tell shot an arrow from his son's head. Yet it has an even
more remarkable distinction. It is the place where modern
man first began to suspect that his ancestry might extend
back for millions of years.
The man responsible, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, would
have been horrified at the very idea. He was a devout
Christian who believed that every word of the Bible is
literally true. And it was while trying to prove this that he
unleashed the flood that would become modern
palaeontology, the science of ancient, extinct organisms.
The year seems to have been 1705 - Scheuchzer never
bothered to record the exact date - and he was taking a
walk with a friend named Langhans. Both young men
were students, and they had climbed Gallows Hill, at the
top of which stood the town gibbet, and paused to survey
the surrounding landscape, with its fields of hops
illuminated by the golden evening sunlight. Then
Scheuchzer's attention was drawn to a large rock at his
feet. The rock itself was grey, but clearly visible in it were
a number of black vertebrae. Scheuchzer pointed at it.
'Look! There's a proof that the Flood really took place!
That backbone is human.'
Langhans surveyed the rock with distaste.
Tm sure it is - some poor devil who was hanged
centuries ago. For God's sake put it down!'
And he knocked the rock out of Scheuchzer's hand. It
bounced down the hillside, hit another rock, and smashed.
Scheuchzer chased after it with a howl of anguish. The
impact had scattered fragments of the grey rock over a
wide area, and Scheuchzer had to scrabble in the
135
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
dust for a few minutes before he succeeded in finding two of
the blackened vertebrae. Breathless, he carried them back to the
gibbet.
'Look, human bones! And you saw them inside the rock.
How could the bones of a hanged man get inside a rock? These
have been here for thousands of years, since Noah's Flood.'
'Why are they black?'
'Because he was one of the sinners that God intended to
destroy, like the inhabitants of Sodom.'
Ignoring his friend's protest, Scheuchzer dropped the
vertebrae into the capacious pockets of his frock-coat. It was
his doctor's coat, and he liked to wear it on walks, for he often
picked up fragments of old bone or flint, to add to his collection
of oddments that were supposed to prove the truth of the Bible.
Five years later, now the chief physician in Zurich, and a
canon of the Church, Scheuchzer wrote a pamphlet to prove
that the Flood had really taken place. He pointed out that many
rocks with the shape of fishes inside them had been found
hundreds of miles inland, and argued that they had been left
high and dry when the Flood subsided. Then he went on to
describe the two vertebrae he had found on Gallows Hill,
embedded in a stone. How had they got inside the stone?
The pamphlet caused a considerable stir, and clergymen
quoted it from their pulpits to prove the truth of the Bible. But
scientists were hostile. Fossils had been known for centuries - a
learned Arab named Avicenna had written about them around
the year 1000, and explained that they were literally jokes -
freaks of a mischievous Nature, which enjoyed imitating living
forms, just as clouds imitate faces. Three centuries later,
Leonardo - who often dug up fossils while directing the
construction of canals - had suggested they were the remains of
living animals, but no one took him seriously. Now scientists
declared that Scheuchzer's vertebrae were really pieces of rock.
But what enraged Scheuchzer most was a book recently
published by a mineralogist named John Bajer, which contained
a picture of some vertebrae exactly like those discovered under
the Altdorf gallows. And Bajer had labelled them fish vertebrae.
Scheuchzer published a pamphlet attacking Bajer, but Bajer
stuck to his opinion. It would be more than another century
before science proved them both wrong, and identified the
bones as those of an ichthyosaurus, a sort of prehistoric
crocodile that flourished in the Jurassic era, around two
hundred million years ago.
Scheuchzer was determined to prove that fossils were the
bones of
136
6 The Antiquity of Man
Flood victims, and he had many disciples, who called
themselves Flood-ists (or Diluvians). Sixteen years later, in
1726, the Floodists were triumphant when Scheuchzer
produced conclusive proof of the reality of the Flood. This
was a rock from the limestone quarries of Oningen, in
Baden, and it contained some indisputably humanoid
remains, with an almost complete skull, a spine, and a
pelvic bone. Again, the pamphlet about it became
something of a bestseller. And again, time would prove
Scheuchzer to have been mistaken; long after his death, his
early human proved to be the skeleton of a lizard.
Yet it had served its purpose. Scheuchzer's pamphlet had
caused widespread debate, and his supporters grew in
number. They mostly agreed with Archbishop James
Ussher, who, in the time of James I, had worked out that
the world was created in 4004 bc (by adding together all
the dates in the Bible), and constructed all kinds of
amazing creatures from the bones and fragments they dug
up, including a unicorn and a dragon. But some of the
more perceptive noticed that fossils found at different
depths were often quite unlike one another, which seemed
to suggest that creatures might change from age to age ...
Scheuchzer died in 1733, at the age of 61, still totally
convinced that the Bible contained the full story of
creation - as, indeed, was most of the Christian world of
his time. Yet even by the early eighteenth century, one
remarkable man of genius had grasped the truth. His name
was Benoit de Maillet, and he was a French diplomat, born
in 1656. In 1715, Maillet wrote a book called Telliamed
(his own name spelt backwards) which suggested that the
germ of life came from outer space, and gradually
developed into marine organisms in the ocean. Fish had
crawled on to the land, and developed into birds and
animals. All this had happened over millions of years. But
Maillet decided against publishing the book in his own
lifetime, in case it jeopardised his standing as a
government official. It appeared eleven years after his
death, in 1749. But it had been read in manuscript by many
cultured people, and widely discussed. Malilet - who is
now forgotten - should be regarded as the creator of the
theory of evolution.
Voltaire derided Malilet's theory, as he also derided the
notion that fossils are the remains of prehistoric
organisms. His view was that fish fossils found in
mountains were the remains of travellers' meals. He did
not try to explain why the bones had fossilised in rocks
instead of rotting away. Voltaire's type of scepticism was
widespread in the late eighteenth century.
Nevertheless, things were slowly changing. In 1780, a
German army
137
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
doctor named Friedrich Hoffmann was walking in
a chalk mine near Maastricht, in Holland, when he
saw a gigantic 'dragon's' skull in the chalk. He had
discovered the first dinosaur skull. Hoffmann had
the skull removed and taken back to the Teyler
Museum in Haarlem, where it created a sensation.
He and his fellow scientists decided to call it a
'saurian'. Unfortunately, Hoffmann had neglected
to ask the owner of the mine, a priest named
Godin, for permission to remove the skull. Godin
sued for its return, and won. Deprived of his
epoch-making discovery, Hoffmann grew
depressed and died. Godin, who sounds an
extremely unpleasant character, locked up the
skull, and refused to allow scientists access to it.
But in 1794, the French invaded, and -to Godin's
chagrin - seized the skull, even though he did his
best to hide it. It was sent back to the Jardin des
Plantes in Paris, and studied by the great naturalist
Georges Cuvier.
Suddenly everyone began to dig for dinosaurs,
and many ancient bones were uncovered. Cuvier
became the great expert on extinct species - he
boasted that he could reconstruct a whole skeleton
from a single bone. But how had these species
vanished from the face of the earth? According to
Cuvier - who borrowed the theory from his
predecessor Count Buffon - the answer was that the
earth had been subject to a series of great
catastrophes, like floods and earthquakes, and these
had wiped out whole species. Then Nature had to
start all over again. Man and his cousin the ape had
been a product of the latest stage of creation, since
the last catastrophe ...
This meant, of course, that Cuvier was totally opposed
to Maillet's
theory of evolution - which was now becoming popular
with many
younger scientists, like Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Species did
not 'evolve'.
They were created, and then wiped out by catastrophes,
l i k e t h e d r a g o n
*
discovered by Hoffmann.
A young Englishman named William Smith had
been crawling around in British mines, and
announced that he had identified no less than
thirty-two 'layers' containing fossils - he gave them
names like Carboniferous, Cretaceous and
Devonian. And these layers were quite distinct.
You did not find Devonian fossils in the
Carboniferous layer. That seemed to mean that
each geological epoch came to an abrupt end -with
a catastrophe.
It is true that Cuvier was momentarily worried
by a discovery made by one of his most faithful
disciples, Baron Ernst Schlotheim, in 1820.
Searching among some mammoth bones in
Thuringia, Schlotheim found human teeth.
According to Cuvier, that was impossible -
mammoths
138
6 The
Antiquity of
Man
belonged to the last age of creation. Cuvier explained
soothingly that probably a gravedigger had buried a body
in soil belonging to the pre-diluvial age, and Schlotheim
breathed a sigh of relief - he was too old to start changing
his mind. Two more lots of human remains turned, up
among bones of extinct animals; again, Schlotheim let
himself be persuaded that this was a freak.
But in 1823, a human skeleton - lacking a head - was
found in ancient strata at Paviland, in Wales; because it
had been stained red by the earth, it was called the Red
Lady of Paviland. (In fact, it turned out to be a man.)
Inspired by this, a clergyman named McEnery found
ancient tools among mammoth bones in Kent's Cavern in
Devon. This should have convinced Cuvier that he was
wrong. He shrugged off the new discoveries as some kind
of accident.
Cuvier was undoubtedly a great scientist, but he was
also a dogmatic bully, who destroyed the career of his
fellow professor Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, an evolutionist
who not only believed that species gradually evolve, but
that they evolve because they want to.
Cuvier was lucky; he died in 1832, just before the
science of geology discredited his catastrophe theories.
The man responsible was a barrister who was also an
enthusiastic student of geology, Charles Lyell. After ten
years of careful study of the earth's crust, he concluded
that Archbishop Ussher's chronology - still accepted by
millions of Christians - was absurdly wrong, and that the
earth had been formed over millions of years. Given this
time scale, there was no need for catastrophes to thrust up
mountains and flood valleys; it could all be explained by
slow erosion. His Principles of Geology (1830-33) was
one of the most epoch-making books in the history of
science. He concluded that the Flood had been real, but
that it had been the result of melting ice at the end of the
last great Ice Age, some fifteen thousand years ago.
Landscapes had been slowly carved by glaciers over
hundreds of thousands of years. And fish fossils found in
mountains had once been at the bottom of prehistoric seas.
Lyell was opposed by Catastrophists, Floodists and
religious fundamentalists alike, but his views slowly
prevailed.
The theory of earth history that would gradually emerge
over the next fifty or so years was roughly as follows.
Our earth has been in existence for about four and a
half thousand million years, but during the first thousand
million, it was a red-hot
139
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
cinder that gradually cooled. Sometime during the next
thousand million years, the first living organisms
developed in the warm seas -tiny cells that were birthless
and deathless. The first fossils are of these unicellular
organs, dating back to three and a half thousand million
years ago. j A mere 630 million years ago, the first
truly living organisms appear | - organisms that can
reproduce themselves, and therefore afford to die. Life
developed its method of handing on the torch to the next
generation, which would hurl itself afresh at all the old
problems. Another forty million years passed before the
first invertebrate organ-j isms, like trilobites, appeared
in the seas. We call this the Cambrian era j - about 590
million years ago - and it was also the era of the first fish.
| Some of the first plants also appeared on land.
| In the Devonian period, about 408 million years ago,
fish who found j the sea too dangerous began to drag
themselves on to the land, and as 1 flippers changed into
legs, became amphibians. Reptiles appeared in the j
Carboniferous periods, 40 million years later. This first
great period in ] Earth's history - known as the Palaeozoic
- ended with the Permian ] era, 286 million years ago.
f The second of the three great periods, the Mesozoic,
is the age of
S mammals, then of dinosaurs, and extends from about
250 million years
| ago to a mere 65 million. We also now know that
Buffon and Cuvier's
j catastrophe theory was not altogether incorrect. It
seems that some
\ great object from outer space struck the earth 65
million years ago,
\ and destroyed 75 per cent of its living creatures,
including the dinosaurs.
\ Whatever it was - perhaps a vast meteor, perhaps a
comet, perhaps
\ even an asteroid - probably filled the atmosphere with
steam, and raised
| the temperature enough to kill off most of the larger
creatures. But for
I this catastrophe, it is unlikely that human beings
would now exist.
_|.jC For at the beginning of the third great age in the
earth's history -
/ known as the Cenozoic era - there was a warm, moist
world of vast
tropical jungles that extended far into northern Europe.
Without the
, great flesh-eating predators - like Tyrannosaurus Rex
and the gigantic
toothed bats - it was a fairly placid place, with feathered
birds, and
squirrel-like rodents that leapt from tree to tree and fed on
grubs
and birds' eggs. These rodents gave birth to their young
from their
\ bodies, instead of laying eggs, and they nurtured and
protected their
\ young, so increasing
the survival rate.
\ Sometime in the middle of the Cretaceous era -
which began about \ 144 million years ago - there
developed a tiny shrew-like creature that
140
6 The
Antiquity of
Man
probably lived in the roots of trees and ate insects. Shrews
are incredibly j fierce little animals (which is why we call
bad-tempered women shrews), 1 like tiny mice; their
hearts beat 800 times a minute, and they eat several times
their own body weight per day. (Because they are so tiny
they * : cannot retain heat.) In the peaceful Cenozoic era
that followed, these j shrews felt confident enough to
take to the trees, where they ate seeds and tender leaves,
and a new evolutionary development called fruit. In / the
trees they developed a 'hand', with a thumb and four
fingers, to
;
cling to branches. Many shrews were
exterminated by their cousins the j rodents, who had teeth
that never stopped growing, so never wore out. i But they
survived in Africa - or rather the vast continent that then \
included Africa and South America - and became
monkeys, with eyes \ that were side by side, instead of on
either side of the head, making \ them a better judge of
distance. We human beings are a descendant of the tree
shrew.
This great revolution in human thinking came about, as
everyone/j knows, because a young naturalist named
Charles Darwin set out, in'/ December 1831, to sail to
South America on a ship called the Beagle. /
The main aim of the voyage, oddly enough, was to take
three dark-/
skinned natives of Tierra del Fuego, off the coast of South
America!,
back to their home. The Beagle's captain, Robert Fitzroy -
a devout
Christian and supporter of slavery - had purchased them at
low coft
(he only paid a pearl button for one of them) and intended
to use theifi
in England as unpaid servants. (One of them, a pubescent
girl, Fitzroy
had purchased because he was disgusted to see her walking
around
naked.) Unfortunately, an anti-slave law had been passed
while he was\
at sea, and he was indignantly ordered to take them back.
And to give \
the expedition some practical purpose, the minister in
charge of the \
Home Office decreed that a scientist should go along too,
to study |
South American flora and fauna. The man chosen was
regarded as I
something of a failure in life. At 22, Charles Darwin was
already a |
failed medical student and a failed clergyman. Then he
found he enjoyed |
zoology and botany, and his professor at Cambridge
recommended him /
for the post on the Beagle.

Darwin also happened to be a good liberal (they

were called Whigs in those days), and he entirely
agreed that the three natives should be returned. The
captain was a lifelong Tory, and told the young
scientist
1
4
1
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
that he was being sentimental. In life, the race was won by
the fittest and the fastest. The strong survived, the weak
died off.
Darwin was not sure he liked this theory. But then, his
grandfather Erasmus Darwin had written a long poem
called The Temple of Nature (1803) in which he argued
that all life had originated in the seas, then moved on to the
land, where the fishes developed limbs and turned into
animals. So perhaps Captain Fitzroy was right. Perhaps
competition was responsible for the slow improvement of
species ...
The return of the three natives to Tierra del Fuego
strengthened his opinion. One of them, a youth they had
named York Minster, was strong and dominant, and was
soon happily settled with his brother savages. He quickly
threw off his civilised ways and went about naked, to the
distress of a missionary named Matthews who had been
sent to try and convert the natives. So did the pubescent
girl, whom Fitzroy had named Fuegia. But the youngest
and gentlest of the natives, known as Jemmy Button, was
bullied and beaten, and tearfully begged to be allowed to
return on the Beagle; the captain had to refuse him, and as
the Beagle sailed away, it was perfectly obvious that,
unprotected by the artificial barriers of civilisation, Jemmy
Button was going to have a hard life.
The same proved to be true of Fuegia. Ten years later, a
ship full of seal hunters stopped off the island, and Fuegia
hastened on board to renew her acquaintance with white
men. They were unable to believe their luck, and raped her
continuously until she collapsed with exhaustion and
almost died. When she was next seen by British observers,
she looked like an old woman. Darwin never learned of
this, but if he had, it would have reinforced his increasing
certainty that nature was not designed according to liberal
principles.
As Darwin studied the flora and fauna of Patagonia, he
found unmistakable signs that Cuvier - who was still alive
- was mistaken about catastrophes. He came upon the
bones of extinct creatures like mega-theria (giant sloths)
and toxodonts, yet saw equally 'prehistoric
5
animals like
armadillos and anteaters surviving and flourishing. He also
observed the bones of extinct llamas, and saw oddly
similar llamas -called guanacos - walking around. The
extinct llamas were smaller. But surely it was unlikely that
God - or nature - had wiped out the ancient llamas then
gone to the trouble of creating larger ones? Was it not more
likely that the guanacos had evolved from their extinct
ancestors?
It was half a dozen years later, back in England, that
Darwin came across a book that once again set him
thinking about the ruthlessness
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of nature left to itself. It was called An Essay on the
Principle of Population (1798), by the Rev. Thomas
Malthus, and it took a distinctly gloomy view of history.
Society is not ascending towards prosperity and liberalism,
for prosperity leads more babies to survive, and the
increase * in population soon outstrips the increase in
prosperity. Society is not headed up but down. If we want
to do something about the problem -Malthus argued later -
we ourselves have to try to control the population. But in
nature, of course, there is no one to control growth. So
population explodes, and the weakest die of starvation.
The truth, Darwin recognised, was that if every couple
of animals or birds or fishes produce more than two
offspring, and those offspring also produce more than
two offspring, the resulting population explosion would
cover every habitable inch of the earth in a few
generations. Death is nature's way of preventing the earth
from being overrun.
He began breeding livestock - dogs, rabbits, chickens,
pigeons - and over twenty years studied the variations
from generation to generation. There were far more than
he had suspected. That settled it. He now had a
mechanism that explained evolution. Nature produced
variations. The useful ones survived, the useless ones
died out. So, just as his grandfather had supposed, there
was a steady change and improvement, as the useful
variations continued to breed and multiply.
Darwin was in no hurry to publish these revolutionary
conclusions. He regarded himself as a good Christian, and
was aware that his findings amounted to a decisive
rejection of the Book of Genesis. So he plodded on with a
vast work that would have been at least 2500 pages long,
and which he half-expected to publish after his death.
Then, in 1857, came the bombshell - a letter from another
zoologist, an ex-schoolmaster named Alfred Rssel
Wallace, which outlined a theory virtually identical to his
own. Darwin was shattered; it looked as if he had wasted
a quarter of a century of work. It would be unfair of him
to stand in Wallace's way. He sought the advice of Sir
Charles Lyell, the author of Principles of Geology. Lyell's
advice was to publish Wallace's paper, and a brief
summary of his own ideas, simultaneously. This was done
in the journal of the Linnaean Society. Then Darwin
settled down to making a condensation of the vast work
he had been writing for years. It took thirteen months, and
was entitled The Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection.
When it appeared in November 1859, it created the
greatest intellectual uproar of the nineteenth century. The
book was obviously deeply
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
serious, and its mass of fact was overwhelming. Yet its
conclusions flew in the face of every religious principle that
man had held since the beginning of time. The diversity of
nature was not the handiwork of God - or the gods - but of a
simple mechanical principle: the survival of the fittest. There
was no mention of man - except a brief comment in the
conclusion that 'light will be thrown on the origin of man and
his history' - but Darwin's views on that subject emerged clearly
in the rest of the book. Man was not 'made in God's image'; he
had no unique place in nature. He was simply an animal like
other animals, and was probably descended from some kind of
ape.
The man who was largely responsible for the book's instant
success - it sold out its first edition in one day - was a scientist
named Thomas Henry Huxley, who reviewed it for The Times
and hailed it as a masterpiece. Huxley would go on to become
Darwin's most powerful defender. Evolution's equivalent of the
Battle of Hastings took place in Oxford in June 1860, when
Huxley debated Darwin's thesis against Bishop Samuel
Wilberforce (known as 'Soapy Sam' because of his unctuous
manner). Wilberforce gave a satirical account of evolution, and
then turned to Huxley and asked whether he was descended
from a monkey through his mother or his father. Huxley
muttered under his breath: 'The Lord has delivered him into my
hands.' He then rose to his feet, and quietly and seriously
explained Darwin's theory in simple language. He concluded
that he would not be ashamed to be descended from a monkey,
but that he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who
used his great gifts to obscure the truth. The audience burst into
roars of applause; one lady fainted. And Wilberforce, knowing
he was beaten, declined the opportunity to reply.
It is impossible for us to understand the impact of these
views. It is true that Maillet and Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck
had already outlined theories of evolution. But Darwin's work
did not amount to a theory. It had all the brutal impact of
undeniable scientific fact. And he appeared to be telling the
world that all its religious creeds were nonsense. There was no
need for God to intervene in nature. It was, in effect, a gigantic
machine that ground out new species as an adding machine
grinds out numbers.
Darwin was himself opposed to this 'soulless' interpretation
of his ideas. After all, a machine has a maker, and has to be set
in motion by human beings. Darwin felt that he had merely
discovered how the mechanisms of evolution operate. Anything
that had to be discarded as rubbish was not worth keeping
anyway.
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In a sense he was right. Yet his opponents were also
right. Whether he intended it or not, Darwin had brought
about the greatest intellectual change in the history of the
human race. Man had always taken it for granted that he
was the centre of the universe, and that he had been *
created by the gods. He scanned the revolving heavens for
some sign of Divine purpose, and he scanned nature for the
obscure hieroglyphics that would reveal the will of the
gods. Now Darwin was telling him that the hieroglyphics
were an optical illusion. The world was merely what it
appeared to be. It consisted of things, not hidden meanings.
From now on, man had to accept that he was on his own.
And what was this 'origin of man and his history' upon
which Darwin promised to throw some light? Now that
most biologists were Darwinians, there was no excuse for
being vague and imprecise.
In fact, Darwin was convinced that archaeologists
would dig up the bones of a creature who was midway
between the ape and man - in 1871 he christened it the
'Missing Link'. In 1908, 26 years after Darwin's death, it
looked as if his prophecy had been fulfilled when a man
named Charles Dawson announced that he had found
pieces of an ancient human skull at a place called
Piltdown, in East Sussex. With two fellow geologists, he
later found a lower jaw that was definitely ape-like, and
which fitted the cranium. This was christened 'Piltdown
Man' or 'Dawn Man', and Dawson became famous.
Yet the scientists were puzzled. The development of
'ancient man' was basically a development of his brain,
and therefore of his skull. Piltdown Man showed
considerable skull development. So why was his jaw so
apelike?
The answer was: because it was an ape's jaw. In 1953,
long after Dawson's death, fluorine analysis of Piltdown
Man revealed that he was a hoax - the skull was a mere
50,000 years old, while the jawbone was that of an orang-
utan or a chimpanzee; both had been stained with iron
sulphate and pigment to make them look alike. It is now
believed that, for reasons of his own, Dawson perpetrated
the Piltdown hoax.
In fact, as early as 1856, a mere seven years after the
publication of The Origin of Species, it looked as if the
first man had been found. A few miles from Dsseldorf
there is a pleasant little valley called the Neander -
Neanderthal, in German - named after a composer of
hymns. It has limestone cliffs, and workmen quarrying in
these cliffs discovered
1
4
5
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
bones so heavy and coarse that they assumed they had
found the skeleton of a bear. But as soon as a local
schoolmaster named Johann Fuhlrott saw them, he knew
this was no bear, but the remains of an ape-like human
being, with a low sloping forehead and almost no chin.
Oddly enough, the brain of this creature was larger than
that of modern man. But the curvature of the thigh-bones
suggested that he had once walked in a crouching posture.
Could this undersized gorilla be man's earliest ancestor?
The learned men said no. Most of them were disciples of
Cuvier, and one even suggested that the skeleton was of a
Cossack who had pursued Napoleon back from Russia in
1814. And the great Rudolf Virchow, founder of cellular
pathology, thought it was the skeleton of an idiot. For a
while the schoolmaster Fuhlrott was thoroughly depressed.
Then Sir Charles Lyell took a hand, and announced that the
'idiot' was indeed a primitive human being. And although
Virchow refused to admit he was wrong, more discoveries
over the next 25 years left no doubt that Neanderthal Man
was indeed an early human being.
So this, it seemed, was the 'missing link', or what
Darwin's combative German disciple Haeckel preferred to
call Pithecanthropus, Ape Man. Or was it? Surely the ape-
man would have a much smaller brain than modern man,
not a larger one? In which case, Neanderthal ought to be
fairly recent - say, over the past hundred thousand years.
The next vital step in the search for ancient man was
taken by the French - not by the Parisian professors of
geology, who still believed Cuvier's assertion that man is a
recent creation, but by two remarkable amateurs. They
uncovered the existence of modern man's direct ancestor,
Cro-Magnon man.
It all started some time in the 1820s, when a French
lawyer named Edouard Lartet, who lived in the village of
Gers in southern France, was intrigued by a huge tooth
brought to him by a local farmer. Lartet looked it up in his
Cuvier, and discovered that it was the tooth of a mammoth.
According to Cuvier, mammoths had died out long before
man arrived on Earth, so what was a mammoth tooth doing
near the surface? Lartet began to dig, and in 1837, found
some bones and skull fragments of an ape-like creature
dating from the mid-Tertiary period - perhaps fifteen
million years ago. This was later identified as Dryopi-
thecus, which some modern scientists regard as man's
original ancestor.
Lartet now came under the influence of a customs
officer and playwright called Boucher de Crvecoeur de
Perthes, who lived in Abbeville, on the Somme, and who
was convinced that man dated back to the
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6 The Antiquity of Man
Tertiary era, more than two million years ago. Both Lartet
and Boucher de Perthes searched Tertiary deposits without
success.
But Boucher de Perthes was now digging in earnest in
Picardy, and found many ancient animal bones, as well as
hand axes, scrapers and awls that had obviously been made
by man. When he showed these to the professors of
geology, they explained patronisingly that they were not
man-made tools, but pieces of hardened silica that merely
looked like tools. But Boucher was saved from
discouragement by a visit from Charles Lyell, who had no
doubt that his hand axes were made by man.
It was a slap in the face for Cuvier's disciples; the most
eminent of all modern geologists had declared that some
form of 'fossil man' had existed for tens of thousands of
years, at the time of the mammoth, the sabre-toothed tiger
and the cave bear. This was Lyell's second major claim to
an important place in the history of science. The cautious
Englishman who had advised Darwin not to make too
much of the descent of man now gave a decisive impetus
to the science of ancient man.
Boucher's problem was a certain happy-go-lucky lack of
precision, which had made him an easy target for Cuvier's
followers; his vagueness made even Lyell impatient. Yet
this rather unscientific individual, who was always
jumping to the wrong conclusions, made discoveries of
inestimable importance. It was his associate Lartet,
however, who made the most exciting discovery so far.
Now financed by an English industrialist named Henry
Christy, and able to devote his full time to his researches,
Lartet abandoned the Tertiary layers, and began to study
the next era - the Pleistocene or Ice Age. In September
1860, he came across a pile of primeval kitchen rubbish in
Masst, in the department of Arrige, in which he found a
stag antler with a cave bear scratched on it. Ancient man, it
seemed, was an artist. When a man named Brouillette had
found a bone engraved with two does 20 years earlier, the
professors had dismissed it as a product of children. But
Lartet's antler was in a completely unexplored layer. The
learned world was now forced to take him seriously.
Next he moved to the valley of the river Vzre, in the
Dordogne. This valley was, as Herbert Wendt has
commented, as important for prehistory as the Valley of
the Kings was for Egyptology. In 1864, Lartet found a
mammoth's tusk with hand-axe marks on it - proof positive
that man was a contemporary of the mammoth.
In 1868, Lartet heard of a new discovery made in the
Vzre valley
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
- a cave uncovered by railway construction near the
village of Les
Eyzies, at a place called Cro-Magnon. Lartet sent his son
Louis to look
at it. Louis had no doubt that this was the greatest
discovery so far.
The cave was full of the artefacts of its former occupants.
But, more
important, it contained skeletons. And a skull that lay at the
back of
the cave was virtually identical to any skull that could be
found in the
local churchyard, with a large brain-case and the jutting
chin of modern
man.
It may be of sinister significance that this dwelling place
of modern man was the scene of violence. The six Cro-
Magnon humans - including three younger men, a woman
and a baby - had died under strange circumstances. The
woman's skull had a deep head wound, which was in the
process of healing. But it seemed that she had died while
giving birth to the baby. How she and the others had died
was undetermined
- the Cro-Magnon cave constitutes the first detective story
in human
history.
As usual, the professors would have none of it. They
said the cave was simply a burial site, and that it was
probably more or less modern. But their certainty was
soon undermined as other Cro-Magnon skeletons began to
turn up in other places, which were obviously not modern
burial sites. On a wall in a cave at Les Combarelles there
was an engraving of a bearded human face. All the
evidence indicated that such caves were occupied by
hunters. The ancient men of the Vzre valley lived by
pursuing animals. Near the village of Solutr, thousands of
bones of wild horses were found at the foot of a steep crag
- the hunters had chased them into a trap and over the cliff.
In short, man's direct ancestor was not Neanderthal man,
but these Cro-Magnon hunters and artists, whose women
wore ornaments of carved ivory and shells.
Cro-Magnon man might have been discovered a decade
earlier if a Spanish hidalgo called Don Marcelino de
Sautuola had showed more curiosity. In about 1858 - the
exact date is not certain - a dog belonging to Don
Marcelino, who lived at Altamira, vanished down a crack
in the ground when he was out hunting; the crack proved
to be the entrance of an underground cave. Don Marcelino
had it sealed up for safety. About twenty years later, after
attending the Paris Exhibition of 1878 and seeing Ice Age
tools, Don Marcelino went into the cave and began
digging for human artefacts; he found a hand axe and
some stone arrowheads. Then, one day, his five-year-old
daughter Marie came into the cave with him and cried out
in excitement; she had seen pictures
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6 The Antiquity of Man
of charging bulls on the walls, in a part of the cave whose
low ceiling had made it inaccessible to her father.
The pigment proved to be still wet. And this was to be
Don Marcel-lino's downfall. For when he announced his
discovery to the world, the experts denounced it as a fraud.
Don Marcelino died a bitter and disappointed man. But
years later, after one of these experts - a man named
Cartailhac - had studied similar caves at Les Eyzies, he
realised that he had done Don Marcelino a great injustice,
and hurried back to apologise. Marie de Sautuola, now an
old lady, could only smile sadly and take him to see Don
Marcelino's grave.
Many other painted caves were later discovered - one of
the most spectacular at Lascaux - full of these drawings of
bison, bulls, wild horses, bears, rhinoceroses, and even of
men wearing deers' antlers. These latter were obviously
shamans, or magicians, and it seemed that the purpose of
the drawings was magical - to make sure that the prey was
somehow lured into the path of the Stone Age hunters.
And what of Neanderthal man, who was still around
50,000 years ago, when Cro-Magnon man was performing
his magical ceremonies? The fact that he had vanished
from history while Cro-Magnon was still flourishing
suggests the sinister hypothesis that he had been wiped out
by his artistic cousin .. .
But how old was man?
So far, the palaeontologists had succeeded in tracing
human history back a hundred thousand years, into the
Pleistocene era. A jaw discovered many years later - in
1907 - in a sandpit near Heidelberg pushed back the age of
Neanderthal man to about 150,000 years. But since he was
definitely not 'the missing link', this did nothing to clarify
the early history of man. But ancient skulls and human
artefacts were always turning up in far older layers,
apparently justifying Boucher de Perthes's conviction that
man might date back to the Tertiary era.
For example, in 1866, in Calaveras County, California, a
mine owner named Mattison discovered part of a human-
type skull in a layer of gravel 130 feet below the surface, at
a place called Bald Hill. The layer in which it was found
seemed to date from the Pliocene era, more than two
million years ago. It was examined by the geologist J. D.
Whitney, who told the California Academy of Sciences
that it had been found in Pliocene strata.
This outraged religious opinion in America, since it
seemed to
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
contradict the Bible. The religious press attacked the
Calaveras skull as a fraud, and one Congregationalist
minister announced that he had talked to miners who had
planted the skull as a hoax on Whitney. The original
hoaxer had been a Wells Fargo agent named Scribner, to
whom the finder of the skull, Mr Mattison, had taken it -
not realising that he had planted it as a joke. But a Dr A. S.
Hudson, who tried to get to the bottom of the story some
years later, was assured by Scribner that it was no hoax.
And Mattison's wife verified that her husband had brought
it back from the mine encrusted with sand and fossils, and
they had kept it around the house for a year. In spite of all
this, the hoax story stuck.
One of those who did not believe it to be a hoax was
Alfred Rssel Wallace, co-founder of evolutionary theory.
He knew that Whitney had investigated many other reports
of human bones found at great depths in mines, and that in
some cases the bones appeared to come from strata even
older than the Pliocene. Whitney had also investigated
stone tools and artefacts that seemed to be millions of
years old. Ten years earlier, a complete human skeleton
had been found by miners under Table Mountain,
Tuolumne County, and nearby were bones and remains
that included mastodon teeth - which seemed to date the
skeleton to the Miocene, more than five million years ago.
Another fragment of a human skull was also found in
Table Mountain in 1857, near mastodon debris. Whitney
examined a human jaw and stone artefacts from below the
same mountain, with a possible age of more than nine
million years. Human bones found in the Missouri tunnel,
in Placer County, came from a layer deposited more than
eight million years ago. Whitney also spoke to a Dr H. H.
Boyce who had found human bones in Clay Hill, Eldorado
County, in a layer that could have been Pliocene or even
Miocene. Whitney brought together all his evidence for
'Tertiary Man' (the Tertiary period ended with the
Pliocene) in a book called Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra
Nevada of California in 1880.
Some of the artefacts found in Tuolumne, California,
sounded so absurd that it was hard to see how they could
not be a hoax. These included a mortar found in situ (i.e.
found embedded in the earth at the site, not, say, in some
river valley where it might have been carried by rivers or
glaciers), in gravels more than 35 million years old, a
pestle and mortar found at the same depth, and a pestle
(known as the King Pestle) found in strata more than nine
million years old. Yet there would be no possibility of their
being 'planted' in recent times. It seemed
150
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6 The Antiquity of Man
more likely that they might have been taken there by
primeval miners thousands of years ago.
Understandably, Alfred Rssel Wallace was inclined to
feel that these finds - and dozens of others like them -
suggested that man might indeed be millions of years older
than Darwin and Haeckel believed -perhaps because
'through culture, [man] has been partitioned from the
vagaries of natural selection'. So when he heard that a Kent
grocer named Benjamin Harrison had been finding stone
hand axes in beds of gravel that seemed to date from the
Pliocene (more than two million years old) and even the
Miocene era (more than five million), he hastened to go
and see him. Harrison lived in Ightham, not far from
London, in an area of the Weald - a kind of valley between
the North Downs and the South Downs, eroded away by
rivers.
A river acts as a kind of excavating tool, for as it cuts
down into the earth, it leaves the past exposed in the form
of gravels. It reverses the usual law of archaeology - that
the deeper the level, the older it is, for the higher gravels
are the oldest. Searching these higher levels, Harrison
found not only 'neoliths' - sophisticated stone tools made
during the last hundred thousand years - but also
'palaeoliths', tools that are perhaps a million years old, and
even 'eoliths', tools so primitive that it is often hard to tell
them from naturally shaped stones.
In 1891, Wallace went to see Harrison, and was
fascinated by his stones. Like the eminent geologist Sir
John Prestwich, he had no doubt that Harrison's palaeoliths
and eoliths proved that tool-making animals had been
around for millions of years.
But now the end of the century was approaching, scientists
like Wallace and Prestwich were gradually becoming a
minority. Darwin's suggestion that man had descended
from the apes had aroused bitter and derisive opposition,
so that even to make such a statement at a public meeting
was enough to unleash shouts of rage or jeers of sarcastic
laughter. The argument had become polarised - religious
bigots on the one hand, and aggressive supporters of the
ape-man on the other. The ape-man supporters had been
delighted with the discovery of Neanderthal, for it seemed
to prove that man had been little more than an ape in the
last hundred thousand years or so. So Wallace, Prestwich
and others of their way of thinking found themselves,
whether they liked it or not, tarred with the same brush as
'Soapy Sam' Wilberforce and Captain
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
(now Vice-Admiral) Fitzroy, Darwin's former shipmate, who
remained implacably opposed to Darwinism.
Ernst Haeckel, the German Darwinist who liked to assert: 'It
is now an indisputable fact that man is descended from the
apes', agreed with Wallace on one central point: that early man
should be sought in the Tertiary era, perhaps five million years
ago. He was also convinced that man's original ancestor was a
gibbon, a monkey with very long arms, which is found in Java
and Sumatra. He would later prove to be wrong about this. But
his suggestion fell on fertile ground, for it reached the ears of a
young Dutch student of anatomy named Eugene Dubois, who
greatly preferred palaeontology to medicine.
It seemed to Dubois that the best way to satisfy his passion
for ancient man was to join the army as a doctor and get himself
posted to the Dutch East Indies. In 1888 he sailed for Sumatra,
then succeeded, on medical grounds, in being transferred to
Java. He had been sent a skull found in the Trinil highlands of
central Java - a skull whose exceptional brain capacity
resembled that of Neanderthal man - and now went to dig in the
same place. Soon he found another skull, and then, in a region
of Tertiary deposits, a fragment of jaw-bone with a tooth. He
also found many animal bone fragments, until he filled several
boxes. Then, in succession, he found a molar, and large bowl-
shaped fragment of a skull, and a fossilised thigh-bone. This, he
felt certain, was the missing link, Haeckel's Pithecanthropus or
ape-man. Yet already there was a feature that seemed to
contradict the Neanderthal find. The thigh-bone showed that
this ape-man walked erect, not crouching. He was
Pithecanthropus erectus.
Dubois wrote and told Haeckel, who was delighted. Then
Dubois took his finds back to Leyden, where in 1896 he
exhibited them at an international conference. To his
disappointment, only a quarter of the professors were
convinced. Some thought it was a gibbon, some thought the
thigh-bone and the skull did not belong together, some thought
it could not be from the Tertiary period (they proved to be
right). And Virchow, who had declared Neanderthal man to be
an idiot, now declared that Pithecanthropus was modern.
Dubois showed a deplorable lack of the scientific spirit; he
packed up his bones and refused to let anyone else see them. It
was a paranoid reaction, and one that cost Dubois the triumph
that should have been his. For when he finally allowed the
boxes to be opened, in 1927, four more thigh-bones were
found. If he had allowed them to be seen earlier, Virchow
would have had to admit defeat. In fact, Dubois became
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6 The Antiquity of Man
virtually a hermit, and in his later years, was inclined to
believe that his Pithecanthropus was a gibbon.
By that time, another palaeontologist, G. von
Koenigswald, had made a careful study of the Trinil strata,
and proved that Dubois's ape-man dated from the mid-
Pleistocene, and was about 300,000 years old. Eventually,
enough bone fragments and stone tools were found to
leave no doubt that Java man was undoubtedly a human
being. But was he the ancestor of modern man?
A new rival was about to appear on the scene.
In 1911, a butterfly collector named Kattwinkel was
pursuing a specimen with his net when he glanced down
and saw that he was about to stumble over the edge of a
steep cliff. The Olduvai Gorge, in what was then German
East Africa (and is now Tanzania) is virtually invisible
until you are about to fall into it. Kattwinkel climbed down
the 300-foot slope, and found that the gorge had an
abundance of rocks containing fossils. He pushed a few of
these into his collecting bag, and took them back to Berlin.
When a so-far unknown three-toed horse was found among
them, a geologist named Professor Hans Reck was asked
to go and study the gorge.
He soon made some important finds - bones of
prehistoric hippos, elephants and antelopes. Then one of
his native assistants saw a piece of bone sticking out of the
earth. After scraping away the surface, he found himself
peering at what looked like an ape skull, embedded in the
rock. It had to be chipped out with hammers and chisels,
and proved to be a human being, not an ape. Reck
identified the strata in which it had been found as about
800,000 years old.
Could it have been a more recent burial? Reck finally
decided against it. If a grave is filled in - even a hundred
thousand years ago - a good geologist can tell.
So it looked as if Reck had proved that human beings
not unlike modern man, lived in Africa nearly a million
years ago. While it would not be true to say that it flew in
the face of all Darwinian teaching -for there was nothing in
Darwin that said man had evolved from ape in the past two
million years - it certainly contradicted the assumption that
had been made ever since Darwin announced the Missing
Link, and that seemed to be verified by the discovery of
Cro-Magnon man.
Back in Berlin, Reck announced his discovery, and was
startled at the hostility he aroused. As usual, the experts
simply refused to admit
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
that this might be an ancient human ancestor. It was
simply not apelike enough. In effect, Reck was attacking
the theory of evolution. The skeleton had to be younger -
perhaps a mere five thousand years.
The First World War caused the controversy to be
forgotten. But not in Africa. Dr Louis Leakey, an
anthropologist who was a fellow of St John's in
Cambridge, went to Berlin in 1925 (when he was 23), met
Reck, and saw the skeleton. He also was inclined to date it
as recent. But in 1931, he and Reck went to the site with
other geologists, and carefully studied the strata. And when
he saw some stone implements that had been discovered in
the same layer - and even in the bed below - he came
around to Reek's opinion.
In a sense, this was almost as heretical as Alfred Rssel
Wallace's view that modern humans existed in the Tertiary.
Now Leakey announced that Dubois's Java man could not
be a human ancestor -and neither could another recent
discovery, an ape-like skeleton found at Chou-kou-tien in
China in 1929, and labelled Peking Man. If a fully
developed creature had been around at the same time, then
Reek's skeleton was more likely to be the ancestor of
modern man.
The experts attacked. It was simply unlikely, said two
British palaeontologists called Cooper and Watson, that a
complete skeleton could be that old. And the filing of the
teeth made it sound like modern Africans . ..
