PART THREE

EXPLORING THE GREATER ANTIQUITY OF CIVILIZATION



10 - The Enigma of India's Origins The Dating of New Discoveries in the Gulf of Cambay Upsets the Orthodox Scenario for the Dawn of Civilization

David Lewis With three quarters of the planet covered by water, it's been said we know more about the surface of Venus than about that which lies beneath the sea. Yet this may be changing. The discovery of what may be a lost city off the coast of western Cuba startled the archeological world in the spring of 2001. Reports from Havana spoke of massive stone blocks stacked at a depth of 2,100 feet in perpendicular and circular formations, some resembling pyramids. Researchers in a miniature submarine described the area as an urban development, with structures that may once have been roads and bridges.



Because a prediluvian "lost city" does not fit into the accepted paradigm of prehistory, the halls of orthodoxy remain silent on the matter - at least for now. And while those halls still stand, other recent discoveries have begun to seriously erode their foundations. Finding the ruins of an ancient, submerged civilization raises more questions than it answers and causes more problems than it solves. How did the land and its structures sink?

What could have prompted such a large-scale cataclysm?

When did civilization on Earth actually begin?

What do we really know about the ancient past and human origins?

And how does the establishment of science, so fixed in its doctrines, grapple with the potential demise of its most cherished presumptions? If the lost city of the Caribbean wasn't enough, about the same time an equally startling discovery occurred twenty-five miles off the coast of Gujurat, India. The discovery took place in that part of the Arabian Sea known as the Gulf of Cambay. India's National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) turned up some amazing sonar images from the gulf's depths while scanning for pollution levels. Using equipment that penetrates the sea floor, marine experts discovered a pattern of distinct, man-made formations across a five-mile stretch of seabed.



According to reports published worldwide, NIOT's sonar-imaging technology detected what appeared to be the stone pillars and collapsed walls of at least two cities. The site was described as part of an ancient river valley civilization not unlike the River Saraswati of the Rig Veda, thought to be mythical but - according to recent independent findings by Indian scientists - has been proved to have flowed to Gujurat. Divers at the Gulf of Cambay site later retrieved from depths of 120 feet two thousand man-made artifacts, including pottery, jewelry, sculpture, human bones, and evidence of writing, according to The Times of London. Inscribed pottery from the Gulf of Cambay. Artifact from the Gulf of Cambay. Small asymmetrical cylindrical object with hollowed middle. (PHOTOGRAPH BY SANTHA FAIIA) Artifact from the Gulf of Cambay. Possible carving of a deer or other animal appears symmetrically on both sides of object. (PHOTOGRAPH BY SANTHA FAIIA) Group of four objects from the Gulf of Cambay. (PHOTOGRAPH BY SANTHA FAIIA) Artifact from the Gulf of Cambay. Stone slab suggested by NIOT to be engraved with archaic script or other deliberate marking or symbols. (PHOTOGRAPH BY SANTHA FAIIA)



"Underwater structures that have been found along the Gulf of Cambay, Gujarat, indicate an ancient township that could date back anywhere before or during the Harappan civilization," Science and Technology Minister Murli Manohar Joshi told the world at a press conference in May 2001. Murli Manohar Joshi's initial guess was that the five-mile-long site was four thousand to six thousand years old and had been submerged by an extremely powerful earthquake. But in January 2002, carbon dating revealed that an artifact from the site was astonishingly ancient, between 8,500 and 9,500 years old (the oldest known civilization in the world by thousands of years). This was a time when, according to orthodox archeological standards, India should have been peopled with primitive hunter-gatherers and a few settlements, not the inhabitants of a lost civilization.



The author and underwater researcher Graham Hancock described buildings at the site as being hundreds of feet in length. with drains running along the streets. "If the case is made [for the age of the underwater cities]. then it means that the foundations are out of the bottom of archeology." Hancock said. The scope and sophistication of the site dismantles the specific belief that civilization began five thousand years ago in Sumeria, according to Hancock, even as the alternative scholarship movement, of which he is a central figure, in general challenges orthodox views about human origins. In the orthodox (Darwinist) view, life, and then human beings, emerged extremely slowly from highly improbable accidental causes over a period of time necessitated by laws of probability.



The theoretical four-billion-year age of the planet was determined not by scientific or geologic evidence, according to the science writer Richard Milton (author of Facts of Life: Shattering the Myth of Darwinism), but by estimating how long it should have taken for accidental life to have occurred. given the extreme improbability of life having occurred at all through random, material causes.



Civilization followed, according to the scenario, after the theoretical "out-of-Africa" migration (about 100.000 years ago), fairly recently in prehistory. Evidence of extremely ancient civilizations, or of severe cataclysmic disruptions (those resembling mythical events that may have shaped the ancient world), throws a wrench into the conventional machinery. Discoveries that reveal civilizations having existed several thousand years earlier than previously thought are greeted with disbelief, consternation, silence. Evidence, then, of modern man having lived, say, 250.000 years ago in South America is considered preposterous and heretical, although the evidence for it exists.



Other views, modern and ancient, portray life as having emerged by more mysterious means, not by a series of astronomically improbable accidents, not through a biblical creationist scenario, but by virtue of some other unknown agency. This other, unknown agency, an all-pervasive life force more in keeping with The Tao of Physics than Origin of Species , is such as that evidenced in Eastern healing disciplines and codified impressionistically in the world's mythologies.



In this latter view. the idea that prehistoric civilizations existed needs not be rejected due to a presumption that life evolved from material causes alone over an arbitrary time line necessitated by improbability. Tradition in India has always held. in fact. that Indian culture predates all understanding. being virtually timeless. stretching into the mists of antiquity from whence sprang the gods and myth - the non-space/non-time reality of modern theoretical physics.



As we shall see. certain mythical traditions maintain that the landmass of ancient India greatly exceeded its present size. and even that it stretched from Australia to Madagascar. perhaps as an archipelago. As with the archeological discovery of Troy. once thought to be a myth. it must be recognized that at least some of India's supposedly mythical traditions are rooted in historical fact. This leads to the idea of an "Asian Atlantis," which may seem fantastic. but early geologists believed such a continent existed. The notion may again be gaining credence after the discoveries in the Gulf of Cambay and given NIOT's intention to investigate other submerged archeological sites off Mahabalipuram and Poompuhar in Tamil Nadu.



Current conceptions of Western scholars conflict with traditional Indian beliefs about such things. but that wasn't always the case. In the mid to late nineteenth century. when scientific ideas about human origins had begun to take shape in Europe. early geologists and archeologists accepted the idea of a biblical flood. lost continents (for which they found much evidence), and a landmass in the Indian Ocean - the great Southern Continent of the British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace.



Even today, mainstream science believes such landmasses as Gondwanaland and Pangaea existed, although they are relegated to the extremely ancient epochs of 180 to 200 million years ago, in keeping with beliefs about the age of the planet necessitated by an admittedly improbable evolutionary process. And consider the South Asian traditions that mimic the findings of the early geologists, those who say an inhabited continent existed across what are now the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, and the Bay of Bengal. These traditions live to this day in the lore of southern India, Sri Lanka, and the islands of the Andaman Sea. "In a former age," an ancient Sri Lankan text states, "the citadel of Rawana (Lord of Lanka), 25 palaces and 400.000 streets were swallowed by the sea." The submerged landmass. according to one ancient account, rested between Tuticoreen on the southwest Indian coast and Manaar in Sri Lanka. This submerged landmass was not a landmass of the size envisioned by the early geologists, but - if it actually existed - a submerged portion of the Indian subcontinent just the same.



Another cultural tradition, cited in Allan and Delair's Cataclysm! Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500B.C., that of the Selungs of the Mergui Archipelago off southern Burma, also speaks of a sunken landmass: "...formerly [the] country was of continental dimensions, but the daughter of an evil spirit threw many rocks into the sea... the waters rose and swallowed up the land... Everything alive perished, except what was able to save itself on one island that remained above the waters." One of the Tamil epics of southern India, the Silappadhikaram, frequently mentions a vast tract of land called Kumara Nadu, also known as Kumari Kandam, stretching far beyond India's present-day coasts. Ancient south Indian commentators wrote in detail of a prehistoric "Tamil Sangham," a spiritual academy situated in that ancient land. They wrote also of the submersion of two rivers, the Kumari and the Pahroli, in the middle of the continent, and of a country dotted with mountain ranges, animals, vegetation, and forty-nine provinces. This Pandya kingdom, according to tradition, reigned from 30.000 B.C.E. to 16.500 B.C.E. At least one branch of modern-day south Indian mystics claims a direct lineage from those extraordinarily ancient times, when their spiritual progenitors were said to have achieved extremely long lives through yogic techniques.



