There is a thing confusedly formed,
Born before Heaven and Earth.
Silent and void
It stands alone and does not change,
Goes round and does not weary.
It is capable of being the mother of the world.
I know not its name
So I style it “The Way.”
I give it the makeshift name of “The Great.”
Being great, it is further described as receding,
Receding, it is described as far away,
Being far away, it is described as turning back.
LAO-TZU, TAO TE CHING, CHINA, ABOUT 600 BCE
There is a way on high, conspicuous in the clear heavens, called the Milky Way, brilliant with its own brightness. By it the gods go to the dwelling of the great Thunderer and his royal abode. . . . Here the famous and mighty inhabitants of heaven have their homes. This is the region which I might make bold to call the Palatine [Way] of the Great Sky.
OVID, METAMORPHOSES, ROME, FIRST CENTURY CE
Since the birth of modern archaeology, sociologists, historians, scholars, and excavators alike have wondered about the evolutionary development of the first cities: where they came from, how they were built, when they first appeared, and why. Most evidence points to the first cities—at least those of the old centers of civilization (Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China)—originating from around 7000 to 4000 BCE. This applies only if one counts the protocities that flourished in earlier times. (True cities did not develop, according to outmoded wisdom, for another two thousand to three thousand years.)
JERICHO’S ELEVEN-THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD “COSMIC TOWER”
In 1952, at Tel Jericho in the West Bank, archaeologists made a stunning discovery: an eleven-thousand-year-old stone tower rising approximately nine meters above the walled proto-Neolithic settlement. These were the early years of Israeli archaeology, and a number of phenomenal finds marked the era as a signature period in Near Eastern studies, including the glorious Dead Sea Scrolls, which literally stood the whole of Judeo-Christianity on its head.
The tower at Jericho promised to offer the same profound insights, this time providing a key to an even earlier age. This “World’s First Skyscraper” predates the development of food production and agriculture in the region (ScienceDaily 2011b).
Doctoral student Roy Liran and Dr. Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University’s Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures at the Lester and Sally Entin Faculty of Humanities have undertaken computer-based research with hopes of illuminating this most ancient of mysteries. Their general conclusion is that the position of the tower is coordinated with the longest day of the year (ScienceDaily 2011b).
Liran and Barkai claim that “reconstruction of the sunset revealed to us that the shadow of the hill as the sun sets on the longest day of the year falls exactly on the Jericho tower, envelops the tower and then covers the entire village. For this reason, we suggest that the tower served an earthly element connecting the residents of the site with the hills around them and with the heavenly element of the setting sun” (ScienceDaily 2011b). They theorize that the tower’s construction can be attributed to the primal fears of the villagers, as well as to their profound connection to the cosmos and nature. These were the hallmark beliefs of Jericho’s Stone Age population (ScienceDaily 2011b).
The tower suggests that the villagers were not merely superstitious but held much more complex religious concepts. Throughout time sun worship has been one of the oldest and most dominant forms of religion. In most cases the sun was later personified as a deity. Much speculation and commentary has been made regarding this practice. The late Carl Sagan, in Cosmos, had this to say:
The Sun warms us and feeds us and permits us to see. It fecundated the Earth. It is powerful beyond human experience. Birds greet the sunrise with an audible ecstasy. Even some one-celled organisms know to swim to the light. Our ancestors worshiped the Sun, and they were far from foolish. And yet the Sun is an ordinary, even a mediocre star. If we must worship a power greater than ourselves, does it not make sense to revere the Sun and stars? (1980, p. 243)
H. G. Wells touched upon the idea of sun worship representing the foundation of cultural and religious life in An Outline of History.He wrote of a lost “heliolithic,” or “sun-stone,” civilization, a culture that thrived throughout southern Europe, North Africa, Eurasia, East Asia, Oceania, and Peru. Their highest level of development lasted from fifteen thousand to ten thousand years ago. They successfully colonized the tropical regions of the Earth and were responsible for the enormous explosion of civilization and technology in the southern latitudes, which began occurring around 8000 BCE (1920, pp. 141–42).
Tel Jericho’s heritage goes far back into prehistory. It is one of the oldest sites on Earth, perhaps competing with Turkey’s Göbekli Tepe on the shores of Lake Van, an ancient temple structure so old that it defies conventional wisdom and predates the destruction of Atlantis. The Tel Jericho tower was constructed featuring a steep staircase approximately one meter wide. Surrounding the tower are four-meter walls that probably enclosed the entire city, a highly fortified site for its day. Although Jericho was really only a preagricultural settlement of hunter-gatherers, it has often been identified as Earth’s first city (ScienceDaily 2011b).