By now, Leakey had made two more discoveries, at
Kanam and Kanjera, near Lake Victoria - a jaw and molar
in Kanam and three skulls in Kanjera. And again, they
seemed to be from fully human beings - Homo sapiens.
The Kanjera beds ranged from 400,000 to 700,000 years
old. In other words, Leakey had discovered a Cro-Magnon
that was at least four times as old as it should be. He
regarded this as additional support for his view that Reek's
skeleton was truly human.
But at this point there was another intervention. A
Professor T. Mollison, who was on record as thinking that
Reek's skeleton was a modern Masai tribesman, now went
to Berlin, obtained some of the material that had
surrounded the skeleton when it was found, and sent it to
be examined by a geologist named Percy Boswell. Boswell
has been described by Leakey' s biographer as
'contradictory... emotional' and with 'the proverbial chip on
his shoulder'. Boswell studied it, and published in Nature a
report claiming that he had found bright red pebbles like
those in bed 3 (above the bed where the skeleton was
found), and chips of limestone like those of bed 5, far
above bed 2. It seemed odd
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6 The Antiquity of Man
that neither Reck nor Leakey had noticed this. And yet
instead of pointing this out, they both gave way, and
conceded that they had probably been wrong. The
skeleton, they agreed, had probably gpt down into bed 2 as
a result of a burial - a possibility Reck had ruled out at the
very beginning - or possibly an earthquake.
But in March 1933, a commission of 28 scientists
studied the Kanjera skulls and the Kanam jaw, and
concluded that the jaw was early Pleistocene (possibly
more than a million years old) and that the skulls were
middle Pleistocene (possibly half a million years old).
Once again Percy Boswell entered the fray. His doubts
led Leakey to invite him to Africa. But he failed to prove
his point. He had marked the sites of the finds with iron
pegs, but it seemed that locals had stolen them for
spearheads or fish hooks. He had photographed the sites,
but his camera had malfunctioned. He had borrowed a
photograph taken by a friend of his wife's, but this proved
to be of another canyon. And he had not been able to mark
them exactly on a map, because no maps of sufficient
detail existed. Boswell reacted unfavourably to these signs
of sloppiness, and his report was damning. In effect, he
simply refused to believe Leakey.
Following Boswell's report, Leakey protested that he
had shown Boswell the precise site of one of the skulls,
and proved it by picking up a small piece of bone that
fitted skull number 3. As to the jaw, it had been found in
association with a site with mastodon and Deinother-ium
fossils, which dated it to the early Pleistocene.
Boswell would not have this. He felt that since no
scientist had seen the jaw in situ, it could not be accepted.
Finally, after much argument, and some ambiguous
chemical testing, the experts decided that the jaw and
skulls were at most 20 to 30,000 years old.
The real problem, of course, was that if Leakey's finds
and Reek's skeleton had been accepted as Homo sapiens,
then the history of mankind would have to be revised. Java
man and Peking man suggested a simple line of descent
from ape-like creatures of half a million years ago, and
Leakey was suggesting that these were mere cousins of
Homo sapiens, who - as Wallace believed - had been
around since the Tertiary.
Leakey had already given way on Reek's skeleton, but
this time he dug in his heels. He had declared in his Stone
Age Races of Kenya that the Kanam tooth was not merely
the oldest human fragment from Africa, but the most
ancient fragment of true Homo yet discovered in the world.
Even his biographer, Sonia Cole, deplores this refusal to
change his mind, and regards it as a sign of sheer
stubbornness.
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
But more conventional anthropologists were about to receive
the most powerful support yet.
In 1924, Dr Raymond Dart, the professor of anatomy at the
University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, received two
cratesful of fossils from a limestone quarry at a place called
Taung, 200 miles south-west of Johannesburg. The Darts were
about to give a wedding party, and Mrs Dart begged him to
ignore them until the guests had gone. But Dart's curiosity was
too great. And in the second crate, he found himself looking
into a piece of rock containing the rear part of a skull. And it
was obvious that the brain it had once contained was as large as
that of a sizeable gorilla. Nearby he found a piece of rock
containing the front part of the skull. The moment the last guest
had departed, Dart borrowed his wife's knitting needles, and
began chipping away the stone. It took almost three months,
and on 23 December, the rock parted, and he was able to look at
the face. He then realised that this creature with a large brain
was - incredibly - a baby with milk teeth. A baby with a 500 cc
brain had to be some form of human being. But Dart reckoned
that the level at which it had been found was at least a million
years old.
When his account of the Taung skull appeared in Nature on 7
February 1925, he became an overnight celebrity. Surely this
had to be the missing link?
Many experts disagreed, and suggested that the Taung baby
was an ape. Sir Arthur Keith, one of the great authorities, had a
different reason for rejecting the baby as the missing link. If it
was a million years old, and Cro-Magnon man was about
100,000 years old, there was simply not time for the Taung
baby to develop into Homo sapiens.
But to begin with, Dart's skull aroused widespread attention.
Then the tone of comment began to change. By 1931, the
scientific establishment had turned against him. In that year, he
appeared before the Zoological Society of London, together
with Davidson Black, who had discovered Peking man.
Davidson Black's presentation was highly professional, with
visual aids; by comparison, Dart, clutching his baby skull,
looked bumbling and unconvincing. A monograph on the skull,
which he called Australopithecus (southern ape) was rejected
by the Royal Society.
Dart went back to South Africa and buried himself in his
department
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6 The
Antiquity of
Man
of anatomy. Like Leakey, he had not changed his mind, but
he decided to keep this fact to himself.
One of Dart's warmest supporters was a retired zoologist
named Robert Broom. Now Broom decided to emerge
from retirement to take * up arms. In 1936, the supervisor
of a Sterkfontein limestone quarry handed Broom another
rock containing an ancient skull fragment, which proved to
be from an adult Australopithecine. Then a femur (thigh-
bone) was found, and it looked unmistakably human. In
1938, Broom located a schoolboy with a pocket-full of
teeth and fragments of jaw-bone, and these enabled him to
recognise that he had discovered a new type of
Australopithecus, which he called Paranthropus (near-
man) robustus. This seemed to be a vegetarian type of
Australopithecus. The fact that he was a vegetarian seemed
to suggest that he might be an animal rather than a human
ancestor.
In 1947, Broom found another Paranthropus fossil in a
cave at Swartkrans; he also found a small and more
human-like creature, which he called Teleanthropus.
Later, he decided that it belonged to the same species as
Java man and Peking man, which had now been classified
as a type called Homo erectus, and generally accepted as a
direct ancestor of modern man. Stone and bone tools also
found at Swartkrans seemed to indicate that Paranthropus
was a true man.
Broom's activity stirred Dart to emerge from his
retirement. In 1948, he went back to a tunnel in
Makapansgat, where he had found bones in 1925. He had
also found some evidence of fire, which had confirmed
his opinion that Australopithecus was humanoid. Now he
found more bones and more evidence of fire, and labelled
the creature who lived there Australopithecus prometheus.
But Dart found something altogether more interesting at
Makapansgat - 42 baboon skulls, of which 27 showed
signs of having been struck by some kind of club. He
concluded that the club - which made two indentations -
was an antelope's humrus (upper leg-bone). This led him
to the startling conclusion that Australopithecus had been
a killer - the first known human ancestor to use a weapon.
He went on to develop the thesis that southern ape-man
had emerged from the apes for one reason only - because
he had learned to commit murder with weapons. In 1961,
a playwright-turned-anthropologist named Robert Ardrey
gave the idea wide popular currency in a book called
African Genesis, which argued that man became man
because he learned how to kill, and that unless he unlearns
it soon, he will destroy the human race.
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
In 1953, the year that Dart published his controversial
paper The Predatory Transition from Ape to Man, Kenneth
Oakley of the British Museum subjected the Piltdown skull
to fluorine tests, and revealed it to be a hoax. In the 1930s,
Sir Arthur Keith had cited the Piltdown skull to discredit
Australopithecus, for it seemed to show that 'intelligence
came first'. Now the skull was discredited, the opposition
to Dart's Australopithecus began to melt away, and Dart's
theory of the killer ape was suddenly made horribly
plausible. Here at last was an evolutionary theory that
seemed designed to prove Darwin's survival of the fittest.
But the battle was not yet quite over.
Louis Leakey was also back again and, together with his
wife Mary, was digging in the Olduvai Gorge. There in bed
1, below the level of Reek's skeleton, he found crude
pebble choppers, and round stones that might have been
used as a bolas - two or three balls on a leather thong, used
for throwing around an animal's legs. He even found a
bone that might have been a leather working tool.
But when, in 1959, he found skull fragments of a
creature similar to Australopithecus robustus, he was
disappointed. His wife admitted that, after 30 years, he
was still hoping to find Homo sapiens. He called his new
ape-man Zinjanthropus - Zinj meaning East Africa. Oddly
enough, he decided that the tools at the site belonged to
Zinjanthropus, although they suggested a creature of more
intelligence.
At least, Zinjanthropus restored Leakey's standing
among palaeontologists; it looked as if he had repented his
earlier heresies. One year later, his son Jonathan found
another skull in bed 1, below Zinjanthropus. This had a
larger brain than Zinjanthropus - 680 cc compared to 530 -
but was still smaller than Homo erectus skulls (at around
800). A nearby hand and foot found by Louis and Mary
Leakey were undeniably human. Tools found in the area
also indicated that this was a human ancestor. At Dart's
suggestion, Leakey called it Homo habilis, tool-making
man.
Leakey was rather pleased with himself. Before Homo
habilis, palaeo-anthropologists had assumed that Homo
erectus was the direct descendant of Australopithecus.
Now Leakey had shown that a more truly human ancestor
interposed between the two. Admittedly, this was
something of a climb-down after his earlier belief that
Homo sapiens might be found in the early Pleistocene. But
it was better than nothing. In
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fact, Leakey still showed traces of the old heretic when he
remarked that he felt that Australopithecus showed various
specialised developments that did not lead towards man.
But there were many stone tools found at Pleistocene
sites that left* no doubt that some early man was a tool
maker. Yet such tools were never found in association with
Australopithecus remains.
By now - the late 1960s - Louis Leakey's son Richard
and his wife Meave had joined the search for human
origins. In August 1972, one of Richard Leakey's team
found a shattered skull at Lake Turkana. Reconstructed by
Meave Leakey, it looked much more human than
Australopithecus, with a domed forehead and a brain
capacity of over 800 cc. Leakey estimated that it was about
2.9 million years old. He decided that it was another
specimen of Homo hahilis. But if it was that old, then it
was a contemporary of Australopithecus, and that meant
that Australopithecus might not after all be a human
ancestor. Leakey suggested that Australopithecus had
vanished from prehistory like the Neanderthals.
J. D. Birdsell, the author of a book called Human
Evolution, was inclined to date Richard Leakey's Homo
hahilis at about two million years ago. But he was troubled
about Leakey's assertion that Homo hahilis led to Homo
erectus. It seemed to Birdsell that Homo hahilis was more
anatomically 'modern' than Homo erectus, and that
development from Homo hahilis to Homo erectus would
be a retrogressive step. He was inclined to agree with
Richard's father Louis Leakey that probably Homo erectus
was not a main part of the human line.
Interesting evidence for a more 'human' ancestor
continued to turn up. Leakey was summoned by a
colleague named John Harris to look at a human-like
femur (thigh-bone) found among elephant bones in
deposits older than 2.6 million years. More missing parts
were found on further search. Again, they were unlike
those of Australopithecus, and more like those of modern
man. Leakey felt that they demonstrated that this creature -
Homo hahilis - walked upright all the time, while
Australopithecus walked upright only some of the time.
When a technique called potassium-argon dating seemed
to show that the layer of material - known as tuff - in
which the bones were found was 2.9 million years old, it
certainly looked as if this Homo hahilis was the oldest
human specimen ever found.
But there was to be yet another twist to the story.
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
In 1973, a young anthropologist from the University of
Chicago, Donald Johanson, was at a conference in Nairobi,
where he met Richard Leakey. He mentioned to Leakey
that a French geologist had told him of a promising site at
Hadar, in the Afar desert of north-eastern Ethiopia, and
that he was now on his way there to search for hominid
fossils. When Leakey asked if he really expected to find
hominids, Johanson replied: 'Yes, older than yours.' They
bet a bottle of wine on it.
In fact, things went badly during the first season.
Johanson failed to find fossils, and his grant was running
out. But one afternoon, he found a tibia - the bone of the
lower leg. A further search uncovered the knee joint and
part of the upper bone. The deposits in which they were
found was over three million years old. In his paper
reporting the find, Johanson suggested that it could be four
million years old, and gave his reasons for thinking it was
humanoid. His discovery brought him another $25,000 in
grants.
On 30 November 1974, Johanson and his colleague Tom
Gray were searching another Hadar site, and as the
temperature reached 103, were preparing to quit. But
Johanson had been 'feeling lucky' all day, and insisted on
looking in a gulley that had already been searched. There
he saw a piece of arm bone that looked like a monkey.
Gray went on to find a fragment of skull and a part of a
femur. When they found other parts of a skeleton, they
went into a kind of wild war dance of triumph. Later, as
they were celebrating back at camp, and playing a Beatles
record called 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds', they
decided to call their find (whose small size suggested a
female) Lucy. Potassium-argon dating and magnetic dating
methods showed Lucy to be about 3.5 million years old.
In the following year, on a hillside in Hadar, Johanson
and his team found bones of no less than thirteen
hominids, which they labelled 'the First Family'. All
proved to be of about the same age as Lucy. They also
found stone tools of better workmanship than those of the
Olduvai Gorge. When John Harris objected that these
tools, found on the surface, might be modern, Johanson
undertook more excavations and uncovered stone tools in
situ, with an approximate age of 2.5 million years.
So it looked as if Lucy and the First Family were
undoubtedly human, and, moreover, earlier than Leakey's
Homo habilis. At this point, Johanson was inclined to
believe that Lucy was an Australopithecus, while the First
Family was a type of Homo habilis. Richard Leakey
thought that Lucy was probably a 'late Ramapithecus' - the
early ape that is
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6 The Antiquity of Man
quite probably not a human ancestor. But Johanson was
later persuaded by a palaeontologist named Timothy White
that the finds were all a type of Australopithecus. At this
point, Johanson decided to call the Hadar group
Australopithecus afarensis (after the Afar desert).
This, then, would seem to be the conclusion finally
reached by the science of ancient man. Human beings have
evolved over the course of three and a half million years,
beginning with the ape-like Australopithecus afarensis. A
million years later, this had evolved into Australopithecus
africanus - 'Dartian man'. Then came Homo habilis, Homo
erectuS) and finally, Homo sapiens. The scheme certainly
seems satisfyingly tidy and complete.
Yet doubts persist. Australopithecus was not known to
be a tool maker, yet tools were found at 'the First Family'
site. Could it be, after all, that the First Family were a
group of Homo habilis, and that Homo habilis co-existed
with Australopithecus}
Another find strengthens the doubt. In 1979, Mary
Leakey was at Laetoli, twenty miles south of the Olduvai
Gorge. And among fossil footprints of animals set in
volcanic ash, her son Philip, and another expedition
member, Peter Jones, discovered some hominid footprints,
dating (according to potassium-argon dating) to about 3.6
to 3.8 million years ago. Yet they looked typically human,
with a 'raised arch, rounded heel, pronounced ball and
forward pointing big toe necessary for walking erect'.
It would seem that, after nearly 300 years, the problem
of Scheuch-zer's 'old sinner' is in some ways as obscure as
ever.
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A
nd what difference does it make whether man is two
million years old, or ten, or even more? None whatsoever,
if we can accept that Australopithecus afarensis could have
developed into Homo sapiens in about three and a half
million years.
For this is the problem: time scale.
Sir Arthur Keith wrote about the Taung skull that it 'is
much too late in the scale of time to have any part in man's
ancestry'. At that point, it was assumed that the Taung skull
was about a million years old, and Keith felt that there was
simply not time for such an ape-like creature to turn into
Homo sapiens in 900,000 years.
But even if we suppose that Lucy was a much earlier
form of human being, the problem remains. In the two
million or so years between Lucy and 'Dart's baby', there
has been very little change - both might well be apes.
Homo erectus, half a million years old, still seems apelike.
Then, in a mere 400,000 years - a blink of the eyelid in
geological time - we have Homo sapiens, and Neanderthals
with a brain far larger than modern man.
If, on the other hand, Reck and Leakey are right, then
Homo sapiens may have been around far longer than two
million years, and the time scale becomes altogether more
believable. Mary Leakey wrote about the Laetoli footprint:
'... at least 3,600,000 years ago, in Pliocene times, what I
believe to be man's direct ancestor walked fully upright
with a bipedal, free-striding gait... the form of his foot
exactly the same as ours.' And since it is the form of the
foot that counts in human evolution - how recently the
creature descended from the trees - this is of central
importance.
If a hominid with a human foot existed more than three
million years ago, it would certainly add useful support to
the argument of this book
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
- that civilisation is thousands of years older than
historians believe. At first sight that statement may sound
absurd - what difference can a few thousand years make,
when we are speaking in millions? But what is really at
issue here is the development of the human mind. In Time-
scale, Nigel Calder quotes the anthropologist T. Wynn to
the effect that tests devised by the psychologist Jean
Piaget, carried out on Stone Age tools from Isimila,
Tanzania - whose uranium dating shows them to be
330,000 years old - indicate that the makers were as
intelligent as modern humans.
1
This is as startling in its way as Mary Leakey's comment
that upright creatures were walking around 3,600,000
years ago. It strikes us as somehow unreasonable. If there
were intelligent creatures walking around 330,000 years
ago, why did they not do something with their intelligence
- invent the bow and arrow, or paint pictures? In fact, the
question is unreasonable. Invention tends to be the
outcome of challenges. Without challenges, things are
inclined to go on much as they did yesterday and the day
before. Small groups of hominids, living in widely
separated environments, were in the same position as
people living in remote villages a few centuries ago. They
must have been incredibly parochial; each generation did
exactly what its father and grandfathers and great-
grandfathers did, because no one had any new ideas. Think
of one of those Russian villages in nineteenth-century
Russian novels, then multiply the boredom and narrow-
mindedness by ten, and you begin to see how man could
have remained unchanged for hundreds of thousands of
years.
In other words, highly intelligent men may have gone on
making the same kind of crude tools simply because they
could see no reason to do anything else. It is true that
walking upright confers certain advantages -a man can see
further than an ape or a dog, and the fact that his eyes are
set side by side, instead of on either side of his head,
means that he is a better judge of distance, which is an
advantage in hunting. But there is no good reason why an
upright creature should not remain unchanged for a million
years if no new challenges present themselves.
And what about the obvious objection - that if there
were 'human' ancestors walking the earth three or four
million years ago, why have we not found their remains?
The answer lies in Richard Leakey's comment (in People
of the Lake): 'If someone went to the trouble of collecting
together in one room all the fossil remains so far
discovered of our ancestors (and their biological
relatives) ... he would need only a couple of large trestle
tables on which to spread them out.' Of the
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Archaeology
millions of hominids who lived on earth in prehistory, we
merely have a few bones.
Yet even as it is, the trestle tables would contain some
interesting evidence - like Reek's skeleton and Leakey's
Kanam jaw - that seem to suggest that man may have
been around rather longer than we suppose.
In 1976, a young American student of political science
named Michael A. Cremo became a member of the
Bhaktivedanta Institute in Florida, which teaches a form
of Hinduism called Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Cremo's guru,
known as Swami Prabhupada, suggested to him that he
should study paleoanthropology, with a view to trying to
establish that Homo sapiens may be millions of years
older than is generally accepted. (Prabhupada died in the
following year, 1977.)
The thought of a scientific investigation being initiated
for religious reasons arouses understandable misgivings -
memories of the Scopes 'monkey trial' in Tennessee, and
of modern born-again Christians who still oppose
Darwinism. Yet it would be a mistake to bracket the
outlook of Hinduism with that of some of the more
dogmatic forms of Christianity, for Hinduism is
remarkably free from dogmas. Its most fundamental
belief is expressed in the Sanskrit phrase Tat tvatn a$i,
'That thou art' - that the essence of the individual soul
(Atman) is identical with the essence of God (Brahman).
In Christianity, the statement 'The Kingdom of God is
within you' is generally taken to mean the same thing.
In other words, the core of vedantism (the basic
philosophy of Hinduism) is an undogmatic belief in the
spiritual nature of reality. So it would be incorrect to
compare Cremo's assignment with that of some Christian
fundamentalist who sets out to prove that Darwinism
must be false because it conflicts with the Book of
Genesis. The Hindu equivalent of the Book of Genesis is
the Vedic hymns, probably the oldest literature in the
world, and commentary on the Vedas, the Bhaga-vata
Purana, states that human beings have existed on earth
for four immense cycles of time, known as yugas, each
lasting for several thousand 'years of the demigods'; since
each year of the demigods is equal to 360 earth years, the
total cycle of four yugas amounts to 4,320,000 years.
But Cremo was not being asked to 'prove' the
Bhagavata Purana -merely to examine the evidence of
palaeoanthropology, and to assess it objectively.
1
6
5
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
He and his colleague Richard L. Thompson, a
mathematician and scientist, were to spend several years
studying material on human origins. Eventually their book,
Forbidden Archaeology, would appear in 1993. This is not
a polemic arguing for or against Darwinism, but simply an
exhaustive study - more than 900 pages long - of the
history of palaeoanthropology.
Cremo's curiosity was piqued by the fact that there
seemed to be so few reports about ancient man from 1859,
when The Origin of Species was published, to 1894, the
year of Java man. Studying volumes on anthropology from
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cremo
found negative comments on many reports during this
period, which made him aware that there had been plenty
of reports, but that because they seemed to contradict the
new Darwinian orthodoxy, they had been ignored. By
tracking them down through footnotes, and then searching
out the original papers in university libraries, he was
finally able to get hold of many of these reports.
Here are some typical examples, from the hundreds
offered in the book.
In the early 1870s, Baron von Ducker was in the Museum
of Athens, and was intrigued by animal bones that showed
signs of deliberate fracturing to extract the marrow - they
included those of an extinct three-toed horse called
Hipparion. The sharp edges of the fractures seemed to
argue that they had been broken by heavy stones rather
than by the gnawing of animals. Von Ducker went to the
place where they had been found - at a village called
Pikermi - and soon excavated a huge pile of fractured
bones from a site that was undoubtedly late Miocene
(certainly earlier than five million years ago).
Professor Albert Gaudry, who had selected the bones for
the museum display, admitted: 'I find every now and then
breaks in bones that resemble those made by the hand of
man.' He went on to add: 'But it is difficult for me to admit
this.' Other academic colleagues insisted that the bones had
been broken by animals like hyenas.
At about this time - in 1872 - the geologist Edward
Charlesworth showed a meeting of the Royal
Anthropological Society many sharks' teeth with holes
bored through them, as if to make necklaces - like those of
modern South Sea Islanders. The layer from which they
were recovered was between two and two and a half
million years old. Professor Richard Owen commented
that 'human mechanical agency'
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was the likeliest explanation. Australopithecus, of course,
did not make ornaments. Although Charlesworth ruled out
boring molluscs, his academic colleagues decided that the
holes were made by a combination of wear, decay and
parasites.
In 1874, archaeologist Frank Calvert reported that he
had found proof of the existence of man in the Miocene
era. In a cliff face in the Dardanelles, he found a bone that
belonged either to a dinotherium or a mastodon, engraved
with the picture of a 'horned quadruped' and the traces of
seven or eight other figures. A Russian geologist named
Tchihatcheff agreed that the stratum was of the Miocene
period. But since Calvert was regarded as an amateur, his
find was ignored.
I am offering only a brief summary of these examples;
Cremo cites dozens more. Among the most impressive is
the case of Carlos Ribeiro.
In the writings of the geologist J. D. Whitney - mentioned
in the last chapter in connection with finds in California -
Cremo found several mentions of a Portuguese geologist
named Carlos Ribeiro who had made some interesting
discoveries in the 1860s. But no works by Ribeiro were
found in the libraries. Finally, he found an account of
Ribeiro in Le Prhistorique by Gabriel de Mortillet (1883),
and from de Mortillet's footnotes, was able to trace a
number of Ribeiro's articles in French journals of
archaeology and anthropology.
What they learned was that Ribeiro was no amateur. He
was the head of the Geological Survey in Portugal. In the
early 1860s, he was studying stone implements found in
Portugal's Quaternary strata (i.e. Pleistocene). When he
heard about flint tools being found in Tertiary beds of
limestone in the Tagus River basin, he hurried to examine
them and do his own digging. Deep inside a limestone bed
inclined at an angle of more than 30 degrees to the
horizontal, he extracted 'worked flints'. This embarrassed
him, for he knew that this was too early for human
artefacts. So his report stated that the beds must be
Pleistocene.
When, in an 1866 map of Portugal's geological strata,
Ribeiro called the beds Pleistocene, he was challenged by
the French geologist Edouard de Verneuil, who pointed out
that the beds were generally agreed to be Pliocene and
Miocene.
Meanwhile, more interesting finds had been made in
France by a reputable investigator, the Abb Louis
Bourgeois, at Thenay, near Orleans. The flints were
crudely made but, in the Abb's opinion,
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
undoubtedly artefacts; moreover, the fact that some of
them showed signs of having been in contact with fire
seemed to support this view.
Now the Abb Bourgeois had been digging for flints
since the mid-18408, long before Darwin's revolution, so
he was not deeply concerned that the flints had been found
in Miocene beds (from 25 to five million years ago). But
when he showed them in Paris in 1867, his colleagues
were not happy.
Their first objection was that they were not artefacts, but
'nature-facts'. There are, however, various simple ways of
distinguishing human handiwork on flints. A natural piece
of flint, found in the ground, usually looks like any other
stone, with round surfaces. But the difference between
flint and other stones is that when struck at an angle, it
flakes, leaving a flat surface (although the blow often
causes a ripple effect).
The first step in making a flint tool is to knock off the
rounded end. This flat surface is known as the striking
platform. After this, the flint has to be struck delicately
again and again, with great skill. One result that is usually
found is a 'bulb of percussion', a gentle swelling like a
blister. Often small chips are struck out, leaving a scar-
shaped hole known as an eraillure (graze). A flint with two
knife-like edges and these other features is certain to be
man-made. Being rolled along the bed of a torrent or
struck by a plough may produce an object that looks
vaguely man-made, but an expert can usually distinguish at
a glance.
When, as in the case of Bourgeois, there are dozens of
such flints, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain
them as 'naturefacts'. When Sir John Prestwich (who
would become Benjamin Harrison's patron) objected that
the flints could be recent because they were found on the
surface, Bourgeois dug down and found more. When
critics suggested that these flints may have fallen down
through fissures in the top of the plateau, Bourgeois
disproved it by digging down into the plateau, and finding
that there was a limestone bed a foot thick, which would
have prevented man-made flints from falling into an
'earlier' layer.
When Ribeiro heard about this, he ceased to declare that
his Tagus River beds were Quaternary, and agreed they
were Tertiary. Subsequent geologists have agreed with
him. And he began openly speaking about worked flints
found in Miocene beds.
In the Paris Exposition of 1878 (which inspired Don
Marcelino de Sautuola to explore his cave at Altamira),
Ribeiro exhibited 95 of his flint and quartzite 'tools'. De
Mortillet examined them, and although
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he felt that 73 were doubtful, agreed that 22 of them
showed sign of human workmanship. This, as Cremo
points out, was quite an admission for de Mortillet, who
was flatly opposed to the idea of human beings in the
Tertiary. And Emile Cartailhac, who was among those *
who later denounced Sautuola as a fraud, was so
enthusiastic that he came back several times to show the
flints to friends. De Mortillet said he felt he was looking at
Mousterian tools (made by Neanderthal man), but coarser.
We have to remember that at this time, Haeckel was
proposing that the missing link would be found in the
Pliocene, or even late Miocene, while Darwin thought
he might be found as early as the Eocene, which began
55 million years ago. So Cartailhac and the rest did not
necessarily feel like heretics.
In 1880, Ribeiro showed more flints at an
Int ernat i onal Congress of Ant hropol ogy and
Archaeology in Lisbon, and wrote a report on Tertiary
man in Portugal. The Congress appointed a team of
geologists to go and look at the beds, including
Cartailhac, de Mortillet and the famous German Rudolf
Virchow, who had declared Neanderthal man an idiot.
On 22 September 1880, they all set out at six in the
morning on a special train from Lisbon, and from the
train windows pointed out to one another the Jurassic,
Cretaceous and other strata. They reached the hill of
Monte Redondo, where Ribeiro had found so many
flints, and split up to search. They found many worked
flints on the surface, while the Italian G. Belucci found
in situ, in an early Miocene bed, one flint that everyone
agreed to be 'worked'.
In the subsequent discussion at the Congress there was
virtually universal agreement that Ribeiro had proved
that man existed in the Miocene era.
There was no change of heart about Ribeiro, no
sudden denunciation by the scientific establishment.
After Dubois's discovery of Java man (which, as we
have seen, was itself hotly contested), his views - and his
evidence - were simply forgotten. No one has disproved
that his flints were Miocene, or suggested a convincing
reason why they were found in Miocene beds. They
were merely allowed to drop out of the record.
Late in the summer of 1860, Professor Giuseppe
Ragazzoni, a geologist of the Technical Institute of
Brescia, was in Castenodolo, six miles south-east of
Brescia. He was going to look for fossil shells in the
Pliocene strata exposed at the base of a low hill, the
Colle de Vento.
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Among the shells he found a top piece of a cranium, full
of coral cemented with blue clay, then nearby, more bones
of the thorax and limbs.
Two fellow geologists had no doubt they were human
bones, but thought they were from a more recent burial.
But Ragazzoni was not happy. He knew that, during the
Pliocene, a warm sea had washed the foot of the hill. The
bones were covered with coral and shells; ergo, they had
probably been washed up by the Pliocene sea. He later
found two more fragments of bone at the same site.
Fifteen years later a local businessman, Carlo Germani,
bought the area to sell the phosphate-rich clay as fertiliser,
and Ragazzoni asked him to look out for bones. Five years
later, in January 1880, Germani's workmen found
fragments of a skull, with part of a lower jaw and some
teeth. More fragments followed. Then, in February a
complete human skeleton was unearthed. It was slightly
distorted, apparently by pressure of the strata. When
restored, the cranium was indistinguishable from that of a
modern woman. It was buried in marine mud, with no
intermixture of yellow sand and iron-red clay of higher
strata. The possibility that the skeleton had been washed
into the blue marine clay by a stream was ruled out by the
fact that the clay that covered it was itself in layers - strata
- which meant that the skeleton had been slowly buried in
the clay over a long period. Geologists who examined the
bed placed it in the mid-Pliocene - about three and a half
million years ago, the same period as Lucy and the First
Family.
In 1883, Professor Giuseppe Sergi, an anatomist from
the University of Rome, visited the site, and decided that
the various bones and skull fragments represented a man,
woman and two children. The trench dug in 1880 was still
there, and Sergi could clearly see the strata, all clear and
separate. He agreed that there was not the slightest chance
that the bones could have been washed down from above,
because the red clay was quite distinctive. As to burial, the
female skeleton was in an overturned position that made it
clear that this was unlikely.
So it looked as if undeniable proof that Homo sapiens
existed in the Pliocene had now been established.
But there was to be a complication. In 1889, another
skeleton was found at Castenodolo. This one lay on its
back in the oyster beds, and looked as if it had been buried.
Sergi came again, with a fellow professor named Arthur
Issel. Both agreed that this skeleton had been buried, and
that therefore it was probably more recent. But when Issel
wrote about it, he concluded that this demonstrated that the
earlier skeletons
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had also been recent burials, perhaps disturbed by
agricultural work. (Since it had nothing to do with the
earlier skeletons, it demonstrated nothing of the sort.) He
added that Sergi agreed with him. So as far as geology was
concerned, the Castenodolo skeletons could all be dis-
missed as Quaternary.
But Sergi did not agree with him, as he made clear
later. He saw no reason whatever to change his opinion
that the earlier skeletons were Pliocene.
Michael Cremo goes on to quote an archaeologist,
Professor R. A. S. Macalister, writing in 1921, who
begins by admitting that Ragazzoni and Sergi were men
of considerable reputation, and that their opinion must
therefore be taken seriously - then goes on to add that
'there must be something wrong somewhere'. Pliocene
bones of Homo sapiens implied a 'long standstill for
evolution', so whatever the evidence, the earlier
Castenodolo skeletons had to be disallowed. This, Cremo
points out reasonably, is applying preconceptions to the
evidence. If Homo sapiens - or something like him -
existed in the Pliocene, then man has not evolved much in
the past four million years, and this is contrary to
Darwin's theory of evolution. In that case, the shark also
contradicts the theory of evolution, for it has remained
unchanged in 150 million years.
In his book Secrets of the Ice Age (1980), dealing with
the world of the Cro-Magnon cave artists, Evan
Hadingham writes:
The excitement of recent discoveries in East Africa
tends to obscure one important fact: the earliest
human record is not one of rapid innovation and
ingenuity but of almost inconceivable stagnation and
conservatism. Certain features of the early hominid
skulls, notably the form of the teeth and jaws,
remained essentially unchanged for millions of years.
It is particularly striking that brain capacity seems to
have stayed fairly constant at around 600 to 800
cubic centimetres (a little over half the average
modern capacity). for a period approaching two
million years in length.
It needs to be explained that brain capacity is not
necessarily a measure of intelligence. Although the
average for modern humans is 1400 ce, a person can be
highly intelligent with far less than this -Anatole France's
brain was only 1000 cc. And, of course, Neanderthal man
had a brain of 2000 cc. So a human ancestor with an 800
cc brain would not necessarily be obviously more stupid
than a modern man.
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Another story from Hadingham's book might be taken as a
cautionary tale. Near Lake Mungo, in Australia, a grave
containing a 'modern man' was found, dating to about 30,000
years ago; it had been buried in red ochre, a substance used in
cave paintings, but also extensively used by Neanderthals. But
at a place called Kow Swamp, remains of a far more primitive
people - physically speaking - were found. They dated from
10,000 bc - 20 thousand years later than the Lake Mungo
people. These two types, modern and primitive, co-existed. So
Cremo is arguing, Australopithecines and a more modern type
of man could have co-existed more than two million years ago.
The evidence exists - in the Reck skeleton, the Kanam jaw, the
Laetoli footprints, as well as in the Ribeiro finds, the
Castenodolo skeletons, and the many finds described by J. D.
Whitney from the Tuolumne Table Mountain in California - but
is discounted by modern palaeoanthropologists.
Cremo is not arguing that there is some kind of scientific
conspiracy to suppress the evidence that Homo sapiens may be
far older than 100,000 years. He is arguing that modern
anthropology has created a simple and scientifically consistent
'story of mankind', and is unwilling to consider any changes in a
conveniently uncomplicated script.
Let me summarise this 'script', as it would be accepted by
most historians.
In Africa, about twelve million years ago, the lush forests of the
Miocene began to disappear as less and less rain fell; by the
Pliocene, seven million years later, forests had given way to
grasslands. It was at this point that our human ancestors - some
Ramapithecus-type of ape -decided to descend from the trees
and take their chance on the savannahs. Three million years
later, the ape had developed into Australopithecus afarensis.
Lucy and her kind in turn became the two types of
Australopithecus, the meat-eating Dartians and the vegetarian
A. robustus.
Two million years ago, the rains came back and the
Pleistocene era began with an ice age that lasted 65,000 years.
And for the rest of the Pleistocene, there were a series of
'interglacials' - warm periods that produced deserts - followed
by ice ages, four of each. During this time, Australopithecus
learned to use his wits and his weapons, and began the swift
evolutionary ascent that turned him into man - Homo habilis,
then Homo erectus, whose brain was twice as big as
Australopithecus.
Then, about half a million years ago, there occurred another
mysteri-
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ous event for which science has been unable to account -
the
c
brain explosion'. Between half a million years ago
and modern times, the human brain expanded by another
third, and most of that growth has been in the cerebrum,
the top part of the brain, with which we think. In African
Genesis, Robert Ardrey has an interesting theory to
explain why this came about.
Around 700,000 years ago, we know that a gigantic
meteorite, or
perhaps even a small asteroid, exploded over the Indian
Ocean, scatter
ing tiny fragments - known as tektites - over an area of
twenty million
square miles. The earth's Poles also reversed, so North
became South,
and vice-versa. (No one knows quite why this happened, or
why it has
happened a number of times in the earth's history.) During
this period, *
the earth would be without a magnetic field, and this could
have led to
a bombardment by cosmic rays and high-speed particles
which may
have caused genetic mutations. For whatever reason, man
evolved more t
in half a million years than in the previous three million.
I
The 'brain explosion' raised the curtain on the age of
True Man. The Neanderthals were a failed evolutionary
experiment which ran from about 150,000 years ago (or
possibly more than twice that long), and which
collapsed because these ape-men were unable to
compete with Cro-Magnon man, who destroyed the
Neanderthal about 30,000 years ago. Then finally the
stage was set for modern man.
And suddenly, history moves much faster.
In Egypt, around 18,000 years ago, during the Ice
Age, someone noticed that seeds dropped into cracks in
the mud at the edge of streams turned into crops that
could be harvested with stone sickles. A thousand years
later, hunters who had learned to make rope and tallow
lamps were painting animals in the caves at Lascaux, in
France - not, as we have seen, for artistic reasons, but as
part of a magical ritual to lure them into traps.
Fourteen thousand years ago, when the ice began to
melt, hunters from Asia crossed the land bridge over
what is now the Bering Strait, and began to populate
America. Others learned to make boats and fishing gear
- like harpoons and fish-hooks - and made their living
from the seas. In Japan, the first ceramic pots were
made. Twelve thousand years ago, wolves were
domesticated into dogs, and sheep and goats followed
during the next millennium.
Ten thousand six hundred years ago, the first walled
town sprang up in the Jordan valley, the place we now
call Jericho, and the local residents harvested a wild
grass called wheat. Then, during the next
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
thousand years, a genetic accident crossed wheat with goat
grass, creating a heavier and plumper variety called
emmer. A further genetic accident crossed emmer with
another goat grass, creating bread wheat, whose grains are
so heavy and tightly packed that they will not scatter on
the wind. It was man who learned to cultivate this new
grain, and who thus ceased to be a hunter-gatherer and
became a farmer. He added cattle to his list of domestic
animals, discovered how to weave sheep and goat wool
into cloth, and learned to irrigate his fields.
In some mysterious way, the farming revolution spread
all over the world; in Africa and China, millet was
cultivated; in America, beans and maize, in New Guinea,
sugar cane, in Indochina, rice. Eight thousand years ago,
civilisation as we know it had spread to the corners of the
earth. Bread was baked in ovens; so was pottery. Copper -
found in lumps lying on the surface - was beaten into
blades. But one day, someone noticed that a gold-coloured
liquid was flowing from a lump of green malachite that
had fallen into a hot fire, and that when this liquid
solidified, it was pure copper. The next step was to place
the green malachite into a bread oven, and collect the
copper that flowed from it; this could be made into axe and
arrowheads.
The trouble was that copper would not take an edge, but
this was solved around 6000 years ago when it was
discovered that arsenic had the power to harden copper
into an alloy. So had tin, and the result, a metal that was
hard enough to make swords, was called bronze. Together
with the newly domesticated animal called the horse
(about the size of a modern pony), the sword enabled a
new warrior caste to terrorise their neighbours, so that an
increasing number of towns had to be built with walls.
Also about 6000 years ago, someone decided that
hoeing the soil was hard work, and that it could be
lightened if an ox could be tethered to the hoe. And when
the invention of the harness solved that problem, the
farmer was able to use a much heavier hoe - the plough -
to break up the fine, dry soil of the Middle East. A few
centuries later, these Middle Eastern plough farmers
moved north, hacked down the European forests, and
cultivated land that had been too heavy for the hoe. They
were the ancestors of the present Europeans.
Trade between the towns meant that some kind of token
was needed to represent such objects as sheep, goats and
measures of grain. In fact, the very first farmers - around
ten thousand years ago - had modified the 'notation bones'
of Stone Age man into clay tablets of various shapes -
cones, cylinders, spheres and so on - to stand for objects
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that could be traded. Five thousand six hundred years ago,
in Sumer, Mesopotamia, the king's accountants sent out
similar tokens - in clay containers - as tax demands. The
next step was obvious - to press the various shapes on to
soft pieces of clay, and so save the trouble of' making
cones and spheres and cylinders. But now someone had
thought of using soft clay, it was obviously common sense
to scratch symbols on them - symbols representing an
animal or a man. So writing was first practised, and it has a
claim to be the most important of all man's inventions.
Now at last he could communicate with other men at a
distance without having to rely on the messenger's
memory; now he could store his own knowledge, as Stone
Age man had stored the phases of the moon on pieces of
bone.
And now - at this very late stage in the development of
civilisation - came the invention that we moderns are
inclined to regard as the greatest of all: the wheel. No one
is certain how this came about, but the likeliest possibility
is that it was the invention of the Mediterranean potter,
who learned around 6000 years ago that if the wet clay
could be spun on a turntable, it could be more easily
shaped with the hands. But how could a turntable be made
to spin? The obvious solution was to place it on an axle
which was kept upright in a hole in the ground. Now if
another wooden wheel was placed on the axle slightly
above ground level, the potter could spin this with his
feet. The heavier the wheel, the more it turned at a
constant speed.
The science of transportation had so far managed
without the wheel, although our ancestors certainly knew
that heavy objects could be moved on rollers laid side by
side. In snowy climes, the answer was the sledge. But the
notion of two wheels on an axle suggested new
possibilities. For example, if attached to a plough, they
made it easier to pull. And four of them placed underneath
a cart would enable it to carry a heavy load.