And India's epic poem the Mahabharata, dated by non-Westernized Indian scholars to five thousand years before Christ, contains references to its hero, Rama, gazing from India's present-day west coast into a vast landmass now occupied by the Arabian Sea, an account supported by the recent underwater discoveries. Less celebrated Indian texts even mention advanced technology, in the form of aircraft used to transport the society's elite and wage war.



The writings describe these aircraft in detail and at great length, puzzling scholars and historians. The great Indian epics, what's more. vividly describe militaristic devastation that can be equated only with nuclear war. Was there, at one time, not just an ancient civilization in India, but an advanced ancient civilization?



Flying machines... lost continents... are these mythical tales of mythical lands or do these ancient references provide us with a historical record long forgotten and then dismissed by Western science as fantasy?



To answer that question, we must look at the history of scholarship as it pertains to India. Since the nineteenth century, Western scholars have dismissed the historical significance of the cultural traditions of ancient peoples, those of southern Asia included. With a decidedly ethnocentric bias, the experts reinterpreted history as it was taught in the East. Having found, for example, that root words of India's ancient Sanskrit turn up almost universally in the world's major languages, Western scholars devised an ethnocentric scheme to explain the phenomenon - one that modern Indian intellectuals have come to accept.



A previous European people must have once existed, the scholars imagined - an Indo-European race upon which the world, including India, drew for its linguistic roots and genetic stock. The scholars also expropriated the Aryans of ancient India to flesh out this scenario. This Aryan race, they told us, derived from Europe and then invaded the Indus Valley in the north of India - making Sanskrit and Vedic culture relatively young and a product, rather than a progenitor, of Western civilization.



The "Aryan invasion" theory has since fallen into disrepute. James Schaffer, of Case Western University, a noted archeologist specializing in ancient India, had this to say on the matter. "The archeological record and ancient oral and literate traditions of south Asia are now converging." In other words, India's mythology is being proved historically accurate . Schaffer then wrote, "A few scholars have proposed that there is nothing in the 'literature' firmly placing the Indo-Aryans outside of south Asia, and now the archeological record is confirming this... We reject most strongly the simplistic historical interpretations [of Western scholars], which date back to the eighteenth century... These still prevailing interpretations are significantly diminished by European ethnocentrism, colonialism, racism..." Southern India, a land whose cultural roots are said by some to stretch into an even more profound antiquity than do those of the north, suffered a similar fate. Speakers of a proto-Dravidian language, the forerunner of a family of languages spoken in the souths - and some say of Sanskrit itself - entered India from the northwest, the Western scholars insist. Both invasion theories were necessitated by Western beliefs, at first about the Garden of Eden theory of origins and then, with the arrival of the Darwinists, beliefs about the widely held out-of-Africa theory.



But the Aryan invasion theory has been debunked. No skeletal evidence shows any difference between the supposed invaders and the indigenous peoples of India. And satellite imagery now shows that the ancient Harrapan civilization of the Indus Valley, and Mohenjo-Daro , probably declined and disappeared due to climatic changes, the drying up of the mythical Saraswati River, rather than to the descent of imaginary invaders. The demise of the Aryan invasion theory, though, and the recently discovered underwater ruins open a Pandora's box for orthodox scholars regarding the past - not just India's past, but that of the human race. If Sanskrit predates the world's other languages, and if ancient civilizations existed where there are now seas, how can prehistory be explained in modern Western terms?



And how much of the actual history of India is still obscured by ethnocentricism, colonialism, or scientific materialism? The demise of the Aryan invasion theory may represent only the tip of the iceberg of misconceptions about the age and nature of ancient India, her culture, her people, and her accomplishments.



It has long been claimed that Mother India was born in a time before all myth began, when rishis, men of great wisdom and phenomenal spiritual attainment, walked on Earth. This ancient India dates to the times out of which the epic poems the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the ancient traditions of Tamil Nadu in the south grew. The Tamil Nadu was a land whose culture is said by some to predate that of the north. having once existed as part of Kumari Kandam and dating to a staggering 30.000 B.C.E.



A great deluge inundated Kumari Kandam, obscure texts of the Siddhartha tradition of Tamil Nadu reportedly say. This is a notion echoed in the writings of Colonel James Churchward and W.S. Cerve, both of whom claim knowledge of texts, Indian and Tibetan, respectively, that speak of a long-lost continent situated in the East.



While continental drift theory presumes the extremely slow and uniform movement of landmasses over many hundreds of millions of years. a great deal of evidence exists that Earth's surface changed rapidly and violently in recent prehistory. A great sudden extinction of mammals and plants took place on the planet around the end of the last ice age. perhaps as recently as 12.000 years ago. Hundreds of mammal and plant species disappeared from the face of the earth, many of the carcasses having been driven by flooding into deep caverns and charred piles the world over. Modern science has been unable to adequately explain this event. and unwilling to consider what seems obvious, based on the evidence.



D.S. Allan and J.B. Delair, in Cataclysm! Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B.C ., amass a formidable quantity of known evidence corroborating the flood/conflagration legends stored in the world's mythological record. If we suspend belief in the textbook accounts of prehistory. Allan and Delair fill the void in a convincing way. replacing gradualist doctrines that involve extremely slow glacial movements (which are supposed to have accounted for the great extinction) with what seems to have been. upon a review of the evidence. a worldwide. phenomenal disaster that submerged landmasses and ruptured Earth's crust.



Much of the evidence centers on southern Asia. Records gathered by the Swedish survey ship Albatross in 1947 reveal a vast plateau of hardened lava for at least several hundred miles southeast of Sri Lanka. The lava. evidence of a severe rupture in Earth's crust. fills most of the now submerged valleys that once existed there. The immense eruption that gave off the lava may have coincided with the downfall of Wallace's Southern Continent (aka Kumari Kandam). for which much zoological and botanical evidence exists that would give such a landmass a recent date. according to Allan and Delair. not the 180 million years that orthodoxy ascribes to such a continent. The lost cities of the Gulf of Cambay may have suffered a similar fate. at the same time or as a result of unstable tectonic conditions resulting from the initial disturbance - an asteroid. perhaps. or a displacement of Earth's crust - that caused the recent extinction and destruction of the ancient cities.



Among the troves of evidence compiled by early geologists and resurrected by Allan and Delair are Asian bone caves filled with diverse species of recent prehistoric animals from around the world. These carcasses could have been driven to their final resting places only by vast amounts of water moving across the globe. In light of Allan and Delair's work. other evidence such as India's Deccan trap, a vast triangular plain of lava several thousand feet thick covering 250.000 square miles, and the Indo-Gangetic trough. a gigantic crack in Earth's surface stretching from Sumatra through India to the Persian Gulf, can be interpreted as evidence of a cataclysm that ruptured Earth's crust. submerged various landmasses, and caused the great extinction.



Other titillating fragments of anomalous evidence suggest a pervasive if not advanced seafaring or even airborne culture having once existed in ancient India - for example. the identical nature of the Indus Valley script to that found at Easter Island on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Initial reports suggest. it should be noted. that the script found recently in the Gulf of Cambay resembles the Indus Valley script. According to certain south Indian researchers. the indecipherable scripts are written in a proto-Tamil language. which would link the culture of distant Easter Island and its famous megalithic statues with ancient southern India, Kumari Kandam - an idea echoed in the lore of Easter Islanders about a lost continent to the West from which their people originated.



With the recent advent of underwater archeology. records of the past are being rewritten. More research is needed. as well as more expeditions into treacherous waters and the depths of the world's oceans; but more than ever. textbook scenarios of prehistory are drowning of their own weight while scenes of a more glorious past rise to the surface via acoustic imaging. Past being prologue, those images are of interest not to academics alone, but to all who would solve the mystery of human origins.

11 - Pushing Back the Portals of Civilization For John Anthony West, the Quest for Evidence of Advanced Prehistoric Civilization Is Bearing New Fruit.

J. Douglas Kenyon

Just as an athlete's ego is bound up in winning and he feels miserable at losing the "Super Bowl," chuckles John Anthony West, "the egos of scholars and scientists are tied up in being right. They don't have much money and much fame and there's no glamour in it, and when someone comes along, like me, from out of left field they react like scalded cats." Tormenting the reigning breed of cats remains a favorite source of amusement to this self-appointed scourge of the "Church of Progress." For West, the modern Western version of civilization, with "its hydrogen bombs and striped toothpaste," is no match for its long-buried predecessors (both historic and otherwise), and scholars who disrespect the legacy of our ancient forebears West considers to be, at the very least, "idiotic."