TWILIGHT OF THE GODS: THE LOST CIVILIZATION OF TIAHUANACO
In the 1930s German archaeologist Dr. Edmund Kiss ventured to the remote Bolivian Andes of South America to conduct research at the ancient ruins of Tiahuanaco (Von Däniken 2010, p. 21). The lost city of Tiahuanaco is often considered one of the most controversial archaeological ruins on the planet, but there is little doubt, even among skeptics, that these ancient structures predate the Inca Empire, and probably by many hundreds if not thousands of years (Childress 1986, p. 135). To Childress, what made these ruins so controversial was that they represented a reality beyond that which is taught to us in school and in history books. The sophisticated technology it took to build these great edifices suggested something greater than the mainstream model: either extraterrestrial intervention in the history of the human race, or something even more significant.
Dr. Kiss himself was no stranger to controversy. He had the misfortune of being a German archaeologist in a decade in which the only people a working scientist such as himself could turn to for financial support were the dreaded SS under Heinrich Himmler. This association was suicide once Germany was defeated in 1945 because of the stigma attached to anything even remotely affiliated with the Third Reich.
Kiss loved ancient civilizations, and when he arrived at Tiahuanaco he was awe-struck by its complexity and scale. Greeting him was a towering, rectangular monolithic gate built from a single eleven-ton andesite block. In the center of this massive arch stared a grim figure that became known as the “Weeping God” (Childress 1986, p. 137). The archway was given the illustrious title “Gateway of the Sun.” It is carved with mysterious hieroglyphs and other engravings that suggest a complex solar calendar. Further study revealed that, with extraordinary precision, the gateway depicted the coming of the summer and winter solstices, the equinoxes, and the phases of the moon. The remainder of the site consisted of thousands of stone slabs that clearly had been carefully cut and transported to that location. Kiss marveled at the ancient ruins. His research led him to believe that Tiahuanaco was constructed around 27,000 BCE (Von Däniken 2010, pp. 28–31).
According to legend, Tiahuanaco was erected in a single night by the gods, while conventional references state only that Tiahuanaco was built by the “Tiahuanaco Culture.” Childress explains that visitors to the site immediately notice the “stark contrast” between the stunning mountain vista of Machu Picchu and the barren, Martian-like hills of swirling dust over which the city of Tiahuanaco stands vigil. In 1864 the site was visited by E. G. Squier, an American anthropologist whose career produced two works that eventually became standard reading for all young anthropologists, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley and Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York. He was highly impressed by the immensity of the ruins and their impressive display of engineering knowledge. He called the site the Baalbek of the New World in reference to the ruins of Baalbek in modern-day Lebanon, one of the most impressive megalithic sites in the world (1986, p. 136).
Cieza de León, an early-sixteenth-century Spanish chronicler, noted that the natives of the region told the Spaniards who arrived at the site that the Incas had found the city abandoned and desolate, in total ruins, and that the Inca believed it had been in that state for hundreds of generations (Childress 1986, p. 137).
Yet the state of the fallen structures and half-standing edifices seem to indicate that the city’s demise was due to something more than just the passage of centuries. In Kiss’s viewpoint, as Erich von Däniken explains in Twilight of the Gods, Tiahuanaco was not only tens of thousands of years older than the oldest recorded civilization, but it was destroyed by a flood—perhaps the same flood described in the Old Testament, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and so many other ancient accounts (2010, pp. 24–25, 60). Plato described a profoundly ancient culture that sank into the sea in a single day and night, the legendary Atlantis. Kiss undoubtedly believed in this myth, and for him the indication of a flood at Tiahuanaco twenty-nine thousand years ago gave credence to Plato’s account as well as the works of his mentor, Hans Hoerbiger (Von Däniken 2010, p. 61). This revelation set the stage for future investigations into the greater antiquity of the human race.
In addition to proving an apparent link to the global flood, Kiss was also interested in the inscriptions on the Gateway of the Sun. As previously stated, he believed they comprised some type of a solar calendar. He also believed, however, that not only were these inscriptions an incredibly ancient form of dating, but they dated to before the last ice age, an assertion that irked his archaeological colleagues outside Germany (Von Däniken 2010, pp. 60–64). He wasn’t alone, however, in his struggle to unlock the secrets of the forgotten time line of human civilization.
THE LOST CIVILIZATION OF CARAL
For decades the Olmec of south-central Mexico were considered the oldest civilization of the Americas. Recently, however, a number of finds place Peru at the forefront of archaeological research aimed at identifying the earliest American civilization. In 2001 archaeologists unearthed the ruins of a previously unknown civilization located approximately 193 kilometers north of Lima.
Excavations took place for more than a year and the level of sophistication of this early kingdom that was uncovered amazed scientists. Conventional archaeologists now believe that this ancient site, known as Caral, is the missing link between the earliest known civilizations of the New World and the forgotten realms of prehistory. Perhaps the most startling discovery was that this lost Peruvian civilization had achieved many glorious things and yet was a Stone Age culture—a revelation that has forever changed our understanding of Neolithic technology and engineering.