The simplest way of making a wheel was to chop a
slice off a log. But this had drawbacks. The lines that
radiate out across the tree-rings are lines of weakness, and
a wheel made in this way soon splits. A band of metal
around the edge will hold it together, but it is still fatally
weak. The answer was to join a number of planks until
they formed a square, then to hack it into a circle. And
now a band of metal hammered around the edge made a
highly durable wheel.
But if two wheels were fixed at either end of an axle,
how could they turn? One of the earliest solutions was to
make the axle itself turn, by attaching it to the underside
of the cart (or plough) with leather straps
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
or metal bands. Technology soon solved that problem by
leaving a small gap between the axle and the centre of the
wheel. This gap could even be plugged with short,
cylindrical pegs which reduced the friction - the first ball
bearings.
And so, approximately 5,500 years ago, Mediterranean
man produced his two most important contributions to
history: writing and the wheel. The writing was made up
of crude 'pictographs", and the wheel was made up of
crude segments; but they served their purpose admirably.
And if civilisation had been as peaceful and stable as in the
early days of farming, they might have remained
unchanged for another four thousand years. But a new
factor was about to enter human history which accelerated
the pace of change: warfare.
The domestication of the horse and the discovery of
bronze had already created a new type of human being: the
warrior. But the early warriors confined themselves to
defending their own territory and occasionally stealing
other people's. Now, as towns turned into cities, and the
cities grew more prosperous, so their rulers grew more
powerful. Inevitably, these rulers began to think of
expansion - which meant conquest, which in turn meant
taxes. Within two or three centuries of the invention of the
wheel, the Age of Warrior Kings began in the Middle East.
But warfare demanded fast chariots, and fast chariots could
only be achieved with light wheels. The result was the
invention of the spoked wheel. And when knife-blades
were fastened to these wheels, they became formidable in
battle. Akkad, the northern part of Babylon, became the
world's first empire, and by 4,400 years ago, its king was
already calling himself 'emperor of all the lands of the
earth'.
'Empires' required communication between their most
distant parts, and the old crude picture-writing was no
longer flexible enough. Around 4,400 years ago, some
scribe in Mesopotamia had one of the most inspired ideas
in human history: developing a form of writing that was
based upon human language rather than on pictures of
objects. In other words, a particular symbol would stand
for a syllable. Two thousand years later, the Chinese would
develop a form of writing based on the old pictographs -
with the result that Chinese has about eighty thousand
symbols. The genius who thought up 'syllable-writing' in
the Land of the Two Rivers had taken one of the most
important imaginative leaps in the history of mankind.
At about the same time, horsemen from the steppes of
Russia swept southward into what is now Turkey. These
'charioteers' were pale-skinned compared to Mediterranean
man, and as they stormed into
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China and India, they brought the language and culture
that came to be called Indo-European.
Meanwhile, across the Mediterranean in Egypt, tribes of
nomads had been united under a single king - the
legendary Mens - by 5,200 years ago, and the Egyptians
soon contributed to the history of human invention by
discovering mummification, around 4,600 years ago; and
by developing the royal tombs - called mastabas - into
pyramids built of massive stone blocks. In a few hundred
years, the Egyptians had developed an amazingly
sophisticated science, mathematics, astronomy and
medicine . . .
Which is, of course, the point where this book began.
The above section is a summary of what we might
describe as 'conventional history'. And we have already
seen that it leaves many questions unanswered.
Hapgood raised one of the major objections in Maps of
the Ancient Sea Kings: that there is evidence for a
worldwide seafaring civilisation in the days when
Antarctica was free of ice, possibly around 7000 bc. The
Piri Re'is map, and other portolans, certainly constitute
the strongest proof so far that there is something wrong
with 'conventional history'.
But if the whole aim of this argument was merely to
place the origin of civilisation back a few thousand years,
it would hardly be worth the effort. Neither would there
be any point in trying to suggest that man may have been
in existence for a million or so years longer. It would
make no real difference to Hapgood's seafaring
civilisation whether man is two million years old or ten.
It is the implications of the 'alternative history' that are
so important.
What Cremo is suggesting is that there is evidence for
beings anatomically similar to modern man existing as
long ago as the Miocene, or even longer.
If these hypothetical beings were anatomically similar,
then they walked upright, which freed their hands - which
in turn suggests that they used tools, if only crude stone
implements, eoliths. The use of tools not only demands a
certain level of intelligence; it also tends to develop
intelligence. Confronted with some problem that might be
solved by tools, the tool-user considers the various
possibilities and exercises his mind.
Then why did Homo sapiens not develop much sooner?
Because we
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
tend to live mechanically. Provided we can eat and drink
and satisfy our basic needs, we feel no need to innovate.
Modern experiments have shown that apes can be taught
to communicate in sign language and paint pictures. They
possess the necessary intelligence. Then why have they
not developed these abilities in the course of their
evolution? Because they had no one to teach them. There
is all the difference in the world between intelligence and
making optimum use of that intelligence - a point that
emerges clearly in Wynn's remark that Piaget's
intelligence tests revealed that the tool makers of 330,000
years ago were as intelligent as modern men.
f Then why did man of half a million years ago begin to
evolve so | rapidly? Ardrey could be right; perhaps some
external event, like the great explosion that covered the
earth with tektites, caused some genetic mutation. Yet that
in itself would not provide the whole answer. We have
seen that Neanderthals had a far bigger brain than modern
man, yet still failed to develop into Homo sapiens sapiens.
If man had suddenly developed the ability to use tools,
this would provide the obvious explanation. But
Johanson's 'First Family' was already using crude tools
three million years earlier. And it cannot be explained by
some climatic change that acted as a challenge, for the
bad weather of the Pleistocene had already lasted for one
and a half million years.
Another plausible suggestion is that man began to
develop language half a million years ago - that is, a
more sophisticated language than grunts. But this is open
to an obvious objection: what did he want to say} A
primitive hunting community has no more need for
language than a pack of wolves. Language develops in
response to a certain complexity in society - for example,
every new technology requires new words. But primitive
society had no new technology. So the language theory
falls prey to the same objection as the tool theory.
The Hungarian anthropologist Oscar Maerth even
made the interesting suggestion that the answer may lie
in cannibalism. In 1929, a palaeontologist named Pie
Wen-Chung had discovered in caves near Chou-kou-tien
the petrified skull of one of man's earliest ancestors. It
looked more like a chimpanzee than a human being, and
his associate Teilhard de Chardin thought the teeth were
those of a beast of prey. It had a sloping forehead,
enormous brow ridges, and a receding chin. But the brain
was twice as big as that of a chimpanzee - 800 cc as
compared to 400. And as more limbs, skulls and teeth
were discovered, it became clear that this beast of prey
walked upright. It looked at first
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as if this was the long-sought Missing Link, but the
evidence soon disproved it. 'Peking Man' (as he was
labelled) knew the use of fire -his favourite meal had been
venison. This creature, who had lived half a million years
ago, was a true human being.
He was also a cannibal. All the 40 skulls discovered at
Chou-kou-tien were mutilated at the base, creating a gap
through which a hand could be inserted to scoop out the
brains. Franz Weidenreich, the scientist in charge of the
investigation, had no doubt that the creatures had been
slaughtered in a body, dragged into the caves, and roasted
and eaten. By whom? Presumably other Peking Men. In
other caves in the area, evidence of Cro-Magnon man was
found, and here also was evidence of cannibalism.
There is, as we know, evidence to suggest that
Neanderthal man indulged in cannibalism. Maerth himself
claims that a day after eating raw ape brains in an Asian
restaurant, he experienced a feeling of warmth in the brain
and a sense of heightened vitality, including a powerful
sexual impulse. Ritual cannibalism - which Maerth studied
in Borneo, Sumatra and New Guinea - is based on the
belief that the strength of the dead enemy passes into the
person who eats him, and this could well be based on the
experience of heightened vitality described by Maerth, who
believes that 'intelligence can be eaten'.
There is an obvious problem with Maerth's theory. If
eating human brains produced intelligence, then the few
south-east Asian tribes that still indulge in it ought to be
far more intelligent than Westerners whose ancestors gave
it up thousands of years ago; this does not appear to be so.
Moreover, in order to explain the rate at which man
evolved after about 500,000 years ago, we would need far
more evidence of widespread cannibalism, and this is
simply lacking. So, reluctantly, the cannibal theory must
be regarded as unproven.
The problem with the 'conventional history' outlined
above is that it implies that man is essentially passive. He
drops seeds into a crack in the ground, and realises that
they turn into crops. He moves a heavy load on rollers, and
realises that a slice off a roller becomes a wheel. It all
sounds so accidental, rather like Darwin's natural
selection.
Now it is true that man is a passive creature who is at his
best when he has a challenge to respond to. But what is so
important about him is precisely that amazing ability to
respond to challenges. What distinguishes him from all
other animals is the determination and willpower and
imagination that he brings to challenges. This is the real
secret of his evolution.
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Palaeoanthropologists have overlooked one obvious
explanation for the evolutionary surge: sex. Sexually
speaking, the major difference between human beings and
animals is that human females are sexually receptive all
the year round. The female ape is receptive to the male
only one week in the month.
At some point in history, the human female ceased to go
'on heat' for a few days a month, and became receptive to
the male at any time. The likeliest explanation is that when
the hunters were away from the tribe for weeks - or
perhaps whole summers
2
- at a time, they expected their
sexual reward when they returned, whether the female was
receptive or not. The females who had no objection bred
more of their kind, while the females who objected
gradually died out by natural selection.
At some point in their evolution, human females began
to develop more pronounced sexual characteristics: full
lips, large breasts, rounded buttocks and thighs. The
genitals of the female chimpanzee swell up and become
bright pink when she is in season; it may be that these
characteristics were transferred to the female mouth.
Robert Ardrey remarked, 'Sex is a sideshow in the world
of animals', but in the human world, it began to play an
increasingly important role when women became
permanently receptive, and developed more pronounced
sexual characteristics. Thinner fur, and face-to-face contact
during mating, made sex altogether more sensuous.
At this point in evolution, the males would have had a
strong motive for being competitive. The presence of
unattached females introduced a new excitement. While
the hunters were away, skinny girls suddenly blossomed
into nubile adolescents. In earlier tribal groups, the sole
purpose of the hunter was to kill game. Now the mightiest
hunter could take his pick of the most attractive females.
So there was suddenly a powerful motivation for
becoming a great hunter - the rewards of sex.
There is, of course, no proof whatever that the 'brain
explosion' was connected to the sexual changes that took
place in woman. Yet in the absence of any other
convincing hypothesis, it seems highly plausible. We only
have to think of the enormous part that sexual romanticism
has played in the history of civilisation to realise that it has
always been one of the most powerful of human
motivations - Antony and Cleopatra, Dante and Beatrice,
Ablard and Hlose, Lancelot and Guinevere, Romeo and
Juliet, Faust and Gretchen, all exercise the same
fascination for us that they did for our great-great-
grandfat hers. Psychol ogi cal l y speaki ng, sexual
romanticism is still the most single powerful force in the
lives of human beings. Goethe may have been speaking
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7 Forbidden Archaeology
sound biological sense when he wrote, 'Eternal Woman
draws us upward'.
Again, the obvious question is: what difference does it
make -whether man became more 'human' through sex, or
language, or; through some genetic accident associated
with tektites?
And this time the answer must be: a great deal. It
reminds us that a man driven by a desire to possess a
certain female is a highly purposive individual. We have
already noted that evolution tends to mark time when
individuals have no reason to evolve. The same applies to
individuals; they may be talented and intelligent, and yet
waste their lives because they somehow lack the
motivation to make use of these faculties. The best piece
of luck that can befall any individual is to have a strong
sense of purpose.
It may or may not be true that Homo sapiens evolved
out of a kind of sexual romanticism. But the possibility
serves to draw our attention to a notion of central
importance: that since the evolution of Homo sapiens has
been a mental evolution (as the word sapiens implies),
perhaps we should be seeking the reason for that evolution
in the realm of motivation and purpose rather than the
realm of natural selection and accident. Perhaps we should
be asking: what sense of purpose could have transformed
Homo sapiens into Homo sapiens sapiens}
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T
here is another force that distinguishes human beings from
animals: religion. For some odd reason that no one has
been able to explain, man has always been a religious
animal. The sceptics of the eighteenth century tried to
explain it away as mere superstition: man was afraid of
natural forces, so he personalised the thunder and lightning
as gods, and prayed to them. But this fails to explain why
our ancestors during the Riss Ice Age, over 200,000 years
ago, wanted to make perfectly round spheres, when there
was no obvious practical use for them. The only obvious
explanation seems to be that they are religious objects,
some kind of sun disc. And Homo erectus - or whoever
made them - certainly had no need to be afraid of the sun.
Again, certain flint tools dating from the Riss Ice Age
have been created with an elaborate craftsmanship that
raises them to the level of works of art - certainly far
beyond any practical demands. At Boxgrove, in the
Cotswolds, similar tools date back half a million years.
This suggests either that the toolmakers took an artistic
pride in their craft - and found in it a means of what the
psychologist Abraham Maslow calls 'self-actualisation' - or
that the tools were ritual objects, associated with religious
sacrifice, and possibly ritual cannibalism. In either case,
we again have clear evidence that man had developed far
beyond the ape stage, even when he continued to look
much like an ape.
Now the religious impulse is based upon the feeling that
there is hidden meaning in the world. Dumb animals take
the universe for granted; but intelligence involves a sense
of mystery, and seeks answers where stupidity cannot even
perceive questions. Mountains or giant trees become gods;
so do thunder and lightning; so do the sun and the moon
and the stars.
But why did man develop this sense of
mystery, of hidden
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
significances? We have seen that the rationalist
explanation - that it is based on fear - is inadequate. When
an animal looks at a magnificent dawn or sunset, it
perceives it merely as a natural phenomenon. When a man
looks at a magnificent dawn or sunset, he perceives it as
beautiful; it arouses a certain response in him, like the
smell of cooking. But the response to cooking is due to
physical hunger. What kind of hunger is aroused by a
sunset? If we could answer that question, we would have
answered the question of why man is a religious animal.
But at least we can make a beginning. When Emile
Cartailhac saw engravings in the Laugerie-Basse cave at
Les Eyzies, he recognised immediately that 'here is
something other than a proof of a marvellous artistic
disposition; there are unknown motives and aims at
work . ..' He discounted the notion that Cro-Magnon man
made paintings because he had leisure, pointing out that
the South Sea Islanders have plenty of leisure but hardly
ever made rock paintings. On the other hand, Bushmen
scraping a mere subsistence produced an abundance of
rock art.
It was the Aborigines of Australia and the American
Indians who finally provided the answer: the drawings
served magical purposes. They were intended to establish
a connection between the hunter and his prey. The
anthropologist Ivar Lissner explains it in Man, God and
Magic: 'An animal is put under a spell through the medium
of its effigy, and the soul of the living beast suffers the
same fate as the soul of its second self... A hunter can also
portray the death of his game in ceremonial fashion by
killing it in effigy, using certain very ancient rituals ...'
So we have one more proof that ancient man was a
superstitious animal. But how is it that he was such a
stupid animal that he failed to noticed that his magic did
not work - that when the tribal shaman had performed
some elaborate ceremony to lure bison or reindeer into the
hunters' ambush, the animals simply failed to put in an
appearance?
In other words, if the magic was ineffective, why was it
not dropped within a few generations?
Sceptics will reply that prayer is probably ineffective,
yet people go on praying. But this is an entirely different
case. Prayers seem to be answered often enough to
encourage more prayer; sceptics claim it is coincidence or
wishful thinking, and there is no obvious way to decide
who is right. But a tribal shaman - like those depicted in so
many caves in the Dordogne - performs a long and
elaborate ritual the night before the hunt, and its aim is to
draw animals to a particular spot. If it failed
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to work again and again, the hunters would soon realise it
was a waste of time.
In fact, there is interesting evidence that, for some odd
reason, it does seem to work.
It is a striking fact that shamans all over the world, in
totally unconnected cultures, have the same basic beliefs
and the same basic methods.
Joseph Campbell remarks in the Primitive Mythology
volume of his The Masks of God, published in 1959, of the
Ona tribe of Tierra del Fuego and the Nagajnek Indians of
Alaska: 'Drawn ... from the two most primitive hunting
communities on earth, at opposite poles of the world, out
of touch, certainly for millenniums, with any common
point of traditional origin... the two groups have
nevertheless the same notion of the role and character of
the shaman ...'
He cites an example of shamanic magic - observed by a
western anthropologist, E. Lucas Bridges - which at first
sounds disappointingly like a conjuring trick. In the snow,
in bright moonlight, the Ona shaman Houshken chants for
a quarter of an hour before he puts his hands to his mouth
and brings out a strip of guanaca hide, about the size of a
leather bootlace. Then he slowly draws his hands apart
until it is four feet long. Then an end is handed to his
brother, who steps back until the four feet has become
eight feet. Then Houshken takes it back, puts his hand to
his mouth, and swallows it. 'Even an ostrich could not have
swallowed those eight feet of hide with one gulp without
visible effort.'
Houshken has not flicked the hide up his sleeve for he is
naked. After this, he brings from his mouth a quantity of
something that looks like semi-transparent dough which is
apparently alive, and revolving at great speed. Then, as he
draws his hands further apart, the 'dough' simply
disappears. Again, it sounds like sleight of hand until we
recall that the shaman is naked.
A book called Wizard of the Upper Amazon is perhaps the
clearest and most detailed account in the literature of
anthropology of the training and development of a shaman.
In this work, which has become a classic in its field, the
explorer E Bruce Lamb acts as amanuensis for a Peruvian
youth named Manuel Cordova, who was kidnapped by the
Amahuaca Indians of Brazil in 1902. Cordova spent seven
years among the Indians, and records their way of life in
detail.
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
And since Cordova eventually became chief of the tribe,
it also enables us to begin to understand what must have
been involved in being a palaeolithic shaman-chieftain. In
order to grasp it fully, it is necessary to read the whole
book, which conveys the remarkable sense of unity that
exists in a primitive tribe, in which every member is, in a
sense, a part of an organism. But the following brief
account will at least make it clear why 'magic' seems to
play an inevitable part in the lives of hunters who live in
close contact with nature.
One of the most remarkable chapters of Wizard of the
Upper Amazon describes how the old chief, Xumu,
prepared Cordova for ten days with a special diet, which
included drinks that produced vomiting, diarrhoea and
accelerated heartbeat. Then, with other members of the
tribe, he was given a 'vision extract', which had the effect
of flooding him with strange sensations, colours, and
visions of animals and other natural forms. It took many of
these sessions before he could control the chaos released
by the drug - which was the aim. Finally, the Indians went
one night into the depth of the forest, and spent hours
gathering vines and leaves. These were pounded and
mashed, then placed with elaborate ritual (involving
chants) into the earthenware cooking pot. The preparation
continued for three days, and then the green extract was
poured into small pots.
A hunter who was having bad luck came to the tribal
chief and described a series of mishaps that had led to his
family being half starved. The chief told him to return the
following night for the 'vision extract' (honi xuma)
ceremony.
This took place in a large group. Soon after drinking the
extract, coloured visions began, which were shared by all.
The 'boa chant' brought a giant boa constrictor, which
glided through the clearing, followed by other snakes, then
by a long parade of birds, including a giant eagle, which
spread its wings in front of them, flashed its yellow eyes,
and snapped its beak. After that came many animals -
Cordova explains that he can no longer recall much about
it, 'since the knowledge did not originate in my
consciousness or experience'. This continued all night.
The next day, the 'unlucky' hunter was asked by the
chief, Xumu, if he could now dominate the spirits of the
forest. He replied that his understanding was renewed, and
that the forest would now provide for all his needs.
Later Cordova went on a hunt. The day before, there
were elaborate pre-hunt rituals, with potions to drink,
herbal baths, and the exposure
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of the body to various kinds of smoke, made by burning
the hair of an animal and feathers of a bird they would be
hunting. In the midst of the final ceremony, an owl landed
on a branch; the hunters danced around him, chanting a
ritual and asking him to direct their arrows at, various
animals or birds they named. Finally the owl flew away
and everyone went to bed.
Cordova describes the hunt that followed, and how he
had to learn to recognise all the signs of the forest - the
odour of animals or snakes, the meaning of a broken twig
or fallen leaf. And after they had killed wild pigs, the
leader described to him their method for ensuring that the
pigs always pass that way. The leader, usually an old sow,
has to be shot, and her head buried in a deep hole, facing
opposite to the way the herd was travelling, with ritual
chants to the spirits of the forest. If this is done correctly,
it ensures that the pigs will always pass over this spot in
every circuit of their territory, and by observing the habits
of the pigs, hunters can always be lying in wait for them
when they return.
One night they heard a peculiar insect call. The hunters
were instantly alert, and two of them slipped off into the
forest. Hours later, they returned with an insect wrapped
in a leaf. They made a tiny cage for it, explaining that the
possession of a 'wyetee tee' would guarantee good
hunting. The next day, the hunters hid in camouflaged tree
huts around the clearing. Just as they had foretold, the
wyetee tee brought them such abundance of game that
they had to build another smoking rack for smoking it.
Cordova was himself eventually chosen by Xumu as his
successor. This was not simply because Cordova could
fire a rifle, and had business enterprise enough to show
the tribe how to manufacture and sell rubber; it was
because he possessed the kind of sensitivity that would
enable him to understand his fellows.
During my training I became aware of subtle changes
in my mental process and modes of thought. I noticed
a mental acceleration and a certain clairvoyance in
anticipating events and reactions of the tribe. By
focusing my attention on a single individual I could
divine his reactions and purposes, and anticipate
what he would do or what he planned to do ... The
old man said my power to anticipate and know future
events would improve and grow, also that I would be
able to locate and identify objects from a great
distance.
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
In fact, Cordova had visions of his mother's death,
which - on his return to civilisation - proved to have been
accurate.
The chief himself possessed this clairvoyant power. 'We
waited in the village for many days after the raiding party
went out. Finally, the chief said they would return the next
day. . .' And of course, Xumu was right.
Throughout the book it becomes very clear that much of
the 'magic' of the Indians is a kind of telepathy. When
Cordova is taken into the forest by Xumu for a magical
initiation, he is in no doubt that they are in telepathic
contact.
'The chief spoke in a low, pleasant tone, "Visions
begin." He had completely captured my attention with
these words of magic. I instantly felt a melting away of
any barrier between us; we were as one.'
Then the chief conjures up visions that are shared by
Cordova. The sceptical explanation - that the chief is
merely using suggestion - fails to fit the facts. The chief
says: 'Let us start with the birds', and an incredibly
detailed image of a bird appears; 'Never had I perceived
visual images in such detail before . .. The chief then
brought a female, and the male went through his mating
dance. I heard all of the songs, calls and other sounds.
Their variety was beyond anything I had known.'
There is later another lengthy description of visions
shared by the whole tribe. After drinking the 'vision
extract', a chant causes a procession of animals, including
a huge jaguar. 'This tremendous animal shuffled along
with the head hanging down, mouth open and tongue
lolling out. Hideous, large teeth filled the open mouth. An
instant change of demeanour to vicious alertness caused a
tremor to pass through the circle of phantom-viewers.'
In fact, Cordova realised that he had conjured up this
jaguar, which he had once met on a jungle path, and
succeeded in 'staring down'. The other members of the
tribe also recognised this, with the result that Cordova was
nicknamed 'jaguar'.
Cordova goes on to speak about scenes of combat with
enemy tribes, and with the invading rubber-cutters who
had driven the Amahuaca to seek new territory. He sees
visions of a village in flames, and the chief killing a rubber
planter. The 'show' ends with scenes in their new village. In
this visionary session, it is obvious that everyone is seeing
the same thing, as if they are sitting in a cinema watching a
film; but the film is created by their own minds. In his
introduction to Wizard of the Upper Amazon, Harvard
research fellow Andrew Weil comments:
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Archaeology
'Evidently, these Indians experience the collective
unconscious as an immediate reality, not just as an
intellectual construct.'
Later in the book, Cordova describes how, when the old
chief dies, he takes his place. He discovers that, during the
drug-induced visions, he . is able to control what is seen by
means of chants.
No matter how involved or strange the visions, they
obeyed my wishes as I expressed them in song. Once
the men realised that I had obtained domination over
the visions, they all considered my position infinitely
superior to theirs. I developed at the same time a
more acute awareness of my surroundings and of the
people about me - a sense of clairvoyance that
enabled me to anticipate any difficult situation that
might develop ...
He also inherits the old chief's power of making use of
his dreams. 'One night at the boa camp I had visions in
my sleep of trouble back at Xanada ...' On their return, he
learned that their territory was being invaded by a
neighbouring tribe.
When Cordova eventually returned to civilisation, the
training of the old chieftain stayed with him. The visions
of his mother's death - in a flu epidemic - proved to be
accurate. And, 'strange as it may seem to you, at least two
other important events in my life I have foreseen in
advance. Explain it how you will, I feel that it came from
Xumu's training.'
A sceptic would object that all this proves nothing.
Cordova had merely taken part in rituals that the Indians
believed would bring results, and when results came, they
believed that their magic had been responsible. Yet this is
simply quite contrary to the impression conveyed by
Wizard of the Upper Amazon^ in which there can be no
doubt, as Andrew Weil says, that we are speaking about
the 'collective unconscious' as an everyday reality.
The following example of shamanistic power cannot be
explained in terms of some kind of mass self-deception.
Sir Arthur Francis Grimble was a British colonial
administrator who became land commissioner in the
Gilbert Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, in 1914. He was to
describe his five years there in a delightful autobiography
called Pattern of Islands (1952), which deservedly
became a bestseller. The book is mainly concerned with
his everyday life, and is
1
8
9
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
told in an appropriately matter-of-fact tone. Yet in one
chapter he describes an event so bizarre that it seems to
defy any normal explanation.
An old chieftain named Kitiona criticised Grimble's
skinniness, and recommended him to eat porpoise meat.
On enquiring how he might obtain porpoise meat, Grimble
was told that Kitiona's first cousin, who lived in Kuma
village, was a hereditary porpoise caller.
Now Grimble had heard of porpoise calling - the ability
of certain shamans to cause porpoises to come ashore by
some form of magic; he classified it with the Indian rope
trick. He enquired how it was done, and was told that it
depended on being able to dream a certain dream. If the
porpoise caller could dream this dream, his spirit would
leave his body, and could visit the porpoise-people and
invite them to come and feast and dance in Kuma village.
When the porpoises reached the harbour, the spirit of the
dreamer would rush back to his body and he would alert
the tribe ...
Grimble expressed interest, and Kitiona promised to
send his canoe for him when his cousin was ready.
In due course the canoe arrived, and Grimble was taken
to Kuma. He arrived hot, sweaty and irritable, and was met
by a fat, friendly man who explained he was the porpoise
caller.
The porpoise caller disappeared into a hut screened with
newly-plaited coconut leaves. 'I go on my journey,' he said
as he took his leave. Grimble was installed in his house
next door.
Four o'clock came - the hour at which the magician had
promised results; nothing happened. Yet women were
plaiting garlands, as if for a feast, and friends and relations
were arriving from neighbouring villages. In spite of the
festive atmosphere, it was hot and oppressive.
My faith was beginning to sag under the strain when a
strangled howl burst from the dreamer's hut. I jumped
round to see his cumbrous body come hurtling head
first through the torn screens. He sprawled on his
face, struggled up, and staggered into the open, a
slobber of saliva shining on his chin. He stood a while
clawing at the air and whining on a queer high note
like a puppy's. Then words came gulping out of him:
'Teirake! Teirake! (Arise! Arise!) . . . They come, they
come! . . . Let us go down and greet them.' He started
at a lumbering pace down the beach.
A roar went up from the village, They come, they
come!
5
I found myself rushing helter-skelter with a
thousand others into the
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shallows, bawling at the top of my voice that our friends
from the west were coming. I ran behind the dreamer;
the rest converged on him from north and south. We
strung ourselves out, line abreast, as we stormed through
the shallows ...
I had just dipped my head to cool it when a man near
me yelped and stood pointing; others took up his cry, but
I could make out nothing for myself at first in the
splintering glare of the sun on the water. When at last I
did see them, everyone was screaming hard; they were
pretty near by then, gambolling towards us at a fine clip.
When they came to the edge of the blue water by the
reef, they slackened speed, spread themselves out and
started cruising back and forth in front of our line. Then
suddenly, there was no more of them.
In the strained silence that followed, I thought they
were gone. The disappointment was so sharp, I did not
stop to think that, even so, I had seen a very strange
thing. I was in the act of touching the dreamer's shoulder
to take my leave when he turned his still face to me: 'The
king out of the west comes to meet me,' he murmured,
pointing downwards. My eyes followed his hand. There,
not ten yards away, was the great shape of a porpoise
poised like a glimmering shadow in the glass-green
water. Behind it there followed a whole dusky flotilla of
them.
They were moving towards us in extended order with
spaces of two or three yards between them, as far as my
eye could reach. So slowly they came, they seemed to be
hung in a trance. Their leader drifted in hard by the
dreamer's legs. He turned without a word to walk beside
it as it idled towards the shadows. I followed a foot or
two behind its almost motionless tail. I saw other groups
to right and left of us turn shoreward one by one, arms
lifted, faces bent upon the water.
A babble of quiet talk sprang up; I dropped behind to
take in the whole scene. The villagers were welcoming
their guests ashore with crooning words. Only men were
walking beside them; the women and children followed
in their wake, clapping their hands softly in the rhythms
of a dance. As we approached the emerald shallows, the
keels of the creatures began to take the sand; they
flapped gently as if asking for help. The men leaned
down to throw their arms around the great barrels and
ease them over the ridges. They showed no least sign of
alarm. It was as if their single wish was to get to the
beach.
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
When the water stood only thigh deep, the dreamer
flung his arms high and called. Men from either flank
came crowding in to surround the visitors, ten or more
to each beast. Then, 'Lift!' shouted the dreamer, and
the ponderous black shapes were half-dragged, half-
carried, unresisting, to the lip of the tide. There they
settled down, those beautiful, dignified shapes, utterly
at peace, while all hell broke loose around them. Men,
women and children, leaping and posturing with
shrieks that tore the sky, stripped off their garlands
and flung them around the still bodies, in a sudden
dreadful fury of boastfulness and derision. My mind
still shrinks from that last scene - the raving humans,
the beasts so triumphantly at rest.
We left them garlanded where they lay, and returned
to our houses. Later, when the falling tide had
stranded them high and dry, men went down with
knives to cut them up. There was feasting and dancing
in Kuma that night. A chief's portion of the meat was
set aside for me. I was expected to have it cured, as a
diet for my thinness. It was duly salted, but I could not
bring myself to eat it. ..
It seems clear that there is no great difference between
the 'magic' learned by Cordova in the Upper Amazon and
the magic of the porpoise callers of the South Pacific. Both
seem to be based on some peculiar telepathic ability - or
what Weil calls the collective unconscious.
It may seem that, in venturing into this realm of primitive
'magic', we have left all common sense behind. Yet,
surprisingly, there is a certain amount of scientific backing
for the suggestion that dreaming can induce 'paranormal'
powers - or rather, tap powers that we all possess.
In the early 1980s, Dr Andreas Mavromatis, of London's
Brunei University, led a group of students in exploring
'hypnagogic states', the states of consciousness between
sleeping and waking.
In a book called Mental Radio (1930), the American
novelist Upton Sinclair discussed the telepathic abilities of
his wife May - she had been telepathic ever since
childhood. May Sinclair explained that, in order to achieve
a telepathic state of mind, she had first of all to place
herself in a state of concentration - not concentration on
anything, but simply a high state of alertness. Then she
had to induce deep relaxation, until
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she was hovering on the verge of sleep. Once she was in
this state, she became capable of telepathy.
Mavromatis taught himself to do the same thing - to
induce states that were simultaneously concentrated and
deepy relaxed. What hap-
4
pens in these states - as
everyone knows (for we have all experienced them on the
verge of falling asleep or waking up) - is that we see
certain images or situations with extreme clarity.
In a book called Beyond the Occult, I described my own
experience:
I myself achieved it by accident after reading
Mavromatis's book Hypnogogia. Towards dawn I half
woke up, still drifting in a pleasantly sleepy
condition, and found myself looking at a mountain
landscape inside my head. I was aware of being
awake and of lying in bed, but also of looking at the
mountains and the white-coloured landscape, exactly
as if watching something on a television screen. Soon
after this I drifted off to sleep again. The most
interesting part of the experience was the sense of
looking at the scenery, being able to focus it and shift
my attention, exactly as when I was awake.
One day, when Mavromatis was half-dozing in a circle
of students, listening as one of them 'psychometrised'
some object he was holding in his hand (trying to 'sense'
its history) he began to 'see' the scenes the student was
describing. He then began to alter his hypnagogic visions
- an ability he had acquired by practice - and discovered
that the student was beginning to describe his altered
visions.
Now convinced that hypnagogic states encourage
telepathy, he tried asking students to 'pick up' scenes that
he envisaged, and found that they were often able to do
this. He concludes that 'some seemingly "irrelevant"
hypnogogic images might... be meaningful phenomena
belonging to another mind'. In other words, that T. S. Eliot
might be wrong in thinking that 'we each think of the key,
each in his prison'. Perhaps, as Blake suggested, man can
pass out of his inner prison 'what time he will'.
Telepathy is, in fact, perhaps the best authenticated of
'paranormal' faculties; the evidence for it is generally
agreed, by those in paranormal research, to be
overwhelming. Mavromatis's book goes a step further, and
suggests a link between telepathy and dream states.
It would seem, then, that what Mavromatis has
duplicated under control conditions with his students is
what the Amahuaca Indians were
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
able to do, using mind-altering drugs, under the guidance of
their shaman: to achieve 'group consciousness'.
It becomes possible to envisage what took place when the
porpoise caller went into his hut. Like Mavromatis, he had
taught himself the art of controlled dreaming - of sinking into a
hypnagogic trance which he is able to control. We have to
suppose that he was then able to direct his dreams to the realm
of the porpoises, and communicate direct with them.
(Experiments with porpoises suggest that they are highly
telepathic.) Somehow, the porpoises were 'hypnotised' into
swimming ashore and allowing themselves to be beached.
In Marty God and Magic, Ivar Lissner points out that about
20,000 years ago, on the threshold between the Aurignacian and
Magdalenian, portrayals and statuettes of the human figure
suddenly ceased. 'It seems obvious that artists no longer dared
to portray the human form in effigy.' What he is suggesting is
clear. Our ancestors firmly believed that hunting magic - with
the use of portrayals of the prey - was effective and deadly, and
that on no account should humans be portrayed.
Let us return once again to the question: why has man evolved
so swiftly in the past half-million years - and particularly in the
past 50,000 - when his evolution was virtually stagnant for
millions of years before that?
In Darwinian terms, there is no obvious answer. Nothing, as
far as we know, 'happened' that suddenly forced man to adapt
by developing increased intelligence.
What the present chapter is suggesting is that the answer may
not be obviously 'Darwinian'. Darwin himself was not a rigid
Darwinian; he accepted Lamarck's view that creatures can
evolve by wanting to. But he did not accept that this was the
major mechanism of evolution. More recently, Sir Julian
Huxley - who was certainly a Darwinian -suggested that, in his
present stage, man has become the 'managing director of
evolutioif - that is to say, he now has the intelligence to take
charge of his own evolution.
1
What Huxley is suggesting is that man is now in the position
to recognise what changes are needed - to the environment, to
the human species - and is prepared to engineer these changes.
But he feels that this is a fairly recent development.
Yet what Huxley is also recognising is man's capacity to be
inspired by a sense of purpose. He actually takes pleasure in
change. It is true
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that he tends to remain static when he can see no reason
for change. I live in a small village in Cornwall, where life
has been much the same for centuries. If an Elizabethan
fisherman was transported to our village in the 1990s, he
would certainly be surprised at the television aerials and
the asphalt road, but otherwise he would feel perfectly at
home. And if society itself had not changed - through
inventions like the steam engine and radio - it is perfectly
conceivable that our village would not have changed at all
since 1595, The average man takes life as he finds it and
adapts to it. This is why Australopithecus remained
Australopithecus for two million years or more.
At the same time, however, what man loves most of all
is change. He will work determinedly to move from a one-
room cottage to a semidetached house, to exchange his
bicycle for a motor car, his radio for a television. He
merely needs to be shown the possibility. He only remains
static as long as he sees no possibility of change.
Now I would suggest that religion itself introduces the
possibility of change. Instead of taking trees and
mountains and lakes for granted, he saw them as the abode
of gods or nature spirits - and, moreover, spirits who could
be appeased if he approached them in the right way. So
when he sets out to hunt an animal, he no longer relies
completely on his spear and stone axe; he also prays for
success, and perhaps performs certain rituals and makes
certain offerings. In this sense, his attitude towards his own
life has become active rather than passive. It is the
beginning of a sense of control.
In 1950, Dr Ralph Solecki, of the Smithsonian Institute,
agreed to join an expedition to Iraqi Kurdistan, to excavate
caves where bones of Neanderthal man had been found. In
a book called Shanidar, The Humanity of Neanderthal Man
(1971) he describes his finds in the Shanidar cave.
Here he discovered skeletons of several Neanderthals
who had died from a roof-fall, and been buried
ritualistically. Ashes and food remains over the graves
suggested a funeral feast, while eight different types of
pollen of brightly coloured wildflowers seemed to indicate
that the flowers were woven into a quilt to cover the dead,
or into a shrub to form a screen. The skeleton of an old and
disabled man who had obviously been unable to work for
years revealed that they cared for their elderly. These
people clearly held some kind of religious beliefs.
Again, in a cave at La Quina, in the Dordogne, no less
than 76 perfect spheres were recovered from among the
tools. There was also
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
a delicately worked flat disc of flint, 20 centimetres in
diameter, with no conceivable purpose - except as a sun
disc.
Neanderthal man buried his dead with a coating of the
pigment called red ochre - a habit Cro-Magnon man
seems to have borrowed. In South Africa, many
Neanderthal red ochre mines have been found, the
oldest a hundred thousand years old. From one of the
largest sites, a million kilos of ore had been removed;
then the hole had been carefully filled in again,
presumably to placate the earth spirits.
All this explains Solecki's subtitle, The Humanity of
Neanderthal Man: these creatures may have had ape-like
faces, but they were emphatically human. And they were
clearly religious. Yet in no Neanderthal site in the world
has there been found the slightest trace of cave art. It
seems odd that Neanderthal man possessed red ochre,
and even 'crayons' of the black manganese dioxide
(which were found at Pech-de-l'Aze), yet never used
them to make an image on a flat surface. It would seem
that Neanderthal man may have been religious, but - as
far as we know - he did not practise 'magic', like the Cro-
Magnons -who supplanted him.
j Is it conceivable that religion and 'magic' may provide
the clues to
/ i why man developed so quickly over the past half-
million years? It is
j true that we have no idea of what development may have
taken place
j between the 'cannibalised' skulls of Peking man half a
million years
| ago, and the Neanderthal ritual burial a hundred thousand
years ago -
i unless the Riss Ice Age tools (already referred to) were
used for ritual
purposes. But the Neanderthal ochre mines reveal that
some important
development took place, and that that development was
connected to
religion and burial. (Did they, as Stan Gooch has
suggested, revere red
ochre because it was the
colour of blood?)
And then we find Cro-Magnon man practising
hunting magic, which must have given him a new sense
of control over nature, as well as over his own life. He
may well have regarded his shamans as gods, as
primitive man of a later age (for example, at Great
Zimbabwe in Africa and Angkor in Cambodia) regarded
his priest-kings as gods. Magic was primitive man's
science, since it fulfilled the basic function of science,
of offering answers to basic questions. He was no longer
a passive animal, a victim of nature. He was trying to
understand, and where important questions were
concerned, he felt he did understand.
Another basic point must be emphasised. Neanderthal
man's burial rituals make it clear that he believed in life
after death. And all shamans, from Iceland to Japan, see
themselves as intermediaries between this
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8 More Forbidden Archaeology
world and the world of spirits. All over the world, shamans
have declared that, in passing through the rituals and
ordeals that qualified them as shamans, they entered the
spirit world and talked with the dead. Shamans believe that
their power comes from spirits and from the dead.
The importance of this observation lies in the fact that
the priest-shaman feels that he possesses an understanding
of both heaven and earth - a claim that even a modern
cosmologist would be reluctant to make. He felt himself in
a position of god-like knowledge, and the rest of the tribe
certainly endorsed this view. Which suggests that 40,000
years ago, perhaps even 100,000 years ago, man had
achieved a peculiarly 'modern' state of mind.
We know that this state of mind existed in ancient Egypt
and ancient Sumer - in fact, every early civilisation we
know about was a theocracy. If Hapgood is correct in
believing that a worldwide maritime civilisation existed in
7000 bc, then it certainly shared the same world view. We
have already seen that the Egyptians regarded their
kingdom as an exact reflection of the kingdom of the
heavens. And if Schwaller de Lubicz and Robert Bauval
are correct in believing that the Sphinx was built by
survivors of another civilisation around 10,500 bc, then
this civilisation certainly held the same view about the
intimate relationship between heaven and earth, the gods
and man. And so, if Professor Arthur Posnansky is right,
did the ancient Incas who built Tiahuanaco at about the
same time.
When did this worldwide theocratic vision come to an
end? It had certainly vanished by the time of Socrates and
Plato. In a book called The Origin of Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) Princeton
psychologist Julian Jaynes argues that the watershed
occurred as recently as 1250 bc.
Jaynes's starting point is the relatively new science of
split-brain physiology - which, since this is of such central
importance to this book, must be briefly explained.
The brain consists of two halves, which are virtually
mirror-images of one another. But the functions of these
two hemispheres are by no means identical. This applies
particularly to the 'top layer' of the human brain, the
cerebral cortex, which has developed most in the past half-
million years.
Even in the nineteenth century, it had been recognised
that the two
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
halves of our brains have different functions. The speech
function resides in the left half of the brain, and doctors
observed that people who had received damage to the left-brain
became inarticulate. The right side of the brain was obviously
connected with recognition of shapes and patterns, so that an
artist who had right-brain damage would lose all artistic talent.