When the saga of Atlantis Rising magazine began in November 1994, our cover story, " Getting Answers from The Sphinx ," featured the brewing storm surrounding research by West and the Boston University geologist Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D., indicating that the Sphinx of Giza was rain-weathered and thus thousands of years older than had been maintained by the Egyptological establishment. The controversy has hardly subsided.



Since that time, the writers Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval have joined the fray with enormous internationally best-selling books underscoring West's contentions and adding their own concerning the astronomical purposes of the Giza monuments. And while all four remain persona non grata among most professional Egyptologists, their ideas - publicized worldwide in numerous media accounts - have achieved an unprecedented notoriety and forced the establishment to break from its standard practice of simply ignoring impudent notions and actually, on occasion. to argue the merits of them.



The result has not been particularly encouraging to the Church of Progress. The September 16, 2002 Fox TV/National Geographic special entitled " Opening the Lost Tombs: Live from Egypt " aired live from Giza in prime time was but the latest of many broadcasts to give major time to the heretical views of West, Schoch, Hancock, and Bauval. Despite all efforts of the debunkers, support for their notions continues to snowball.



At the heart of the controversy are the mysteries surrounding the birth of civilization. Did we, as the academic establishment insists, emerge from the Stone Age about five thousand years ago and only then begin the slow and painful ascent to our present "lofty" heights?

Or was there, in remotest antiquity, a fountainhead of civilization that rose to levels of sophistication equal if not superior to our own, and yet which vanished so completely that hardly a trace of it remains? If the latter is true and can be proved, the implications are profound indeed, if not earthshaking. That West and Schoch may be producing the first scientifically irrefutable evidence for the existence of that progenitor culture could be one of the most important scholarly achievements of our time, and one that could rain convincingly on the parade of the Church of Progress.



Atlantis Rising talked with John West about his ongoing struggle with the establishment and new evidence he has accumulated to buttress and perhaps clinch his case for the existence of a sophisticated prehistoric civilization. He also talked about his debt to an obscure Alsatian archeologist whose contribution to our understanding of ancient Egypt is only beginning to be appreciated.



THE LEGACY OF SCHWALLER DE LUBICZ

The master plan to understanding the wisdom of ancient Egypt is already in place, West believes, but does not, as you might expect, come from within the precincts of the Egyptological establishment. The massive work of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, assembled during an exhaustive study of the Temple at Luxor from 1937 to 1952, amounts to nothing less than "a unified field theory" of the philosophy and science of ancient Egypt. Schwaller de Lubicz is best known for his comprehensive, seminal work on ancient Egypt entitled The Temple of Man. He founded the "symbolist" school of Egyptology, of which West is currently the most outspoken proponent. West's book, Serpent In The Sky , remains the most complete commentary in English on Schwaller de Lubicz's work.

Schwaller de Lubicz was looking for evidence of ancient insight into the principles of harmony and proportion. In particular he was looking for knowledge of the Golden Section (a ratio mathematically expressed as 1 plus the square root of 5 over 2), which has been credited to the Greeks but not the Egyptians. Using measurements that were then in the process of determination by a French team of architects and archeologists, Schwaller de Lubicz was able to demonstrate that, indeed, the Golden



Section was applied at Luxor and with a complexity and sophistication never achieved by the Greeks.



Here was irrefutable evidence of advanced mathematical development existing more than a thousand years before Pythagoras. "Obviously this didn't spring out of nowhere," says West. "New Kingdom Egypt (Luxor was built by Amenhotep III in the fourteenth century B.C.E.) is in the tradition of Middle and Old Kingdom Egypt, so by extension, Schwaller de Lubicz pretty much proved that Egypt understood harmony and proportion from the reputed very beginnings of its existence, back to 3000 B.C.E. or a bit earlier." All of which suggests the likelihood of still older developments, coinciding nicely with the theories of West and Schoch about the age of the Sphinx, which, interestingly, were based upon a casual observation by Schwaller de Lubicz that the Sphinx had been weathered by water. "Egypt was in n o way a kind of magnificent dry run for Greece, which in turn gave rise to our brilliant civilization," says West. "The Greeks themselves acknowledged the greater fount and source of the wisdom that came later. In other words, civilization has been on a downhill slide since ancient Egypt. In fact, ancient Egypt itself was on a downhill trip from its very beginnings because, strangely enough, it reached its absolute peak - the height of its prowess and sophistication - fairly early in the Old Kingdom around 2500 B.C.E... and pretty much everything thereafter was a lesser accomplishment, even the fabulous temples of the New Kingdom."



"But,... " the question has always persisted, "if there was an advanced civilization in prehistory, where are the artifacts?" That is a question that John West has long sought to answer, and with the discoveries at the Sphinx he has made a significant first step.



But the undeniable physical remains of that mother culture, he insists, are in no way limited to the Sphinx. Several sites, potentially as compelling, provide evidence that thousands of years before the oldest acknowledged remnants of the so-called Old Kingdom, Egypt was host to a highly developed civilization. One previously unnoticed site West now believes might well make his case.



SECRETS OF THE RED PYRAMID

Usually attributed to the fourth-dynasty pharaoh Snefru, the Red Pyramid of Dahshur is part of a military reservation and was until recently closed to the public. A near equal in total volume to the Great Pyramid (credited to Snefru's son Cheops), the Red Pyramid (so named for its pink granite) slopes a bit more gently. Fairly accessible now, it offers visitors the opportunity to climb a steep staircase on the northern face and then descend the 138 steps of a long, sloping corridor to the first of two high-gabled chambers that, though horizontal, resemble the grand gallery of the Great Pyramid.

At the end of the second chamber are wooden steps, provided by the Egyptian antiquities department, leading to still a third gabled chamber, which, rising to a height of fifty feet, is at right angles to the first two. Standing on a wooden balcony, the visitor is able to look down into a kind a pit surrounded by a jumble of worked stones. No sign of a burial of any kind has ever been found in the Red Pyramid.



When this writer first looked at that place, several points seemed obvious. The stones in the pit were clearly of a different type from those of the structure above. Moreover, while the pyramid had been built with great precision, the arrangement of the pit was chaotic. And even though the stones were doubtless cut artificially, their edges had been rounded in a way that suggested water weathering. I remarked to West that I thought the place must be part of a much older site, over which the Red Pyramid had been built. possibly to memorialize a sacred spot. Whatever weathering had occurred clearly had been brought to a halt by the sheltering pyramid. In making these observations. I thought I was doing no more than stating the obvious. but to my amazement. John West became very excited. "I think you're absolutely right." he exclaimed. "I don't see any other possible explanation."



As it turned out, this was not the first time he had wondered about the meaning of that chamber. "I'd been into that Red Pyramid half a dozen times since it reopened a couple of years ago." he recalled. "puzzling over this strange. so-called burial chamber. which didn't look as though it had been plundered." John West continues. "Why is it in that state of disarray? It looks as though it's been taken apart. but then it doesn't look as though it's been taken apart. Not once did it occur to me that. hey. this was once outside - not inside. Yes. these are old. deeply weathered stones. The trick now is to get the geologists over there and see just what kind of stones they are." The experts, like Schoch, West believes, will also find ways of dating the place. Currently West is of the opinion that the stones are hard limestone. and very old indeed. "I think it was a sacred spot to the very ancient Egyptians." he said. "and they built the whole Red Pyramid around it." Throughout the rest of our tour. West referred again and again to what he said he felt was a "truly important discovery," even dubbing the chamber Kenyon's Cavern, and adding that he felt the place might serve. as nothing had yet, to "clinch" his case. "The opposition is always saying," complains West, "how can the Sphinx be the only evidence of this earlier civilization? Well. it isn't. But then they go selectively deaf when I start pointing out the other pieces of evidence." Before the discovery in the Red Pyramid, he looked at the Mastaba Fields. southwest of the Sphinx, where a structure once served as the tomb of Khentkaus, the queen of Menkaure - the builder, it is said, of the third and smallest Giza pyramid. The ruined southwest corner of the structure reveals that the 4.500-year-old repair covers blocks that are obviously much older and which bear the same telltale signs of water weathering that caused all the furor at the nearby Sphinx.