Caral was a preceramic culture. It was without pottery, and all artifacts that were found in the ruins were made of wood, bone, stone, or reeds. These relics were often found together in lavishly ornamented burial chambers fashioned from crude stone tools. This is clearly a Neolithic society, yet they knew how to use cotton to weave textiles—a craft usually not seen in the Americas and other parts of the world, including some parts of Europe and Asia, until centuries later (Chouinard 2002).
In Caral and other primitive states the chieftains and councils of earlier times gave rise to powerful, godlike emperors who inspired the building of great structures and pyramids. They commanded the labor force and armies to do their bidding. The idea of an advanced Stone Age culture supports Graham Hancock’s vision of a civilization far older than many mainstream archaeologists and historians are prepared to admit (Chouinard 2002).
For nearly fifty centuries the enigmatic lost “mother city” of Caral remained untouched and unseen, hidden amid the swirling grit of Peru’s Supe Valley. Its ancient walls and massive monuments were consumed by the sands and left in utter silence. Now, for the first time since it was abandoned by an advanced pre-Columbian civilization, it is once again ready to tell its story (BBC 2002).
Radiocarbon dating of reed bags found at the site places the age of the ancient city between 2627 and 2000 BCE. This makes the find as old as the pyramids of Giza and predates the Olmec civilization, once thought to be the oldest in the New World, by one thousand years. This is without question the greatest archaeological find in the history of the Americas, comparable only to the discovery of the Clovis point in the 1930s. These new revelations are reshaping our knowledge of the Americas and the rest of the world (BBC 2002).
Caral’s discoverer is Ruth Shady. Although Caral was known to some small extent prior to her first visit in the early 1990s, it was Shady who first recognized that the crumbling megaliths and stone structures were formed by human hands and obviously belonged to an ancient and advanced civilization. “When I first arrived in the valley in 1994,” she told the BBC, “I was overwhelmed. This place is somewhere between the seat of the gods and the home of man. It is a very strange place” (BBC 2002).
While standing amid a mound of blowing dust, Shady was amazed to see the vague outline of what appeared to be pyramids. She discovered six of them altogether. Superficially, they somewhat resemble those seen in the Mississippian culture. The main difference is that rather than a simple mound of manipulated earth piled high above the plains, these pyramids were formed with mud plaster and stone (BBC 2002). Guy Gugliotta, writing for the Washington Post, stated, “Unlike the celebrated Egyptian pyramids, Caral’s monuments were relatively simple structures—rectangular retaining walls of fitted stones, fronted with mud plaster and filled with reed bags full of rocks carried from the Supe River” (2001).
Like their future Mayan cousins to the north, these Caral pyramids are terraced and feature steps ascending the structures, indicating that they were probably used for religious practices. They are only 18 meters high, which is not a staggering height when compared with those of Mesoamerica, but their bases are more than 152 meters wide, making these structures the largest ever to have graced the Americas.
Additional sites are scattered across the region, hinting that Caral could have been a focal point for a more complex civilization of vast proportions. According to Winifred Creamer, an archaeologist at Northern Illinois University, “Besides Caral, there also appear to be four other sites you can see from one to another. If they are contemporaneous, we are looking at thousands of people in the valley at a very early date” (Gugliotta 2001).
FORBIDDEN ARCHAEOLOGY
At Table Mountain in Tuolumne County, California, miners were digging for gold and other precious ores in 1966. At 55 meters below the surface they discovered a mortar and pestle. Unbelievably, scientists called to the site could offer no clues to their origin. Analysis of the strata revealed that they were between thirty-three million and fifty-five million years old. A formidable attempt was launched to debunk the artifacts, but it proved nearly impossible. A number of human skeletal remains dating to the same time period were also found at the site (Gallegos 2009, pp. 9–10).
Many of these anomalous discoveries have engendered controversy; they are often met with a “knowledge filter,” a system that judges all new theories—not on their merits but rather on the basis of preexisting academic theories (Gallegos 2009, 11). There is little chance of a truly original and paradigm-shattering idea ever gaining widespread acceptance within mainstream scientific circles. The guardians of the establishment simply don’t want to risk their reputations and careers on a competing idea, even if that idea is the correct one. Rather than acting to support a genuine search for the truth, this filter is nothing more than a political power play, the ultimate result of which is that all ideas, evidence, or speculation not officially sanctioned by the academic hierarchy are thought to be unworthy of consideration or further investigation and are consigned to the domain of “fringe science.” This is a death sentence for any scientist attempting to gain broad acceptance for a new theory.