One man could not even draw a clover leaf; he put the three
leaves of the clover side by side, on the same level.
Yet an artist with left-brain damage only became inarticulate;
he was still as good an artist as ever. And an orator with right-
brain damage could sound as eloquent as ever, even though he
could not draw a clover leaf.
The left brain is also involved in logic and reason - for
example, adding up a laundry list or doing a crossword puzzle.
The right is involved in such activities as musical appreciation
or recognising faces. In short, you could say that the left is a
scientist and the right is an artist.
One of the odd facts of human physiology is that the left side
of the body is controlled by the right side of the brain, and vice-
versa. No one quite knows why this is, except that it probably
makes for greater integration. If the left brain controlled the left
side and the right brain the right side, there might be 'frontier
disputes'; as it is, each has a foot firmly in the other's territory.
If you removed the top of your head, the upper part of your
brain -the 'cerebral hemispheres' - would look like a walnut
with a kind of bridge connecting the two halves. This bridge is
a knot of nerves called the corpus callosum, or commissure.
But doctors learned that there are some freaks who possess no
commissure yet seem to function perfectly well. This led them
to wonder if they could prevent epileptic attacks by severing the
commissure. They tried it on epileptic patients and it seemed to
work - the fits were greatly reduced, and the patient seemed to
be unharmed. This led the doctors to wonder what the
commissure was for. Someone suggested it might be for
transmitting epileptic seizures; another suggested it might be to
stop the brain sagging in the middle.
In the 1950s, experiments in America began to shed a flood
of light on the problem. Someone noticed that if a 'split-brain'
patient knocked against a table with his left side, he didn't seem
to notice. It began to emerge that the split-brain operation had
the effect of preventing one half of the brain from learning what
the other half knew. If a split
7
brain cat was taught some trick
with one eye covered, then asked to
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do it with the other eye covered, it was baffled. It became
clear that we literally have two brains.
Moreover, if a split-brain patient was shown an apple
with the left eye and an orange with the right, then asked
what he had just seen, he would reply: 'Orange'. Asked to
write what he had just seen with his left hand, he would
reply 'Apple'. A split-brain female patient who was shown
an indecent picture with her right brain blushed; asked
why she was blushing, she replied truthfully: 'I don't
know.' The person who was doing the blushing was the
one who lived in the right half of her brain. She lived in
the left half.
This is true of all of us, though in left-handers, the brain
hemispheres are the other way round and so the situation
reversed. The person (a right-hander) you call yourself
lives in the left half - the half that 'copes' with the real
world. The person who lives in the right is a stranger.
It might be objected that you and I are not split-brain
patients. That makes no difference. Mozart once remarked
that tunes were always walking into his head fully fledged,
and all he had to do was to write them down. Where did
they come from} Obviously, the right half of his brain, the
'artist'. Where did they go to} The left half of his brain -
where Mozart lived. In other words, Mozart was a split-
brain patient. And if Mozart was, then so are the rest of us.
The person we call T is the scientist. The 'artist' lives in the
shadows, and we are scarcely aware of his existence,
except in moods of deep relaxation, or of 'inspiration'.
Jaynes's interest in the subject began when he
experienced an auditory hallucination. Lying on a couch,
brooding on a problem until he was mentally exhausted, he
suddenly heard a voice from above his head say: 'Include
the knower in the known.' Concerned about his sanity,
Jaynes began researching hallucinations and, to his relief,
discovered that about ten per cent of people have had
them.
Jaynes then noticed that in a great deal of ancient
literature - the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible, the Iliad - the
heroes are always hearing voices - the voices of the gods.
He also noted that these early heroes were completely
lacking in what we would call an 'inner self. 'We cannot
approach these heroes by inventing mind-spaces behind
their fierce eyes as we do with each other. Iliadic man did
not have subjectivity as we do; he had no awareness of his
awareness of the world, no internal mind-space to
speculate upon.'
Jaynes is suggesting that what we call 'subjectivity' - the
ability to look inside yourself and say: 'Now what do I
think about this?' - did
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
not exist before about 1250 bc. The minds of these early
people were, he thinks, 'bicameral' - divided into two
compartments. And when a primitive man was worried
about what to do next, he heard a voice speaking to him,
just as Jaynes did as he was lying on his couch. He thought
it was the voice of a god (or of his chieftain, whom he
regarded as a god). In fact, it came from his right brain.
According to Jaynes, self-awareness began to develop
slowly after about 3000 bc, due to the invention of writing,
which created a new kind of complexity. And during the
great wars which convulsed the Middle East and
Mediterranean in the second millennium bc, the old
childlike mentality could no longer cope, and human
beings were forced to acquire a new ruthlessness and
efficiency in order to survive. 'Overrun by some invader,
and seeing his wife raped, a man who obeyed his voices
would, of course, immediately strike out, and thus
probably be killed.' The man who survived would need the
ability to reflect, and dissimulate his feelings.
According to Jaynes, the first sign of this 'change of
mind' came in Mesopotamia. The Assyrian tyrant Tukulti-
Ninurti had a stone altar built in about 1230 bc, which
shows the king kneeling before the empty throne of the
god, while in earlier carvings the king would be seen
talking to the god. Now he is alone - trapped in his left
brain. The god has vanished.
A cuneiform text of the period contains the lines:
One who has no god, as he walks
along the street Headache envelops
him like a garment.
It is speaking of stress, nervous tension, loss of contact
with the right brain, with its sense of 'feeling at home in
the world'. We seem to be observing the birth of 'alienated
man'. And according to Jaynes, it is at this point that
cruelty entered history, and we see Assyrian carvings of
men and women impaled and children beheaded.
It is not necessary to agree with this whole thesis to
recognise its importance. The main objection to it is that
many animals have been shown to possess self-awareness.
One experimenter anaesthetised various animals, painted
their faces red, and left them facing a large mirror. Most
animals showed no interest whatever in their reflections,
but chimpanzees and orang-utans were the exception - they
inspected their faces with great interest, which would seem
to indicate that they possess self-awareness. And if
chimpanzees and orang-utans possess self-aware-
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8 More Forbidden Archaeology
ness, it is difficult to imagine even the most primitive
humans entirely without it.
Moreover, our recognition that modern man is somehow
'separated from himself would seem to imply that it is we
who are 'bicameral', with the mind divided into two
compartments, while primitive man was 'unicameraP - as
most animals probably are.
Yet in spite of these objections, it is obvious that Jaynes
is correct in suggesting that some basic change came over
the human race at a certain point in history, and that after
that point, man became trapped in a narrower form of
consciousness. Yet we compensated for the loss by
learning to use reason to far greater effect, and our
technological civilisation is the end product.
These insights bring us back to the mainstream argument
of this book.
Schwaller de Lubicz was totally convinced that there is
a fundamental difference between the Egyptian mentality
and that of modern man -he returns to it repeatedly in book
after book.
One of the most important forms of this difference can
be seen in the hieroglyphic. Words, says Schwaller, fix
their meaning. If you read the word 'dog', it evokes a
vague, abstract notion of 'dogginess'. But if you look at a
picture of a dog - even a simple drawing - it is far more
alive.
Everyone, as a child, has tried out those red and green
goggles that cause pictures to turn three-dimensional. You
look at the photograph with normal eyes, and it looks
blurry, with red and green patches superimposed on one
another. Then you pick up a cardboard pair of spectacles,
with one eye made of red cellophane and one of green, and
the photograph ceases to be blurry, and leaps into three
dimensions. According to Schwaller, our words are like the
blurry photograph. The hieroglyphic is an image that leaps
into life. 'Each hieroglyphic', says Schwaller, 'can have an
arrested, conventional meaning for common usage, but it
includes (1) all the ideas that can be connected to it, and
(2) the possibility of personal comprehension.'
In a chapter called 'Experimental Mysticism' in A New
Model of the Universe, Gurdjieff's disciple Ouspensky
describes how he used some unspecified method (probably
nitrous oxide) to achieve 'mystical' consciousness. One of
the characteristics of this state of mind was that every
single word, every single thing, reminded him of dozens of
other words and things. When he looked at an ashtray, it
released such a
201
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
flood of meanings and associations - about copper, copper-
mining, tobacco, smoking, and so on - that he wrote on a
piece of paper: 'One could go mad from one ashtray.'
Similarly, Schwaller says: Thus the hieroglyphics are
really not metaphors. They express directly what they want
to say, but the meaning remains as profound, as complex
as the teaching of an object might be (chair, flower,
vulture), if all the meanings that can be attached to it were
to be considered. But out of laziness or habit, we skirt this
analogic thought process and designate the object by a
word that expresses for us but a single congealed concept.'
In The Temple in Man he uses another image. If we say
'walking man', we envisage a walking man, but in a vague,
abstract way. But if we see a picture of a walking man -
even a hierogylphic - he becomes somehow real. And if the
walking man is painted green, then he also evokes
vegetation and growth. And although walking and growing
seem completely disconnected, we can feel the connection
in the picture of the green man.
This power of the hieroglyphic to evoke a 'reality' inside
us is what Schwaller means by 'the possibility of personal
comprehension'. It rings a bell, so to speak.
He tries again, in the same book, in a chapter on the
Egyptian mentality, to explain himself. Our modern
method of linking ideas and thoughts he calls 'mechanical',
like a lever attached rigidly to some gear. By contrast, the
Egyptian mentality is 'indirect'. A hieroglyphic evokes an
idea, but it also evokes dozens of other connected ideas.
And he tries to explain himself by a simple image. If we
stare at a bright green spot, then close our eyes, we shall
see the complementary colour - red - inside our eyelids.
The westerner would say that the green is the reality, and
the red some kind of illusion dependent on that reality. But
an ancient Egyptian would have felt that the red is the
reality, because it is an inner vision.
It is important not to misunderstand this. Schwaller is
not saying that external reality is an illusion. He is saying
that symbols and hieroglyphics can evoke a richer, more
complex reality inside us. Great music and poetry produce
the same effect. Keats's lines:
The moving waters at their priest-
like task Of pure ablution round
earth's human shores
somehow evoke a rich complex of feelings, which is why
Eliot said
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that true poetry can communicate before it is understood.
Ordinary perception merely shows us single things,
deprived of their 'resonance'. A simple parallel would be a
book, which is a solid object with a rectangular shape; this
is its 'external reality'. But what is inside the
m
book can
take us on a magical journey. The reality of the book is
hidden, and for a person unable to read, it would merely be
a physical object.
When we look at this in the light of what has been said
above about the left and right brain, we can see
immediately that a hieroglyphic is a picture, and is
therefore grasped by the right brain. A word is a
succession of letters, and is grasped by the left brain.
Is Schwaller saying simply that the Egyptians were
'right brainers' and we are 'left brainers'?
He is, but there is far more to it than that. He is saying
that the Egyptians possessed a different kind of
intelligence from modern man, an intelligence that is
equal, and in many ways superior. He calls this 'innate
intelligence' or 'intelligence of the heart'. It sounds like
the kind of doctrine preached by D. H. Lawrence or
Henry Miller, and to some extent it is. But there is far
more implied than either of them realised. In spite of their
'intelligence of the heart', both writers saw themselves
essentially as modern men, so their criticism of the
twentieth century often sounds negative and destructive.
Neither seems to be aware of the possibilities of a
different way of seeing.
One of these is obvious. If we think of what Manuel
Cordova learned in the forest of the Amazon, we can see
that it involved learning about certain 'powers' that sound
almost mythical - to begin with, the power to participate
in the 'collective unconscious' of the tribe. Observe that
Cordova was able to see a procession of birds and
animals, and that he saw them in far more precise detail
than in ordinary perception. The chieftain had somehow
taught him to make active use of his right hemisphere,
which in turn was providing far more richness (more
associations) than ordinary visual perception.
It would be a mistake to think of telepathy as a
'paranormal' faculty. With a series of experiments in the
1960s, Dr Zaboj V. Harvalik, a physicist at the University
of Missouri, placed it on a scientific basis. To begin with,
Harvalik was intrigued by dowsing - an ability that seems
to be possessed by all primitive people. Observing that
the dowsing rod - a forked twig, with the two prongs of
the fork grasped in either hand - would always react to an
electric current, he came to suspect that dowsing is
basically electrical. He drove two lengths of
2
0
3
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
water pipe vertically into the ground, 60 feet apart, and
connected their ends to a powerful battery. As soon as the
current was switched on, the dowsing rod reacted by
twisting in his hands. He tried it on friends, and discovered
that they could all dowse if the current was strong enough
- say, 20 milli-amps. A fifth of them were able to detect
currents as low as 2 milli-amps. All of them improved
steadily with practice.
He also noted that people who seemed unable to dowse
would suddenly 'tune in' after drinking a glass of whisky;
the whisky obviously relaxed them, preventing 'left brain'
interference.
Harvalik discovered that a strip of aluminium foil
wound round the head blocks all dowsing ability, again
demonstrating that the pheno-monon is basically electrical
(or magnetic).
A German master dowser named de Boer was able to
detect currents as low as a thousandth of a milli-amp. He
could even detect the signals of radio stations, turning
around slowly until he was facing the direction of the
station. Harvalik could check his accuracy by tuning in a
portable radio in that direction. Moreover, de Boer could
select a named frequency to the exclusion of others - rather
like our ability to 'tune in' to different conversations at a
party.
When someone invented a magnetometer sensitive
enough to detect brain waves, Harvalik wondered if a
dowser could also pick them up. He would stand with his
back to a screen in his garden, with earplugs in his ears,
and ask friends to walk towards him from the other side of
the screen. His dowsing rod could pick up their presence
when they were ten feet away. If he asked them to think
'exciting thoughts' - for example, about sex - this doubled
to twenty feet.
2
So it would seem that dowsing is simply a faculty for
detecting electrical signals. But how does the dowsing rod
detect them? It seems that some part of the body (Harvalik
concluded that it was the adrenal glands) picks up the
signal, which is then passed on to the brain, which causes
the muscles to convulse. The striped muscles concerned
are under the control of the right brain. Dowsing - like
telepathy - is a right brain faculty.
When we also recollect Grimble's porpoise caller
inviting the porpoises to a feast, it also seems clear that
this form of 'magic' (involving telepathy) is also a right
brain faculty.
If dowsing and telepathy can be explained scientifically,
then it becomes possible to understand how the Stone Age
shaman was able, by drawing bison or deer - and so setting
in train the process of
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'association' described by Schwaller - somehow to
influence their movements and ensure success for the
hunters.
All this places us in a position to begin constructing an
'alternative history'.
In a Time-Life book called Early Man, there is a kind
of pull-out chart showing man's evolution from the ape-
like Dryopithecus and Ramapithecus, through
Australopithecus and Homo erectus to modern man. The
problem with such a chart is that it gives us the idea of
some steady progression, by means of natural selection
and survival of the fittest, that led inevitably to Homo
sapiens sapiens.
The objection to this picture is that it makes it all seem a
little too |
mechanical. This is why Cremo's Forbidden Archaeology
offers a timely )
reminder that it is not the only view. By making the
startling assertion |
that anatomically modern man may have been around for
millions of I
years, he at least causes us to question this mechanical
view of evolution, I
(Again, it must be emphasised that the 'mechanical' view is
not 'Darwin- I
ian'; Darwin was never dogmatic enough to claim that
natural selection I
was the only mechanism of evolution. It is only his neo-
Darwinian I
followers who have hardened it into a dogma.)
|
Let us, then, begin formulating our alternative history by
supposing f
that Mary Leakey may be correct in suggesting that a man
who walked I
erect and looked 'human' may have walked the earth at the
time of I
Lucy and the First Family, three and a half million years
ago. She also \
noted that she had studied a period of half a million years
in the \
Olduvai Gorge during which there was no change in the
tools. Man I
remained unchanged because he had no reason to evolve.
Most of his /
energies were taken up merely staying alive.
I
Then why did he start to evolve with such speed that
the event is I
k n o w n a s ' t h e b r a i n e x p l o s i o n ' ?
f
It is almost impossible for modern man to put himself in
the position! of a creature with no civilisation, no culture,
nothing but the naturej that surrounded him. Even the
Amahuaco Indians described by Manuel} Cordova lived in
huts and used spears and bows and arrows. But they| can at
least give us an idea of what it must be like to live in daily
and nightly contact with nature. Cordova's Indians read
every sign of the forest - every sight and sound - as we
read the morning paper. And our remote ancestors must
have possessed the same capacity in order to survive.
2
0
5
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
We have to imagine them surrounded by unseen
presences, some visible, some invisible. And we have to
picture them in closer contact with nature that we can
begin to conceive. Schwaller de Lubicz tries to convey
some sense of the awareness of primitive man - although
he is admittedly speaking of the ancient Egyptians: '...
every living being is in contact with all the rhythms and
harmonies of all the energies of his universe. The means of
this contact is, of course, the self-same energy contained
by this particular living being. Nothing separates this
energetic state within an individual living being from the
energy in which he is immersed ...'
In other words, Schwaller sees primitive man - and
animals -immersed in a sea of energies like a fish in water.
It is as if he is a part of that sea, a denser knot of energy
than that which surrounds him and sustains him. Schwaller
speaks of neters, an Egyptian word usually translated as
'god', but here meaning something closer to an individual
energy vibration:
... in every month of each season of the year, every
hour of the day has its Neter, because each one of
these hours has its own character. It is known that the
blue morning-glory blooms at sunrise and closes at
midday like the lotus flower ... certain fruits require
the afternoon sun in order to ripen and to colour... A
young pepper plant, for example, leans towards the
burning sun of the morning, which differs from the
cooking sun of the afternoon... we will draw the
conclusion that a relationship exists between the fruit,
for example its taste, and the sun of its ripening, and,
for the pepper plant, between the fire of the pepper
and the fire of the sun. There is a harmony in their
'nature'.
If a good gardener plants his cauliflower on the day
of the full moon, and a bad gardener plants them at
new moon, the former will have rich, white
cauliflower and the latter will harvest nothing but
stunted plants. It is sufficient to try this in order to
prove it. So it is for everything that grows and lives.
Why these effects? Direct rays of sunlight or indirect
rays reflected from the moon? Certainly, but for quite
another, less material reason: cosmic harmony. Purely
material reasons no longer explain why the season,
even the month and the precise date, must be taken
into account for the best results. Invisible cosmic
influences come into play ...
3
I have quoted at such length because Schwaller here not
only provides
206
8 More Forbidden Archaeology
an insight into the Egyptian state of mind, but into the
reason why primitive man paid such attention to the sun
and moon. This is why he made perfectly spherical stones
and sun discs, and why later he buried his dead in circular
barrows. The sun - and the moon - meant infinitely, more
for him than it can for modern man.
Schwaller makes another central point that is as valid
for early Homo sapiens as for the ancient Egyptians: that
they took life after death for granted. Life on earth was
only a small part of the great cycle that began and would
end in another world. Spirits - nature spirits and the spirits
of the dead - were as real as living people. The elaborate
burial practices of Neanderthal man make it clear that he
also took life after death for granted, and the suggestions
of ritual cannibalism make the same point - for the
cannibal intends to absorb the vital principle of his enemy.
We can say that the holes in the skulls found in the Chou-
Kou-Tien cave, which suggest that Peking man was a
cannibal, also suggest that he believed in spirits.
Any kind of ritual indicates a level of intelligence
beyond the merely animal. A ritual symbolises events in
the real world, and a symbol is an abstraction. Man is the
only creature capable of abstraction. So if Peking man
indulged in ritual cannibalism, this would already seem to
suggest that he was truly human. And since it is hard to
imagine any kind of ritual without communication, then
we also have to imagine that he was capable of speech.
In an earlier chapter, we dealt with the suggestion that
the 'brain explosion' might have been due to the
development of speech, pointing out that this theory also
requires us to explain what primitive man had to say. The
suggestion of ritual cannibalism - and therefore of religion
- provides an answer. Peking man had no need to ask his
wife, 'Have you done the washing up?' But if he lived in
the rich and complex world suggested by Schwaller de
Lubicz, in which every hour of the day had its individual
neter or vibration, and in which the sun, the moon and the
spirits of the dead were living presences, then language
had, so to speak, an object on which to exercise itself.
Peking man provides us with another clue. In 1930,
Teilhard de Chardin visited the Abb Breuil in Paris and
showed him a piece of blackened bone. 'What do you
think that is?' The Abb examined it, then said: 'It's a piece
of stag antler, which has been exposed to fire then worked
with some crude stone tool.' 'Impossible!' said Teilhard.
'It's from Chou-Kou-Tien.' 'I don't care where it's from,'
said Breuil. 'It was fashioned by man - and by a man who
knew the use of fire.'
207
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
The piece of antler was about half a million years old.
And since it was carved with a tool after it was burnt, we
must presume it was deliberately burnt first. So Homo
erectus used fire.
We cannot suppose that he knew how to make fire by
striking flints together - that seems to be supposing too
high a level of sophistication. In which case, we have to
assume that he supplied himself with fire when he saw a
tree struck by lightning - or some similar phenomenon -
and then kept it burning permanently, presumably by
assigning someone in the group to keep it alive. And this
notion of keeping a fire alive, for year after year, would
obviously provide the 'fire-keeper' with a powerful sense
of motivation and purpose. And since purpose makes for
evolution, we have yet another possible contributory
reason for the 'brain explosion'. Peking man, apparently,
had both fire and some kind of religious ritual.
Schwaller makes the important point that Egyptian
science, Egyptian art, Egyptian medicine, Egyptian
astronomy, must not be seen as different aspects of
Egyptian life; they were all aspects of the same thing,
which was religion in its broadest sense. Religion was
identical with knowledge.
The same must have been true for the descendants of
Peking man. They had moved from the merely animal
level to the level where knowledge could be pinned down
in some kind of language. To see a tree or a river or a
mountain as a god - or rather a neter - would be to see it in
a new and strange light. Even today, a religious convert
sees the world in this strange light in which everything
looks different. Shaw makes a character in Back to
Methuselah say that since her mind was awakened, even
small things are turning out to be big things. This is the
effect of knowledge. It brings a sense of distance from the
material world, and a sense of control.
Yet Neanderthal man was religious, and he still vanished
from history. This can be for only one reason: that the
being who supplanted him had an even greater sense of
precision and control. No doubt Neanderthal man had his
own form of hunting magic; but compared to the magic of
Cro-Magnon man, with its shamans and rituals and cave
drawings, it was as crude as a bicycle compared to a motor
car.
This sense of precision and control is illustrated in a
story told by Jacquetta Hawkes in her book Man and the
Sun (1962). She points out:
The absence of any solar portrait or symbol in
Palaeolithic art may
208
8 More Forbidden Archaeology
not mean that the sun had absolutely no part in it. A
rite practised among the pygmies of the Congo warns
against any such assumption. Frobenius was travelling
through the jungle with several of these skilful and
brave little hunters when, towards evening, a need
arose for fresh meat. The white man asked his
companions if they could kill an antelope. They were
astonished at the folly of the request, explaining that
they could not hunt successfully that day because no
proper preparation had been made; they promised to
go hunting the next morning instead. Frobenius,
curious to know what their preparations might be, got
up before dawn and hid himself on the chosen hill-
top. All the pygmies of the party appeared, three men
and a woman, and presently they smoothed a patch of
sand and drew an outline upon it. They waited; then,
as the sun rose, one of the men fired an arrow into the
drawing, while the woman raised her arms towards
the sun and cried aloud. The men dashed off into the
forest. When Frobenius approached the place, he
found that the drawing was that of an antelope, and
that the arrow stood in its neck. Later, when the
hunting party had returned with a fine antelope shot
through the neck, some of them took tufts of its hair
and a calabash of blood, plastered them on the
drawing and then wiped it out. Joseph Campbell adds,
'The crucial point of the pygmy ceremony was that it
should take place at dawn, the arrow flying into the
antelope precisely when it was struck by a ray of the
sun . . .'
It is easy to see that the Cro-Magnon hunter, using this
kind of technique, would feel like a modern big game
hunter using a high-powered rifle with telescopic sights.
By comparison, the older magic of Neanderthal man must
have seemed as crude as a bow and arrow.
This, I am inclined to believe, was the reason that Cro-
Magnon man became the founder of civilisation. His
command of 'magic' gave him a sense of optimism, of
purpose, of control, such as had been possessed by no
animal before him.
Central to this evolution was the authority of the chief.
Among animals, the leader is simply the most dominant.
But if Cro-Magnon man resembled his descendants in
Egypt and Sumeria and Europe (or even the chief of the
Amahuaca Indians in Brazil), then his kings were not
simply authority figures, but priests and shamans, those
with a knowledge of 'spirits' and the gods. This was of
immense importance for ancient man; we can form some
estimate of what it meant if we
209
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
think of Hitler's effect on Germany in the early 1930s - the
sense of optimism, of idealism, of national purpose.
Hitler's Third Reich was basically religious in conception -
the notion of heaven brought down to earth. The same was
true of ancient Egypt, under its pharaoh-god.
So //there was a civilisation in 'Atlantis' before 11,000
bc, and in Tiahuanaco in the Andes, and in pre-dynastic
Egypt, then we can state beyond doubt that it was a
'pharaonic theocracy', ruled by a king who was also
believed to be a god.
The pyramids were built by men who believed totally
and without question that their pharaoh was a god, and that
in erecting such magnificent structures, they were serving
the gods. Such a belief gives a society a sense of purpose
and direction that is impossible for any group of mere
animals, no matter how dominant and cunning their leader.
When primitive man came to believe that his tribal leader
was in touch with the gods, he had taken one of the most
important steps in his evolution.
210
9 Of Stars and Gods
I
n the summer of 1933, a 39-year-old Scot named
Alexander Thorn
anchored his sailing yacht in East Loch Roag, north-west
of the
island of Lewis in the Hebrides. Thorn was an aeronautical
engineer
whose lifelong passion was sailing. As the moon rose, he
looked up
and saw, silhouetted against it, the standing stones of
Callanish, 'Scot- I
l a n d ' s S t o n e h e n g e
5
.
j
After dinner, Thorn walked up to it, and looking along
the avenue of
menhirs, realised that its main north-south axis pointed
direct at the
Pole Star. But Thorn knew that when the stones were
erected - probably
before the Great Pyramid - the Pole Star was not in its
present position.
So how did the men who built it manage to point it with
such accuracy
to geographical north? To do this, with such incredible
precision as is
revealed at Callanish, would require something more than
guesswork.
One way would be to observe the exact position of the
rising sun and
the setting sun, and then bisect the line between them - but
that can
only be done accurately in flat country, where both
horizons are level.
Another would be to observe some star close to the pole in
the evening,
then again twelve hours later before dawn, and bisect that
line. Thorn
could see that it would be an incredibly complicated
business involving
plumb lines and upright stakes. Obviously, these ancient
engineers were
h i g h l y s o p h i s t i c a t e d .
v
Thorn began to study other stone circles, most of them
virtually | unknown. They convinced him that he was
dealing with men whose \ intelligence was equal to, or
superior to, his own - a television programme about his
ideas referred to them as 'prehistoric Einsteins'.
The i dea st aggered - and enraged - most
archaeologists. The astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer had
observed, around the beginning of the twentieth century,
that Stonehenge might be a kind of astronomical
calculator, marking the positions of the sun and moon,
but no one had
2
1
1
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
taken him very seriously, for most 'experts' were
convinced that the builders of Stonehenge were
superstitious savages, who probably conducted human
sacrifices on the altar stone. Thorn was asserting that, on
the contrary, they were master-geometers.
Moreover, most of these stone circles were not circles:
some were shaped like eggs, some like letter Ds. Yet the
geometry - as Thorn discovered through years of study and
calculation - was always precise. How did they do it?
Thorn finally worked out that the 'circles' were built
around 'Pythagorean triangles' - triangles whose sides
were, respectively, 3, 4 and 5 units long (so the square on
the hypotenuse was equal to the sum of the squares on the
other two sides).
And why did they want these circles? That was more
difficult to answer. Presumably to work out such things as
the phases of the moon, the movement of the sun between
the solstices and equinoxes, and to predict eclipses. But
why did they want to predict eclipses? Thorn admitted that
he did not know, but he mentioned a story of two ancient
Chinese astronomers losing their heads because they failed
to predict an eclipse - which meant that the ancients
attached immense importance to eclipses.
There was another interesting problem. If these ancient
men were so skilled in geometry, how did they remember
it all? No stone or clay tablets inscribed with geometrical
propositions has come down to us from the megalith
builders. But then, we do know that the ancient Greeks
knew their Homer - and other poets - by heart. They had
trained their memories until they could recite hundreds of
thousands of lines. The Iliad and Odyssey we read in books
had been passed down for centuries in the memory of
bards - this is why bards were so highly respected.
When Alexander Thorn died, at the age of 91, in 1985,
he was no longer regarded as a member of the lunatic
fringe; many respectable archaeologists and experts on
ancient Britain had become his firmest supporters.
Moreover, the British astronomer Gerald Hawkins had
confirmed Thorn's most important assertions by feeding
the data from monuments like Stonehenge through his
computer at Harvard, and proving that there were
astronomical alignments.
One of Thorn's most interesting followers, the Scottish
academic Anne Macaulay, has followed in Thorn's
footsteps with a theory that is just as controversial. In
Science and Gods in Megalithic Britain, she starts from
Thorn's assumption that the earliest geometry was a
tradition which was not written down, and that it was
connected with
212
9 Of Stars and Gods
astronomy.
1
She then asked herself how ancient
astronomers could have stored their knowledge in the
absence of phonetic writing (which was developed by the
Greeks and Phoenicians after 2000 bc). Obviously,
memory has to be the answer. But not memory in the sense
we speak of it today. It is a little-known fact that the
ancients had developed a complex art of memory^ which
they regarded as comparable to any of the other arts or
sciences. The scholar Frances Yates has written about it in
her book The Art of Memory (1966) and shows how we can
trace it back to the ancient Greeks, and how it survived
down to the time of Shakespeare.
The art of memory did not simply depend on brain
power, but upon a complicated series of mnemonics
(devices for helping us remember, like 'roygbiv' for the
colours of the rainbow). Anne Macaulay's suggestion is
that the phonetic alphabet was created as a series of
mnemonics to record positions of the polar stars, and that
the word 'Apollo' - the god of music - was one of these
basic mnemonics. The letters, from A to U, were created as
mnemonics for certain geometric theorems or figures, with
which numbers were associated. (In fact, Anne Macaulay's
starting point was her study of the ancient Greek musical
scale.)
Her theory of ancient history, and the geometry of
megalithic circles, is too complicated to detail here. But
she reaches one thought-provoking conclusion: that when
this 'code' is used to encapsulate the extreme southerly
rising of the moon, the ideal spot to build an observatory is
precisely where Stonehenge is placed. Another is that all
this indicates that ancient Greek science - including
Pythagoras (who was born about 540 bc) - probably
originated in Europe - the exact reverse of a suggestion
made in the nineteenth century that Stonehenge was built
by Mycenaean Greeks. She suggests that the early Greeks
may have been British tin traders from Cornwall.
Since we know that the construction of Stonehenge
began about 3100 bc, her theory also implies that phonetic
writing is about fifteen hundred years older than we at
present assume.
From our point of view, the importance of this whole
argument is its suggestion that geometry and astronomy
existed in a sophisticated form long before there was an
accurate method of writing it down. Anne Macaulay
believes - as Thorn does - that it can be read in the
geometry of megalithic circles and monuments, and that
their builders are trying to pass a message on to us - just as
Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock believe (as we shall
see) that the ancient Egyptians were passing on a message
in the geometry of Giza.
! *
213
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
When did our ancestors begin to use mnemonics to record
the movements of the sun and moon?
Incredibly, the answer to that question seems to be at
least 35,000 years ago.
In the 1960s, a research fellow of the Peabody Museum
named Alexander Marshack was studying the history of
civilisation, and was troubled by what he called 'a series of
"suddenlies" '. Science had begun 'suddenly' with the
Greeks, mathematics and astronomy had appeared
'suddenly' among the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians and
the Chinese, civilisation itself had begun 'suddenly' in the
Fertile Crescent in the Middle East.
In short, Marshack was bothered by the same question
that had troubled Schwaller de Lubicz and John Anthony
West. And, like Schwal-ler and West, Marshack decided
that these things had not appeared 'suddenly', but after
thousands of years of preparation.
He was curious to know whether there was any
archaeological evidence that man indulged in seasonal (he
calls them 'time factored') activities like agriculture in the
days 'before civilisation'.
At this point, he became fascinated by strange markings
on pieces of bone dating from the Stone Age. Under a
microscope, he could see that they were made with many
different tools, which indicated that they were not made, at
the same time. He finally reached the conclusion that one
series of marks forming a curved line on a 35,000-year-old
bone were notations of the phases of the moon. Which
meant that, in a sense, Cro-Magnon man had invented
'writing'.
But why? Why should he care about the movements of
the sun and moon? To begin with, because he was
intelligent - as intelligent as modern man. He probably
regarded himself as highly civilised, just as we do. And an
intelligent person needs a sense of time, of history.
Marshack mentions a 'calendar stick' of the Pima Indians
of America, which represents their history over 44 years.
This means that the Indian 'story teller' could take the
stick, point out some distant year, and recount its history -
represented by dots or spirals or other faint marks. Cro-
Magnon man of 35,000 years ago would probably have
done much the same thing.
And then, of course, a calendar would be useful to
hunters, telling them when the deer or other prey would be
returning. It would be useful to pregnant women who
wanted to know when they were due to give birth. In fact,
a calendar is one of the basic needs of civilisation, the
equivalent of modern man's digital watch.
214
9 Off
Stars and
Gods
But of course, we are forgetting another vital factor. If
Schwaller is correct, Cro-Magnon man was interested in
the sun and moon for another reason: because he was
sensitive to their rhythms, and experienced them as living
forces. Today, even the most sceptical scientist
acknowledges the influence of the moon on mental
patients; any doctor who has worked in a hospital will
verify that certain patients are affected by the full moon.
Yet compared to aboriginal peoples, civilised man has lost
most of his sensitivity to nature.
If we want to understand our Cro-Magnon ancestors,
then we have to try to imagine human beings who are as
sensitive to the sun, moon and other natural forces (like
earth magnetism) as a mental patient is to the full moon.
In The Roots of Civilisation, Marshack comments:
Though in the Upper Palaeolithic explanations were by
story and via image and symbol, there was a high
intelligence, cognition, rationality, knowledge and
technical skill involved.'
2
In other words, Stone Age man
possessed all the abilities needed to create civilisation.
And yet although he was poised on the brink of
civilisation 35,000 years ago, living in a community
sufficiently sophisticated to need a knowledge of
astronomy, we are asked to believe that it actually took
him another 25,000 years before he began to take the
first hesitant steps towards building the earliest cities.
It sounds, on the whole, rather unlikely.
In his bafflingly obscure book, The White Goddess, the
poet Robert Graves puts forward a view that is in total
accord with Marshack's conclusions. He argues that
worship of the moon goddess (the 'white goddess') was
the original universal religion of mankind, which was
supplanted at a fairly late stage by worship of the sun
god Apollo, whom he regards as a symbol of science and
rationality - that is, of left-brain knowledge, as opposed
to the right-brain intuition that he associates with the
goddess.
Graves explains that he was reading Lady Charlotte
Guest's translation of the Welsh epic The Mabinogion
when he came upon an incomprehensible poem called
'The Song of Taliesin'. Suddenly he knew ('don't ask me
how') that the lines were a series of mediaeval riddles, to
which he knew the answers. He also knew ('by
inspiration') that the riddles were linked with a Welsh
tradition about a Battle of the Trees,
2
1
5
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
which was actually about a struggle between two Druid
priesthoods for the control of learning.
The Druid alphabet was a closely guarded secret, but its
eighteen letters were the names of trees, whose consonants
stood for the months of which the trees were characteristic,
and the vowels for the positions of the sun, with its
equinoxes and solstices. The 'tree calendar' was in use
throughout Europe and the Middle East in the Bronze Age,
and was associated with the Triple Moon Goddess.
This cult, says Graves, was slowly repressed by 'the
busy rational cult of the Solar God Apollo, who rejected
the Orphic tree-alphabet in favour of the commercial
Phoenician alphabet - the familiar ABC -and initiated
European literature and science.'
Graves's idea supports Anne Macaulay's notion that the
modern alphabet was associated with Apollo. It also
supports many of the suggestions made in the last chapter
about the 'magical' mentality of Cro-Magnon man, which
has slowly given way to the 'bicameral' mind of today.
According to Graves, he did not have to 'research' The
White Goddess in the normal sense; he had it 'thrust upon
him'. And what was 'thrust upon him' was a whole
knowledge system that is based upon a mentality that is
totally different from our own - upon 'lunar' rather than
'solar' premises.
And this, clearly, is also what Schwaller is attempting to
outline in books like Sacred Science, and helps to explain
their obscurity: he is trying to describe a remote and
forgotten vision of reality in a language that is totally
unsuited to it.
The mention of ancient calendars inevitably reminds us of
the famous Mayan calendar which, as Graham Hancock
points out, is far more accurate than the modern Gregorian
calendar. Hancock quotes an archaeologist asking why the
Maya created such an incredibly accurate calendar, but
failed to grasp the principle of the wheel. We know, of
course, that the Maya inherited their calendar from the
Olmecs of a thousand years earlier, but that only shifts the
emphasis of the question to why the Olmecs failed to grasp
the principle of the wheel.
Hancock suggests that the answer may be that the Maya
- and the Olmecs - did not invent the calendar: they
inherited it - exactly the suggestion that Schwaller de
Lubicz made to explain the sophisti-
216
9 Of Stars and Gods
cation of Egyptian science. All the evidence we have
considered so far indicates that they are correct.
Which still leaves us with the question: why should
anyone want such an accurate calendar?
One intriguing possibility has been suggested by a
modern researcher named Maurice Cotterell, in a book
called The Mayan Prophecies (co-authored with Adrian
Gilbert, Robert Bauval's collaborator on The Orion
Mystery).
Cotterell is an engineer and computer scientist who
became interested in scientific aspects of astrology. When
in the merchant navy, he noticed that his colleagues on
board ship seemed to behave in ways that corresponded
with their astrological signs - that 'fire' signs are more
aggressive than 'water' signs, and so on.
Now in fact, a statistician named Michel Gauquelin had
already raised this question, and published a study
indicating that there is genuine statistical evidence for
certain propositions of astrology, such as that more
scientists and doctors are born under the sign of Mars, and
that more politicians and actors are born under Jupiter. A
sceptical psychologist, Dr Hans Eysenck, was open-
minded enough to look at these results, and dismayed his
colleagues by publicly admitting that they seemed to be
sound. Eysenck then went on to work with an astrologer
named Jeff Mayo, and they studied two huge samples of
subjects chosen at random to see whether people born
under 'fire' signs (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius) and 'air' signs
(Gemini, Libra, Aquarius) are more extroverted than
people born under 'earth' (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn) and
'water' (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) signs. And although the
odds against it were 10,000 to 1, the statistics involving
around 4,000 people showed that it was indeed so.
Cotterell wanted to know how this could be. Is there
some cosmic factor that changes from month to month to
explain this puzzling result? The signs of the zodiac
(Aries, Taurus, etc) are called 'sun' signs because the sun
rises against a background of different constellations each
month. But obviously, the constellations cannot influence
individuals - they are light-years away; it is a mere figure
of speech to say our fate is written in the stars, for they are
merely the figures on a clock that enable us to tell the time.
On the other hand, the sun does something that has
considerable influence on the earth; this great roaring
furnace sends out a continuous stream of energy, which
causes the tails of comets to stream out behind them like
flags in the wind. It also has variations known as sunspots,
217
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
which are huge magnetic flares that can cause radio
interference on Earth- They send out a 'solar wind' of
magnetic particles which cause the Aurora Borealis.
Cotterell decided to start with the reasonable
assumption that it may be the magnetic field of the sun
that affects human embryos - particularly sunspot activity.
Because the sun is made of plasma - superheated gas - it
does not rotate uniformly, like the earth; its equator rotates
almost a third faster than its poles - 26 days to a 'turn' as
compared to 37. So its lines of magnetism get twisted, and
sometimes stick out of the sun like bed-springs out of a
broken mattress; these are 'sunspots'.
Cotterell was excited to learn that the sun not only
changes the type of radiation emitted every month, but that
there are four types of solar radiation which follow one
another in sequence. So the sun's activities not only seem
to correspond to the monthly astrological changes known
as 'sun signs', but also to the four types of sign - fire, earth,
air, water.
Because the earth is also revolving around the sun, a 26-
day rotation of the sun takes 28 days as seen from Earth.
The earth receives a shower of alternating negative and
positive particles every seven days.
Biologists know that the earth's weak magnetic field
influences living cells and can affect the synthesis of DNA
in the cells. So it seemed to Cotterell highly probable that
changes in the sun's magnetic field affect babies at the
moment of conception. If so, he had discovered the
scientific basis of astrology.
Astrologers to whom he explained his theory were
dubious. According to astrology, it is the time of birth that
affects us, not the moment of conception. Yet this hardly
seems to make sense - after all, the baby has been alive for
nine months at the time of birth. In fact, another scientist
was already at work on a similar theory; in The
Paranormal: Beyond Sensory Science (1992), physicist
Percy Seymour suggests that the newly formed foetus is
affected by the 'magnetic web' of the solar system, which
stretches like a cat's cradle between the sun, moon and
planets. Cotterell was simply ignoring the moon and
planets as unimportant.
When Cotterell was appointed to a job at the Cranfield
Institute of Technology, he lost no time in feeding his data
into its powerful computer. He wanted to plot the
interaction of the sun's two magnetic fields (due to its
different speeds of rotation at the poles and equator) and
the earth's movement round the sun.
What came out of the computer was a graph that showed
a definite
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9 Of Stars and Gods
rhythmic cycle every eleven and a half years. Astronomers
have computed the sunspot 'cycle' at 11.1 years. So it
looked as if Cotterell was getting close.