And there are other anomalies, "The two-stage construction of the Khafre pyramid (the Greek historian Herodotus is our only source for the attribution) - the giant blocks on the bottom and on the paving, the slabs around the base - are absolutely out of sync with the other Old Kingdom masonry that constitutes that pyramid. The same applies to the Menkaure pyramid. And there's the deeply weathered shaft east of the midpoint of the Saqqara pyramid."



The Osirion at Abydos

(PHOTOGRAPH BY J. DOUGLAS KEN~YON)



He also sees strange inconsistencies between the valley temple near the Sphinx and other constructions supposedly by Chephren. Moreover, West believes that the so-called Osirion at Abydos, with its massive undecorated granite blocks, is certainly much older and of a style completely alien to the neighboring temple of Osiris built by Seti I in the New Kingdom: "To attribute these two temples to the same builder is like saying the builders of the Chartres cathedral also built the Empire State Building." West is hopeful that the many feet of Nile silt strata that once covered the Oseirion, and which still surround it, will eventually be carbon-dated and that this will put the matter to rest.

West's evidence is not confined to architecture. In the Cairo Museum. for instance. is a small vase associated with the dawn of the Old Kingdom. Made from the hardest of diorite. the precision of its form and its perfectly hollowed interior are impossible to explain in terms of any known tooling techniques of the time. It could be much older. as could many similar vases that have been discovered.



And. of course. there are the pyramid texts carved into the walls of fifth and sixth dynasty pyramids. The consensus among experts is that the texts were copied from much older sources. Just how much older is the question. On that same trip to Egypt. West was accompanied by Clesson H. Harvey. a physicist and linguist who has spent the better part of forty years translating the pyramid texts. The texts, Harvey believes, reveal that the Egyptian religion originates not millennia. but rather tens of millennia before the Old Kingdom. West thinks Harvey is on the right track.



Despite the weight of the evidence. though. West is not expecting established Egyptology to give ground quickly. "It's very similar to the Church of the Middle Ages and its rejection of Galileo's heliocentric solar system. The centrality of humanity in God's scheme wasn't something they were prepared to give up easily... Now, the idea of a much more ancient source of civilization is a very hard thing for Egyptologists to acknowledge. And it's not just that civilization is older - but that it was sophisticated and capable of producing technological feats that we can't reproduce."



TOWARD A PROPER EGYPTOLOGY

When it comes to proposing a suitable course for Egyptology. West is not ungenerous with his advice. Ph.D.'s in the field. he feels. would be better earned on challenges more meaningful than inventorying Tutankhamen's underwear. In fact. he can reel off dozens of suitable projects for more enlightened research. He would, for example, like to see the kind of meticulous architectural studies that Schwaller de Lubicz did on the temple of Luxor done elsewhere.

Studies of that type. he feels. should be applied to certain temples to determine the harmonics. proportions. measures. and so on. "The temples have been surveyed. but nobody's looked at their geometric breakdowns - how they grow from the core sanctuary into the finalized temple. It's through that kind of study that you would come to understand the esoteric doctrine, mathematical, geometric, harmonic, et cetera, attached to each of the gods or principles." West also believes that a study of gestures in temple art would yield much insight. Another possible line of research has to do with the systematic effacements on temple walls. He has observed that the careful selection. in many temples. of certain images to efface indicates not the work of later religious fanatics. but indeed the carefully considered actions of Egyptian priests who saw one era ending and another dawning and were taking the appropriate measures.



So far. though. there appears to be no rush to pick up his gauntlet. Yet, if the present surge of interest in what he and Schwaller de Lubicz might call "a return to the source" continues, an emerging generation of scholars, equipped with new information and deeper insight, may soon venture into terrain where few of their predecessors have dared to go. Back to Egypt - The Land of Kem



12 - New Studies Confirm Very Old Sphinx Orthodox Protests Notwithstanding. Evidence for the Schoch/West Thesis Is Growing Robert M. Schoch. Ph.D.

For the past ten years. I have been working closely with John Anthony West on the redating of the Great Sphinx of Giza. The traditional date for the statue is circa 2500 B.C.E.. but based on my geological analysis. I am convinced that the oldest portions of the Sphinx date back to at least circa 5000 B.C.E. (and John West believes that it may be considerably older still). Such a chronology. however. goes against not just Classical Egyptology. but also many long-held assumptions concerning the dating and origin of early civilizations. I cannot recall how many times I have been told by erstwhile university colleagues that such an early date for the Sphinx is simply impossible because humans were technologically and socially incapable of such feats that long ago. Yet, I must follow where the evidence leads.



My research into the age of the Great Sphinx led me to ultimately question many aspects of the "traditional" scientific worldview that. to this day. permeates most of academe. I got to a point where there were so many new ideas buzzing around in my head that I felt I had to organize them on paper. and this led me to coauthor the book Voices of the Rocks: A Scientist Looks at Catastrophes and Ancient Civilizations with Robert Aquinas McNally. in 1999.



The manuscript for Voices of the Rocks was completed in August 1998. Since that time I have learned of two independent geological studies of the Great Sphinx and its age. These studies go a long way toward both supporting my analysis and conclusions and rebutting the inadequate counterarguments of the critics.



In both cases they corroborate the primary conclusions of my original studies of the Great Sphinx, namely that the Sphinx and the Sphinx enclosure show evidence of significant precipitation-induced weathering and erosion (degradation), and the core body of the Sphinx and the oldest portions of the Sphinx temple predate the pharaohs Khafre (ca. 2500 B.C.E.) and Khufu (Khufu. or Cheops. a predecessor of Khafre. reigned about 2551-2528 B.C.E.).



The first study was undertaken by the geologist David Coxill and published in an article entitled "The Riddle of the Sphinx" in Inscription: Journal of Ancient Egypt. After confirming my observations on the weathering and erosion of the Sphinx. and pointing out that other explanations do not work. Coxill clearly states: "This [the data and analysis he covers in the preceding portions of his paper] implies that the Sphinx is at least 5.000 years old and pre-dates dynastic times." Coxill then discusses very briefly the seismic work that Thomas Dobecki and I pursued and my estimate of an initial date of 5000 to 7000 B.C.E. for the earliest parts of the Sphinx based on the seismic data. He neither supports nor refutes this portion of my work. but simply writes: "Absolute dates for the sculpturing of the Sphinx should be taken with extreme caution and therefore dates should be as conservative as possible - until more conclusive evidence comes to light." I can understand that he could take this stance. although perhaps I feel more comfortable with. and confident in, the seismic analysis we did. Coxill, in the next paragraph of his paper, continues: "Nevertheless, it [the Sphinx] is clearly older than the traditional date for the origins of the Sphinx - in the reign of Khafre, 2520-2490 B.C.E." Bottom line: Coxill agrees with the heart of my analysis and likewise concludes that the oldest portions of the Sphinx date to before dynastic times - that is, prior to circa 3000 B.C.E.



Another geologist, Colin Reader (who holds a degree in geological engineering from London University), has also pursued a meticulous study of weathering and erosion (degradation) features on the body of the Sphinx and in the Sphinx enclosure. This he has combined with a detailed analysis of the ancient hydrology of the Giza plateau, which has been published as a article entitled "A Geomorphological Study of the Giza Necropolis, with Implications for the Development of the Site" in Archaeometry. Like Coxill, Reader points out the problems and weaknesses in the arguments of my opponents.



Reader notes that there is, "a marked increase in the intensity of the degradation [that is, weathering and erosion] towards the west [western end] of the Sphinx enclosure." Reader continues, "In my opinion, the only mechanism that can fully explain this increase in intensity is the action of rainfall run-off discharging into the Sphinx enclosure from the higher plateau in the north and west... However, large quarries worked during the reign of Khufu [as noted above, a predecessor of Khafre, the "traditional" builder of the Sphinx] and located immediately up-slope, will have prevented any significant run-off reaching the Sphinx." Thus Reader concludes that, "when considered in terms of the hydrology of the site, the distribution of degradation within the Sphinx enclosure indicates that the excavation of the Sphinx pre-dates Khufu's early fourth dynasty development at Giza." Interestingly, Reader also concludes that the so-called Khafre's causeway (running from the area of the Sphinx, Sphinx temple, and Khafre Valley temple up to the mortuary temple on the eastern side of the Khafre pyramid), part of Khafre's mortuary temple (which Reader refers to as the "Proto-mortuary temple"), and the Sphinx temple predate the reign of Khufu.