A perfect example of this chilling effect occurred in 1966. The U.S. Geological Survey sent a team of three seasoned excavators to investigate reports of anomalous finds at Hueyatlaco, a palaeo-Indian site 121 kilometers southeast of Mexico City. Among the team members was geologist and graduate student Dr. Virginia Steen-McIntyre. Although the site itself was discovered by Mexican archaeologist Juan Armenta Camacho and American archaeologist Cynthia Irwin-Williams, Virginia Steen-McIntyre is best associated with the site due to her adherence to the facts of her discovery and her determination to let the truth be known.
She unearthed sophisticated stone tools whose origins she dated to roughly two hundred thousand years ago. Despite the fact that a team from the United States Geological Survey confirmed the great antiquity of the finds, when she attempted to publish her findings she faced tremendous roadblocks. Her statements of finding an unusually ancient set of stone tools were ridiculed. It was as if she was claiming that Bigfoot lived in the White House. She was promptly fired from her position as geologist and field archaeologist and stripped of her prestige as a respected member of the academic community. Furthermore, never again was she able to get a job in her beloved field of archaeology or any legitimate position as a mainstream geologist (Gallegos 2009, p. 10).
THE RENEGADE VELIKOVSKY
Although the late, great Carl Sagan readily identified himself with what my friend John Anthony West calls the priesthood of science, he did make a heroic appeal on behalf of Polish scholar Immanuel Velikovsky, who is best known for his book Worlds in Collision, published in 1950. Velikovsky’s theories included the idea that Venus was actually an anomaly generated in the Jovian system (Sagan 1980, pp. 90–91). Velikovsky maintained that the planet, or comet as he called it, left the gravitational influence of Jupiter and entered the inner solar system approximately 3500 BCE. During two close encounters with Earth in 1450 BCE, the direction of Earth’s rotation was altered radically (Alexander 2005, pp. 21–24).
According to Velikovsky, Earth’s rotation then reverted to its original direction on its next pass through the orbit of the inner solar system. In the second and final confrontation with Earth, the comet caused substantial volcanism, floods, and even the parting of the Red Sea as described in the Book of Exodus. Following this phase of its journey it settled into its current orbit and became the planet Venus as we know it today. Mars also passed dangerously close to Earth between 776 and 687 BCE, prompting Earth’s axis to oscillate by ten degrees (Alexander 2005, pp. 21–24).
According to Sagan, the academic community attempted to suppress Velikovsky’s ideas and he (Sagan) condemned these actions. They didn’t allow Velikovsky to speak at universities or publish his ideas in scientific journals, and they dissuaded newspapers and other media from releasing updates on his research. “Science,” concluded Sagan, “is generated by and devoted to free inquiry; the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science” (1980, pp. 90–91).
There are exceptions to the pattern of suppression, however. Quite recently a new theory has emerged that promises to rewrite Darwinian theory. But rather than being met with scorn and skepticism, it has attracted many adherents among conventional anthropologists and biologists, and it is now almost considered part of the mainstream scientific arena. This theory was first presented by the distinguished neurosurgeon Aaron G. Filler, M.D., Ph.D. In his recently published book The Upright Ape: A New Origin of the Species, Filler proposes the theory that rather than humans evolving from apes, or at least apelike hominids, it happened the other way around. He believes that apes evolved from humans from a common upright ancestor (Gallegos 2009, pp. 11–12).
In a college paper titled “Beyond History: Alternative Historical Perspective,” San Jose State University student Fernando S. Gallegos commented: “Imagine the implications within our institutional views if this turned out to be true; we would have to completely restructure our whole preconceived views of our history as a human species” (2009, p. 11).
CONCLUSIONS
The nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche once wrote, “It is our future that lays down the law of our today.” While there is some truth to this viewpoint, it is our past that defines humanity as a species and steers us forward to an uncertain but perhaps glorious future. The legacy of the pyramids, Stonehenge, ancient Greek and Roman civilization, the enigma of the Maya, the solemn ruins of Chaco Canyon in the American Southwest, ancient Chinese and Japanese civilization, the sum total of our earthly heritage—all pushes us forward to a final destiny. That future is only now starting to take shape. Through history and archaeology we can discover the reason and purpose behind it.
On the book:
FORGOTTEN WORLDS
“From China’s incongruous Caucasian mummies and Egypt’s Great Sphinx to a lost Germanic civilization and extraterrestrial influences, Forgotten Worlds presents a panoramic view of Atlantis, as broad as it is comprehensive. As such, Patrick Chouinard offers us previously unconsidered, even startling possibilities for Plato’s perennial kingdom.”
FRANK JOSEPH,
AUTHOR OFATLANTIS AND 2012AND
ADVANCED CIVILIZATIONS OF PREHISTORIC AMERICA
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