The sun's two interacting magnetic fields come back to
square one,* so to speak, every 87.45 days, which Cotterell
called a 'bit'. Looking at his graph, he saw that the sunspot
cycle repeats itself and goes back to square one every 187
years. But there is a further complication called the sun's
'neutral sheet' - the area around the equator where north
and south balance out perfectly. This sheet is warped by
the sun's magnetic field, so it shifts by one 'bit' every 187
years, giving a total cycle -before it goes back to square
one - of 18,139 years. And every 18,139 years, the sun's
magnetic field reverses.
This period, Cotterell could see, broke down into 97
periods of 187 years, consisting of five major cycles, three
of 19 times 187, and two of 20 times 187.
It was when Cotterell noticed that 20 times 187 years
amounts to 1,366,040 days that he became excited. He had
become interested in one of the Mayan astronomical
documents known as the Dresden Codex, which the Maya
used to work out eclipses, as well as with the cycles of the
planet Venus, to which they attached tremendous
importance. The Maya declared that Venus was 'born' in
the year 3114 bc, on 12 August. (We may recall that
Immanuel Velikovsky, discussed in Chapter 5, believed
that Venus had been 'born' out of Jupiter, and came close to
the earth on its way to its present position.) The Mayas
calculated using a complicated period called a tzolkin - 260
days - and according to them, a full cycle of the planet
Venus amounted to 1,366,560 days. This, Cotterell
noticed, was the same as his number 1,366,040, plus two
tzolkins.
Was it possible, he wondered, that the Mayas had
somehow stumbled on his recognition about sunspot
cycles, and that their highly complex calendar was based
on it?
There was something else that made him feel he might
be on the right track. He had noted a rather curious fact -
that the sun's magnetic bombardment intensifies during
periods of low activity in sunspot cycles. This seemed
contradictory; surely you would expect it to be lower? The
reason, he concluded, has to do with the belts of radiation
around the earth known as the Van Allen belts, which were
discovered by space scientist James Van Allen in 1958.
These are due to the earth's magnetic field, and they trap
solar radiation, which would otherwise destroy life on
earth.
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Cotterell reasoned that the Van Allen belts become
super-saturated with magnetic particles during periods of
high sunspot activity, so reducing the amount of radiation
that reaches Earth's surface. In periods of low sunspot
activity, they let the particles through. And, Cotterell
believed, they cause infertility and other problems.
Cotterell was inclined to date the decline of the Maya
from the year ad 627, when Earth was receiving maximum
bombardment from sun magnetism. Now he realised that
ad 627 was also the end of the Mayan cycle (of 1,366,560
days), starting from the 'birth of Venus' in 3114 BC. This
was also the time the sun's magnetic cycle reversed. The
birth of Venus was the date of the previous reverse. Surely
that could not be coincidence?
Rather more worrying was the fact that the next Mayan
cycle will end on 22 December 2012, when the sun's
magnetic field will again reverse. Cotterell points out that
there is now a fall in fertility in the developed countries,
and that this may be due to this change in the sunspot
cycle.
Graham Hancock, we may recall, cites the year 2030 as
the time when the earth's magnetic poles are expected to
reverse, causing widespread catastrophes. If Cotterell is
correct, the earth may experience problems 18 years before
that time.
But then, after all, Hancock and Cotterell may both be
wrong. The earth survived its previous change in the sun's
magnetic field - in ad 627 - without apparent catastrophe.
In that year, the Roman emperor Heraclitus invaded
Assyria and Mesopotamia, and defeated the Persians near
Nineveh, the Prophet Mahomet harassed the Meccans from
Medina, and the Japanese despatched envoys to China.
None of these seemed to notice the reversal of the sun's
magnetic field.
As to the earth's magnetic field, scientists at present
have no idea what causes it, let alone why its polarity
occasionally reverses; so there can clearly be no scientific
reason why it should happen in 2030 rather than in a
thousand years' time.
Cotterell's ideas have nevertheless made an important
contribution to the study of ancient civilisations. He
appears to have demonstrated very convincingly that the
Maya calendar has a sound scientific foundation, and -
once again - that ancient man seemed to know far more
about the heavens than modern astronomers give him
credit for.
Moreover, if the Maya based their calendar on the
sunspot cycle, then we must assume that this knowledge
was based on intuition rather than purely scientific interest.
Schwaller de Lubicz says that each living
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9 Of Stars
and Gods
being is in contact with the energies of the universe, and
that each hour of the day has its different neters or
vibrations. If Alexander Marshack is correct, then Cro-
Magnon man studied the heavens because he was aware of
these energies or vibrations, and the same undoubtedly
applies to the Incas and the Mayas.
I have deliberately left until this point a discussion of one
of the most puzzling and frustrating books ever written on
the problem of astronomy and ancient man: Hamlefs Mill
(I960), by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dachend.
By comparison with Hamlefs Mill, Graves's White
Goddess seems a model of clarity.
Santillana was a highly respected professor of the
history of science, but Hamlefs Mill was rejected by
academic publishers, and finally had to be issued by one
of the lesser known commercial publishers. So his fellow
academics had two reasons for ignoring it: not only was it
incredibly obscure, but the fact that it was brought out by
a non-academic press amounted to an admission that it
fell below acceptable standards of scholarship. In fact, the
general academic opinion seemed to be that it proved
Santillana had joined the lunatic fringe.
Yet in spite of its obscurity, the book has slowly made
its way - for it is impossible to read more than a few
pages without recognising that it is saying something of
tremendous importance, and that Santillana knows
exactly what he is talking about.
For a long time, Santillana had been aware that there
was a point where the history of science blended into
mythology. And Hamlefs Mill makes it clear that, at some
point, he must have received a revelation about
mythology that left him overwhelmed with the sense that
he had been entrusted with some amazing secret of the
past.
His collaborator, Hertha von Dachend, was an
anthropologist, a pupil of that same Frobenius who had
seen the African pygmies shooting an arrow into a
drawing of an antelope. She also felt that myth was more
than primitive nonsense. And she 'hit pay dirt' (in
Santillana's phrase) when she noticed that two tiny
Pacific islands, undistinguished except for their
extraordinary number of sacred sites, were situated
precisely on the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of
Capricorn - the point at which the sun 'stands still' and
then retraces its steps at the solstices. Her observation
confirmed that 'primitive man' was deeply concerned with
astronomy, and was therefore less primitive than anyone
supposed.
2
2
1
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Santillana had already reached the same conclusion.
Years before, he had recognised that one of the basic
characteristics of ancient man was 'an immense, steady,
minute attention to the seasons. What is a solstice or an
equinox? It stands for the capacity of coherence,
deduction, imaginative intention and reconstruction with
which we could hardly credit our forefathers. And yet
there it was. I saw'
Long before writing was invented, says Santillana, man
was obsessed by measures and counting, by numbers - and
by astronomy. And he goes on to speak - in language
reminiscent of Alexander Thorn - of those 'Newtons and
Einsteins long forgotten'.
This ancient knowledge, Santillana felt, was based upon
titne^ 'the time of music' (of which we shall have more to
say later).
The basic argument of the book can be expressed very
simply: that ancient man not only knew about the
precession of the equinoxes (which was supposed to have
been discovered by the Greek Hipparchus in 134 bc), but
encoded this knowledge in dozens of myths. This is an
interesting thesis, but hardly sounds epoch making. But
that is only half the story.
Santillana says:
This book is highly unconventional. . . To begin with,
there is no system that can be presented in modern
analytical terms. There is no key, and there are no
principles from which a presentation can be deduced.
The structure comes from a time when there was no
such thing as a system in our sense, and it would be
unfair to search for one. There could hardly have been
one among people who committed all their ideas to
memory.
In other words, what the normal reader expects him to
do is to discuss ancient myths, and then 'explain' them in
terms of precession of the equinoxes. He is trying to say
that it is not as simple as that. 'The subject has the nature
of a hologram, something that has to be present as a whole
to the mind.'
There is a simpler way of expressing what Santillana is
trying to explain. All over the world, in myths of dozens of
different cultures, there are legends that are obviously
expressions of the same story. Sir James Frazer made this
the starting point of his famous Golden Bough. Frazer
decided that the key to the mystery was the notion of the
earth's fertility, the need for a good harvest. The king was a
magician whose powers ensured rainfall. If they began to
fail, he was offered as a
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sacrifice to the gods. Eventually, the sacrifice became
symbolic, and turned into a ritual in which the god was
buried, and sprang up again in the spring, like John
Barleycorn ...
The problem here, of course, is that it presupposes that
myths developed after man became a farmer. What
emerges from Hamlet's Mill is Santillana's powerful sense
that they are far, far older. There are even times when we
suspect that he is hinting that they stretch back tens of
thousands of years.
In effect, Santillana is presenting a rich tapestry of
legends of the Eskimoes, Icelanders, Norsemen, American
Indians, Finns, Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese, Hindus,
Persians, Romans, ancient Greeks, ancient Hindus, ancient
Egyptians, and dozens of other nations, and asking: how
did these strange similarities develop unless myths have
some common origin? And this origin, he is inclined to
believe, lies in astronomy.
His starting point is a corn-grinding mill that belonged
to the Icelandic hero Amlodhi (whose name has come
down to us as Hamlet). This mill originally ground out
peace and plenty; it existed in the days of the 'Golden
Age
5
. This came to an end, and the mill then ground out
salt. Finally, it ended at the bottom of the sea, grinding up
sand, and creating the whirlpool called the Maelstrom -
which Edgar Allen Poe used to such dramatic effect.
('Mala' means to grind.)
Why a mill? Presumably because one grinding wheel,
the sun, goes through the constellations in one direction -
Aries, Taurus, Gemini and so on - while the equinoxes
move in the opposite direction - Gemini, Taurus, Aries.
What was embodied in the mill was the idea 'of
catastrophes and the periodic rebuilding of the world'. So
ancient myths are about catastrophes like the Flood. But
the 'ages' that end in catastrophe are due to the precession
of the equinoxes, which means that we move from age to
age - the age of Leo in 10,000 bc down to our present age
of Pisces, and the coming age of Aquarius.
Obviously, if the ancients thought that precession was
connected with periodic great catastrophes that destroyed a
large part of mankind, they were going to attach great
importance to it, and study it minutely. According to
Santillana, Amlodhi's mill is an image of precession of the
equinoxes.
In our own time, 'ancient astronaut' theorists like von
Daniken have pointed to the evidence for sophisticated
knowledge among the ancients, and argued that this proves
that this knowledge was brought to Earth
223
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
by visitors from outer space. In fact, the precession theory
advanced by Santillana is fairly conclusive evidence that
there were no such visitors. If there had been, they would
have explained to those early astronomers that precession
was simply due to the tilt of the earth's axis, which makes
the earth wobble like a top or gyroscope, and that it has no
great universal significance - in which case, the rich
cluster of myths explored in Hamlefs Mill would never
have come into existence.
Let me offer an example of Santillana's complex method
of argument. Chapter 21, The Great God Pan is Dead',
begins by recounting Plutarch's story of how a voice from
a Greek island called out to the pilot of a ship - an
Egyptian named Thamus - 'When you come opposite to
Palodes, announce that Great Pan is dead.' Since it was
calm and still as he passed Palodes, Thamus did as he was
asked, and there were great cries and lamentations from
the shore. The emperor Tiberius, who was interested in
mythology, sent for Thamus in order to hear the story from
his own lips.
Christians were inclined to interpret the story as
meaning that Christ was dead (since Jesus was crucified in
the reign of Tiberius). But Santillana goes on to cite many
oddly similar myths. In the Tyrol, there are legends of
Fanggen, tree spirits who sometimes enter human homes
as servants. In one story collected by Grimm, a man on his
way home hears a voice calling: 'Yoke bearer, yoke bearer,
tell them at home that Giki-Gaki is dead.' When he repeats
this, the housemaid bursts into tears and vanishes. The
'yoke' referred to, according to Santillana, is the axle of
Amlodhi's mill.
There are many variants. A man is watching a meeting
of cats when one of them jumps on a wall and shouts: 'Tell
Dildrum that Doldrum is dead.' When he gets home, he
tells his wife what he has seen, and their house cat shouts:
'Then I am king of the cats', and vanishes up the chimney.
Is it possible, asks Santillana, that Plutarch's ship is the
constellation Argo, and that it has the dead body of Osiris
on board? And is it chance that the pilot is called Thamus,
like Plato's king who criticised Thoth (the god Mercury)
for inventing writing, which made man mentally lazy, and
brought an end to an age of 'integral knowledge' of the
universe?
He goes on to tell another story of women lamenting the
death of a god, this time Tammuz, who figures in Frazer as
a grain god who dies with the season. But in this context,
the minor god Tammuz is men-
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and Gods
tioned in context with many important gods; what is he
doing in such distinguished company?
The answer, says Santillana, appears when we learn the
date of the festival of Tammuz. It took place on the night
of 19-20 June/ the date that marked the beginning of the
Egyptian year. On that day, the dog star Sirius rose just
before the sun (its 'heliacal rising'). Now the Egyptians
venerated Sirius because over 3000 years, it continued to
rise at that date, in defiance of precession of the equinoxes.
That sounds impossible, since all stars are affected by
precession. But Sirius is, relatively speaking, very close to
Earth - the second closest of all stars - and has a
considerable 'proper motion', which enables it to
(apparently) defy precession.
There was another reason, to do with the fact that the
ancient Egyptians used a calendar which, like the Roman
Julian calendar, had only 365 days in the year, instead of
365.25, and this slight inaccuracy again enabled Sirius
apparently to defy precession.
So when Sirius also succumbed to precession, as it
eventually did, the Great God Pan was dead.
It can be seen why Santillana's method of argument
baffled the scholars, as he leaps bewilderingly from the
Great God Pan to servant girls and tabby cats and Plato,
and a dozen other examples that I have forborne to
include, to end up with precession and Sirius.
Yet again, it must be stated that it is impossible to
understand Hamlet's Mill unless we grasp that it is not just
an attempt to argue that ancient myths reflect a knowledge
of precession. If this was all it amounted to, Santillana
could have managed it in a short essay. He needed a large
and extremely dense book to convey what he wanted to
bring to our attention: the incredible richness of world
mythology, and the fact that it seems to point to some way
of apprehending the universe that, in our age of written
information and sound-bytes, we have long forgotten. He
even goes out of his way to attack one of the greatest
students of myth, Ernst Cassirer, whom he feels to be too
'reductionist'. He obviously feels that he is saying
something too big to be stated in a logical form and in so
many words. He often comments that to explore such and
such a connection would require a book in itself. Perhaps
if he had lived long enough to read Hancock's
Fingerprints of the Gods and Bauval's Orion Mystery^ he
might have begun to feel that a few people were
beginning to understand what he was talking about.
*
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
We have so far made no mention of another culture that
has strong claims to be the 'cradle of civilisation': that of
ancient India.
The generally accepted view of India was that it was
originally occupied by a primitive people called
Dravidians, and that some time between 1500 and 1200
bc, blue-eyed Aryans descended from Afghanistan and
swept the Dravidians south, then establishing their own
'Vedic' culture - a culture whose greatest literary
monuments are the Vedic hymns.
In Harappa, in what is now Pakistan, huge mounds were
known to conceal the ruins of an ancient town, and in
1921, an Indian archaeologist, Daya Ram Sahni, suggested
that it might belong to a period before the Maurya empire,
which was founded at about the time of Alexander the
Great (born 356 bc) by Chandragupta. In fact, excavation
at Harappa revealed that it was two and a half thousand
years earlier than Chandragupta.
In 1922, excavations began at Mohenji-Daro (which
means 'hill of the dead') in the Indus valley, four hundred
miles south-west of Harappa, which revealed a rich
civilisation that no one had suspected. Incredibly,
Mohenji-Daro proved to be as sophisticated as a later
Greek or Roman city, built on mud-brick platforms to
protect it from floods, with a grid-plan reminiscent of New
York, and an impressive sewer system - not to mention sit-
down toilets. The size of the city indicated that it had held
about 40,000 people. The large number of female
statuettes found there suggested that a female deity -
probably the moon goddess - was worshipped. Their seals
proved they possessed some form of writing.
In subsequent years, further excavations along the 1800
miles of the Indus river valley revealed more than 150
sites, half a dozen of them cities. The whole area, from the
Arabian sea to the foothills of the Himalayas, was once the
home of a great civilisation that rivalled Egypt or Greece.
This lost civilisation was labelled the Indus Valley Culture.
To the east of the Indus lies a vast desert, the Thar
Desert. When remains of towns were found in this desert,
there was some puzzlement about how they had survived
in such arid conditions. Then satellite photographs
revealed the answer: the Thar Desert was once a fertile
plain, traversed by a great river; there were even
unmistakable signs of canals. Now only a small part of this
river, the Ghaggar, exists. Scholars concluded that the river
that had now vanished was the Sarasvati, mentioned in the
Vedic hymns.
It seemed that in the heyday of Mohenji-Daro and
Harappa, this
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9 Of Stars and Gods
whole plain was one of the richest places in the world. At a
time when ancient Britons were Bronze Age farmers, and
the Greeks were a few Mycenaean warrior tribes, one of
the world's greatest civilisations flourished in the land of
the Indus and Sarasvati.
It seems that some great catastrophe destroyed this
civilisation some time after 1900 bc. Evidence shows that
the earth buckled, due to the pressure of the tectonic plate
that has raised the Himalayas, and the result was a series
of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that literally caused
the rivers to sink into the ground. The cost in human life
must have been appalling.
The Vedas are written in Sanskrit, a complex language
that Sir William Jones - in 1786 - demonstrated to be
related to Greek, Latin, German and Celtic (giving rise to
the expression 'Indo-European languages'). And if the
Vedas speak of the Sarasvati River, then it would seem
clear that they were written before about 2000 bc, and not
later than 1500 bc, as scholars originally believed. And if-
as seemed likely - Sanskrit was the language of the
Aryans, then it was also clear that they could not have
invaded as late as 1500 bc.
There are four major collections of Vedic hymns - the
Rig-Veda, the Sama-Veda
y
the Yajur-Veda and the Atharva-
Veda, of which the Rig-Veda is recognised as the oldest
and most important.
In the 1980s, a Vedic scholar, David Frawley, observed
that the hymns of the Rig-Veda are full of an oceanic
symbolism that seems to argue that they sprang from a
maritime culture - which certainly contradicted the
assumption that the Aryans came from somewhere in
central Europe. He also noted hymns that spoke of the
'ancestors' as coming from across the sea, having been
saved from a great flood.
Studying the astronomical references in the Vedic
hymns, Frawley concluded that one reference to a summer
solstice in Virgo indicated a date of about 4000 bc, while a
reference to a summer solstice in Libra pointed to about
6000 bc. He also concluded that the authors of the Vedas
were familiar with the precession of the equinoxes. These
revolutionary ideas were set out in a book called Gods,
Sages and Kings (1991). *,
In the section of Vedic astronomy, for example, he
discusses a myth about the god of the year, Prajapati,
falling in love with his own daughter Rohini, and being
punished by a god called Rudra, who pierced him with a
three-pointed arrow. Frawley points out that the god Rudra
is the name in Vedic astronomy for Sirius, while the three-
pointed arrow is Orion, and Rohini is the star Aldebaran.
The myth
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
indicates a time when the spring equinox was moving
from Gemini into Taurus, around 4000 bc. (A scholar
named B. G. Tilak had been one of the first to investigate
the astronomy of the Vedas, and he devotes a whole book
to Orion.) Anyone who is familiar with Hamlet's Mill will
find nothing controversial in all this.
It will also be noted that the Vedic Hindus showed a
preoccupation with the same stars and constellations that
were central to the Egyptians. Frawley points out that the
Hindu Varuna, like the Egyptian Osiris and the Greek
Ouranos, are all symbolised by Orion, and that their myths
seem to refer to the vernal equinox in Orion around 6000
bc.
Frawley recognised that the notion of a maritime culture
dating back to before 6000 bc is highly controversial and
likely to be rejected out of hand. Yet, as we have seen,
Charles Hapgood would have found it perfectly credible.
So, of course, would that remarkable student of Mayan
culture Augustus le Plongeon, who - it may be recollected -
suggested that colonists from the Maya lands had sailed to
Europe and India thousands of years before Christ, and
quoted the Ramayana to the effect that India and China
were invaded and conquered by warriors known as great
navigators and architects. John West and Graham Hancock
would probably amend Le Plongeon's argument, and
suggest that South America, Egypt and India became the
home of survivors of some great catastrophe long before
6000 bc.
The questions raised by Frawley in Gods, Sages and
Kings are further explored in a book called In Search of the
Cradle of Civilisation (1995) by Georg Feuerstein,
Subhash Kak and David Frawley. As the title suggests,
they argue that India is the 'cradle of civilisation', and that
there is evidence of Vedic culture as long ago as 7000 bc.
They point out that the myth of creation from a churning
ocean of milk seems to refer to the Milky Way, while the
churning motion - as in Santillana -refers to Hamlet's Mill
or precession, and that the ancient Hindus regarded the
switch of the equinoctial point from one constellation to
another (the end of an age) as an alarming event.
The arguments of In Search of the Cradle of Civilisation
inevitably bring to mind those of John Anthony West,
Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock - in fact, the authors
mention Robert Schoch's opinion that the Sphinx may date
back to 7000 bc. But they were unaware of the
astronomical arguments that have since led West, Hancock
and Bauval to date the Sphinx to 10,500 bc. If these are
sound, then the suggestion that India is the cradle of
civilisation because the Vedas seem to refer to dates as
remote as 6000 bc loses much of its force.
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On the other hand, it could also be argued that the
astronomical evidence Feuerstein, Kak and Frawley
present demonstrates that the ancient Hindus shared the
Egyptian obsession with star-gazing and the precession of
the equinoxes. In which case, the same arguments, apply to
ancient India as to ancient Egypt. In Egypt, we have the
suggestion that the dynastic civilisation of the third
millennium may have been preceded by a far older
civilisation founded by survivors from a great flood, who
planned the pyramids and built the Sphinx in 10,500 BC.
In India, it seems that the great civilisation of the Indus and
Sarasvati plain was preceded by forerunners whose great
achievement was the Rig-Veda. Frawley suggests that the
civilisation of the 'forerunners' may date from 7000 bc -
which happens to be the date that Schoch suggested for the
Sphinx. There seems to be no good reason why the
civilisation of the Vedic Hindus should not also be pushed
back a further 3,000 years or so.
Let me try to express some of these insights in terms of
the concepts developed in the last two chapters.
Ancient man's 'knowledge' was not knowledge in our
modern sense: knowledge that could be classified in an
encyclopaedia. It was a slowly increasing sense of
intuitive involvement in the universe. Santillana says:
'Archaic thought is cosmological first and last; it faces the
gravest implications of a cosmos in ways which
reverberate in later classic philosophy... It cannot be
reduced to concreteness.'
An animal feels itself to be a creature, whose business
is to adjust -in an essentially passive manner - to the
universe around it. As man ceased to be mere animal, he
ceased to be passive. He began to feel there was
something he could do to control the world in which he
found himself. At first, this attempt at control came
through various forms of ritual - including ritual
cannibalism. 'True man' began as a religious animal.
A few hundred thousand years later, Neanderthal man
had so far evolved that his brain was a third larger than
that of modern man. The zoologist Nicholas Humphrey
was puzzled by the fact that the gorilla's brain is far larger
than it needs to be, until he realised that this is a response
to the extraordinarily rich social life of the gorilla. In
effect, a baby gorilla attends a kind of university in which
it learns highly complex social behaviour. The same was
almost certainly true of Neanderthal man.
2
2
9
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
Yet it was Cro-Magnon man who took the next immense
step forward in developing hunting magic. He felt that this
brought him a new control over the universe. And he also
studied the movements of the moon. Our assumption is
that he merely needed some kind of calendar to tell him
about animal migration, but both Graves and Schwaller
would obviously regard it in a completely different light.
They would say that it was a part of a rich and complex
knowledge system, a 'lunar' system that was totally unlike
our 'solar' knowledge. This is clearly what Santillana is
also trying to express.
At some point - perhaps, as Jaynes suggests, as recently
as 1250 bc
- man began to develop 'solar' knowledge, the kind of
knowledge
that can be set down in encyclopaedias and dictionaries
and tables of
logarithms. The difference between the two types of
knowledge is quite
easy to express: it is the difference between insight and
mere infor
mation. When Archimedes leapt out of the bath shouting
'Eureka!', he
had had a sudden insight into floating bodies. He expressed
this insight
in the form of a 'law', which any schoolboy can learn by
rote: the
weight of a floating body is equal to the weight of the
amount of water
displaced. This sounds simple enough. But how would we
use it if, like
Archimedes, we had to devise a method to find out
whether a goldsmith
has adulterated the gold of a crown with some base metal?
To work
out this problem, we need insight into the law of floating
bodies.
3
This is why, in Plato's Phaedrus, King Thamus
expresses doubt when the god Thoth tells him that his
invention of writing is a great step forward for the human
race; the king replies that it will only make man mentally
lazy, and diminish his mental powers.
Sol ar knowl edge, whi ch can be s t or ed i n
encyclopaedias, is extremely useful; but it is no real
substitute for that intimate sense of the universe
- and of our involvement with it - that was first developed
by our
remote star-gazing ancestors.
This brings us to one of the most recent and exciting
speculations about our star-gazing ancestors.
In Chapter 3, I spoke of the important advance Robert
Bauval and Graham Hancock have made in suggesting
exactly why the ancient Egyptians built the Sphinx around
10,500 bc, and the Great Pyramid 8000 years later. Keeper
of Genesis (the title refers to the Sphinx) is a remarkable
piece of research, based on computer simulations of the
skies of ancient Egypt. The essence of the book lies in this
comment:
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9 Of Stars
and Gods
\ .. it is our hypothesis that the Giza monuments, the past,
present and future skies that lie above them, and the
ancient funerary texts that interlink them, convey the
lineaments of a message. In attempting to read this
message we have done no more than follow the initiation .
"journey" of the Horus-Kings of Egypt...'
We have already seen how Bauval reconstructed the
skies in 2500 bc, and discovered that the southern
'ventilation shaft' out of the King's Chamber pointed
directly at Orion's Belt, while the similar shaft out of the
Queen's Chamber below it pointed at the star Sirius,
whom the Egyptians identified with Isis, just as they
identified the constellation of Orion with Osiris. These
alignments convinced Bauval that the Pyramid was,
indeed, built when Egyptologists think it was built.
We also recall that the only time the positions of the
three pyramids on the ground reflect the positions of the
three stars of Orion's Belt is 10,500 bc, when Orion is at
its closest to the southern horizon in the 'precessional
cycle', which takes 25,920 years. After that, Orion seems
to rise very slowly through the heavens, and, in ad 2500,
it will have reached its highest point, and begin
descending again.
The Egyptians called this earlier time, 10,500 bc, Zep
Tepi, the 'first time', and identified it with a kind of
golden age, the beginning of a new epoch. In Santillana's
terms, it was a time when the 'mill' ground out peace and
plenty.
It would, of course, have been highly convenient if the
alignments suggested that the pyramid had been built in
10,500 bc, for it would go a long way to proving
Schwaller's conviction that the Sphinx and the pyramids
were built by the highly civilised survivors of some great
catastrophe - Atlanteans.
Bauval and Hancock point out that there is a highly
convincing reason to believe that the Sphinx was built in
10,500 bc. Imagine that you are standing between the
paws of the Sphinx at dawn on the spring equinox of
10,500 bc. The Sphinx faces due east, and a few
moments before dawn, we see the constellation of Leo
rising above the horizon - Leo the lion. If we now turn at
a right angle to face due south, we see in the sky the
constellation of Orion, with the stars in its belt reflecting
exactly the later lay-out of the pyramids. It is as if the
pyramid builders are leaving us a message to tell us not
only when they built the Great Pyramid but, by
implication, when their ancestors built the Sphinx. The
southern 'air shaft' tells us when they built the Pyramid,
and the alignment of the pyramids, reflecting Orion's
Belt, tells us that they are directing our attention to
10,500 bc, in the age of Leo.
2
3
1
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
This still leaves us with the most puzzling question,
however: in that case, why did the Egyptians build the
Sphinx in 10,500 bc, and the pyramids 8000 years later?
The answer, according to Keeper of Genesis, is
astronomical: that they had to wait another 8000 years for
some important event to occur in the sky. We shall discuss
what this is in a moment.
Meanwhile, it is clear that Bauval and Hancock's thesis
is highly controversial. They are stating that the original
'priests' came to Egypt some time before 10,500 bc, that
they knew all about precession, and they knew that Orion
would reach its lowest point in the sky in 10,500. The
Sphinx, facing due east, was built as a marker of the
beginning of this new age.
Then there arises the objection I discussed in Chapter 3.
Are we really being asked to believe that the ancient
priests planned ahead 8000 years, and then carried out
their plan with such bravura? It sounds an unlikely
proposition.
Bauval and Hancock's attempt to demonstrate it begins
with one of the basic facts about the ancient Egyptian
mentality: that the ancients saw the land of Egypt as an
earthly counterpart of the sky, with the Milky Way as the
Nile. Egypt was an image of heaven.
And what was the basic aim of these priests and initiates
who built the Sphinx? It was one that enables us to
understand why Schwaller de Lubicz felt so at home in the
mentality of ancient Egypt - the quest for immortality, that
same quest in which the alchemists engaged in their
attempts to create the philosophers' stone.
The argument in Keeper of Genesis depends very much
on Egyptian texts like The Book of the Dead, the Pyramid
texts, and The Book of What Is In the Duat. These often tell
us, with great precision, what we can infer from
astronomy. The 'Duat' is usually translated as 'heaven', but
Bauval and Hancock make a strong case for it referring to
a specific part of heaven - that area where Orion and Sirius
could be seen on the 'right bank' of the Milky Way in 2500
bc. And it was of importance only at the time of the
summer solstice, when Sirius rose at dawn, and signalled
the flooding of the Nile.
The next important step in this argument concerns Zep
Tepi, the first time, or rather, the place where this was
supposed to have happened -we might call it the Egyptian
Garden of Eden. This, it is clear from many texts, is
situated in the area of the Great Pyramids, and of the
ancient cities of Memphis and Heliopolis, just south of the
Nile Delta. This is where Osiris and Isis ruled jointly,
before Osiris's brother Set -
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Stars and
Gods
the god of darkness - murdered and dismembered him and
scattered the parts of his body abroad. Isis succeeded in
bringing them together, and in impaling herself on Osiris's
penis for long enough to be impregnated. . Their son was
Horus, who would avenge his father (like Hamlet in the
later story).
Geb, the father of Isis and Osiris, at first gave Set and
Horus a half each of the kingdom of Egypt; then Geb
changed his mind and gave it all to Horus, uniting the
land of Egypt. This uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt
happened, according to historians, in the time of King
Mens, around 3000 bc. But the Egyptian myths clearly
suggest that it took place at another time.
The body of Osiris, which had been located in
southern Egypt, has now floated up the Nile, from his
tomb in Abydos in the south, to 'the land of Sokar' - the
area of Rostau (the ancient name for Giza) and
Heliopolis in the north. Now, finally, Osiris can depart
for his home in the kingdom of the skies in Orion. And
he will depart from Giza.
When did this take place? The authors argue that the
astronomical evidence gives the date as 2500 bc.
And where? According to Hancock, there is a pyramid
painting of the land of Sokar, with corridors and
passageways that remind us strongly of those of the
Great Pyramid. And of course, Bauval argues in The
Orion Mystery that the pharaoh - identified with Osiris -
took his departure from the King's Chamber of the Great
Pyramid when the 'ventilation shaft' was pointing at
Orion.
Now consider. The cycle began - according to Bauval
and Hancock - in 10,500 bc, when Orion (Osiris) was at
the nadir of its precessional cycle. And if Hancock is
correct, these survivors of some great flood felt that the
catastrophe marked the end of an age - and, of course,
the beginning of another. This next cycle would last for
25,920 years, the half-cycle (when Orion begins to
descend again) occurring in ad 2460.
Let us make the admittedly far-fetched assumption
that the astronomer-priests who built the Sphinx in
10,500 bc also planned to build the pyramids in such a
way that their arrangement would reflect exactly the Belt
of Orion, and so convey an important message to some
future age. The obvious question is: when would this
building be done?
Let us assume - what is now virtually a certainty - that
these priests knew all about precession of the equinoxes:
that is, they knew that the equinoxes do not keep
occurring against the same constellation: that, like the
hand of a clock, they slowly move around the
constellations,
2
3
3
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
taking 2200 years to move from figure to figure. (To
complicate things, of course, the hand of this clock moves
backwards - which is why the phenomenon is called
precession.) The most important equinox is traditionally
that which takes place in spring, at the beginning of the
year - the vernal equinox. And the 'vernal point' is the
precise spot in the zodiac the 'hand' is pointing to at the
time. In 10,500 bc, that point was in Leo.
Being skilled astronomers, these priests knew what
would happen over the next thousand or so years. First of
all, the vernal point would move backwards, from Leo to
Cancer, then to Gemini, then to Taurus, until in our own
age it would be in Pisces, about to enter Aquarius.
As this happened, the body of Osiris - the constellation
of Orion -would rise in the sky, appearing to drift north up
the right 'bank' of the Milky Way.
Now obviously, a point would come when Osiris would
reach 'the land of Sokar' in the sky - the land where, down
on the ground, the Sphinx had been built. And then, with
the correct ceremonies, he could finally take up his proper
place as the lord of the sky.
So now, at last, was the time to build the great Temple
of the Stars where this ceremony would reach its climax.
And where was the vernal point at this time? Exactly
where was the hand of the precessional clock pointing?
Between 3000 and 2500 bc, the vernal point was on the
'west' bank of the Milky Way, moving slowly past the head
of the bull Taurus. This 'head' is formed by a group of stars
known as the Hyades, in which two stars stand out as the
brightest.
If we now look down from the sky to its reflection in the
land of Egypt, we see the Nile and the 'land of Sokar',
which includes Memphis, Heliopolis and Rostau (Giza).
And if we look down today, at the place where those two
bright stars of the Hyades are 'reflected', we also see two
pyramids - the so-called 'Bent Pyramid' and the 'Red
Pyramid' at Dahshur, built by the pharaoh Snofru, the
father of Cheops.
Bauval and Hancock suggest, very reasonably, that
Snofru built them in that place for a purpose - to signal the
beginning of the great design.
And where is Osiris (Orion) at this time? He has also
arrived virtually in 'Sokar'. The vernal point and the
constellation of Orion - and the star Sirius (Isis) - are now
in the same area of the sky.
It was not so in 10,500 bc. As you faced due east
towards Leo -which is where the vernal point was situated
- you had to turn through
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9 Of Stars
and Gods
a full 90 degrees to look at Orion. Now, eight thousand
years later, they have come together.
This, say Bauval and Hancock, is why the Great
Pyramid was built eight thousand years after the Sphinx.
The 'heavens' were finally ready " for it. And their logic
seems virtually irrefutable. Provided you agree that the
ancient Egyptians knew all about precession - and no one
now seriously doubts this - and that Orion was their most
important constellation, then it is impossible to disagree
that the moment when the vernal point moved into the
same area as Orion was perhaps the most important
moment in Egyptian history.
What followed was the building of the pyramids at
Rostau, with their arrangement pointing back clearly to
the 'first time' in 10,500 bc.
Then came the ceremony that the pharaoh now
undertook to send Osiris back to his proper home, which
would also gain immortality for himself and for his
people.
This ceremony took place at the time of the dawn-rising
of Sirius. But it began ten weeks earlier. Sirius was absent
for seventy days below the horizon (due, of course, to the
fact that the earth is tilted on its axis). So, of course, was
its near neighbour Orion - Osiris.
It seems highly probable that a ceremony to 'rescue'
Osiris took place every year. But the ceremony that took
place at the time of the summer solstice - the event that
announced the flooding of the Nile - in the year after the
completion of the Great Pyramid, would have been
climactic.
The Horus-pharaoh - presumably Cheops - had to
undertake a journey to bring his father Osiris back to life.
In his form as the sun, he had to cross the great river - the
Milky Way - in his solar boat, and journey to the eastern
horizon, where Osiris was held captive. In his form as the
king, he had to cross the Nile in a boat, then journey to
Giza, to stand before the breast of the Sphinx.
Bauval and Hancock write:
As the 'son of Osiris' he emerged from the womb of
Isis, i.e. the star Sirius, at dawn on the summer
solstice ... It was then - and there - both at the sky-
horizon and the earth 'horizon' that the Horus-King
was meant to find himself in front of the Gateway to
Rostau. Guarding that Gateway on the earth-horizon
he would encounter the giant figure of a lion - the
Great Sphinx. And guarding that Gateway in the sky-
horizon his celestial counterpart would find - what?
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
The answer, of course, is the constellation of Leo.
The Pyramid texts explain that the beginning of the
journey of Horus into the Underworld occurred 70 days
before the great ceremony. Twenty-five days later, the sun
has crossed the 'river' - the Milky Way -and is now moving
east towards the constellation of Leo. And 45 days later -
the end of the 70 days - the sun is between the paws of
Leo.
On the ground, the pharaoh stands on the east bank of
the Nile, crosses it in the solar boat - perhaps the boat
found buried near the Pyramid in 1954 - then makes his
way, via the two pyramids at Dahshur, to the breast of the
Sphinx.
At this point, according to the texts, he has to face a
ritual ordeal, rather like those of the Freemasons described
in Mozart's Magic Flute. He is given a choice of two ways,
either by land or by water, by which he can journey to the
Underworld to rescue his father. The land route, the
authors believe, was an immense causeway (of which
there are still remains) linking the Valley Temple with the
Great Pyramid. It was once roofed with limestone slabs
and had stars painted on its ceiling.
The 'water route' is still undiscovered - but the authors
believe that it was an underground corridor that was kept
half filled (or perhaps more than half) with water drawn by
capillary action from the Nile. (They cite a French
engineer, Dr Jean Kerisel, who suggests that the Sphinx
may stand over a 700-metre-long tunnel leading to the
Great Pyramid.)
What happened next is pure conjecture - except that it
must have ended with the reappearance of Orion and
Sirius over the eastern horizon. Bauval and Hancock
believe that this ceremony was the symbolic uniting of
Upper and Lower Egypt - that is, of heaven and earth.
Clearly, the priests who planned it saw it as the central
event of Egyptian history after 'the first time'.
And who were these priests? Bauval and Hancock write:
We shall argue that 'serious and intelligent men' - and
women too - were indeed at work behind the stage of
prehistory in Egypt, and propose that one of the many
names by which they were known was the 'Followers
of Horus'. We propose, too, that their purpose, to
which their generations adhered for thousands of
years with the rigour of a messianic cult, may have
been to bring to fruition a great cosmic blueprint.
They go on to speak of the Temple of Edfu, parts of which
date back
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9 Of Stars
and Gods
to the Pyramid Age, although its present form was built
from 237 bc to 57 bc. Its 'Building Texts' speak of earlier
ages going back to the 'First Time', when the words of the
Sages were copied by the god Thoth into a book with the
oddly modern title Specifications of the Mounds of the *
Early Primeval Age, including the Great Primeval Mound
itself, where the world was created. This mound is
believed by Professor Iodden Edwards to be the huge rock
on which the Great Pyramid was erected.
According to the Building Texts, the various temples
and mounds were designed by Seven Sages, including
the 'mansion of the god' (presumably the Great Pyramid)
- which would seem to support Bau-val's belief that the
pyramids were planned (and perhaps partly constructed)
at the same time as the Sphinx. The Seven Sages were
survivors of a catastrophic flood, and came from an
island. These Seven Sages seem to be identical with
'Builder gods', 'Senior ones' and 'Followers of
Horus' (Shemsu Hor) referred to in other writings such
as the Pyramid Texts. The Followers of Horus were not
gods, but humans who rebuilt the world after the great
catastrophe - which was predated by the Age of the
Gods.
This, then, is the basic thesis of Keeper of Genesis:
that a group of priests, survivors of some catastrophe,
virtually created ancient Egypt as we know it. It could be
regarded as a sequel to Hamlet's Mill, and Jane B.
Sellers' Death of the Gods in Ancient Egypt, which also
argues powerfully that the ancient Egyptians knew all
about precession. But it goes further than these books in
its mathematical and astronomical arguments (of which I
have only had space to present a crude outline). Its
arguments about the astronomical alignments of the
Sphinx and the pyramids are a tour de force. Jane Sellers
had already discussed a 'precessional code' of numbers,
and Graham Hancock summarises her results in
Fingerprints of the Gods. But Bauval's use of computer
simulations raises all this to a new level of precision,
with the result that even those who feel dubious about
the idea of a priestly succession lasting for thousands of
years will have to admit that the mathematics seems
uncontradictable.
The authors reach one more interesting conclusion.
Where precisely, they asked the computer, was the
vernal point situated in 10,500 bc? The answer was 'that
it lay exactly 111.111 degrees east of the station that it
had occupied at 2500 bc. Then it had been at the head of
the Hyades-Taurus, close to the right bank of the Milky
Way; 8000 years earlier it lay directly under the rear
paws of the constellation of Leo?
And if this point has an 'earthly double', then it would
seem to hint
2
3
7
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
at some undiscovered secret below the rear paws of the Sphinx.
The Coffin Texts speak about 'a sealed thing, which is in
darkness, with fire about it, which contains the efflux of Osiris,
and is put in Rostau'. Could it be that 'something hidden' in a
chamber under the rear paws of the Sphinx - is a 'treasure' that
will transform our knowledge of ancient Egypt? Edgar Cayce
predicted the discovery of a 'Hall of Records' beneath the
Sphinx towards the end of the twentieth century, and Hancock
and Bauval speculate whether this is not even now being
investigated by the team of 'official Egyptologists' who are the
only ones permitted near the Sphinx.
So Keeper of Genesis - as is perhaps inevitable - ends on a
question mark. For the real question that lies behind this search
into the remote past is: what does it all mean} We have to
recognise that even the most precise knowledge of the Egyptian
precessional code and their religion of resurrection still brings
us no closer to answering some of the most obvious questions
about their achievement - even one as straightforward as how
they raised 200-ton blocks ...