I have come out strongly in favor of not only an older Sphinx, but also a contemporaneous (thus older) Sphinx temple (at least the limestone core being older than the fourth dynasty). Independently of Reader, John Anthony West and I have also concluded that part of Khafre's mortuary temple predates Khafre, but I had not published this conclusion or spoken of it at length in public, as I wanted to collect more corroborative evidence first. Reader has now come to the same conclusion concerning Khafre's mortuary temple. I am pleased to see his confirmation. I believe that there was much more human activity at Giza in pre-Old Kingdom times than has previously been recognized. I even suspect that the second, or Khafre pyramid, may actually sit on top of an older site or structure.



According to the Egyptologists John Baines and Jaromir Malek and as discussed in their book Atlas of Ancient Egypt, the Khafre pyramid in ancient times was referred to as the Great Pyramid while the Khufu pyramid (referred to in modern times as the Great Pyramid) was known in antiquity as "The Pyramid Which Is the Place of Sunrise and Sunset." Does the ancient designation of the Great Pyramid for the Khafre pyramid indicate that the site, if not the pyramid itself, was of supreme importance and predated many other developments and structures on the Giza plateau?



Reader tentatively dates the "excavation of the Sphinx" and the construction of the Sphinx temple, proto-mortuary temple, and Khafre's causeway to "sometime in the latter half of the Early Dynastic Period" (that is, circa 2800 to 2600 B.C.E.) on the basis of "the known use of stone in ancient Egyptian architecture." I believe that Reader's estimated date for the excavation of the earliest portions of the Sphinx is later than the evidence indicates. I would make three general points: 1. In my opinion, the nature and degree of weathering and erosion (degradation) on the Sphinx and in the Sphinx enclosure is much different from what would be expected if the Sphinx had not been carved until 2800 B.C.E., or even 3000 B.C.E. Also, mudbrick mastabas on the Saqqara plateau, dated to circa 2800 B.C.E., show no evidence of significant rain weathering, indicating just how dry the climate has been for the last five thousand years. I continue to believe that the erosional features on the Sphinx and in the Sphinx enclosure indicate a date much earlier than 3000 or 2800 B.C.E.



In my opinion, it strains credibility to believe that the amount, type, and degree of precipitation-induced erosion seen in the Sphinx enclosure was produced in only a few centuries. Reader points out, as I have previously, that even the Egyptologist Zahi Hawass (one of the most ardent "opponents" when it comes to my redating of the Sphinx) contends that some of the weathering and erosion (interpreted as precipitation-induced by Reader, Coxill and me) on the body of the Sphinx was covered over and repaired during Old Kingdom times - thus we can safely assume that the initial core body of the Sphinx was carved out much earlier.



2. Reader never addresses the seismic work that we pursued around the Sphinx, which is in part the basis I used to calibrate a crude estimate for the age of the earliest excavations in the Sphinx enclosure. In my opinion, the date estimate based on our seismic work is compatible with the type and amount of erosion and weathering seen in the Sphinx enclosure and also nicely correlates with the known paleoclimatic history of the Giza plateau. Some of my critics have suggested that our seismic studies simply recorded subsurface layers of rock rather than weathering per se.



Here I would point out that the differential weathering pattern that we recorded in the subsurface cuts across the dip of the rock layers and parallels the floor of the enclosure (as is to be expected of weathering). Furthermore, the dramatically shallower depth of the low-velocity layer immediately behind the rump of the Sphinx is totally incompatible with the notion that the seismic data simply records original bedding in the limestone.



3. I do not find dating the Sphinx on the basis of "the known use of stone in ancient Egyptian architecture" convincing. I would point out that massive stonework constructions were being carried out millennia earlier than circa 2800 B.C.E. in other parts of the Mediterranean (for instance, at Jericho, in Palestine). Even in Egypt, it is now acknowledged that megalithic structures were being erected at Nabta (west of Abu Simbel in Upper Egypt by the fifth millennium B.C.E.) and the predynastic "Libyan palette" (circa 3100-3000 B.C.E.), now housed in the Cairo Museum, records fortified cities (which may well have included architectural stonework) along the western edge of the Nile delta at a very early date. I find it quite conceivable that architectural stonework was being pursued at Giza prior to 2800 or 3000 B.C.E. Bottom line as far as I am concerned: Reader is one more geologist who has corroborated my basic observations and conclusion: The oldest portions of the Sphinx date back to a period well before circa 2500 B.C.E..



It is not only concerning the age of the Sphinx that there have been significant developments since the original publication of Voices of the Rocks. In June 1999. I participated in an amazing conference organized by Professor Emilio Spedicato of the University of Bergamo entitled "New Scenarios for the Solar System Evolution and Consequences in History of Earth and Man," at which I was invited to speak on the age of the Sphinx.



A number of scientists and researchers attended this conference. representing many "alternative," "heretical." and "catastrophic" viewpoints. In particular. the University of Vienna geologist Professor Alexander Tollmann discussed the work pursued by him in conjunction with his late wife, Edith Tollmann. The Tollmanns accumulated a mass of evidence supporting cometary impacts with Earth at the end of the last ice age. between some 13.000 and 9.500 years ago (between circa 11.000 and 7500 B.C.E.).



Another important researcher attending the "New Scenarios" conference was Dr. Mike Baillie. a dendrochronologist (one who studies tree rings) at the Queen's University in Belfast. Further supporting themes developed in Voices of the Rocks, Baillie has documented a series of "narrowest-ring events" in the Irish oak tree-ring chronology at the following dates: 3195 B.C.E., 2345 B.C.E., 1628 B.C.E., 1159 B.C.E., 207 B.C.E.. and 540 C.E.



As Baillie pointed out. these dates mark major environmental downturns and also the general time periods of major disruptions and changes in the history of human civilizations. Baillie also noted that some or all of these dates may be associated with cometary activity influencing Earth. Indeed, I believe that these dates. along with the date of 1178 C.E. elucidated by Professor Spedicato. may all represent periods of more or less intense cometary impacts somewhere on our planet. Also note that these dates appear to follow a roughly five-hundred- to one-thousand-year cycle.



Looking at each of these dates in turn. we can make a few casual observations and speculations: 3195 B.C.E.: Possibly this marks the final end of the "Sphinx culture" (a time that the Great Sphinx and other very ancient megalithic monuments were built). which. due to its collapse and the resulting cultural vacuum. paved the way for the dynastic culture of Egypt and other Mediterranean civilizations and the development of writing as we know it. 2345 B.C.E.: The early Bronze Age crisis. 1628 B.C.E.: The end of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt; dynastic changes in China. 1159 B.C.E.: The end of the Bronze Age. 207 B.C.E.: Social disruption in China and the Far East; the decline of various Hellenistic empires in the circum-Mediterranean region that cleared the way for the dominance of the Roman Empire. 540 C.E.: Collapse of the traditional Roman Empire. which ended the ancient world and set off the Dark Ages. 1178 C.E.: Social unrest and turmoil. particularly in the Pacific region and Asia (including the rise of the Mongols under Genghis Khan).

Based on the pattern above, I will not be surprised if our planet experiences another major cometary encounter during the twenty-first or early-twenty-second century. This predicated future event may have already been foreshadowed by the 1908 extraterrestrial impact (I believe it was cometary in origin) in the Tunguska region of Siberia .



Extraterrestrial events have recently been acknowledged as also playing a major role in the development of human culture in the very distant past. The March 3, 2000, issue of Science magazine includes an article on stone tools from southern China dated to approximately 800.000 years ago. What is particularly interesting about these tools is their association with tektites. glassy fragments of molten rock that resulted from a meteorite impact (the result of a comet or asteroid colliding with our planet). It seems that the impact scorched the landscape. dramatically altered the local environment. exposed the rocks from which the stone tools were ultimately manufactured. and paved the way for early human innovation. In the devastation of the impact and its aftermath. new opportunities for cultural development arose.



The Crab Nebula as seen from the Hubble Space Telescope. The lower of the two large stars seen in the box is the Crab Pulsar, which emits optical, as well as electromagnetic pulses.



Clearly the evidence continues to accumulate that extraterrestrial and. in particular, cometary events have directly influenced the course of human civilization. I stand by the ideas presented. and themes discussed. in Voices of the Rocks. More than ever, I believe we must learn from the past even as we prepare for the future. Let us hope that we learn in time.

Return to The Sphinx at Giza

13 - R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz's Magnum Opus

The Keys to Understanding the Wisdom of the Ancients Have Been Preserved Joseph Ray, Ph.D. From time to time, significant events occur unbeknownst to virtually everyone. Great discoveries, formidable inventions, and even profound legacies have been delivered to humanity in relative obscurity and sometimes against its unconscious collective will. Such an event occurred in late 1998 with the publication of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz's greatest work, The Temple of Man.



The Temple of Man is an accomplishment of truly Herculean proportions. Nothing written in the past two hundred years, with the exception of only one book, even approaches it in enormity of purpose, scope, subject matter, majesty, and profundity. It is also physically enormous, as well as beautiful, and to read it properly is a year's commitment. To comprehend it and finally to understand it may require additional years of effort, rereading, pondering, and, most significantly, revelation.



One needs to learn to read this book and then immerse oneself in it. Were one to do this, and assuming diligence, sincerity, determination, and some ingenuity by the reader, the outcome toward which all human life is aimed, the evolution of consciousness, is ensured. "Consciousness cannot evolve unconsciously," said G.I. Gurdjieff. His great work, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, conveys much of the occult and profound teachings set forth in The Temple of Man, requires similar effort, and can exert a similar effect upon the reader.



Essential in both is the reader's open-mindedness and state of receptivity, produced by consciously suspending mental reactions until the teachers (the ancient sages whose mode of thought is being transmitted) have completed their work and the transcribers of this knowledge, the authors, have exhausted their understanding.



Every man who attempts to fathom the profound expresses himself about it uniquely. This includes his turns of phrase, the ordering of his thoughts, and the very manner in which he thinks (by hops, leaps and bounds, one rung at a time, or in a direct line). To become his student, which is to say to place oneself in a state of maximum sensitivity to the ideas he expresses, one must familiarize oneself with his turns of phrase and mode of expression. To the extent that one becomes able to think, reason, and ponder in a fashion similar to one's teacher, a psychological fusion can occur. This fusion, by a sort of inner "resonance" in the reader-student, metaphorically speaking shakes loose the embedded knowledge from its innate repository, the "Intelligence of the Heart" and a fresh understanding emerges.



The more subtle, oblique, and ineffable knowledge is, the less suited is the cerebral intelligence to it and the more it will react against it. "Knowledge (or even elements of the knowledge) cannot be conveyed through writing alone; the symbolism of the image is indispensable," Schwaller de Lubicz says. The "symbolique," then, is "the concrete image of a synthesis that cannot be expressed in time..." and it is these images that evoke the synthesis. It may sound awkward, but the process is straightforward. True symbols appeal to the Intelligence of the Heart, where they draw knowledge from it. Ordinary language and the thought expressed in it, the currencies of cerebral intelligence, are ill suited to this knowledge and always distort it.



However, not only the pharaonic mode of thought but its mode of perception, as well, differed from our own. We are, says Schwaller de Lubicz, the victims of our own "mechanistic mentality" and as such suffer from a materialistic misunderstanding of nature. (It is worth noting that, ever since Schwaller de Lubicz's time, materialism has further extended its grip on human thought. Today, despite inaccuracy and verbal inefficiency, practically everything is described in terms of "amount" - e.g., a "fair amount" of: knowledge, accuracy, time, skill, speed, and/or any psychological resource. Not everything is quantity or volume!)



To become adept in the pharaonic mode requires effort, suffering, and experiment. Two shorter works by Schwaller de Lubicz, Nature Word and The Temple in Man, are desirable precursors to The Temple of Man, either new or in rereading. Casual readers need not be deterred either, for they may discover themselves being hooked by the beauty, interconnectedness, and depth of these extraordinary teachings of the ancient sages. This knowledge is for those willing to struggle, and Schwaller de Lubicz warns against concluding, "that the ancients meant to say something that we understand; rather one should try to find out why they expressed themselves thus." The Temple of Man is not a straightforward presentation of ancient teachings. Nor is it Schwaller de Lubicz's own path, recounted in somewhat objectified form but based upon his personal discoveries and illuminations. It is both and much more. Schwaller de Lubicz assimilated what the ancients taught: He allowed himself to be affected (impacted emotionally) by the symbolic language transcribed into the Temple of Luxor. This language transcends ordinary language, is vital and not dead, and thus is the only means of transmitting the ineffable to future humanity free of distortion.

The Temple of Luxor is a pedagogical device. built to embody and encode knowledge through the use of a variety of subtle cues (e.g.. the representation of an incorrect anatomical detail such as two left hands. a missing detail present on the other side of a wall). Painstakingly. the ancients integrated occult knowledge into visual. auditory. conceptual. and architectural symbolic expressions. In so doing. they specifically intended to bypass cerebral intelligence.

Their goal was to evoke from the student the sublime. evanescent knowledge they knew to be embedded in the student's Intelligence of the Heart. This true education. involving experience. emotional impact. and work (action). causes the student to become the knowledge. as opposed to remembering something. As Gurdjieff said, "A man is what he knows." True education is an end in itself. yet is also a means of consciousness evolution. for it incorporates its own form of suffering. The Temple of Man can teach the reader by means of Schwaller de Lubicz's experience rendered as his understanding. Our experience will be less rich. but understanding can develop because the ideas themselves vivify.



How will the "scholars" within the Egyptological establishment react to this seminal work? A handful may peruse it; many will avoid (i.e.. feign ignorance of) The Temple of Man. Some may describe the work as a concoction of Schwaller de Lubicz's fertile imagination. In this regard, it needs to be stated: No mere mortal ever, in history or in the future, could have an intelligence so vast, an imagination so fecund, and an integrative capacity so complete as to have made up, somehow or other, the contents of The Temple of Man. It proves itself in its very unimaginability. Moreover. many of the teachings and unifying conceptions in it can be found in sources entirely independent of ancient Egyptian thought. Consider the "science of correspondences" - knowledge that underlies the ancients' selection of symbols.



Swedenborg. who lived during the eighteenth century and never visited Egypt. wrote at length on the subject of "correspondences." and it became the title of one of his books. A section of Heaven and Hell is devoted to the subject. "The most ancient people. who were celestial men. thought from correspondence itself. as the angels do"; "The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world..."; "the knowledge of correspondences is now wholly lost." Indeed, the seminal Anthropocosmic principle, upon which correspondence depends and that underlies pharaonic teaching, is considered extensively by Swedenborg, who described the universe as "The Grand Man" and humanity as this in miniature. Schwaller de Lubicz uses the phrase "Colossus of the Universe" as he confirms and amplifies all that Swedenborg told us in 1758.



The Temple of Man is organized into six parts. It contains forty-four chapters and is presented in two large volumes. Chapter 27 onward concerns the particular architecture of the Temple of Luxor: These chapters contain 101 plates and about a third of the book's three hundred figures.



These latter chapters include commentaries on the plates and their subject matter. Occasionally, the style of presentation varies, as required by the topic. The earlier chapters form a basis for many of the later discussions. Some are difficult and some possibly are of lesser interest. When I felt that rereading a chapter would facilitate the growth of my understanding of it, I did so immediately. One must not be deterred by an apparent opacity of the text and the ideas therein that may be beyond present comprehension: Mental alchemy can and will occur.



Schwaller de Lubicz warns that "effort" is required. This effort is a form of suffering. And the ancient sages stated clearly that suffering is the engine for the evolution of consciousness: "It is suffering that causes the widening of consciousness," where suffering "is understood as a profound experience brought about by the conflict of consciousness, not as sorrow." Acquiring just some of the pharaonic mentality is suffering itself as the modern, "mechanistic mentality presents a formidable barrier," in Schwaller de Lubicz's words. He describes the nature of cerebral intelligence, ordinary thought, as constrictive and "centripetal."



Indeed, most of us live within the cage of ordinary consciousness established and maintained by the cerebral intelligence. Conversely, pharaonic mentality, the "noncerebral" Intelligence of the Heart, is expansive, synthetic (as opposed to analytic), intuitive, noncomparative, direct, and innate, and thus evoked. Getting there is one's personal death and life story: Suffer gladly.



Schwaller de Lubicz wrote The Temple of Man, "...first to show the means of expression used by the ancients to transmit knowledge," and "...second, to present an outline of the doctrine of the Anthropocosmos, the guide to the way of thinking of the sages." To fulfill this goal required the consideration and discussion of subjects seldom seen in occult, esoteric, or spiritual writings: Anthropocosmos, Pharaonic Calculation, Cosmic Principle of Volume, The Covered Temple, The Head, Crossing, The Knees, Receiving and Giving are examples.