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10 The Third Force
I
n Chapter 1, we saw that both Schwaller and Gurdjieff
believed that the men of today have degenerated from their
former level. Schwaller, obviously, was talking about
ancient Egypt, and the earlier civilisation from which it
derived its knowledge. But what was it that - according to
Schwaller - made these men of former times 'giants'?
What emerges clearly from his books is the idea that
modern man has forgotten something of central
importance.
Some notion of what he had in mind can be derived
from the researches of American anthropologist Edward T.
Hall, who spent much of his life working with or studying
Native American Indians - Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo and
Quiche (the descendants of the Maya). His book The
Dance of Life (1983) is about time, and about the fact that
the time system of the Indians is so totally different from
that of American-Europeans (which he shortens to AE) that
it is virtually a different kind of time. He notes that the
Hopi do not even have a word for time, and that Hopi
verbs have no tenses. They live in an 'eternal present',
indifferent to western science, technology and philosophy.
Hall coins the term 'polychrome time' to distinguish this
Native American 'eternal present' from the 'monochrome'
time of western civilisation, with its ever-ticking clock.
Religion is the central core of Hopi life. Religious
ceremonies perform many functions which in AE
cultures are treated as separate and distinct entities,
quite apart from the sacred: disciplining children, for
example; encouraging rain and fertility; staying in
sync with nature; helping the life-giving crops to be
fertile and to grow; relating to each other; and
initiating the young into adulthood. In fact, religion is
at the center not only of social
239
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
organisation, but also of government, which is part
and parcel of Hopi ceremonial life.
And the centre of this ceremonial is, of course, the dance.
When a Hopi dance is successful, 'all consciousness of
external reality, all awareness of the universe outside, is
obliterated. The world collapses, and is contained in this
one event...'
Of course, the dance is not always successful; if some
element of discord enters, it may be a failure. This
underlines the fact that a Hopi dance is not simply a
formality, like hymns in a Christian church; it requires total
commitment, and success can be felt, like the success of a
work of art. Elsewhere in the book Hall emphasises that
'for the Quiche, living a life is somewhat analogous to
composing music, painting, or writing a poem. Each day
properly approached can be either a work of art of a
disaster ... The Quiche really do have to think deeply and
seriously about the process of how each day is to be lived.'
So the 'law of productivity' that drives western man, and
which is the measure of his achievement, seems alien to
Native Americans, who feel that a day properly lived is an
achievement, even if it has not involved a stroke of
'productive work'.
This, I would suggest, begins to explain to us
what.Schwaller and Gurdjieff meant in stating that modern
civilised man had 'degenerated'. It is as if he has stuck ear-
plugs into his ears to protect him from city noise, and then
forgotten to take them out.
We could express this, of course, by saying that the
civilised city dweller is a left brainer, and that the Hopi
and Quiche are right brainers. It is true, of course. But it
gets us no closer to our objective - defining the mental
world of the ancient Egyptians.
As a first step, consider Hall's description of a long ride
he took with a companion to bring his horses from New
Mexico to Arizona.
Our daily average was twelve to fifteen miles,
otherwise the mustangs we were riding would tire and
ultimately give out. Dropping down from the fir-
covered slopes of the Jemez Mountains onto the
parched plains of the west, I watched the same
mountain from different angles during three days, as it
seemed to slowly rotate while we passed by.
Experiences of this sort give one a very different
feeling than speeding by on a paved highway in one
or two hours. The horse, the country, and the weather
set the pace; we were in the grip of nature, with little
control over the rate of progress.
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10 The Third Force
Later, riding horseback on a trek of three or four
hundred miles, I discovered it took a minimum of
three days to adjust to the tempo and the more
leisurely rhythm of the horse's walking gait. . .
He is not speaking merely about relaxation, but about a
different kind of perception.
Oddly enough, the 'magician' Aleister Crowley, who was
in some ways a most unadmirable character, knew about
this. In 1920, an actress called Jane Wolff came to visit
Crowley in his rented villa at Cefalu. She proved to be
highly combative, and Crowley determined to teach her
that he knew best. He told her that she should begin her
training in magic with a month's meditation in a tent at the
top of the cliff. When she flatly refused, he told her she
was free to leave on the next boat. Finally, with anger and
reluctance, she agreed to go and meditate.
During the next month she lived in the tent, wearing
only a woollen robe, and living on bread, grapes and water.
During the first few days she was tense, resentful and
uncomfortable. Then she became bored. But after the
nineteenth day she suddenly plunged into a mood of
'perfect calm, deep joy, and renewal of strength and
courage'. Suddenly she understood what Crowley meant
when he told her that she had the sun, moon, stars, sky, sea
and the universe to read and play with. When the month
was up, she left her tent reluctantly.
Like Hall, she had switched from one mode of time to
another. This is not simply a matter of relaxation - after all,
when we are relaxed, the world may look more or less the
same as when we are tense. But what Hall - and Jane Wolff
- experienced was a perception, a certainty, that the world
is a richer and stranger place than we realise.
This also emerges in a story Hall tells about the Pueblo
Indians (of whom D. H. Lawrence wrote in Mornings in
Mexico). A new agricultural agent had spent a summer and
winter working with the Indians, and seemed to be well-
liked. Then, one day, he called on the superintendent of the
agency, and admitted that the Indians seemed to have taken
a dislike to him - he had no idea why. The superintendent
called on a religious leader of the Pueblos and asked him
what had gone wrong. All the Indian would say was: 'He
just doesn't know certain things.'
After thinking about it, the superintendent suddenly
realised what was wrong.
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
In the spring, Mother Earth is pregnant, and must be
treated gently. The Indians remove the steel shoes
from their horses; they don't use their wagons or even
wear white man's shoes because they don't want to
break the surface of the earth. The agricultural
extension agent, not knowing about this and probably
not thinking it important if he did, was trying his best
to get the Indians to start 'early spring plowing'.
Like most 'civilised' westerners, the agent no doubt
regarded the notion of the earth as a pregnant mother as
some kind of quaint superstition, failing to realise that for
the Indians, it is not an idea or belief, but something they
feel in their bones, so that an Indian's relationship with the
earth is as intimate as his relationship with his horse - or,
for that matter, his wife. To regard this as a 'belief is to
miss a whole dimension of reality.
We can also see that the ancient Egyptian must have felt
precisely this about his relationship with the earth, and
with the Nile that enabled him to stay alive by flooding it
every time Sothis returned to the dawn sky. It was not a
matter of superstition, but of a deeply experienced
relationship with the earth and the heavens, a relationship
that could be felt as distinctly as the midday sun or a cold
wind. Egypt was, as Schwaller is never tired of pointing
out, a sacred society.
Hall's understanding of this relationship becomes
increasingly clear as he talks about the Quiche Indians and
their sense of time. Inheritors of the Maya calendar system,
they live simultaneously by two calendars, one secular and
one religious. Their ordinary calendar - as we know -is the
same Julian calendar that the ancient Egyptians used, of
360 days with five days 'spare'. Their sacred calendar has
260 days made up of various periods. The two calendars
interlock, so they return to 'square one' every 52 years,
when the sacred calendar has repeated itself 73 times.
When a normal year is over, the sacred calendar is well
into its second year; so it could be said to go on turning
endlessly, like a wheel.
Each day, Hall explains, has special characteristics - just
as, in ancient Egypt (according to Schwaller) each hour
had its special neters - and
it takes a special shaman-diviner to provide a proper
interpretation of the day. This is particularly important
when critical decisions are contemplated. Not only
does each of the twenty days have a proper name and
character that is divine, but also a number. The
'nature' of the days change depending on the
numerical accompani-
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10 The Third Force
ment, as well as the actions or moves contemplated
during that particular day. A 'good' day in one context
may be bad in another. There are favourable and
unfavourable combinations, and it is the combination
that determines how the day should be interpreted.
Again, it is important to realise that all this is quite distinct
from a 'belief. The 'right-brain' state of mind permits
deeper perception. For example, 'an important feature of
Quiche divination is the use of the body as sender, receiver
and analyser of messages'. So a Quiche shaman feels the
pulse in different parts of the patient's body in order to
reach a diagnosis and effect a cure. It sounds - as Hall
admits - 'hogwash', yet it works. And Hall goes on to tell a
story of a psychoanalyst who also learned to use his body
as a receiver and analyser of messages. He was dealing
with a seductive but very violent female patient who might
try to smash his skull with some heavy object without
warning. The assaults occurred when the psychoanalyst
was most relaxed and trusting. Then he noticed that his
own pulse rate was giving him warning of the attacks; it
began to increase a few seconds in advance. All he had to
do was to make sure he paid attention to it, and he was
ready to ward off the blow. He was picking up some kind
of signal - telepathic or otherwise - and his pulse acted as
an alarm clock.
It is because there is a 'telepathic' (or 'collective
unconscious') element in the lives of Native Americans
that they recognise the importance of thought. Hall
explains that when the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico plan
to build a house, they wait until the 'right thoughts' are
present. 'The Pueblos believe that thoughts have a life of
their own, and that these live thoughts are an integral part
of any man-made structure, and will remain with that
structure forever. Thoughts are as essential an ingredient as
mortar and bricks. Something done without the right
thoughts is worse than nothing.'
This is obviously part and parcel of the attitude that
makes the Hopi put such immense effort into the sacred
dance, in an effort to ensure that it is 'successful'. They
recognise that there is a subtle sense in which human
thoughts, human attitudes, imprint themselves on what we
do. In traditional magic - for example, Tibetan - there is a
belief that 'thought forms' can be brought into existence by
a long effort of concentration. (In Tibet they are called
tulpas.) Such thought-forms may be benevolent or
otherwise.
But Hall also points out that the 'right thoughts' that are
needed to build a house are not simply those of its future
owner, but of everyone
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
concerned in the building. It is essentially a joint venture.
'When a Pueblo Indian builds a house, it reaffirms the
group.' Again, we sense that the Pueblo Indians share a
'collective unconscious' like that of Cordova's Amahuaca
Indians of Brazil, and that it is quite unlike the
compartmentalised mind of the 'AE' westerner. Our 'left-
brain' consciousness strands us in a far more bleak and
boring universe than the Indian.
If we can grasp this, we can see that it is not a question
of Indian credulity, but that we suffer from what William
James called 'a certain blindness in human beings'. The AE
westerner lacks a sense that the Indian possesses, just as a
blind man lacks a sense possessed by a man who can see.
This sense, Hall argues, is due to the Indian slowing-
down of time. We all have some conception of this - for
example, the way that, under the right circumstances, a
glass of wine or whisky can relax us and make everything
look more real and interesting. This enables us to
understand how our 'left-brain' time has the effect of
making things slightly unreal. What is so hard for us to
understand is that a long period of 'right-brain' time can
make us aware of another reality. Hall likes to remind us
'that this reality ... exists as something distinct from what I
or anyone else says or thinks'.
What is so important about The Dance of Life is that it
makes us aware that the 'other' way of perceiving the
world is not some vague and 'occult' concept, but a reality
that can be studied scientifically. Hall's colleague William
Condon came to this conclusion via a study of philosophy
- specifically HusserPs phenomenology. Husserl was
concerned to deny the view that has become a cornerstone
of western philosophy: that meaning is 'in the mind'.
Condon wrote: 'There is a genuine coherence among the
things we perceive and think about, and this coherence is
not something we create, but something we discover.'
Condon got hold of a 4^-second clip of film made by
Gregory Bateson of a family eating dinner, and realised
that by studying it closely, he could discover all kinds of
things about the family and its relationships. He was so
fascinated that he spent a year and a half running the film
over and over again until he wore out 130 copies of it.
Hall pursued the same method. He shot some footage of
a film of the Indian market in the plaza in Santa Fe, then
studied it frame by frame, astonished by how much it
revealed of the different attitudes of the Indians, the
Spanish-Americans and the Anglo-Americans. One 30-
second shot of a middle-class American woman talking to
a Pueblo
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10 The Third Force
Indian woman behind a stall was a mini-drama in itself, as
the American woman held out her arm, her finger pointed
like a rapier, in the face of the Indian, until the Indian
turned her head away, an unmistakeable look of disgust on
her face. Later, Hall asked unprepared students to, watch
the footage without telling them what to look for. Usually
it took days, while the bewildered and bored student stared
at the film in a state of awful frustration - until, suddenly, it
broke through. Once it had broken through, the student
could discern endless depths of meaning in the film. Like
Crowley's 'student' Jane Wolff, a new level of perception
had suddenly emerged.
Hall points out that this kind of perception is natural to
Japanese culture, and can be found in the Zen tradition,
which attempts to create insight by the same method of
'frustration'. It is not simply a new level of perception that
emerges, but a new level of doing and being. Eugen
Herrigel describes in Zen in the Art of Archery how his
teacher taught him to allow 'it' - the 'other self - to fire the
arrow. Herrigel 's teacher fired his arrow down a long,
dark hall, with only a candle illuminating the target, and
still split a target arrow in two.
St Augustine said: 'What is time? When I do not think
about the question, I know the answer.' This is essentially
the principle of Zen, and the principle that underlies the
lives of the Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo and Quiche described
by Hall.
In the last section of the book, Hall speaks about Cro-
Magnon man, and about Alexander Marshack' s
discoveries of the 'moon-marks' on the 35,000-year-old
bone, as well as about the stone circles studied by Thorn
and Gerald Hawkins. And it is at that point, as he speaks
of the essential continuity of their culture and that of the
Native American Indians, that it becomes clear that he has
in mind a completely different kind of evolution from
Darwin's survival of the fittest.
In one of the most important pages of The Dance of Life,
Hall describes how one of his students decided to film
children in a playground. To avoid making them self-
conscious, the student filmed them from an abandoned car.
When he viewed the result, it at first seemed disappointing
- just children playing. But after repeated viewings at
different speeds - which was part of the technique taught
by Hall - he observed that one lively little girl seemed to
be affecting everybody else in the playground. As she
skipped and danced and twirled, her rhythms seemed to be
conveyed to every group she approached.
245
After watching it dozens of times, the student began to
sense an underlying beat, as if watching a kind of ballet.
Moreover, the beat struck him as familiar. He called on a
friend who was a rock enthusiast, and asked him to watch
the film. After a while, the friend took a cassette from a
nearby shelf. When played alongside the film, the children
seemed to be dancing to the rock music, as if it had been
specially written for them. 'Not a beat, not a frame, was out
of sync'
What had happened, Hall thinks, is that the children
were dancing and playing to some basic musical beat of
life, which the composer had also 'plucked out of the air of
the time'. Which is why Hall uses for this chapter the title
of the whole book, 'The Dance of Life'. There is, he
believes, some basic rhythm of life - a quite definite
rhythm, which could be defined in musical terms - to
which our modern left-brain awareness leaves us deaf.
Now this, clearly, is what Schwaller is talking about in
the chapter of Sacred Science called 'Magic, Sorcery,
Medicine'. 'The higher animals, as well as the human
animal, are totally bathed in a psychic atmosphere which
establishes the bond between the individuals, a bond as
explicit as the air which is breathed by all living things .. .
Every living being is in contact with all the rhythms and
harmonies of all the energies in his universe.'
But is there any way to turn this rather vague and
abstract statement into something more concrete and down
to earth? After all, harmonies and rhythms can be
measured in the physicist's laboratory, and described in
terms of amplitude or wavelength. Can we not be more
precise about them?
This is a question which, almost by accident, came to
preoccupy an ex-advertising salesman named Michael
Hayes.
Ever since late childhood - spent in Penzance, Cornwall,
where his mother owned a hotel - Hayes had been
preoccupied with the question of why we are alive, and
what we are supposed to do now we are here.
In 1971, at the age of 22, he went to live in Mashad,
Iran, where his brother was in the senior management of an
international trading company. These were the years before
the Shah was deposed, when Iran was still swarming with
hippies. During his seven years in Iran, Mike Hayes - as he
prefers to be known - took the opportunity to travel to
India, Pakistan, Kathmandu and Afghanistan. It was during
this time that he was introduced by a hippie friend to the
ideas of Gurdjieff - via Ouspensky's In Search of the
Miraculous - and began to think more purposefully about
the basic problems of human nature.
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In Mashad he had been deeply impressed by the great
mosque of Imam Reza. It was obvious from the sheer
number of worshippers, and their devoutness, that for them
religion was a living reality, as it had been for the cathedral
builders of the Middle Ages. And travelling in
m
India and
Pakistan, were he had a chance to come into contact with
Hinduism and Buddhism, he again had this sense of the
tremendous vitality of the religious tradition. It took him
by surprise for, apart from hymns at school and an
occasional visit to church, his childhood had not been
particularly religious. The sheer size of these religious
territories impressed him, and the effect of the religious
founders on their followers. '... I decided that there was
very definitely something supernatural about all this.
Whoever they were, these "saviours" of mankind certainly
knew how to make their presences felt.'
Back in England, he felt that it was time to catch up
on his education, which he could now see had been less
than thorough. He signed on for a course in extramural
studies at Leicester University, and it was there that he
attended some classes on DNA and the genetic code.
DNA is, of course, a thread-like material in living cells
which carries genetic information, such as whether a
baby is born with brown or blond hair, blue or brown
eyes, and so on. It transmits this information by means of
a code, which was finally cracked in the early 1950s by
James Watson and Francis Crick. They showed that the
DNA molecule has a spiral structure, and looks rather
like two spiral ladders held together by rungs made of
four chemical 'bases' called adenine, guanine, cytosine
and thymine. These bases are strung together in what
looks like a random order - perhaps AGTTCGGAA - but
it is the order of these bases that makes the difference
between brown hair and blond hair, etc. When a cell
splits into two - which is how it reproduces - the 'ladder'
comes apart, and each half attracts to itself various
molecules of the bases that are floating free, until there
are now two identical ladders. This is how living things
reproduce themselves.
It was when he learned that 64 is the number in which
the four bases can form into triplet units called RNA
codons that Mike Hayes had a vague sense of dj vu.
The number 64 awoke vague memories. The same thing
happened when he learned that these codons correspond
with the twenty amino acids necessary for the
manufacture of protein - but since there are also two
which are the coded instruction for 'start' and 'stop', the
basic number is 22. This again seemed vaguely familiar.
Then he remembered where he had come across the
number 64 - in the I-Ching, the Chinese Book of
Changes, which is used as an oracle.
2
4
7
And the basic unit of the I-Ching is, of course, a 'triplet' of
lines, either broken or unbroken, corresponding to the
principles of Yin and Yang, which might be regarded as
darkness and light, or the male and female principles, or
the moon and the sun.
Hayes recalled that when he had studied the I-Ching in his
hippie days, he had wondered vaguely why the number of
its 'hexagrams' (each one made up of two trigrams) should
be 64 - eight times eight - and not seven times seven or
nine times nine. And now he learned that each of the triplet
units of RNA links up with another triplet in the DNA
molecule. So the 'double helix' of information in the heart
of all reproductive cells is made up from 64 hexagrams, as
in the I-Ching. Could this really be just coincidence?
Since his extramural course left him with time to kill, he
began looking more closely into this 'coincidence'. Of
course, it seemed unlikely that Fu Hsi, the legendary
creator of the I-Ching, had stumbled upon some kind of
mystical insight into the 'code of life'. But it seemed worth
investigating.
If it was not coincidence, then there should be eight
trigrams hidden in DNA. And when he learned that this
was so, Mike Hayes began to feel that he had stumbled
upon something that could be very important indeed.
Then he recalled where he had seen the number 22. This
was nothing to do with the I-Ching, but with Pythagoras,
the Greek 'father of mathematics'. The Pythagoreans
regarded the number 22 as sacred because it represented
three musical octaves, and the Pythagoreans saw music as
one of the basic secrets of the universe. Of course, an
ordinary musical scale has seven notes - doh, re, mi, fa, so,
la, ti - and a final doh of the next octave completes it and
begins the next octave. But three octaves -and the
Pythagoreans also attached a mystical significance to the
number three - begins on doh, and ends on another doh 22
notes later.
Mike Hayes had played the guitar since his early teens,
so knew a certain amount of musical theory. In the quest
that followed, it proved to be of central importance.
But at this early stage, in the late seventies, a suspicion
was beginning to form in his mind: that these numbers
involved in the DNA code might express some basic law
of the universe. He was in the position
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10 The Third Force
of Edward T. Hall's student who realised that the children
in the playground were dancing to some basic rhythm of
life, a rhythm that is totally unsuspected by the rest of us.
Mike Hayes came to believe that rhythm is basically
musical in nature. And this, in turn, meant that he was a
kind of Pythagorean.
Pythagoreanism is sometimes called ' number
mysticism', and Pythagoras attached great importance to
the numbers three and seven, and to the laws governing
musical notes. Gurdijieff had also spoken of the 'Law of
Three' and the 'Law of Seven'. The Law of Three states
that all creation involves a 'third force'. We are inclined to
think in terms of dualities: positive and negative, male and
female, good and evil. Gurdjieff - who derived the idea
from the Sankhya philosophy of India - stated that, instead,
we should try to think in terms of three. Positive and
negative merely counterbalance one another, but if
anything is to come of them, they must be given a push by
a third force. An obvious example would be the catalyst in
a chemical reaction. Oxygen and sulphur dioxide do not
naturally combine; but if passed over hot platinised
asbestos, they form sulphur trioxide, from which sulphuric
acid is made. The platinised asbestos remains unchanged.
Another simple example would be a zip. The left and
right side of the zip need the fastener in the middle to
make them combine.
But perhaps Gurdjieff's most interesting illustration is of
someone who wishes to change, to achieve greater self-
knowledge, and in whom the forces of laziness act as a
counterbalance. In this case, the breakthrough can occur
through knowledge - a perception of how it can be
achieved, which brings a new drive and optimism. In other
words, the third force is a kind of kick, an outside force
that alters the balance of a situation, breaks a deadlock.
The Law of Seven is illustrated by the seven notes of the
musical scale; here the final doh somehow draws them
together so they can move on to a higher octave. Again,
the seven colours of the spectrum are 'drawn together' into
white light.
When Mike Hayes began to study the major world
religions, he was struck by how often the numbers three,
seven and 22 recur. The legendary founder of Hermetic
philosophy - identified with the Egyptian God Thoth - is
known as Thrice Great Hermes. The number pi - the
relation of the diameter of a circle to its circumference -
which was supposed to have been discovered by
Pythagoras, is 22 divided by seven.
In the story of Noah's Ark, Noah is told by God to build
an ark and take on board two pairs of every animal and
bird. After seven days it
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. .*!!! Miiaiius io me spmnx
begins to rain. When the flood starts to subside, Noah
sends a raven to see what is happening. It fails to return,
and after seven days, he sends a dove, which is unable to
find land. After another seven days, Noah sends the dove
again, which returns with an olive branch in its beak (the
olive branch which has become the symbol of the most
important of third forces - reconciliation). After another
seven days he releases the dove again, and this time it fails
to return, having found land.
Those who know their Bible will recall that there seems
to be a contradiction about the number of animals. In 6:19,
God tells Noah to take two of every creature on board. In
7:2 this has become seven pairs of 'clean
5
animals and
only two of the unclean ones. But in verse 8, Noah goes on
board with only two pairs of each. In fact, it hardly makes
sense to take seven pairs of animals on board. Which
suggests that the seven was inserted by some scribe simply
in order to bring the 'magical' seven into the text. The same
could also be true of Noah's age, 600 - the beginning of his
seventh century.
Hayes points out that the story contains three periods of
seven days - except that there is also a day when the dove
returns, unable to find land, which brings the total to 22.
The rainbow, the symbol of God's reconciliation, has, of
course, seven colours.
The same number mysticism can be seen in the Hebrew
sacred lamp-stand known at the menorah, which has six
branches on either side, with three cups on each, making
eighteen. You would expect the central stem (the seventh)
to have another three cups, making 21. Instead, it has four,
making 22. Twenty-two cups divided by seven branches -
the number pi.
Pythagoras also attached peculiar importance to a figure
he called the tetrad - ten pebbles arranged in the form of a
triangle.
*
*
#
#
*
*
*
Pythagoras regarded this figure as a symbol of the
supernatural, and Hayes sees it as a symbol of
evolutionary ascent, with the topmost pebble as a symbol -
like top doh - of the upward movement to a higher level
(Plato calls the tetrad 'the music of the spheres'). From the
tetrad Pythagoras derives two more sacred numbers: ten
(for the number of pebbles) and four (for the number of
lines).
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Hayes goes on to demonstrate how the symbol of the
tetrad also occurs repeatedly in religion and Hermeticism.
For example, a commentary on the Koran called the Tafsir
describes the Prophet's visit to the seven heavens, which
begins with Mohammed mounting a quadruped. which is
neither donkey nor mule, then entering a mosque and
lowering his head three times in prayer, after which the
angel Gabriel offers him two vessels, one full of wine, one
full of milk, and after he has chosen the milk, conducts
him to the first heaven. So we have the quadruped
- number four - followed by bowing the head three times,
followed by
the two vessels, followed by the first heaven - the
numbers forming a
tetrad. The quadruped is also symbolic; being neither
donkey nor mule,
it symbolises the third force or manifestation, so leading
to the next
line of the tetrad, the three. The two vessels of wine and
milk are also
symbolic, the milk symbolising gentleness, kindness (the
Chinese yin
principle) as against the more positive and assertive wine.
The results of Mike Hayes's decade of study of religion
were finally written down in a book called The Infinite
Harmony, in which separate sections deal with ancient
Egypt, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Buddhism (with
its eightfold path), Confucianism, Christianity and Islam,
as well as a chapter on alchemy and the Hermetic code,
one on the I-Ching, and one on the genetic code. His basic
argument is that the musical octave, together with the
Law of Three and the Law of Seven, express some basic
code of life and the law governing evolution. And he
demonstrates that these numbers turn up with bewildering
frequency in the world's great religions (the Book of
Revelation seems to be particularly full of number
symbolism and musical symbolism).
Inevitably, the reader begins to wonder whether all this
merely demonstrates the author's determination to make
the numbers fit the facts
- for example, I found myself wondering why God made
it rain for 40
days and 40 nights, rather than the seven or eight or 22
that might be
expected (although the answer could lie in multiplying the
two numbers
of the tetrad, four and ten). Yet even accepting his
argument at its
lowest level, there can be no possible doubt about the
strange recurrence
of the numbers three and seven and eight throughout
world religions,
as if they all incorporate some musical principle.
But this, of course, is only the foundation of Hayes's
argument. Its essence is the notion that the 'Hermetic
code' is also an evolutionary code - it is something to do
with the way life manifests itself, and attempts
continually to move to a higher level. Hayes believes that
what he has glimpsed is something very like the 'rhythm
of life' seen by Hall's
2
5
1
Student in the film of the schoolchildren: the same hidden
rhythm by which the Hopi and the Navajo and the Quiche
still regulate their lives, and which the priests of ancient
Egypt recognised as the creative force of Osiris.
In fact, the chapter on Egypt and the Great Pyramid is
particularly convincing because - as we have seen - there
can be little doubt that the Egyptians set out deliberately to
encode their knowledge - such as the size of the earth. In
some cases, it is hard to know precisely what the Egyptians
were trying to tell us. We learn, for example, that in the
antechamber to the King's Chamber, there is a square
granite relief whose area is exactly equal to the area of a
circle, whose diameter happens to be the precise length of
the antechamber floor. Moreover, when this length is
multiplied by pi, the result is precisely the length of the
solar year - 365.2412 pyramid inches. It is difficult to
understand why the architect of the Pyramid wanted to
transmit this information, or to whom. On the other hand,
it seems that the off-centre niche in the Queen's Chamber,
which has also baffled most writers on the Pyramid, is
precisely one sacred cubit off centre, as if the architect was
trying to tell us precisely what basic measure he was using.
So the other encoded information may be just as practical.
Hayes also argues convincingly for the Egyptian
knowledge of pi (which, we may recall, was supposed to
have been discovered two thousand years later by
Pythagoras). He cites, for example, a decree which
appoints a certain high priest Director of all 22 nomes
(districts) of Upper Egypt. Later, when the son is
appointed, he is only Director of seven nomes. The
symbolism seems to be obvious: father over son, 22 over
seven.
He also points out the association of the Great Pyramid
with the 'Magic Square of Hermes', 2080, which happens
to be the sum of all the numbers from 1 to 64 - the number
of the I-Ching and the genetic code.
Schwaller de Lubicz's years studying the Temple of
Luxor left him in no doubt of its incredibly precise
symbolism. His major work, The Temple of Man (not to be
confused with the smaller Temple in Man, also about
Luxor) demonstrates beyond all doubt that the Luxor
temple symbolises a human being, with various chambers
corresponding precisely to various organs. Here again, the
architect enjoyed playing with number codes, many of
which Schwaller is able to decipher in the course of the
three volumes. An ancient Egyptian mystic would no
doubt have found the Temple, like the Great Pyramid, an
amazing and
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10 The Third Force
continuous revelation. But in spite of Schwaller's
decoding, most of its meaning is now lost to us.
As we have seen, Mike Hayes's starting point was his
observation of the odd similarity between the genetic code
and the I-Ching.
The I-Ching is, of course, a book of 'oracles', which is
consulted for advice. This certainly sounds like pure
superstition. But the psychologist Carl Jung, who launched
the book upon the modern world by introducing Richard
Wilhelm's translation in 1951, believed there was more to
it than that. He argued that there is a hidden truth behind
the I-Ching which he called synchronicity (in a small book
of that title), an 'acausal connecting principle'.
The I-Ching is consulted either by throwing down three
coins six times, and noting the preponderance of heads or
tails (tails for yin - a broken line - and heads for yang, an
unbroken line). It can also be consulted by a method using
50 yarrow stalks, of which one is thrown aside, leaving 49,
which we note is seven times seven. So it would seem that
one method is based on the Law of Three, the other on the
Law of Seven.
It must be borne in mind that when the Book of Changes
first came into being, it was not a 'book', but merely two
lines, a broken and an unbroken one, meaning respectively
no and yes, and the questioner threw down the coins (or
divided the yarrow stalks) only once. It seems to have
struck the legendary inventor of the I-Ching, the sage Fu
Hsi (believed to have lived in the third millennium bc),
that the two lines can change their nature, becoming their
opposite. Fu Hsi arranged the lines into trigrams, then
hexagrams. He began with Ken, 'keeping still, the
mountain'. Then he contemplated these hexagrams,
conceiving them as nets of forces, and tried to envisage the
meaning of the changes within them. At that stage it was
an exercise in pure intuition. Most of the hexagrams were
probably not even named. A slightly later version of the
hexagrams began with K'un, 'the receptive'.
In about 1000 bc, King Wen had been imprisoned by the
tyrant Chou Hsin, and it was there, after a vision in which
he saw the hexagrams arranged in a circle, that he arranged
them in their present form, beginning with the masculine
hexagram Ch'ien, 'the creative', and adding commentaries.
Wen was rescued by his son, who overthrew the tyrant,
and Wen became ruler. Confucius added more
commentaries about five hundred years later.
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!-!vin Miicintis io ine dptiinx
So the I-Ching began purely as symbols, contemplated
for their inner meaning. This is clearly how Jung saw
them. ^
The Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser notes (in his
magnum opus The Ever Present Origin, 1949) that 'the
revision of the former book of oracles into a book of
wisdom ... indicates the decisive fact that around 1000 bc
man began to awaken to a diurnal, wakeful consciousness',
which suggests that in China, as in the Mediterranean,
some fundamental change in the nature of human
consciousness had appeared.
It is only towards the end of The Dance of Life that
Edward T. Hall mentions the name of Jung, whose idea of
the collective unconscious seems to flow like an
undercurrent through the book. Hall is also speaking about
synchronicity - which he sees as a form of 'entrainment' (a
term invented by William Condon, which means what
happens when one person picks up another's rhythm - in
other words, sympathetic vibration). Hall sees
synchronicity as a type of entrainment, in which events are
experienced simultaneously by two people in different
places. He cites a story about Jung, who was on a train,
feeling oddly depressed as he thought about a patient with
severe marital problems. At a certain point in this gloomy
meditation, Jung happened to check his watch -and later
learned that the patient had committed suicide at that exact
moment.
But of course, this is not all Jung means by
synchronicity. Neither are Hall's personal examples of a
colleague ringing him with information that he needed
urgently, or of experiencing 'in my own body sensations
that were present in someone else's body'. These could be
explained by some kind of telepathy. Many examples of
synchronicity cited by Jung are of coincidences so
preposterous that they sound like fiction. A typical
example concerns the French poet Emile Deschamps, who
was given a piece of plum pudding by a certain M.
Fortgibu when he was a boy. Ten years later, he saw some
plum pudding in the window of a Paris restaurant, and
went in to ask if he could have some - only to be told that
it had been ordered by M. Fortgibu. Many years later, he
was invited to a meal that included plum pudding, and
remarked that all that was wanting was M. Fortgibu. As he
said this, M. Fortgibu walked in - he had come to the
wrong address.
Jung comments that 'either there are physical processes
which cause psychic happenings, or there is a pre-existent
psyche which organises matter.' What is implied is that
such coincidences happen when the mind is in a state of
harmony and balance. This is perfectly illustrated by a
story told to Jung by his friend Richard Wilhelm, translator
of the
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10 The Third Force
I-Ching. Wilhelm was in a remote Chinese village that was
suffering from drought, and a rainmaker was sent for from
a distant village. The man asked for a cottage on the
outskirts of the village, and vanished into it for three days.
At the end of that time, there was a tremendous, downpour,
followed by snow. Wilhelm asked the old man how he had
done it; the old man replied that he hadn't. 'I come from a
region where everything is in order. It rains when it should
rain, and is fine when it is needed. But the people in this
village are all out of Tao and out of themselves. I was at
once infected when I arrived, so I asked for a cottage on
the edge of the village, so I could be alone. When I was
once more in Tao, it rained.'
The story seems to be a perfect example of what Hall
means when he speaks of the Indians' harmony with
nature. It is also an example of the harmony referred to in
the title of Hayes's The Infinite Harmony - the harmony
that Confucius, and Lao Tse, the founder of Taoism,
regarded as the essence of 'right living'.
Yet we are still faced with the puzzling and totally
illogical notion of a book - made of paper and printer's ink
- answering questions. One obvious possibility would be
that the questions are answered by 'spirits', rather as with a
Ouija board. But apparently the Chinese do not accept this
notion. Jung explains their view by saying that 'whatever
happens in a given moment possesses inevitably the
quality peculiar to that moment', and mentions a wine
connoisseur who can tell from the taste of the wine the
exact location of its vineyard, and antique dealers who can
name the time and place where a certain objet d'art was
made; he even adds the risky analogy of an astrologer who
can tell you merely by looking at you the sign you were
born under and the rising sign at the time of your birth.
The I-Ching, then, may either be regarded as some kind
of living entity, or as a kind of ready reckoner which is
able to inform the questioner of the exact meaning of the
hexagram he has obtained. It is, at all events, based upon
the notion that there is no such thing as pure chance.
This notion sounds preposterous, but seems to be
supported by quantum physics, in which the observer
somehow alters the event he is observing. For example, a
beam of light shone through a pinhole will cause a small
circle of light to appear on a screen (or photographic
plate) behind it. If two pinholes are opened side by side,
there are two interlinked circles of light, but the portion
that overlaps has a number of dark lines, due to the
'interference' of the two beams, which cancel
255
!-!vin #*tiin*is io ine dpninx
one another out. If the beam is now dimmed, so that only
one photon at a time can pass through, you would expect
the interference lines to disappear when the plate is finally
developed, for one photon cannot interfere with another.
Yet the interference lines are still there. But if we 'watch'
the photons with a photon detector, to find out what is
happening at the holes, the interference pattern
disappears ...
Jung seems to be suggesting that, in the same way, our
minds affect the patterns of the real world, unconsciously
'fixing' the results. I have described elsewhere
1
how, when
I began to write an article on synchronicity, the most
absurd synchronicities began to occur. The most
preposterous of these was as follows. I described how a
friend, Jacques Valle, had been seeking information on
the biblical prophet Melchi-zedek (pronounced 'Mel-
kizzy-dek'), because he was interested in a Los Angeles
religious sect called the Order of Melchizedek. He could
find very little. But when he took a taxi to Los Angeles
airport, and asked the taxi driver for a receipt, she gave
him one signed 'M. Melchizedek'. Thinking that perhaps
there were hundreds of Melchizedeks in Los Angeles, he
looked in the vast telephone directory, which runs to
several volumes. There was only one Melchizedek - his
taxi driver.
After I had finished writing this story, I broke off to take
my dogs for a walk. On the camp bed in my basement, I
noticed a book that I did not recognise; it was called You
Are Sentenced to Life, by W. D. Chesney, a Los Angeles
doctor, and I knew it was my book because I had sent it to
be bound. (My house contains over 20,000 books, so it is
easy to lose track.) When I came back from my walk I
opened it -and found myself looking at a page headed
'Order of Melchizedek' - a copy of a letter from the
founder of the Order to the author of the book. I felt my
hair prickle. It was as if some fate had whispered in my
ear: 'If you think Jacques Vallee's story is the strangest
synchronicity you've ever heard of, how about this?' It was
as if synchronicity was setting out to convince me of its
reality.
How can we explain synchronicities? Unless we dismiss
them as 'pure chance', we are forced to Jung's conclusion
that the mind plays a more active part in forming reality
than we realise. Or, as Jung put it, 'there is a pre-existent
psyche that organises matter.'
This is clearly very close to the views of the Hopi and
Navajo Indians as described by Hall - the feeling that our
mental attitudes influence nature and the material world,
so that, for example, a house cannot be built until the
builders have created 'right thoughts'. The Indians feel that
their minds can influence the future of the house, just as,
according
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Force
to Jung, our minds influence the fall of the coins in
consulting the I-Ching.
Mike Hayes would express it slightly differently. He
would say that the basic energies of which the universe is
made are constructed of , vibrations that obey the laws of
music; therefore events follow these 'hidden laws'.
A simple example may clarify the point. Try asking
someone to write down his telephone number, then to
write down the same number with its digits jumbled up.
Now tell him to subtract the smaller number from the
larger one, and to add together the digits of the answer
until they become one single number (i.e. 783 will
become 18, then 9). You can tell him that the answer is
nine. This is because the answer is always nine. It works
with the biggest or smallest numbers.
I am not enough of a mathematician to know why it is
so, but I know that it is not 'magic' - merely the laws of
arithmetic. Jung would say that synchronicities are the
operation of similar laws of reality. Mike Hayes would
add that those laws are basically musical in nature.
So what may appear to be primitive 'magic' may be
merely a recognition of these laws of 'chance'.
An example was witnessed by television reporter Ross
Salmon in the late 1970s. He was visiting the Calawaya
Indians of Lake Titicaca, and learned that, while the
medicine man had gone to the city to earn money, his
wife Wakchu was suspected of being unfaithful to him. A
council of local women and a council of elders was
undecided about her guilt, so the priests announced that
they would 'call the condor' to decide the matter. The
Calawayas believe that human beings are reincarnated as
condors, and that the 'Great Condor' is a reincarnation of
a great Inca leader.
Salmon was allowed to film the ceremony at the top of
a sheer cliff, as the priests performed their ritual to
summon the condor, throwing coco leaves into the air
and chanting. The next day, Wakchu was taken to the site,
and tied to a post, stripped to her loincloth. Salmon was
quite convinced that nothing would happen. But after half
an hour, a condor appeared, flew around overhead, then
landed on a rock facing Wakchu. It sat there for a time,
then stepped right up in front of the girl and pointed its
beak up at her. The elders cried: 'Guilty - she must take
her own life.' If Salmon had any doubts about the
genuineness of the ceremony, they vanished ten days
later when the girl flung herself from a high cliff.
All this was shown on Westward Television,
with Salmon's
2
5
7
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
commentary. When he wrote a book about his travels, In
Search of Eldorado, I hastened to buy it, so that I could
quote his description. To my surprise, he only told half the
story, making it altogether more ambiguous. When I saw
him subsequently, I asked him why this was, and he
explained that scientists had advised him to 'water it
down', because he had obviously been tricked. Yet the film
left no doubt whatsoever that he had not been tricked.
Here, it seems, the condor was 'called' in much the same
way as the porpoises in Sir Arthur Grimble's account, and
then played the part of the oracle, indicating the girl's
guilt. No 'rational' explanation can cover the facts (short of
cheating on the part of the priests); but Hopi Indians or the
natives of the Gilbert Islands would certainly find nothing
unbelievable about the events.
Ross Salmon also mentions that he spoke to two tribes
of Indians in the Bolivia-Colombia area, both illiterate,
but with endless events stored in their memory, and that
they both told him that man had been on earth far longer
than anyone suspects.
Sir Wallis Budge begins his book Egyptian Magic (1899)
by explaining that Egyptian religion has two sides. 'On the
one it closely resembles in many respects the Christian
religion of today, and on the other the religion of many of
the sects which flourished in the first three or four
centuries of our era...' This latter aspect, he explains,
'represents a collection of ideas and superstitions which
belong to a savage or semi-savage state of existence ... We
may think that such ideas and beliefs are both childish and
foolish, but there is no possible reason for doubting that
they were very real things to those who held them.'
Budge was, of course, a late Victorian - which explains
the patronising tone, and the strange suggestion (no doubt
meant to reassure his readers) that Egyptian religion is not
unlike Christianity. He sees the Egyptians from a
thoroughly western standpoint, and often speaks about
their belief in 'God'. The magical stories he tells are all
preposterous - about magicians who can cut off heads and
then restore them, so the subject of the experiment
remains unharmed. (He even tells a story from Apuleius's
Golden Ass - which of course has nothing to do with
Egypt - about a man whose nose and ears are eaten off by
witches.)