One must acquire a good feeling for Elements, Consciousness, and Irreducible Magnitudes, as well as Symbolique, to begin to fully appreciate all of these latter chapters. This may take some time. As mentioned, however, even casual readers - that is, non-students - will find wise statements everywhere, conjectures verified now by time (this book is more than forty years old), and remarkable insights: The pages contain much spiritual food, some of which may be ingested raw. "The Anthropocosmic doctrine [holds that] each plant and animal species represents a stage in the evolution of consciousness..." Man is a microcosm of the macrocosm. "Thus the Universe is incarnate in man and is nothing but potential Man, Anthropocosmos." In this system, creation and generation are central; the forces of genesis and the moment of expansion are the subject matter.



Humanity, by the way, procreates but creates nothing. In applauding our pseudo-understanding of life because we genetically engineer a plant, clone a sheep, or grow a human pinna (ear) on a mouse's back, we succumb to pride and self-delusion, our great foibles.



Were modern humanity not so disordered in life, out of touch with nature, and imbalanced as well, gaining pharaonic insights would still be difficult. But we have developed the "cult of convenience" to a high order and live by another modern principle, that of "something for nothing." Inasmuch as, in the spiritual realm, payment is a principle, such a worldview further amplifies the impediments toward pharaonic mentality.



Those who have seen, generally, the hollowness of modern thought must be at pains to discover its effects in themselves, so invidious is its process. The need to be surrounded by people, sound, activity, even noise, arises in the psychological consciousness of the cerebral intelligence, which subsists on stimulation. Says Schwaller de Lubicz, most modern people (as of the 1950s) could not have "stood" the serenity that prevailed in ancient Egypt.





Schwaller de Lubicz tells us that, in order to grasp the essence of the Anthropocosmic teaching, we need to reestablish in our minds a proper notion of the term symbol. A symbol is not merely "any letter or image that is substituted for the development of an idea." Instead, a symbol is "a summarizing representation, which is commonly called a synthesis." This process "feels" like something, often exhilaration.



The ancients selected these symbols knowing virtually everything about the natural counterpart (the correspondent) from gestation to its death. Mental caution is necessary, however, and the tendency to "fix," by definition, the essence of the symbolic representation must be avoided. The qualities of a symbol are many and varied and not to be linguistically rigidified any more than molten lava. The symbol is alive, vital, and dynamic, because Anthropocosmic doctrine is a vitalist philosophy. "To explain the Symbol is to kill it..." and, indeed, the landscape of academic Egyptology is everywhere strewn with the carcasses of dead, unheard symbols. "Rational thinkers" believe we've passed beyond simplistic thinking. Rather, in the last two millennia, we have fallen into it.

Many concepts of modern thought are defined and understood differently in The Temple of Man - so many, in fact, that scientists, academics, and people generally, having unconsciously espoused a mechanical rationalism, will be forced to reject these ideas out of hand. "Cause and effect are not separated by any time." There exists a, "principle of the (present moment), mystical in character, that modern science ignores," says Schwaller de Lubicz. These and other similar statements cannot be reconciled with the current and opposing worldview. But one may examine the modern socio-scientific-technological state of the world in light of these ideas and, from so doing, draw tentative conclusions concerning the relative merit of the ancients' teachings.



The history of science demonstrates that we seldom build upon the great discoveries of preceding generations of scientists. Few physicists today know Kepler's laws of planetary motion; even fewer mathematicians appreciate that his unconventional use of the fractional notation of powers (e.g., X2/3 power) and the unique position he accorded the number 5 (which led to this) were a part of pharaonic mathematics thousands of years earlier. Modern science is as "pouring from the empty into the void," to quote Gurdjieff. Modern science, Schwaller de Lubicz says, is founded upon incorrect premises. We know kinetic energy, not vital energy, and we tamper with forces, powers, and processes we do not and cannot now understand: We are the Sorcerer's Apprentice.



Cerebral intelligence is based upon the sensory information conveyed to it by the major sensory systems. These are understood by the ancients in terms of both their natural, exoteric function (to provide the brain with information) and their esoteric, spiritual function. One cannot but be amazed, again, at the subtlety of the insights they conveyed. For example, "the faculty of discernment, located in the olfactory bulb, is the seat of judgment in man..." Well, the olfactory bulb is a so-called primitive structure of the brain with no direct connections to the cortex, the "advanced" gray matter. Nevertheless, apparently in deference to its unique anatomical characteristics, the ancients accorded olfaction one of the three secret sanctuaries in the head of the Luxor temple, Room V.



The moral sense, sexuality, and the physiological distribution of vital energy are combined in the relevant symbol, the cobra. Here in Room V of the temple is located "conscience." Goodness has a spiritual fragrance (a fact noted by Swedenborg. who mentioned that the ancient Egyptians were the last to fully understand the science of correspondences).



Subtlety is all the more difficult to acknowledge and recognize when what is taught conflicts diametrically with what people already believe. Ironically. we seldom have evidence that appears to contradict the ancients' teachings. which typically go beyond our accepted facts.



Schwaller de Lubicz includes a lengthy discussion of the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus. This papyrus (from Luxor in 1862) was translated after 1920 by the renowned Egyptologist J.H. Breasted. The effort convinced him of the elevated status of ancient Egyptian science and mathematics (as it did others) but apparently modern Egyptologists remain uninfluenced by his writing. An extensive anatomical dictionary of the skull. head. and throat (also in hieroglyphics) enables the reader to comprehend the many cases of head injury described in the papyrus. Despite the ancients' lack of a really good source of head injury cases (e.g.. automobile accidents). their knowledge of clinical neuroanatomy was detailed and correct. without the benefit of EEGs. CAT scans. and magnetic resonance imaging.



The ancients described a human as comprising three interdependent beings. each having its own body and organs. Of course. all were essential and important. However. the head was especially so. for it was the seat of the spiritual being. There. the blood was spiritualized. infused with vital energy prior to coursing through the corporeal and sexual bodies. These bodies. vivified by the spiritual being. live a lifetime without knowing it in a state of ignorance or self-delusion.



Modern humanity has struck an iceberg of its own making. Those forces we have tampered with and let loose. but which we do not understand. threaten our annihilation. We have a role in cosmic metabolism but are unable to fulfill it. We must cease fiddling while our planet burns. cease occupying ourselves with liposuction. with killing birds to kill insects. with poisoning the soil to kill weeds. with polluting air and water. Any sane person can see our way of "life" has become unnatural. a condition the ancients foresaw.



Everyone's consciousness needs to expand. to evolve: We need to become aware of a great deal that. right now. escapes us. This can occur by choice - the price is some suffering. "And now that the temple of Luxor has shown us the way to follow. let us begin to explore the deeper meaning of the teaching of the pharaonic sages." wrote Schwaller de Lubicz. We shall discover along the way what a trivial price we are asked to pay. Back to Egypt - The Land of Kem

14 - Fingerprinting the Gods

A Bestselling Author Is Making a Convincing Case for a Great but Officially Forgotten Civilization J. Douglas Kenyon Although few people would question the popularity of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, no academic worth his salt ever dared to say the movie was more than a Hollywood fantasy. either. So when the respected British author Graham Hancock announced to the world in 1992 that he had actually tracked the legendary Ark of the Covenant of Old Testament fame to a modern-day resting place in Ethiopia. serious eyebrows everywhere twitched upward. Nevertheless. objective readers of his monumental volume The Sign and the Seal on both sides of the Atlantic soon realized that Hancock's case. incredible though it seemed. was not to be easily dismissed. The exhaustively researched work went on to enjoy widespread critical acclaim and to become a best seller in both America and the United Kingdom as well as the subject of several television specials.



Hancock's writing and journalistic skills had been honed during stints as a war correspondent in Africa for The Economist and The London Sunday Times. Winner of an honorable mention for the H. L. Mencken Award ( The Lords of Poverty, 1990). he also authored African Ark: Peoples of the Horn, and Ethiopia: The Challenge of Hunger. In The Sign and the Seal. Hancock was credited by The Guardian with having, "invented a new genre - an intellectual whodunit by a do-it-yourself sleuth..." Apparently, though, the success of The Sign and the Seal only whetted the writer's appetite for establishment chagrin. His subsequent book, Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization , sought nothing less than to overthrow the cherished doctrine taught in classrooms worldwide. that civilization was born roughly five thousand years ago.