Half a century after Budge, a work called Before
Philosophy (1949) shows an altogether closer
understanding of the Egyptians. Professor Henri Frankfort
observes in the introduction: 'Mythopoeic thought does
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10 The Third Force
not know time as uniform duration or as a succession of
qualitatively indifferent moments. The concept of time as it
is used in our mathematics and physics is as unknown to
early man as that which forms the framework of our
history.' What Frankfort means by mythopoeic time, is
what Edward T. Hall means by the 'polychrome time' of
American Indians - the sense of an eternal present.
And how did a people who lived in an eternal present
create monuments like the pyramids?
To understand this, we first need to understand the Nile,
and the land it supports. Professor John A. Wilson says:
The essential part of Egypt is a green gash of teeming
life cutting across brown desert wastes. The line of
demarcation between life and non-life is startlingly
clear: one may stand at the edge of the cultivation
with one foot on the irrigated black soil and one foot
on the desert sands. The country is essentially
rainless; only the waters of the Nile make life
possible . . .
The Egyptians were a lucky people. Their country was a
kind of tube, with the sea at one end and the mountains of
Africa at the other, and hills on either side of the Nile to
protect them from enemies and scorching winds. By
August the harvest is in and the fields are dry and cracked.
Then the Nile rises and floods the land, leaving behind
rich mud, in which farmers hasten to plant new crops.
Mesopotamia, by contrast, had the untrustworthy Tigris
and Euphrates, which might flood at any time, drowning
the crops, and the fierce desert winds that often blew up
sandstorms. It is not surprising that the Egyptians were
known to the writers of antiquity as a serene and contented
people.
What does seem to surprise John A. Wilson - writing in
Before Philosophy - is the short period it took for Egyptian
civilisation to reach such a high point. He explains this by
saying: Tor centuries the Egyptians had been gathering
slow strength within the Nile Valley until their day
arrived, and they sprang upward with a suddenness which
is miraculous to us.'
Wilson goes on: 'We shall see two major periods of
Egyptian thought, the aggressive and optimistic earlier
times and the submissive and hopeful later times.' And he
quotes Breasted, who remarks: 'Conceive . . . the dauntless
courage of the man who told his surveyors to lay out the
square base 755 feet on each side! [He knew it would]
take nearly two and a half million blocks each weighing
two and one half tons to cover
259
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
this square of thirteen acres with a mountain of masonry
481 feet high ... The Great Pyramid of Gizeh is thus a
document in the history of the human mind.'
West, Hancock and Bauval would agree; but they would
argue that the 'suddenness' is an illusion, and that the
Egyptians were heirs to an older civilisation. Bauval and
Hancock would suggest, moreover, that it was not a
'gathering of slow strength' that caused the Egyptians to
explode into the achievements of the pyramid age, but a
long-term religious purpose. The Great Pyramid was the
culmination of centuries of preparation, and it marked the
beginning of a new age, the Age of Osiris, which could
only bring prosperity to everyone in the land of Egypt.
With their god-king, in their well-protected land, under the
benevolent eye of the gods who looked down from the
heavens, they could afford to be cheerful and optimistic.
Moreover, they were almost certainly the first
civilisation in human history who were in that happy
position. There is a sense in which we can regard the
Egyptians as the culmination of man's evolution up to that
point. Wilson says: 'We want to emphasise just as strongly
as we can that the Egyptians of these times were a gay and
lusty people. They relished life to the full, and they loved
life too fully to surrender its hearty flavour.' For thousands
of years, man had been 'up against it' -against ice ages and
droughts and earthquakes and floods. Now suddenly, one
single people - who believed firmly that they were
protected by the gods - had found their golden age.
But what we are in a position to understand - as
Professor Wilson was not - is that the strength of dynastic
Egypt sprang from unity of mind. Like the Hopi or the
Navajo, they were living very close to the earth, to the
black mud that brought them life. And we could say of
them what Hall says of the Hopi - that religion is the
central core of their life (see p. 239).
All the evidence shows that his every word can be
applied to ancient Egypt. It was basically a religious
civilisation, bound together in total unity.
To understand this fully, we have to see it against the
background of human social evolution up to that point.
I have argued that the evidence - presented, for
example, by Alexander Marshack - suggests that Cro-
Magnon man represented an aston-
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Force
ishing step forward in evolution. It had been happening, by
then, for nearly half a million years, for reasons that are
not fully understood.
As we have seen, Gurdjieff borrowed from Sankhya
philosophy the idea of the
c
Law of Three' - the third force.
Two forces - such as man
m
struggling against his
environment - may remain forever in equilibrium if
nothing alters the balance. Whether human beings existed
as long ago as the Miocene (as Forbidden Archaeology
suggests) is in a sense irrelevant - although the evidence is
certainly worth studying - because if they did, they marked
time for millions of years. Then, about half a million years
ago, some 'third force' altered the balance, and gave man a
reason - or a cluster of reasons - for becoming more
intelligent. Language and the development of human
sexuality almost certainly played their part. A creature who
is learning to express himself verbally is becoming more
intelligent by definition. And a creature whose interest in
sex has ceased to be brutish and seasonal, and who finds
the opposite sex permanently interesting and exciting -
perhaps even sacred - has also taken an important step
towards being truly human.
Neanderthal man was undoubtedly a 'religious animal',
and Stan Gooch has argued strongly (in The Neanderthal
Question and Cities of Dreams) that he achieved a higher
level of civilisation than we give him credit for. But since
he vanished from the scene of history, this is largely
irrelevant to the present argument. And since he has left
us no art, we possess no evidence to suggest that he
achieved the supremely important development of
hunting magic.
But we know that Cro-Magnon man achieved it. And
we are also in a position to understand the importance of
that step forward. A man who believes that he can
influence nature and capture his prey by means of
magical ritual has a new sense of control. He feels that, in
some sense, he has found the key to becoming the master
of nature rather than its slave. Life ceases to be a non-
stop struggle for survival, which he often wins only by
the skin of his teeth. He has undergone a psychological
revolution that might be labelled the purpose-revolution.
If Marshack is correct, then a close study of the
heavens also played its part in the revolution. To begin
with, it was probably merely a matter of creating some
kind of calendar, which enabled him to anticipate the
changes of the seasons. But since this study played a
central part in his more active and involved attitude
towards his own existence, it must have become
something in which he indulged more and more for its
own sake.
But we are speaking of Cro-Magnon man as if he was
an individual,
2
6
1
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
who enjoyed indulging his hobby of star-
gazing. What must be understood is that
ancient man was never an 'individual' in our
modern sense. He was a member of a group -
of both males and females - who shared the
consciousness of that group. Animals operate
on a collective instinct, like a herd of
reindeer or a flock of birds or a school of
fishes, and this is how we need to think of
our remote human ancestors.
But hunting magic made another basic
difference, as we can see from his cave
paintings. Those who performed it were
shamans, 'magicians', and it was inevitable
that the shaman would also become the
leader. In primitive societies, the priest
quickly becomes the priest-king, the
priestess the priestess-queen. And this has
the effect of creating a new kind of unity, a
new level of purpose.
This must have have been one of the most
important factors in the evolution of Cro-
Magnon man towards modern Homo
sapiens. He had a leader whom he regarded
with unqualified admiration. From now on,
he could face the world with total singleness
of purpose. And with this unity of purpose,
he was ready to create civilisation.
How long did it take? We have no idea.
Conventional history suggests about 25,000
years between the time when Marshack's
Cro-Magnon star-gazers turned into farmers
and then city-builders. The evidence we have
examined in this book suggests that it was far
less than that, and that by perhaps as long
ago as 20,000 bc, the 'collective unity' with
its shaman-king or priestess-queen had
evolved into some early form of civilisation.
According to Hapgood, a worldwide
maritime civilisation existed at a time when
Antarctica was free of ice, perhaps 7000 bc.
But if Schwal-ler de Lubicz is correct in
believing that the Sphinz is water-weathered,
then some fairly sophisticated civilisation
antedated it by three or four thousand years.
In Earth's Shifting Crust, Hapgood argues
that Antarctica was 2500 miles closer to the
equator in 15,000 BC. If so, then it is easy to
imagine that its movement was a major
catastrophe for those who lived there, and
probably involved massive flooding.
We have looked closely at the evidence
that survivors from this drifting continent
took refuge in South America and in Egypt,
and that the native peoples of Central and
South America called them the Viracpchas.
If Schwaller is correct, then a group of
these Viracochas moved to Egypt, found that
this sheltered country, with its great river and
its yearly inundation, was the ideal home,
and began to create a new civilisation. Aware
of the precession of the equinoxes, which
played a
262
I
I
f
10 The
Third
Force
central part in their religious belief, they laid the
foundations of their temple on the Giza plateau, where a
great mass of granite became identified with the 'primeval
mound'. They built the Sphinx, gazing towards the
constellation of Leo, and laid out the ground-plan of the ,
pyramids, whose conformation was precisely that of the
three stars of Orion's Belt in 10,500 bc. They planned to
complete their Temple of the Stars when Orion came close
to the heavenly counterpart of the Giza plateau. Then the
pharaoh-god would perform the ceremony that would send
Osiris back to his home in the skies, and inaugurate a new
Golden Age.
Egyptologists are agreed that this Golden Age actually
arrived, around 2600 bc. There was an explosion of
creative energy, an upsurge of optimism. With religious
conviction acting as a 'third force', the ancient Egyptians
became the highest manifestation of the human
evolutionary drive so far achieved.
For the ancient Egyptians, magic was accepted in the
same way that modern man accepts technology - not
magic in the sense of a contradiction of the laws of
causality, but, as Schwaller explained, in the sense of
being 'bathed in a psychic atmosphere which establishes
a bond between the individuals, a bond which is as
explicit as the air which is breathed by all living beings.'
In other words, Egyptian magic was undoubtedly closer
to the magic of the porpoise caller of the Gilbert Islands,
or the Amahuaca chieftain performing a hunting ritual,
than to the absurdities described by Budge. Such magic
is based upon an understanding of forgotten laws of
nature.
In attempting to gain some insight into how the
Egyptians lifted giant blocks of stone, I asked
Christopher Dunn, the manufacturing engineer who had
studied the sarcophagus in the King's Chamber of the
Great Pyramid, whether he had any practical - or even
impractical - suggestions. By way of reply he sent me a
strange little pamphlet called A Book in Every Home,
written by a man called Edward Leedskalnin, and
published by the author in Homestead, Florida.
Leedskalnin, apparently, was an eccentric who lived in a
place called Coral Castle, near Miami, Florida, which he
built himself from giant blocks of coral* some weighing
as much as 30 tons. Leedskalnin, a thin little man who
was only five feet tall, died in 1952 without divulging the
secret of how he constructed the 'castle', and moved these
enormous weights. In 28 years, he quarried and erected a
total of 1,100 tons.
2
6
3
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
A Book in Every Home tells us the reason that Ed
Leedskalnin became a recluse. 'I always have wanted a
girl, but I never had one.' As a young man, he fell in love
with a sixteen-year-old girl, but his courtship was
apparently unsuccessful. This may have been because she
turned him down, although the pamphlet hints strongly
that the real reason was that he learned that she was not a
virgin, and decided that it would be humiliating to accept
'damaged goods'. He seems to have become obsessed by
the idea that most girls of 'sweet sixteen' (one of his
favourite phrases) were 'damaged' (although he obviously
regarded even a kiss as evidence of depravity), and 'that is
why I was so successful in resisting the natural urge for
love making'. The pamphlet advises all mothers not to
allow their daughters to associate with 'fresh boys', and
even suggests that they should offer themselves instead.
Leedskalnin's disappointment in love led him to retire to
Homestead, Florida, where he worked out some secret
process of moving and lifting giant blocks, weighing an
average of 6V
2
tons - more than the average weight of
blocks in the Great Pyramid.
Christopher Dunn had visited Coral Castle for the first
time in 1982; now, following my letter, he was kind
enough to pay a second visit, which convinced him that
Leedskalnin was merely telling the truth when he declared:
'I know the secret of how the pyramids of Egypt were
built.' But he refused to divulge it, even to US Government
officials, who paid him a visit and were shown around the
castle. The only hint he would drop was to the effect that
'all matter consists of individual magnets, and it is the
movement of those magnets within material through space
that produces measurable phenomena, i.e. magnetism and
electricity.'
Christopher Dunn's discussions with a colleague, Steven
Defenbaugh, led them to conclude that Leedskalnin had
invented some kind of anti-gravity device. Then it struck
him that merely getting out of bed in the morning is an
anti-gravity device, and that this concept brings the
solution no nearer.
On the other hand, there are even now magnetic
lvitation trains that are basically anti-gravity devices. If
one magnet is suspended over another, there is a natural
tendency for their opposite poles to align themselves, so
they attract one another. If their poles can be prevented
from aligning, they repel one another. Could Leedskalnin
have used this principle in raising his vast blocks? One
photograph of Ed Leedskalnin's backyard shows a device
like three telephone poles leaning together to form a
tripod, with a square box on top. Wires descend from this
box
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Force
and hang between the poles. No such box was found in
Leedskalnin's workshop after his death, so presumably he
disassembled it to prevent it from being examined.
What Christopher Dunn was able to find in the
workshop was a large flywheel, which Leedskalnin is
supposed to have used to create electricity. The bar
magnets on it were set in concrete. Dunn went off and
purchased a bar magnet at a local hardware store. Then he
returned to the workshop and spun the flywheel, holding
the bar magnet towards it. Sure enough, the magnet
pushed and pulled in his grasp like a shunting train. This
was enough to suggest that Leedskalnin's secret involved
magnetism.
Dunn points out that the earth itself is a giant magnet -
although we still have no idea of what causes the
magnetism. And of course, matter itself is electrical in
nature. Had Leedskalnin discovered some new. principle
that utilised earth magnetism? Or, if that sounds too absurd
to take seriously, could he have somehow turned his whole
block of coral into a giant magnet by wrapping it in steel
sheets and using an electric current? And then used his
push-pull device to force it to move? Could he even have
suspended his iron-clad block like a magnetic lvitation
train?
The obvious objection to all this - as a solution to how
the pyramids were built - is that the Egyptians knew
nothing of electricity, and possessed no iron. In fact, there
are those who doubt both propositions. When Howard-
Vyse was exploring the Great Pyramid in June 1837, he
told one of his assistants, J. R. Hill, to use gunpowder to
clear the far end of the southern 'air shaft' in the King's
Chamber (the one that Bauval discovered to have been
pointing at Orion's Belt in 2500 bc). Hill blasted away at
the southern face of the Pyramid, and after clearing away
much debris, found a flat iron plate near the mouth of the
air shaft. It was a foot long, four inches wide, and an
eighth of an inch thick, and did not look like meteoric
iron; in fact, since it looked like ordinary wrought iron,
the 'experts' were inclined to doubt its genuineness. But
when Flinders Ptrie examined it in 1881, he found
fossilised protozoa in the rust, revealing that it had been
buried for a long time next to a block of limestone with
fossils in it. In 1989, it was re-examined by Dr M. P. Jones
of the Mineral Resources Department at Imperial College,
London, and he and a fellow metallurgist, Dr Sayed El
Gayer, established that it was not meteoric iron, since its
nickel content was too low. Their tests showed that it had
been smelted at a temperature of over 1000 degrees
centigrade, and that there were traces
265
!-!win Htiaiiii iw in? apniiiA
of gold on one side of the plate, suggesting that it had once
been gold-plated. The conclusion would seem to be that
the Egyptians knew how to smelt iron ore - approximately
two thousand years before the Iron / Age.
The trace of gold raises another possibility - gold
plating by electrical means. In June 1936, the German
archaeologist Wilhelm Knig, of the Iraq Museum in
Baghdad, came upon a clay vase containing a copper
cylinder, inside which - held in by asphalt and molten
lead - was an iron rod. He recognised it as a primitive
battery. Other archaeologists dismissed this conclusion
on the grounds that the Parthian grave in which the
battery was found dated back to about 250 bc. But
another German Egyptologist, Dr Arne Eggebrecht,
agreed with Knig, and constructed a duplicate which,
when filled with fruit juice, produced half a volt of
electricity for eighteen days. He was able to use this to
coat a silver figurine in gold in half an hour. Eggebrecht
had noticed gold-covered Egyptian statues in which the
gold coating seemed to be too thin and fine to have been
applied by gluing or beating, and concluded that it was
highly likely that the Egyptians knew about
electroplating. It seems certain that the Parthians did - for
it is hard to think what else the battery was intended for.
Others have suggested an even more intriguing
possibility. One puzzle about painted Egyptian tombs is
what the artists used to light the tomb as they worked on
the painting - they show no sign of lampblack on the
ceilings. But on the walls of the temple at Dendera, there
are engravings that might be electric lights and
insulators. Admittedly, this would also have involved
inventing a light bulb containing a vacuum, which
sounds too far-fetched - it seems far more likely that the
artists used oil lamps with well-trimmed wicks, or that
they carefully cleaned all lampblack off the ceiling. But
these suggestions serve to remind us that we still have no
idea of how the Egyptians drilled out the sarcophagus in
the King's Chamber, or the inside of vases whose neck is
too thin to admit a child's finger. All that is certain is that
they knew far more than we give them credit for.
The basic problem may be the one that these last few
chapters have tried to pinpoint: that as products of a
technological culture, we find it virtually impossible to
place ourselves inside the minds of a far simpler, more
primitive culture. Schwaller de Lubicz never tires of
emphasising that when the ancient Egyptians expressed
themselves in symbols, this
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Force
was not because their drawing 'symbolised' something, in
the way that Freud claims an obelisk symbolises a phallus.
The symbol was the only way to express what they meant.
To look for hidden meaning is rather as if someone stood
in front of a Constable painting and said: 'I wonder , what
he meant by it?'
We have to try to understand what it means to be a
civilisation that is totally unified by its religion. As
Schwaller says: 'Ancient Egypt did not have a "religion"
as such; it was religion in its entirety, in the broadest and
purest acceptation of the term.'
We can perhaps begin to grasp this if we think in terms
of one of those modern messianic sects who believe that
their leader is God, or a reincarnation of Christ, and who
would be glad to die for him. Their total belief in their
messiah makes life marvellously simple; they feel
absolutely secure from the problems and contingencies
that torment the rest of us. They have made the discovery
that total, unquestioning belief creates a kind of heaven
on earth, and even in the face of the most conclusive
evidence that their messiah is not what he claims to be,
they refuse to be swayed. They are, in fact, refusing to
exchange their state of inner peace and certainty for the
usual miseries and hazards of human existence.
In one of the Hermetic Texts, the god Thoth says: 'Do
you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of
heaven? Or, to speak more precisely, that in Egypt, all the
operations of powers which rule and operate in heaven
have been transferred down to earth below.'
A million or so ancient Egyptians believed this without
question. They were illiterate peasants, but they believed
that their priests knew all the secrets of the universe, and
that their pharaoh was a god. Ancient Egypt was a
collective civilisation: not merely in the sense that Soviet
Russia and Communist China were collectives, but in an
even deeper sense of being united by a 'collective
unconscious'. They were as united under their pharaoh-
god as the Amahuaca Indians under their shaman
chieftain. It is even likely that, in their religious
mysteries, they experienced collective 'visions' as the
Amahuaca Indians experienced them when everyone in
the tribe was able to see the same procession of phantom
animals.
The notion that thousands of slaves were driven to
build the Great Pyramid by a cruel pharaoh belongs to a
later age that had left behind the sheer simplicity of the
Old Kingdom Egyptians. Kurt Mendelssohn is closer to
the truth when he supposes that the pharaoh devised the
task of pyramid-building to unite his people. But he is
failing to grasp
2
6
7
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
the fact that they were united - far more united than a modern
man can understand.
In fact, modern computer science can provide an insight into
this paradoxical notion of a collective unconscious. In Out of
Control (1994), Kevin Kelly describes a conference in Las
Vegas, in which five thousand computer enthusiasts came
together in one hall. On the stage facing the audience is a kind
of vast television screen in which the audience can see itself.
Every member of the audience holds a cardboard wand, red on
one side and green on the other. As the audience waves the
wands, the screen dances with colours. Individual members of
the audience can locate themselves by changing the colour of
their wands from red to green and back.
Now the Master of Ceremonies flashes on to the screen a
video game called Pong - a kind of ping-pong, with a white dot
bouncing inside a square, while two movable rectangles on
either side act as ping-pong bats. The MC announces: 'The left
side of the auditorium controls the left bat, and the right side
controls the right bat.'
The whole audience then proceeds to play electronic ping-
pong. Each bat is controlled simultaneously by 2500 people.
The collective unconscious is playing the game. Moreover, it
plays an excellent game, as if there were only one player on
each side. As the ball is made to bounce faster, the whole
audience adjusts, and increases its pace.
Next, the MC causes a white circle to appear in the middle of
the screen, and asks those who think they are sitting inside it to
try to create a green figure 5. Slowly, a blurred 5 materialises
on the screen, then sharpens until it is quite distinct. When the
MC asks for a 4, then a 3, a 2, a 1, a 0, the figures emerge
almost instantly.
Now the MC places a flight simulator on the screen, so the
whole audience is looking through the pilot's eyes at a tiny
runway in the midst of a pink valley. This time the left side
controls the plane's roll, and the right side the pitch. But as
5000 minds bring the aircraft in for landing, it is obvious that it
is going to land on its wing. So the whole audience aborts the
landing and makes the plane raise its nose and try again.
As Kelly comments: 'Nobody decided whether to turn left or
right... Nobody was in charge. But as if of one mind, the plane
banks and turns wide.'
A second landing makes the wrong approach and is again
aborted. 'The mob decides, without lateral communication, like
a flock of birds taking off...' And simultaneously, everyone in
the audience decides to
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see if they can make the plane loop the loop. The horizon
veers dizzily, but they succeed, and give themselves a
standing ovation.
So modern man can achieve group-consciousness, and
moreover, achieve it almost instantaneously. It is obvious
that we have not lost , the trick. In effect - as Kelly
observes - the audience turns into flocking birds.
Presumably this could be explained in terms of individual
feedback, but for all practical purposes, it is group
telepathy.
Now consider an equally curious phenomenon. It is
1979, and Dr Larissa Vilenskaya, an experimental
psychologist, is in the Moscow apartment of Dr
Veniamin Pushkin, where the Soviet film maker Boris
Yermolayev intends to demonstrate his peculiar powers
in front of a small audience of scientific observers.
Yermolayev drinks some vodka to relax, then, by way of
a warm-up, proceeds to a card-guessing experiment,
which proceeds so fast that Dr Vilenskaya cannot follow
it. Then Yermolayev asks one of the observers to give
him some light object; he is given a cigarette packet. He
holds his hands in front of him and stares at his spread
fingers with such tension that perspiration appears on his
forehead. Then he takes the cigarette packet between the
fingers of both hands and stares at it. He opens his
hands, and the packet falls to the ground. He picks it up
and holds it again, talking to it in an inaudible whisper.
Then he opens his hands, and the cigarette packet
remains suspended in the air for between 30 and 40
seconds, before it falls to the ground.
Yermolayev explains that he tries to establish a
rapport with the object. He 'persuades' it, and tries to
project a part of himself into it.
In the same paper,
2
Dr Vilenskaya describes how
Elvira Shevchuk, a 40-year-old woman from Kalinin, is
able to suspend various objects in the air in the same
way - including a beaker of liquid. In one case she took
a stick provided by Dr Pushkin, rested it at an angle of
45 degrees on the floor, then slowly removed her hands.
The stick remained at 45 degrees for over a minute.
The evidence for such feats, performed under
experimental conditions, is overwhelming. An
Amahuaca or Hopi Indian would not express surprise -
he would shrug and comment that Yermolayev and
Madame Shevchuk are merely natural shamans, and are
performing feats that shamans have performed since
time began.
Am I, then, suggesting that the ancient Egyptians
'levitated' 200-ton blocks of stone by exercising the
'group mind'? Not quite. It is not as simple as that. It is
probable that they were not even aware that they were
doing anything unusual. They prepared to move some
vast block,
2
6
9
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
probably with levers, ropes and rollers, the priest uttered
'words of power', and then they all exerted themselves in
concert, and the block moved smoothly, just as they all
knew it would.
Let me be more explicit. I have often taken part in an
experiment in which four people lift a fully grown man
merely by placing one finger under his armpits and his
knees. The 'game' usually proceeds like this. The subject
sits down, and the four volunteers place one finger under
each armpit and each knee - four fingers in all - and try to
lift him. Naturally, they cannot. Then they all place their
hands on his head in a kind of pile, first the right hand of
each person, then the left. They concentrate hard and press
down for perhaps half a minute. Then, acting
simultaneously, they pull away their hands, place a single
index finger under the subject's armpits and knees, and lift.
This time, the subject soars off the ground. 'Professor' Joad
once described, on a BBC Brains Trust programme, how
he had seen an enormously fat pub landlord raised off the
ground by four people, one of whom was the landlord's
small daughter.
Those of a scientific turn of mind claim they can explain
this quite simply. When four people are totally
concentrated, and then exert their strength simultaneously,
they can exert far more force than if they attempt the
experiment without preparation - in which case, their self-
doubt helps to ensure failure.
Now this explanation may well be correct. For practical
purposes, it makes no difference whether the power they
are exerting is normal or paranormal. In all probability, the
half-minute of concentration creates the same kind of
unity that the members of the computer conference
experienced. It is their total unanimity that 'increases their
strength'.
I am suggesting that the workmen who built the Great
Pyramid made use of some similar 'trick', and that relays
of them probably lifted their 6-ton blocks from course to
course by sudden concentrated effort, under the guidance
of an overseer or priest. They probably believed that the
gods were making the blocks lighter, and that no special
effort - except obedience - was required. In building the
Sphinx Temple, they probably used ramps and levers, and
were quite unaware that there was anything unusual about
moving a 200-ton block. In a civilisation where 'flocking'
was part of the normal behaviour of men working together,
they probably accepted it as a perfectly normal technique.
A gang of modern workmen would be in danger of being
crushed as a block slipped out of control and was allowed
to fall backwards, but a totally unified
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group of workmen would act in concert, like the audience
bringing the plane in to land.
The explanation of other mysteries - like the granite
sarcophagus -may have to wait until we can learn whether
the Egyptians possessed unsuspected technical resources,
such as the ability to make practical use of musical
vibrations. What is clear is that our ignorance will continue
until we have a better understanding of the powers of the
'group mind'. But if an audience at a computer conference
can demonstrate these powers spontaneously, then there
seems no reason why carefully designed experiments with
groups should not begin to provide some of the answers.
All the evidence suggests that Old Kingdom Egypt was a
unique experiment in human evolution, the most
remarkable demonstration in human history of what could
be achieved with a 'group mind'.
It could not last, of course. According to Professor
Wilson: 'The Old Kingdom of Egypt collapsed into turmoil
heels over head. The old values ... were swept away in an
anarchy of force and seizure.' Their immensely successful
civilisation turned into a kind of rat race. Two centuries
after Gheops, pyramid-building had already become
painfully careless and incompetent - although the
inscription of the ancient texts in the pyramid of Unas was
still one of the great achievements of the Old Kingdom.
Wilson describes how Egyptian confidence gradually
drained away. During the Old Kingdom, men saw
themselves as very nearly the equal of the gods. Five
hundred years later, they were feeling vulnerable and
accident-prone. This produced a higher form of morality,
in which man's responsibility to his fellow man - and
woman - was increasingly emphasised. But the old
certainties had evaporated. 'The new deterministic
philosophy,' says Wilson, 'was rather definitely stated in
terms of the will of god, placed over against man's
helplessness.'
Then, around the time of the fall of Troy - about 1250 bc
- new problems arose. The Mediterranean world seethed
with violence - Hittites, the Sea Peoples, the Libyans, the
Assyrians. Egypt survived, but was never the same again.
1250 bc is, of course, the period when, according to
Julian Jaynes, 'modern consciousness' was born. Jaynes
believes that the 'old consciousness' was 'bicameral',
lacking any kind of self-awareness, and that men 'heard
voices', which they mistook for the voices of the gods
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rrum Hiianiis 10 me apninx
- in other words, man was a kind of conscious robot. The
evidence presented here makes this seem unlikely. It suggests
that the chief difference between primitive man and modern
man is that primitive man took for granted a certain access to
the 'collective unconscious', and was therefore far closer to
nature and his fellow man. But it is hard to imagine any human
being, even the most primitive, completely lacking in self-
consciousness.
Schwaller, as we know, felt that man has degenerated since
the time of the ancient Egyptians. And there is a sense in which
he is obviously correct. But there is also a sense in which the
Tall' was inevitable. 'Group consciousness' had reached a kind
of limit.
Now, from the evolutionary point of view, group
consciousness has considerable advantages. In African Genesis,
Robert Ardrey describes how he and Raymond Dart stood
beside a particularly beautiful blossom. Dart waved his hand
over it, and the blossom dissolved into a cloud of insects flying
around a bare twig. After a while, the insects -they were called
flattid bugs - resettled on the twig, crawled around over one
another's backs for a few moments, then reformed into the
'blossom', green at the tip, gradually shading into delicate tints
of coral.
Natural selection cannot explain the flattid bug, for in natural
selection, individuals die because they are unable to meet
challenges, and the 'fittest' survivors mate and continue the
species. But to explain the flattid bug in Darwinian terms, we
have to suppose that a whole colony of bugs alighted on a
branch and accidentally formed something like a blossom,
while another group, that looked like an assembly of flattid
bugs, got eaten by birds. And the other flattid bugs took note of
this, and drilled themselves to form even more convincing
blossoms. In fact, as we can see, there is no Darwinian
explanation. Only the 'group mind' hypothesis can explain how
they learned to form a blossom that does not even exist in
nature.
But group consciousness is of limited value. It cannot
produce Leonardos and Beethovens and Einsteins. Even ancient
Egypt needed its men of genius, like Imhotep, who built the
Step Pyramid. Group consciousness tends to be static by nature.
It may only have taken 50,000 or so years for group
consciousness to evolve from Cro-Magnon cave artists to Old
Kingdom Egyptians. But it has only taken slightly over 3000
years for 'fallen man', trapped in left-brain consciousness, to
create modern civilisation. That is because left-brain
consciousness is simply a far more efficient method of
evolution. A talented left-brain individual, like Thaes or
Pythagoras or Plato, produces important ideas,
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and these are disseminated by means of writing,
influencing far more people than even the most
charismatic shaman. It was with the aid of the New
Testament and the Koran that Jesus and Mohammed went
on to conquer the world.
The problem with left-brain consciousness is that it
creates frustration, which in turn produces criminals who
take out their frustrations on the rest of society. Yet one
single book like the Morte d'Arthur -written in prison by a
man who was both a brigand and a rapist - can change the
sensibility of a whole continent. After the invention of the
printing press, talented individuals could influence
millions. Since the 1440s, when Gutenberg invented the
printing press, it would be possible to write the history of
western civilisation in terms of important books -
beginning with Luther's 95 theses and his translation of the
Bible.
Such books are an example of what Gurdjieff calls 'the
third force'. In Luther's day, two forces were in equilibrium
- the power of the Roman Church, and the dissatisfaction
of northern Europeans like Frederick the Wise of Saxony.
And they might have remained in equilibrium until the end
of the century, since the Emperor of Germany was Charles
V, the most powerful man in Europe. But Luther nailed a
paper with his 95 theses on the door of the church in
Wittenberg, then had them printed. Everyone in Germany
read it, or had it read to them, and before the Pope could
stop it, the Reformation was under way. The third force
had entered like a well-aimed kick.
I am arguing that evolution cannot be understood
without this concept of the third force. One of Gurdjieff's
best illustrations was of someone who wishes to change, to
achieve greater self-knowledge, and in whom the forces of
laziness act as a counterbalance. In this case, the
breakthrough can occur through knowledge - a perception
of how it can be achieved, which brings a new drive and
optimism.
In the same way, the neo-Darwinian view of evolution is
that man evolved through the struggle against nature - two
forces in opposition. I am suggesting that the real stimulus
to evolution was knowledge, man's discovery that he could
solve problems by the use of his brain. The brain explosion
must have been due to the intervention of a 'third force' -
possibly an exploding meteor, but more probably the
development of language, of religion, and of sexual
attitudes. Again, I believe that it was Cro-Magnon man's
discovery of hunting magic that acted as a 'third force' that
made his attitude towards his life and his environment
more aggressive and purposeful.
* * *
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rrum Miiciriii* to ine opninx
In a highly original book called The Chalice and the Blade
(1987), Riane Eisler advances her own view of what has
gone wrong with civilisation. Proposing a theory of
'Cultural Transformation', she argues that there are two
basic models of society, the 'partnership model' and the
'dominator model'. The Amahuaca and Hopi Indians would
be examples of what she means by the partnership model.
A modern business corporation would be an example of
the dominator model, with its ruthlessness and
competition.
She believes that Palaeolithic and Neolithic culture were
partnership cultures, but that 'following a period of chaos
and almost total cultural disruption, there occurred a
fundamental social shift'. In this respect, her theory bears
an obvious resemblance to that of Julian Jaynes. The chief
difference is that she believes that the 'disruption' started
as early as 5000 bc, when nomads she calls the Kurgan
people, who had been living in the 'harsh, unwanted,
colder, sparser territories on the edges of the earth' began
to invade the territories of the agricultural civilisations that
spread out along the lakes and fertile river valleys.
She calls such civilisations 'partnership' cultures
because she believes that men and women lived on equal
terms, and that the worship of the Earth Mother was the
most widespread form of religion - she cites an impressive
amount of archaeological evidence to suggest that early
cultures were oriented to the Mother Goddess - Graves's
White Goddess. Such cultures survived for thousands of
years, but eventually succumbed to the invading nomads
(whom she identifies with Aryans). Crete was one of the
last to fall to these invaders, and its destruction, about
3000 years ago, marks the end of an era. Here again, the
argument is very close to Jaynes.
The Kurgans brought a 'dominator' culture, 'a social
system in which male dominance, male violence, and a
generally hierarchic and authoritarian social structure was
the norm.' And this, she declares, has lasted until our own
time. Now, she argues, mankind stands at an evolutionary
crossroads; what is needed, if we are to survive, is a return
to the partnership culture of the past.
One authority on evolution, Ashley Montague, described
The Chalice and the Blade as 'the most important book
since Darwin's Origin of Species'. Predictably, others have
dismissed it as a piece of feminist propaganda. Yet it can
be seen that her basic argument is very close to the one that
has been outlined in the last three chapters. She also seems
to accept that one of the reasons that man became truly
human was some kind of sexual revolution in which
woman assumed new import-
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ance - she cites Andr Leroi-Gourhan, director of the
Sorbonne Centre for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Studies,
to the effect that 'Palaeolithic art reflects the importance
our early forebears attached to their observation there are
two sexes', a conclusion 'based on analysis of thousands of
paintings and objects in some sixty excavated Palaeolithic
caves.' In other words, Palaeolithic man had begun to see
woman as a kind of goddess.
Riane Eisler's argument is certainly highly persuasive.
Yet her final chapter, 'Breakthrough in Evolution: Towards
a Partnership Future', which should be the most important
in the book, is in fact the least convincing. She paints an
appealing picture of a future 'partnership world' in which
there will be no more war, no more male domination, and
in which there will be a steady decrease in such problems
as mental illness, suicide, divorce, wife-battering,
vandalism, murder and international terrorism. But she
seems to feel that all this will come about through
goodwill and understanding. Gurdjieff would have pointed
out that goodwill and understanding can change nothing.
In a world in which the forces are in equilibrium - in this
case, dominator culture versus partnership culture - change
can only be brought about by a 'third force'.
But what force?
In his Experiment in Autobiography (1934), H. G. Wells
pointed out that ever since the beginning of life, most
creatures have been 'up against it'. Their lives are a drama
of struggle against the forces of nature. Yet nowadays, you
can say to a man: 'Yes, you earn a living, you support a
family, you love and hate, but - what do you doV His real
interest may be in something else - art, science, literature,
philosophy. The bird is a creature of the air, the fish is a
creature of the water, and man is a creature of the mind.
He goes on to compare mankind to the earliest
amphibians, who dragged themselves out of prehistoric
seas, because they wanted to become land animals. But
they only have fins instead of legs, and they find the land
exhausting, and long for the sustaining medium of the sea.
Man is not yet a true creature of the mind; he has fins
instead of legs. After a short walk in the world of the mind,
he is exhausted. There is a sense in which we are not yet
human.
Gurdjieff would have put it more harshly; he would
have said that we think we have free will, but we have
almost none. At the beginning
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From Atlantis to the Sphinx
of the First World War, he and Ouspensky saw a lorry
loaded up with crutches heading for the battle front -
crutches for men whose legs had not yet been blown off.
Yet there was no way of preventing those legs from being
blown off. This is the objection that Gurdjieff would raise
to Riane Eisler's vision of a 'partnership society'. Human
nature cannot be changed by wishful thinking.
On the other hand, when we look at this problem from
the perspective of human evolution, some interesting
insights emerge.
Most animals seem to possess no self-awareness, in the
sense of being able to reflect on themselves. We cannot
imagine a dog asking: 'Who am I?' But from the moment
man began to perform any kind of religious rite - carving
sun discs, ritual cannibalism, burying the dead with
funeral observances - he had achieved a new level of self-
awareness; he was now truly human.
Forty thousand years ago, Cro-Magnon society may
have been more rich and complex than we can imagine,
with observation of the heavens, worship of the moon
goddess, hunting magic (possibly with a priestess as
shaman) and a life whose rhythms were those of nature.
This 'partnership society' reached its peak in ancient
Egypt, where Isis and Osiris shared the throne of the gods,
and ended some time during the past 3500 years.
But this 'Fall', as we have seen, was not without its
advantages. As an individual, isolated in left-brain
consciousness, man began to use his mind in a new way. It
was Pythagoras who invented the world 'philosophy' - love
of wisdom: that is, love of knowledge for its own sake, not
for any practical purpose that it might serve. And Plato
describes how Socrates, preoccupied with some
philosophical problem, stood in the same spot for a whole
day and night.
This story is undoubtedly an exaggeration. As Wells
points out, man is not quite that much a creature of the
mind.
Yet he continued to develop this odd faculty of living
inside his own head. The ancient Greeks were perfectly
happy to sit on a cold stone seat watching an actor wearing
a mask and pretending to be Oedipus. And just over 2000
years later, audiences were just as happy to stand in the
Mermaid Theatre, watching an actor on a bare stage
claiming to be Tamburlaine the Great.
Less than two centuries after this, a printer named
Samuel Richardson invented a new form of entertainment
- the novel. Of course, it could be said that the novel was
as old as Homer. But until 1740, it had been a kind of
fairy-tale. Richardson turned it into soap opera; Pamela
was
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about the girl next door. Suddenly, everyone was reading
novels - and writing them. The novel was a magic carpet
that could transport readers out of their own lives - and the
problems of being 'up against it' - and into the lives of
other people.
The chief development in man in the past few centuries
has been a development of imagination.
But at this point we become aware of a new problem.
This escape from the real world was so intoxicating that
many people lost all sense of reality. Romantic poets - and
painters and musicians - found the world of fantasy so
greatly preferable to the harsh realities of life that they
began committing suicide, or dying of drugs or alcohol, in
alarming numbers. The typical artist of the nineteenth
century was an 'Outsider', who felt miserable and
alienated. De L'Isle Adam's Axel summed it up in the
words: 'As for living, our servants can do that for us.'
Two world wars, and a sense of global crisis, have
helped to restore some realism. But it is still obvious that
Wells was correct; our real problem is that we are still not
creatures of the mind. The problem is not wickedness or
male domination or scientific materialism; it is boredom.
When faced with a challenge, we are magnificent. But
when the problems are solved, and we have re-established
peace and leisure, we tend to feel stifled and directionless.
Yet here is one of the most interesting observations
about humankind. When we are faced with some appalling
problem, we can see
y
perfectly clearly, how pleasant it
would be if the problem went away, and life was back to
normal. And if someone asked us: 'But wouldn't you find it
boring?', we would reply indignantly: 'Of course not!' And
this is not self-deception. We can see how easy it would be
to use the imagination -which has now become such a
useful tool - to re-create our present state of anxiety and
misery, and relax into an immense sense of gratitude that it
has gone away.
And in fact, when a major problem vanishes, we do
experience an immense gratitude - for a few hours. Then
we relapse into our usual state of 'taking for granted'.
The truth is that although the development of human
imagination in the past three centuries has been
extraordinary, it is still not powerful enough to make us
immensely grateful for all the miseries and difficulties we
are not experiencing.
Yet as we look at the matter closely, it becomes obvious
that this development of the imagination is the third force
that can alter the course of human evolution. Our
technological civilisation has created
277
more freedom than man has experienced in his whole history.
Yet he is not aware that he is free. He feels trapped, bored and
restless.
Let me cite some examples of the third force creating a sense
of freedom.
In Swann's Way, Marcel Proust describes how, feeling tired
and depressed, he tasted a cake dipped in herb tea, and
experienced a sudden sense of overwhelming delight. 'I had
ceased to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal.' Then he realised
that the taste had reminded him of his childhood, when an aunt
gave him a taste of her cake dipped in herb tea. The taste made
his childhood real again, and brought the sudden sense of
ecstasy and freedom.
As a bored and depressed teenager, Graham Greene took a
revolver on to the common and played Russian roulette. When
there was just a click on an empty chamber, he felt an
overwhelming sense of delight and relief, and the recognition
that life is infinitely rich and exciting.
The psychologist Abraham Maslow coined the phrase 'peak
experience' to describe such moments. He tells of a peak
experience described to him by a young married woman. She
was watching her husband and children eating breakfast,
feeling cheerful and relaxed, but preoccupied with the next
thing she had to do. Suddenly, a beam of sunlight came in
through the window, and she thought: 'Aren't I lucky\\ and
plunged into the peak experience.
In a book called Seeing the Invisible, a collection of
'transcendent' experiences, a sixteen-year-old girl describes
how, approaching a wood on a summer evening, time stood still
for a moment. 'Everywhere, surrounding me was this white,
bright, sparkling light, like sun on frosty snow, like a million
diamonds, and there was no cornfield, no trees, no sky, this
light was everywhere . . .' She comments: 'I only saw it once,
but I know in my heart it is still there.'
In the first three cases - Proust, Greene and the young
married women - we know what 'triggered' the experience; in
the fourth case, we have no idea. There are obviously occasions
when the peak experience 'just happens'.
But Maslow noted an extremely interesting thing. When he
talked to his students about peak experiences, they began to
recall peak experiences that they had had in the past, then
forgotten. For example, a youth who was working his way
through college by playing drums in a jazz band recalled how,
at about two in the morning, he suddenly began to drum so
perfectly that he 'couldn't do a thing wrong', and went into the
peak experience.
278
10 The Third Force
Moreover, as students began to talk to one another about
their peak experiences, they began having them all the
time. Like the girl approaching the wood, they 'knew it
was still there', and knowing it was still there places them
in the right state of optimistic expectancy that tends to
generate the peak experience. These experiences always
produce an overwhelming sense of authenticity, of the
reality of freedom. In such moments, our usual sense of
lack of freedom is seen as an illusion.
So what had happened to Maslow's students? Why could
they have peak experiences all the time? Because they had
somehow 'got the trick'. They knew the freedom was really
there, and they simply learned to see it. It is like one of
those pictures, made up of a tangle of lines, from which, as
you stare at it, a face suddenly emerges. And once you
have seen it, you can always go back and see it again.
We can be sure that our ancestors of 4000 years ago
found it far easier to induce peak experiences, for they
were relaxed and close to nature. Then came the Tall' into
left-brain consciousness, which induces a kind of tunnel
vision. Yet, as Maslow's research demonstrated, it is not
difficult for healthy human beings to throw off the tunnel
vision and regain consciousness of freedom. His students
found it perfectly easy, just as Kelly's audience at the
computer conference found it easy to achieve group
consciousness.
What is the lesson of the peak experience? This is easy
to describe. It brings a sense of delight and courage - in
fact, we see courage as being of central importance. We
also see that the peak experience depends on a high degree
of inner pressure - which is the opposite of 'depression'.
And if we wish to live in such a way that we have regular
peak experiences, we need to maintain a sense of drive,
purpose, optimism. We induce 'depression' by allowing
ourselves to experience a 'sinking feeling'. Is it like letting
air out of a tyre. And when we feel cheerful and optimistic
- say, on a spring morning, or setting out on a journey - we
create a sense of high inner pressure by filling ourselves
with a confident feeling of meaning and purpose. Wi? do it
ourselves. We imagine that the external world causes our
problems, and sometimes, indeed, it does present us with
real difficulties. But most of our problems are self-induced;
we permit ourselves to become negative, or merely 'blank'.
I am arguing that it was necessary for human evolution
for us to escape from that pleasant collective
consciousness that characterised our ancestors. It had
enormous advantages, but it was essentially limited. It was
too pleasant, too relaxed, and its achievements tended to
be
279
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
communal. The new left-brain consciousness was far
harder, far more painful and exhausting. In Dostoevsky's
Possessed, the character Svidri-gailov says that he
dreamed of eternity the other night, and that it was like a
narrow room full of cobwebs. This is the symbol of left-
brain consciousness. And yet when galvanised by courage
and optimism, it is capable of a far greater intensity - and
sense of control - than right-brain consciousness.
Moreover, as Maslow realised, healthy people are
always having experiences of right-brain consciousness -
for the peak experience is right-brain consciousness. In
spite of being trapped in the left brain, healthy and
optimistic human beings can easily regain access to right-
brain consciousness.
In other words, left brainers have the choice. They can
induce right-brain consciousness. But the typical right
brainer finds it very distressing to try to induce left-brain
consciousness - the kind of purposeful concentration
required, for example, to solve a difficult mathematical or
philosophical problem. Which means that, at this point in
evolution, left brainers have the advantage.
This is why these insights into past civilisations, to
which this book has been devoted, are so important. We
have been inclined to see them as less efficient versions of
ourselves - superstitious, technologically inadequate,
deficient in reason and logic. Now it has become clear that
this was a mistake. In some ways, they actually knew more
than we do. Compared to their rich collective awareness,
modern consciousness seems barren and constricted. They
also knew more than we do about the hidden powers of the
mind. In some ways they were far more efficient than we
are. To really understand this comes as something of a
revelation, which teaches us a great deal about what it
means to be human.
It makes us understand, to begin with, that evolution has
actually given us far more than they had. Right-brain
awareness tends to be passive; left-brain awareness is
active. Right-brain awareness is like a broad, gently
flowing river; left-brain awareness is like a powerful jet of
water. Above all, left-brain awareness has the power to
contemplate itself, as if in a mirror. To understand the men
of the remote past is to understand something very
important about ourselves - including how much reason we
have to be satisfied with the place to which the last 3500
years have brought us. For we have not lost what they
have; we still have it - but we also have a great deal more.
Our chief disadvantage
280
10 The
Third
Force
so far has been that we didn't know that we had it - or,
insofar as we did know, failed to understand what could be
done with it.
It is difficult to conclude a book like this, for it involves
making the reader see why man has reached the most
interesting point in his
#
evolution so far. The ancient
Egyptians would have understood the problem perfectly:
they knew that there are certain things that have to be
shown. The same was true of the Zen teachers, who
understood that the flash of insight cannot be achieved by
explanation; it has to come spontaneously.
It might help if we try considering again Maslow's
young mother watching her husband and children eating
breakfast. She was 'lucky' before the beam of sunlight
came through the window. But the sunlight made her
aware that she was lucky, and she went into the peak
experience. The peak experience depended upon
achieving a kind of bird's-eye view that made her
conscious of what she already possessed.
The same is true of the next step in human evolution.
It has already happened. It has been happening for the
past 3500 years. Now all we have to do is recognise it.
2
8
1
\
Notes
1 EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES
Some of these articles are quoted by Christopher Bamford in his
introduction to Schwaller's first book, A Study of Numbers, 1917.
P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 1950 (p. 27).
Columbia Encyclopedia.
Lancelot Hogben, Mathematics for the Million, 1936.
2 THE NEW RACE
Herodotus cites a story to the effect that because Cheops and Chefren
were so wicked, the Egyptians preferred to call the pyramids after a
shepherd named Philitis, 'who at the time fed his flocks about the
place', which certainly implies that it was green. And in an article
called 'When the Sahara was Green' (in The World's Last Mysteries,
1977), Henry Lhote, a respectable scholar, also says that the Sahara
was green in 2500 bc.
Flinders Ptrie, however, says in his book, Naquada and Ballas
(1896): The wheel must have been well known to the Egyptians at
this time [of Naquada].'
INSIDE THE PYRAMID
Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramids, 1971 (p. 59).
Zechariah Sitchin, The Stairway to Heaven, 1980 (p. 271).
Those who are interested in the various crank theories about the
Pyramid will find an excellent summary of them in Martin Gardner,
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, 1959.
Kurt Mendelssohn, The Riddle of the Pyramids, 1974.
Margaret Murray, The Splendour that was Egypt, 1949 (p. 97).
283
From Atlantis to the Sphinx
7 FORBIDDEN ARCHAEOLOGY
Nigel Calder, Timescale, 1984 (p. 241).
The confined life of winter was followed by a nomadic
camping existence, during which the hunters housed
themselves in shallow, well-located rock shelters ... They were
always on the march, in the wake of the herbivorous animals
they hunted.' Raymond Lantier, quoted by Alexander
Marshack, The Roots of Civilisation, 1972 (p. 371).
8 MORE FORBIDDEN ARCHAEOLOGY
Julian Huxley, New Bottles for New Wine, 1957.
Harvalik's experiments are described in Christopher Bird, The
Divining Hand, 1979.
Ren Schwaller de Lubicz, Sacred Science, 1961 (p. 164).
9 OF STARS AND GODS
1 Anne Macaulay, Science and Gods in Megalithic Britain (not
yet published).
1am indebted to Dr Macaulay for allowing me to read the book
in typescript
form.
Alexander Marshack, The Roots of Civilisation, 1972 (p. 280).
The answer is to immerse the crown in a vessel brimful of water,
and measure the overflow to determine its precise volume. Then
take exactly the same volume of pure gold, and weigh it. If the
crown weighs less, it is not pure gold.
10 THE THIRD FORCE
Colin Wilson, An Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries, 1949.
'Physical Mediumship in Russia' included in Incredible Tales of
the Paranormal, d. Dr Alexander Imich, 1995.
284
Bibliography
Ardrey, Robert, African Genesis, Atheneum, 1961
Bauval, Robert, and Gilbert, Adrian, The Orion Mystery, Heinemann,
1994
Bird, Christopher, The Divining Hand, Dutton, 1979
Calder, Nigel, Timescale, Chatto and Windus, 1984
Edwards, I. E. S., The Pyramids of Egypt, Penguin, 1947
Eisler, Riane, The Chalice and the Blade, Harper & Row, 1987
Feuerestein, Georg, Kak, Subhash and Frawley, David, In Search of
the Cradle
of Civilisation, Quest Books, 1995 Flem-ath, Rand and Rose, When
the Sky Fell, Weidenfeld, 1995 Frawley, David, Gods, Sages and
Kings, Passage Press, 1991 Gebser, Jean, The Ever Present Origin,
Ohio University Press, 1985 Gilbert, Adrian and Cotterell, Maurice,
The Mayan Prophecies, Element, 1995 Gooch, Stan, The Neanderthal
Question, Wildwood House, 1994 Gooch, Stan, Cities of Dreams,
Aulis Books, 1995 Grimbie, Sir Arthur, Pattern of Islands, John
Murray, 1952 Gurdjieff, George, All and Everything, Routledge, 1950
Haddingham, Evan, Secrets of the Ice Age, Heinemann, 1979 Hall,
Edward T., The Dance of Life, Doubleday, 1983 Hancock, Graham,
The Sign and the Seal, Heinemann, 1992 Hancock, Graham,
Fingerprints of the Gods, Heinemann, 1995 Hapgood, Charles, Maps
of the Ancient Sea Kings, Turnstone Books, 1979 Hayes, Michael,
The Infinite Harmony, Weidenfeld, 1994 Jaynes, Julian, The Origin of
Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral
Mind, Houghton Mifflin, 1976 Kelly, Kevin, Out of
Control, Fourth Estate, 1994 Lissner, Ivar, Man, God and
Magic, Cape, 1961 Lamb, Bruce, Wizard of the Upper
Amazon, Houghton Mifflin, 1971 Marshack, Alexander,
Roots of Civilisation, McGraw-Hill, 1972 Mavromatis,
Hypnagogia, Routledge, 1987
Ptrie, W. N. Flinders, The Pyramids and Temples ofGizeh: History
and Mysteries of Man Ltd, London, 1990 Salmon, Ross, In Search of
El Dorado, Hodder, 1966
from Aiiamis to me %pnmx
Santillana, Giorgio and von Dachend, Herta, Hamlet's Mill, Godine,
1977 Schwaller de Lubicz, R. A., Sacred Science, Inner Traditions
International, 1988 Sellers, Jane B., The Death of the Gods in Ancient
Egypt, Penguin, 1992 Sitchin, Zechariah, The Earth Chronicles, 6
volumes, Avon Books, 1978-1993 Solecki, Ralph R., Shanidar, The
Humanity of Neanderthal Man, Allen Lane,
1972 Temple, Robert, The Sirius Mystery, Sidgwick and Jackson,
1976 Thom, Alexander, Megalithic Sites in Britain, Oxford, 1967
Thorn, Archibald, Walking in all of the Squares: A Biography of
Alexander
Thom, Argyll Publishing, 1995 Tompkins, Peter, Secrets of the
Great Pyramid, Harper and Row, 1971 Tompkins, Peter, Secrets of
the Mexican Pyramids, Harper and Row, 1976 VandenBroeck, Andre,
Al Kemi, Lindisfarne Press, 1987 Wells, H. G., Experiment in
Autobiography, Gollancz, 1934 Wendt, Herbert, In Search of Adam,
Houghton Mifflin, 1966 Wendt, Herbert, Before the Deluge,
Gollancz, 1978 West, John Anthony, Serpent in the Sky, Wildwood
House, 1979 Wilson, Colin, New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow
and the Post-Freudian
Revolution, Gollancz, 1972
?
286
Index
Abu Ruwash, pyramid of Nebka 69 Account of Yucatan (de Landa) 103 'Advanced
Machining in Ancient Egypt' (Dunn)
37-8 Aesclepius 77
African Genesis (Ardrey) 157, 173, 272 Agatharchides 62, 85 agriculture, beginning
of 94-5, 132-3 Akasic records 91 Akkad empire 176 Al-Kemi (VandenBroeck) 8 Al-
Mamun, Abdullah 50-53 Alaska-Siberia land bridge 87-8, 173 alchemy 18, 20, 21,
24-5 Alpha Draconis 64 Altamira cave 148-9 Amahuaca Indians 185-9, 203, 205
American Indians, Native 95, 184, 239-40,
241-2, 243-5 Amlodhi's mill 223^ Anciennes Villes du Nouveau Monde (Charnay)
105 Andrade, Jos Maria 104 Antarctic Circle 86 Antarctica
closer to equator 262
free of ice 82-3, 85, 86-7, 94, 177
maps of 82, 86-7, 88, 94, 96-7
pre-Ice Age civilisation 2-3, 5-7, 9, 88
site of Atlantis 7, 96 Anukis, goddess 67 ape man 146, 151-3, 157-8
apes, killer 157-8 Apollo 213, 215-16 Ardrey, Robert 157, 173, 180
Ark of the Covenant 13-14, 15 art, real and subjective 25-6 astrology
217-18 Atlantis
according to Cayce 72-3
destruction of 91, 95, 103, 107, 133
disappearance of 92
film script 3, 4
legend of 2
maps of 94
origin of Egyptian civilisation 90
origin of South American civilisations 103-4
Plato's account of 89-90
predicted reappearance 73, 93
sited in Antarctica 7, 96
sited on Santorini 92-3
survivors, migration of 17, 71-2, 79 Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (Donnelly)
90, 115 'Atlantis Not a Myth' (Thompson) 109-10 Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra
Nevada of
California (Whitney) 150 Australopithecus 156-61, 163, 167, 172 authoritarian
social structure 274 Axum, Ethiopia 13-14 Aymara language 121-2 Aztec civilisation
99-100, 123^, 128
Babbitt, Elwood 93
Badawy, Alexander 69
Bajer, John 136
Batres, Leopoldo 125-6
Bauval, Robert 8, 39, 66, 67-72, 74
Beagle, voyage of 141-2
Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson (Gurdjieff)
28 Benvenides, Rodolfo 40 Beresovka mammoth 87, 115 Bergier,
Jacques 2-3 Bessel, Friedrich Wilhelm 66 Beyond Stonehenge (Hawkins)
126 Beyond the Occult (Wilson) 193 bicameral minds 200-201, 216, 272
Bimini 73, 93 Birch, Samuel 57-8 Birdsell, J. D. 159 Black, Davidson 156
Blavatsky, Helena 91 boats, buried 78-9
2
8
7
Index
Book in Every Home, A (Leedskalnin) 263-4
Book ofDzyan, The 91
Boswell, Percy 154-5
Bourgeois, Abb Louis 167-8
Box Hill 183
brain, human 197-200
capacity 171, 172-3, 178, 229 brain explosion 173, 180, 205, 207-8 Brasseur de
Bourbourg, Charles Etienne 102-3 Brasseur de Hoerbiger, Hans 115-16 Breasted, J.
H, 68 bronze 174, 176 Broom, Robert 157 Buache, Philippe 88 Budge, Sir William
258 burial rituals 196, 207 Burns, Creighton 3
Calaveras skull 149-50
Calawaya Indians 257
calculating prodigies 5-6
Calder, Nigel 164
calendars, importance of 214, 216-17, 230,
261 Callanish stone circle 211 Cal vert, Frank 167 Cambrian era 140
Campbell, Joseph 185, 209 cannibalism 178-9, 207 Canon, The (Stirling) 18
Careri, Giovanni 100 Cartailhac, Emile 169, 184 Case for Astrology, The (West)
6 Castenodolo skeletons 169-71 cataclysms, 28, 74, 115 catastrophe myths 95
y

98, 223 catastrophism 114 cathedrals, secret knowledge concealed in
18-19 Catherwood, Frederick 101 cave art 184, 196, 262 Caviglia,
Giovanni Battista 54-5, 56 Cayce, Edgar 72, 93 Cenozoic era 140, 141
Chacmools 106
Chalice and the Blade, The (Eisler) 274 challenge, responding to 164, 179
change, man's pleasure in 194-5 Charlesworth, Edward 166 Charnay, Desire
104-5, 124 Chartres Cathedral 21 Chefren (Kafre) 33^, 45
builder/repairer of Sphinx 3, 4, 15
face of the Sphinx 6, 46-8 Cheops (Khufu) 15, 33, 45-6, 56-60 Chessler,
Geoffrey 4-5 Chichen Itz 105, 106, 110-14 Chick Pea (Isha Schwaller) 23
children, filmed in playground 245-6
Cholula, pyramid 100, 123 Churchward, James 108-9 civilisation
2-3, 9, 14
age of 128, 132 clairvoyant powers 188-9 climatic revolutions 87 collective
unconscious 192, 243, 254, 267-8,
272 computers, living 27 Condon, William 244
Conquistadores Without Swords (Deuel) 132 consciousness, states of 9-10, 22
continental drift 87-8 control, sense of 208 Copan 101-2 copper, use in tools 174
Coral Castle 263^ Cordova, Manuel 185-9, 203, 205 Corts, Hernando 99, YLl-4
cosmic harmony 206 Cotterell, Maurice 217-20 creation, date of 137 Cremo,
Michael A. 165-6, 177, 205 Cretaceous era 140-41 Critias (Plato) 89 Cro-Magnon
man 146-8, 153-4, 156, 171,
173, 179, 184, 196, 208-9, 214-16, 230,
261-2, 273 Cummings, Byron 131-2 Cuvier, Georges 138-9, 146
Cyclopean blocks 32, 45, 75, 93
Da Passano, Andrew 22
Dahshur, pyramids 61, 77, 234
Dance of Life, The (Hall) 239, 244, 254
Dart, Dr Raymond 156-8
Darwin, Charles 141-5, 194, 205
Davison, Nathaniel 54-5
de Camp, L. Sprague 90
de Laurentiis, Dino 3
de Maillet, Benoit 137
de Monzon, Luis 130, 131
de Mortillet, Gabriel 167-9
de Santillana, Giorgio 221-5
de Sautuola, Don Marcelino 148-9, 168-9
de Siguenza, Don Carlos 100
de Verneuil, Edouard 167
depression 279
Deuel, Leo 132
Devereux, Paul 7
Devonian period 140
Diaz, Porfirio 104, 105, 125-6
Diego de Figueroa, Don 110
Diego de Landa, Biship 103, 110
Dieterlen, Germaine 66-7, 103
dimensions, existence of other 6
DNA code 247-8
Dobecki, Thomas L. 34, 40-41
Dogon, African tribe 66-7, 103, 127
288
I
n
d
e
x
Domingo, Detective Frank 47-8
Donnelly, Ignatius 90-91, 115
Dow, James 127
dowsing 203-4
Dramatic Prophecies of the Great Pyramid
(Benvenides) 40 Druid alphabet 216 Dubois, Eugene 152-3 Dunn,
Christopher 37, 39, 119, 263-5
earth
as pregnant mother 242
size of 50, 62, 84-5, 107-8 Earth Chronicles, The (Sitchin) 58 earth crust
displacement 87-8, 93-4, 96 earth history, theory of 139-41 Earth in Upheaval
(Velikovsky) 117 Earth's Shifting Crust (Hapgood) 7, 87, 94,
115,262 eclipses, predicting 212, 219 Eddington, Sir Arthur 66
Edfu, Temple 236-7 Edwards, Iodden 75 Egypt
collective civilisation 267-8
date of catastrophe 132-3
during Ice Age 173
links with South America 127, 132, 133
populated by survivors of Atlantis 17 Egyptian Heritage, The (Lehner) 72
Egyptians
contentment of 259-60
knowledge 16-17
magic 263
mentality 202, 232, 240
relationship with earth and heavens 242
religion 258
use of symbolism 266-7 Eisler, Riane 274-5 Elephantine, Jewish temple 14
Emperor's New Mind, The (Penrose) 27 equinoxes, precession of 64, 70-71, 75, 222
5,
227, 229, 233-5, 262 Eratosthenes 84 Essay on the Principle of Population,
An
(Malthus) 143 eternal present 239, 259 evolution 140-41, 163, 171,
205
accelerated 8, 9, 194-5, 205
advantage of left brainers 280
man's control over 194
and third force 273, 277 Experiment in Autobiography (Wells) 275 extinction of
species 87, 114-15, 138, 140, 142 Eysenck, Dr Hans 217
facial reconstruction 47 farming revolution 174 film clips, repeated
viewing 244-6
Finaeus, Oronteus 86, 88
Fingerprints of the Gods (Hancock) 7, 9, 61,
237 fire, made by primitive man 207-8 Flamel, Nicolas 19 Flemming (Flem-
ath), Randy 7, 93-9 Flemming, Rose 94 Flinders, Ptrie 36-8, 40, 44, 62 flint
tools 167-9, 183 Flood legends 135-6, 139, 223, 249-50 Forbidden Archaeology
(Cremo and
Thompson) 117, 166, 205 Foreman, Richard 7 fossils 136, 138
Frankfort, Professor Henri 44-5, 258-9 Frawley, David 227-9 freedom, sense of
278 From the Akasic Records (Steiner) 91 Fu Hsi 248, 253 Fuhlrott, Johann 146
Fulcanelli 19-20
Galanopoulos, Professor Angelos 92
Gantenbrink, Rudolf 70
Gaudry, Professor Albert 166-7
Gauquelin, Michael 217
Gauri, L. Lai 42
Geological Society of America 3-4, 41, 42
geometry, ancient 212-13
Germani, Carlo 170
Gerzeans 85
Giza, pyramids
alignment of 68-9, 74, 231
building of 28, 74-6
and Orion's Belt 69-70, 74
see also Great Pyramid Glacial Cosmologogy (Hoerbiger) 115 Glanville, S.
R. K. 88 Gods, Sages and Kings (Frawley) 227-8 gold electroplating 266 Great
Pyramid
age of 14, 15
air vents 60-61, 69-70, 231
as astronomical observatory 63-6
builder of 15, 46, 56-60
building a replica 13
building blocks 75
building of 75-6
Campbell's Chamber 57-9
casing 49, 53-4
climbing 11
Davison's Chamber 55
t
56> 57, 59
excavations and explorations Al-Mamun 50-53 Caviglia 54-5, 56
Davison 54-5 Greaves 54 Howard-Vyse 56-60
Grand Gallery 53, 54, 61, 63, 64
2
8
9
Index
hinged stone 49
King's Chamber 14, 53^, 57, 60-62, 64, 69, 252, 265 sarcophagus 36-7, 39
measurements 62-3
original entrance 51
and Orion's Belt 69
purpose of 62-6, 70
puzzles of 52-3
Queen's Chamber 51-2, 54, 70, 252
as ritual building 70
secret entrance 55
source of world prophecies 63
spacemen theory 16
weight of 16
Wellington's Chamber 57 Great Pyramid, Observatory, Tomb and
Temple, The (Proctor) 65 Graves, Robert 5, 215-16 Greaves, John 54, 60
Griaule, Marcel 66-7, 103 Grimble, Sir Arthur Francis 189-92 group
consciousness 268-71, 272 Guerrero 108-9 Gurdjieff, George Ivanovich
25-6, 28
Hadar160-61
Hadingham, Evan 171-2
Haeckel, Ernst 146, 152-3
Hagar, Stansbury 127
Hall, Edward T. 239^*6, 254
Hamlets Mill (Santillana and von Hertha)
221-5 Hancock, Graham 7, 9, 11, 13-14, 79, 97,
118-23, 126,230 Hapgood, Charles H. 2-3, 5-7, 81-9, 91, 93,
97-8, 114-15, 177 Harappa 226 Harleston, Hugh 127-8 Haroun Al-Rashid
49-50 Harrison, Benjamin 151, 168 Harvalik, Dr Zaboj V. 203^ Hawass, Dr
Zahi 33, 43 Hawkes, Jaquetta 208-9 Hawkins, Gerald 126, 127, 130, 212 Hayes,
Michael 246-52, 257 Henutsen, Princess 46 Hermetic code 251 Herodotus 13,
32, 49 hieroglyphics 58-60, 201-3 Hill, J. R. 57, 59-60, 265 Hinduism 165
History of the Civilisation of Mexico and
Central America (Bourbourg) 103 Hogben, Lancelot 26 hominids 160, 161, 163-5
Homo erectus 157, 158-9, 161, 163, 172, 183,
208 Homo habilis 158-9, 160-61, 172
Homo sapiens 154-6, 158, 161, 163, 165, 262
age of 172
evolution of 181
in Pliocene era 170-71
slow development of 177-8 Homo sapiens sapiens 205 Hopi, sacred
dances 239-40, 243 horse, domestication of 174 Horus 235-6, 237
Howard-Vyse, Colonel Richard 56-60, 265 Human Evolution (Birdsell) 159 Huni,
Pharaoh 77 hunting magic 186-7, 190-92, 209, 230, 262,
273 Huxley, Sir Julian 194 Huxley-Wilberforce debate 144
hypnagogic states 192-4 Hypnogogia (Mavromatis) 193 hypnosis 72
I-Ching 247-8, 251, 253-6
ice ages 87, 96, 115, 139, 172, 183
imagination, development of 277
Imhotep 77, 272
In Search of Eldorado (Salmon) 258
In Search of the Cradle of Civilisation
(Feuerstein, Kak and Frawley) 228-9 Incas 122-3 Incidents of Travel in
Central America
(Stephens) 101, 102 India, ancient civilisation 226-9 Indo-European language
and culture 177 Indus Valley Culture 226-7, 229 Infinite Harmony, The (Hayes)
251, 255 inner vision 202 intelligence 178, 203 intensity experiences 10
interglacials 172 Inventory Stela 45-6 iron
found in Great Pyramid 265-6
meteoric 70, 265 Isis 45-6, 67-8, 70 Issel, Arthur
170-71
James, William 74 Java man 152-3, 154, 155 Jaynes, Julian 197,
199-201, 271 Johanson, Donald 160-61 Jomard, Edm-Franois 61
Jung, Carl 24, 254-7
Kabah 107 Kalasasaya 119-20 Kamal el-Mallakh 78 Kanam jaw 154-5
Kanjera skulls 154-5 Karnak, temple of Amin-Ra 65 Keeper of Genesis
230-32
290
I
n
d
e
x
Keith, Sir Arthur 163
Kelly, Kevin 268
Khepera 33, 35
Khnem-Khuf 58
Khufu's ship 78-9
King of Pharaonic Theocracy, The {Schwaller)
20 Kircher, Athanasius 96-7 knowledge systems 1, 5, 8-9, 24, 28, 229-30 Kosok,
Paul 129-30 Kow Swamp 172 Kukulcan, pyramid 123
La Quina cave 195-6
Lacovara, Peter 41
Laetoli footprint 163
Lamb, E Bruce 185
language development 178
Lartet, Edouard 146-8
Las Vegas, group consciousness 268-9
Latif, Abdul 53^
Laws (Plato) 95
Layne, Al 72
Le Plongeon, Augustus 105-8, 109, 110, 127,
228 Le Prhistorique (de Mortillet) 167 Leakey, Dr Louis 154-5, 158-60
Leedskalnin, Edward 263-5 left brain 198-200, 203^, 215, 240, 244, 280
consciousness 272-3, 276, 279 Legacy of Egypt, The (Glanville) 88-9 Lehner,
Mark 42-3, 47, 72 Lemuria 91, 108 Les Veilleurs 19 lvitation 269-70 lighting
tombs 266 Lissner, Ivar 184, 194 Lockyer, Sir Norman 65-6, 211 Lost Continent
of Mu (Churchward) 108 Lost Continents (de Camp) 90-91 Lucy 160
lunar knowledge 5, 24, 230 Luxor, temple 20, 28, 65
y
252 Lyell, Sir
Charles 139, 143, 147
Macalister, Professor R. A. S. 171
Macaulay, Anne 212-13
Machu Picchu 122-3
Maerth, Oscar 178-9
magnetic poles, reversal of 103, 117, 133, 173,
220 magnetism 2645
Mallery, Captain Arlington H. 82-3 Mamelukes 32
Man, God and Magic (Lissner) 184, 194 Man and the Sun (Hawkes) 208-9 mankind,
history of 172-7, 205 Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians
(Wilkinson) 59
maps 2, 81-4, 86-8, 177
Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (Hapgood) 2,
3, 7, 81, 88, 91, 94, 97-8, 177 Maria, Don Jos 101 Mariette, Auguste 45
Marshack, Alexander 214-15 Masks of God, The (Campbell) 185 Maslow,
Abraham 278-9 Maspero, Sir Gaston 15, 33, 34 mastabas 77, 177
Materia Hieroglyphica (Wilkinson) 59 matriarchal civilisation 274-5 Mavromatis, Dr
Andreas 192-3 Mayan astronomy 132, 219-21 Mayan calendar 132, 216, 219-20, 242
Mayan civilisation 101-14, 116, 132 Mayan language 107 Mayan Prophesies, The
(Cotterell) 217 Meidum, pyramid 77-8 Melchizedek, Order of 256 memory, art of
212-13 Mendelssohn, Kurt 77-8, 267 Mental Radio (Sinclair) 192-3 Menzies, Robert
63 Mesozoic period 140 mica 125, 129 Mid-Atlantic Ridge 90 Milky Way 232, 234-5
Milosz, Luzace de Lubicz 19 Miocene era 151, 166-7, 168-9, 172, 177 mnemonics
213-14 Mohenji-Daro 226 Mollinson, Professor T. 154 Moon, Myths and Man
(Bellamy) 118 moon, sensitivity to 215 moon goddess, worship of 215 Morley,
Sylvanus Griswold 102 Morning of the Magicians, The (Pauwels and
Bergier) 2-3 Morrison, Tony 130, 131 Mousterian tools 169 Mu 107, 108-9, 114
Mller, Dr Rolf 120, 123 mummification, discovery of 177 Mundus Subterraneus
(Kircher) 96-7 Murray, Margaret 44-5 music, representing knowledge 22, 27 musical
rhythm 248-9 Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids (Tompkins)
106 Mystery of Cathedrals (Fulcanelli) 19 mystical consciousness 201-2
Naqada 36, 40 natural selection 142-4 nature
governed by mathematical laws 26-8
harmony with 255 Naville, Professor E. 44
2
9
1
Index
navy, Egyptian 85
Nazca lines 129-31
Neanderthal man 145-6, 149, 151-2, 169,
171, 173, 179, 195-6, 207-9, 229, 261 neters 206-7, 221, 242 New Model of the
Universe, A (Ouspensky) 26,
201-2 New Race civilisation 36, 40, 43 Nile, River
delta 29
Egyptian dependence on 259
flooding of 232, 235
flow to west 73
image of Milky Way 232
man-made river 23 Niven, William 108-9 Nordenskiold,
E. E. 83 North Pole 87
numbers, significance of 247-50, 252-3 Nuttal, Zelia 126
obliquity of the ecliptic 119
Occult Sciences in Atlantis, The (Spence) 92
ochre mines, Neanderthal 196
Olduvai Gorge 153, 158
Olmecs 100, 110, 132,216
Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind, The (Jaynes) 197 Origin of the Species by Means of
Selection,
The (Darwin) 143-4 Orion Mystery, The (Bauval) 8, 71, 74, 233 Orion's Belt
68-70, 74, 130, 133, 231, 263 Oseirion, temple 43-5, 75 Osiris 16, 43, 68, 71, 76,
234-5, 260 Ouspensky 25-6, 201 Out of Control (Kelly) 268 Owen, Professor
Richard 166
Palaeozoic period 140 Palermo Stone 46, 77 Paranormal Beyond Sensory
Science, The
(Seymour) 218 paranormal powers 192-3 Paranthropus 157
partnership society 274-6 Patagonia 142
Path of the Pole, The (Hapgood) 87 Pathways to the Gods (Morrison) 130
Pattern of Islands (Grimble) 189-92 Pauwels, Louis 2-3 peak experiences
278-9, 281 Peking man 154-6, 178-9, 207-8 Penrose, Roger 27 People of
the Lake (R. Leakey) 164 perception, levels of 241, 245 Permian era 140
Perring, John 56-7, 60 pharaonic theocracy 210 phonetic writing 213
pi 249, 252
Pie Wen-Chung 178
Pillars of Hercules 92
Piltdown Man 145, 158
Piri Re'is map 2, 82-5, 88, 177
Pitluga, Dr Phyllis 130
Plato 2, 17, 71, 89-90, 92, 95, 230
Pleistocene era 147, 153, 155, 158-9, 172
Pliocene era 151, 163, 169-72
plough, invention of 174
Popol Vuh 102
population control 143
porpoise calling 190-92, 204, 258
portolans 2, 83, 86-8, 177
Posnansky, Professor Arthur 118-21
prayers 184, 195
Predatory Transition from Ape to Man (Dart)
158 Prestwich, Sir John 168 Principia Mathematica (Russell and
Whitehead) 22 Principles of Geology (Lyell) 139 Problem of Atlantis, The
(Spence) 92 Proclus 63
Proctor, Richard Anthony 63-5 proto-Egyptians 75-6 psychic communication 6, 8
psychical research 74 Pueblo Indians 241-2, 243-5 Pygmy hunting ritual 209
Pyramid Texts 67-8 Pyramidographia (Greaves) 54 pyramids, as scale models of
earth 127-8 Pyramids of Egypt, The (Edwards) 75-6 Pythagoras 20, 26-7, 212, 248-9,
276
Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx (Le
Plongeon) 107 Quetzalcoatl 16, 9% 103, 121, 124-6, 128
Temple of 124, 126
see also Viracocha Quiche Indians 102, 240, 242-3
Ra 33, 60
Ragazzoni, Professor Giuseppe 169-71
Ragnarok, The Age of Fire and Gravel
(Donnelly) 115 rain-maker, Chinese 255 Kamayana (Valmiki) 107
Rameses II 44 Rameses IX, tomb of 20 Ramn de Ordonez, Friar 104
rational knowledge 5, 6, 24 Reek's skeleton 153-5 Red Lady of Paviland
139 Redmount, Carol 4, 42 reincarnation, doctrine of 72 religious impulse
183-5, 195, 196 rhythm of life 246
292
I
n
d
e
x
Ribeiro, Carlos 167-9
Rig-Veda 227
right brain 198-200, 203^, 215, 240, 244,
280
consciousness 280 Riss ice Age 183, 196 ritual magic
185-92 Roberts, Paul 16
Roots of Civilisation, The (Marshack) 215 Rosetta Stone 59 Rostau,
pyramids 235 Russell, Charles Taze 63
Sacks, Oliver 6
Sacred Science (Schwaller) 8, 20, 21, 29, 216 Sacsayhuaman, citadel 122 Sahara,
green 33-4 Said, Boris 34, 43, 47 Salisbury, Stephen 111 Salmon, Ross 257-8 Sam,
Bonefish 93 ^^Santiago Ahuizoctla 109 Santorini 92-3
Saqqara 37, 39, 42, 61, 67-8, 77 Sarasvati Plain 226-7, 229 Satis,
goddess 67 Sayle, Murray 3
Scheuchzer, Johann Jakob 135-7 Schliemann, Heinrich 110 Schoch, Robert 3^t,
31-2, 34, 41-3 Scholtheim, Baron Ernst 138-9 Schwaller, Isha 20, 23 Schwaller
de Lubicz, Ren 1, 8, 10, 15-25, 65,
201-3, 206-8 Schwartz, Stephen 3
Science and Civilisation in China (Needham) 88 Science and Gods in Megalithic
Britain
(Macaulay) 212 Scott-Elliot, W. 91 Secret Doctrine, The (Blavatsky) 91
Secrets of the Ice Age (Hadingham) 171-2 self-actualisation 183 self-
awareness 200-201, 272, 276 Sellers, Jane 237
Sergi, Professor Giuseppe 170-71 Serpent in the Sky (West) 1, 16, 29
Seti I, Pharaoh 43-4 Seven, Law of 249, 253 sexual romanticism 180-81
Seymour, Percy 218
shamans 184-92, 196-7, 204, 243, 262 Shanidar, The Humanity of Neanderthal
Man
(Solecki) 195-6 Shanidar cave 195-6 sharks' teeth 166-7 Sign and the
Seal, The (Hancock) 14 Sinclair, Upton 192-3 Sirius 66-7, 103, 126-7, 133,
225, 235 Sirius Mystery, The (Temple) 66, 127
Sitchin, Zechariah 58-60
64, significance of 247-8, 252
Smith, William 138
Smyth, Charles Piazzi 63
Snofru (Snefru) 77, 79, 85, 234
society, models of 274
Socrates 90
solar knowledge 5, 6, 24, 230
solar radiation 218
Solecki, Dr Ralph 195
Solomon's Temple 14
Solon 71
So this 67
sound based technology 39-40
South America, links with Egypt 127, 132, 133
speech, development of 207
Spence, Lewis 92
Sphinx
age of 1, 3-4, 15, 26, 28-9, 32, 41-3, 231
builder/repairer of 15
building of 28, 263
built by Atlanteans 28
construction 32
lion-shaped 75
Old Kingdom repairs 42
rear paws 238
resemblance of face to Chefren 46-8
size of building blocks 35-6
Atemples 32, 34-5, 43-4, 75
underground chambers 40 spirits, communication with 197 split-
brain physiology 197-200 Spurling, Ehud 8 stained glass 18, 20, 21
star temples 65 Starseekers (Wilson) 4 Steiner, Rudolf 91-2
step pyramids 37, 42, 61, 77, 105, 125, 132 Stephens, John Lloyd 101 Stern, Jess 73
Stirling, William 18 Stone Age cultures 76 Stone Age Races of Kenya (Leakey) 155
stone circles 211-12, 213 Stonehenge 65, 211-12, 213 stones, heavy, shifting 263-5,
269-71 Story of Atlantis, The (Scott-Elliot) 91 Strabo 44, 49 subjectivity 199-200
subsurface weathering 41 Suhalia, Switzerland 19 sun
influence on earth 217-18
magical customs based on 96
sensitivity to 215
temples 65 sunspot cycle 219-20 superstition 183, 184
survival legends 95-6
2
9
3
Index
survival of the fittest 142-4, 158, 272
Syene 84
syllable-writing 176
Symbol and the Symbolic (Schwaller) 22
synchronicity 254, 256-7
Tagus, River 167-9
Tammuz 2245
Taung skull 156, 163
Taylor, John 62-3
tectonic plates 87
Teleanthropus 157
telepathy 188, 192, 203^, 243, 254
Telliamed (de Maillet) 137
Temple, Robert 66-7, 127
Temple of Man, The (Schwaller) 8, 20, 23, 202
Teotihuacan 100, 104, 123-9
Tertiary era 150, 152, 168-9
tetrad 250-51
Thenay flints 167-8
third force 249, 261, 273, 275, 277-8
13, superstition and 107
Thorn, Alexander 211-12
Thompson, Edward Herbert 110-14
Thompson, Richard L. 166
thought forms 243
Three, Law of 249, 253, 261^
Thunupa 119, 121
Thutmose IV, King 32-3, 35
Tiahuanaco 98, 118-22, 132, 133
Timaeus (Plato) 71, 89-90
time
monochrome and polychronic 239
slowing down of 244 Timescale (Calder) 164 Titicaca, Lake 95, 105-6, 118-19,
121, 257 Tollan 104
Toltecs 100, 102, 104, 128,132 Tompkins, Peter 106 tools, ancient 36-9, 151, 174
Traveller's Guide to Egypt, The (West) 14-15 Trimble, Virginia 69 Troano Codex
103, 107, 108 Tukulti-Ninurti 200 Tula 104 Turin Papyrus 76 22, significance of 248,
249, 250, 252
ultrasound drilling 39^0, 119 Ussher, Archbishop James 137, 139
Valentine, Dr J. Manson 93 Valentinus, Basil 19 Valle, Jacques
256
Van Allen belts 219-20
VandenBroeck, Andr 8, 21-2, 23-5
Vavilov, Nikolia Ivanovitch 95
Velikovsky, Immanuel 116-17
Venus, birth of 116,219
vibration technology 40-41
vibrations, energy 206-7, 221
Viracocha 16, 118-23, 125, 130-31, 133, 262
Virchow, Rudolf 169
voices, hearing 199-200, 272
Voices of Spirit (Hapgood) 93
von Dachend, Hertha 221
von Daniken, Erich 2-3, 15-16, 81-2, 130
von Ducker, Baron 166
von Humboldt, Alexander 100
Wallace, Alfred Rssel 143, 150-51
Walters, W. I. 82
warfare 176
water erosion 1, 8, 15, 21, 29, 31-2, 34-5
Weiant, Clarent 6
Weil, Andrew 188-9
Wells, H. G. 275-7
West, John Anthony 1, 3, 6-7, 14-16, 29, 31-2,
42-3, 47-8, wheat 173-4
wheel, invention of 175-6 When the Sky Fell (Flemming) 7, 94-5 white dwarfs
66
White Goddess, The (Graves) 5, 24, 215-16 white gods 16, 133 Whitney, J. D.
149-50, 167 Wilhelm, Richard 253, 254-5 Wilkinson, Sir John 59-60 Witt Europe
Follow Atlantis? (Spence) 92 Wilson, Colin 4, 193
Witch Cult in Western Europe (Murray) 45 Wizard of the Upper Amazon (Lamb)
185-9 Wolff, Jane 241
Worlds in Collision (Velikovsky) 116 writing, invention of 86, 175, 176, 200, 214,
224 Wynn, T. 164
Xochicalco 107
Yaxchilan 105 Yermolayev, Boris 269 Yucatan Indians 106
Zawyat al-Aryan, pyramid 69 Zink, Dr David 93 Zoser 77
294