Anything earlier. we have been told. was strictly primitive. In one of the most comprehensive efforts on the subject ever - more than six hundred pages of meticulous research - Hancock presents breakthrough evidence of a forgotten epoch in human history that preceded. by thousands of years. the presently acknowledged cradles of civilization in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Far East. Moreover, he argues, this same lost culture was not only highly advanced but also technologically proficient. and was destroyed more than 12.000 years ago by the global cataclysm that brought the ice age to its sudden and dramatic conclusion.



Kirkus Reviews called Fingerprints of the Gods "a fancy piece of historical sleuthing - breathless but intriguing. and entertaining and sturdy enough to give a long pause for thought."



Graham Hancock discussed Fingerprints of the Gods with Atlantis Rising, wherein he indicated that the book was enjoying the kind of favorable media attention that helped to make The Sign and the Seal an American hit. Interviewers. Hancock felt. were generally positive and open to his ideas. Though the reception among academics had been something less than cordial, that was to be expected. "One of the reasons the book is so long," he explained, "is that I've really tried to document everything very thoroughly so that the academics have to deal with the evidence rather than me as an individual, or with what - they like to think - are rather vague, wishy-washy ideas. I've tried to nail it all down to hard fact as far as possible." Nailing down the facts took Hancock on a worldwide odyssey that included stops in Peru. Mexico, and Egypt. Among the many intriguing mysteries that the author was determined to investigate fully were: Ancient maps showing precise knowledge of the actual coastline of Antarctica. notwithstanding the fact that the location has been buried under thousands of feet of ice for many millennia.



Stone-building technology - beyond our present capacity to duplicate - in Central and South America. as well as Egypt.



Sophisticated archaeoastronomical alignments at ancient sites all over the world.



Evidence of comprehensive ancient knowledge of the 25.776-year precession of the equinoxes (unmistakably encoded into ancient mythology and building sites. even though the phenomenon would have taken. at a minimum. many generations of systematic observation to detect. and which conventional scholarship tells us was not discovered until the Greek philosopher Hipparchus in about 150 B.C.E.).



Water erosion of the Great Sphinx dating it to before the coming of desert conditions to the Giza plateau (as researched by the American scholar John Anthony West and the geologist Robert M.

Schoch. Ph.D.).



Evidence that the monuments of the Giza plateau were built in alignment with the belt of Orion at circa 10.500 B.C.E. (as demonstrated by the Belgian engineer Robert Bauval). Unfettered as he is by the constraints under which many so-called specialists operate, Hancock sees himself uniquely qualified to undertake such a far-reaching study. "One of the problems with academics, and particularly academic historians," he says, "is they have a very narrow focus. And as a result, they are very myopic." Hancock is downright contemptuous of organized Egyptology, which he places in the particularly short-sighted category. "There's a rigid paradigm of Egyptian history," he complains, "that seems to function as a kind of filter on knowledge and which stops Egyptologists, as a profession, from being even the remotest bit open to any other possibilities at all." In Hancock's view, Egyptologists tend to behave like priests in a very narrow religion, dogmatically and irrationally, if not superstitiously. "A few hundred years ago they would have burned people like me and John West at the stake," he says, laughing. Such illogical zealotry, Hancock fears, stands in the way of the public's right to know about what could be one of the most significant discoveries ever made in the Great Pyramid. In 1993, the German inventor Rudolph Gantenbrink sent a robot with a television camera up a narrow shaft from the Queen's Chamber and discovered what appeared to be a door with iron handles. That door, Hancock suspects, might lead to the legendary Hall of Records of the ancient Egyptians. But whatever is behind it, he feels it must be properly investigated.



So far, though, there has been no official action, at least not a public one. Citing episodes personally witnessed, he protests, "You have Egyptologists saying 'There is no point in looking to see if there's anything behind that slab' - they call it a slab, they won't call it a door - 'because we know there's not another chamber inside the Great Pyramid.'" The attitude infuriates Hancock: "I wonder how they know that about this six-million-ton monument that has room for three thousand chambers the same size as the King's Chamber. How do they have the temerity and the nerve to suggest that there's no point in looking?" The tantalizing promise of that door has led Hancock to speculate that the builders may have purposely arranged things to require technology of ultimate explorers. "Nobody could get in there unless he had a certain level of technology," he says. And he points out that even one hundred years ago, we didn't have the means to do it. In the last twenty years the technology has been developed and now the shaft has been explored, "and lo and behold, at the end is a door with handles. It's like an invitation - an invitation to come on in and look inside when you're ready." Hancock is far from sanguine about official intentions: "If that door ever does get open, probably there will be no public access at all to what happens." He would like to see an international team present, but suspects that instead, "what we're going to get is a narrow, elite group of Egyptologists who will strictly control information about what happens." In fact, he thinks it's possible that they've even been in there already. The Queen's Chamber was suspiciously closed for more than nine months after Gantenbrink made his discovery. "The story was given out that they were cleaning the graffiti off the walls, but the graffiti were never cleaned off. I wonder what they were doing in there for those nine months. There's what really makes me angry, that this narrow group of scholars control knowledge of what is, at the end of the day, the legacy of the whole of mankind." Gantenbrink's door is not the only beckoning portal on the Giza plateau. Hancock is equally interested in the chamber that John Anthony West and Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D., in the course of investigating the weathering of the Sphinx, detected by seismic methods, beneath the Sphinx's paws. Either location might prove to be the site of the "Hall of Records." In both cases, the authorities have resisted all efforts at further investigation.



Hancock believes the entire Giza site was constructed after the crust of the earth had stabilized following a 30-degree crustal displacement that destroyed most of the high civilization then standing. According to Rand and Rose Flem-Ath's When the Sky Fell: In Search of Atlantis, upon which Hancock relies, that displacement had moved an entire continent from temperate zones to the South Pole, where it was soon buried under mountains of ice. This, he believes, is the real story of the end of Plato's Atlantis, but the "A" word is not mentioned until very late in his book. "I see no point in giving a hostile establishment a stick to beat me with," he says. "It's purely a matter of tactics." The Giza complex was built, Hancock speculates, as part of an effort to remap and reorient civilization. For that reason he believes the 10,500 B.C.E. date (demonstrated by Bauval) to be especially important. "The pyramids are a part of saying this is where it stopped. That's why the perfectment, for example, to due north, of the Great Pyramid is extremely interesting, because they obviously would have had a new north at that time." Despite a determination to stick with the hard evidence, Hancock is not uncomfortable with the knowledge that his work is serving to corroborate the claims of many intuitives and mystics. On the contrary, he believes that, "the [clairvoyant ability] of human beings is another one of those latent faculties that modern rational science simply refuses to recognize. I think we're a much more mysterious species than we give ourselves credit for. Our whole cultural conditioning is to deny those elements of intuition and mystery in ourselves. But all the indications are that these are, in fact, vital faculties in human beings, and I suspect that the civilization that was destroyed, although technologically advanced, was much more spiritually advanced than we are today." Such knowledge, he believes, is part of the legacy of the ancients that we must strive to recover. "What comes across again and again," he says, "particularly from documents like the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts. which I see as containing the legacy of knowledge and ideas from this lost civilization. is a kind of science of immortality - a quest for the immortality of the soul, a feeling that immortality may not be guaranteed to all and everybody simply by being born. It may be something that has to be worked for. something that results from the focused power of the mind." The real purpose of the pyramids, he suggests, may be to teach us how to achieve immortality. But before we can understand. we must recover from the ancient amnesia.



Hancock believes we are a species with amnesia. "I think we show all the signs that there's a traumatic episode in our past that is so horrible that we cannot somehow bring ourselves to recognize it. Just as the victim suffering from amnesia as a result of some terrible episode fears awakening memory of that trauma and tries to avoid it. so we have done collectively." The amnesia victim is. of course. forced to return to the source of his pain and, "if you wish to move forward and continue to develop as an individual. you have to overcome it. You have to confront it. deal with it. see it face-to-face. realize what it means. get over it. and get on with your life." he says. "That is what society needs to be doing." In the institutional resistance to considering ancient achievement. Hancock sees a subconscious pattern based on fear: "There's a huge impulse to deny all of this. because suddenly all the foundations get knocked out from under you and you find yourself swimming loosely in space without any points of reference anymore." The process needn't be so threatening. though. "If we can go through that difficult experience and come out on the other side." he says. "I think we'll all emerge better from it. I'm more and more convinced that the reason we are so messed up and confused and totally disturbed as a species at the end of the twentieth century is because of this - because we've forgotten our past." If it is true that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. then there are lessons in our past that can be ignored only at our peril. Clearly written into the mythology of many societies are stories of cataclysmic destruction. Hancock cites the work of Giorgio de Santillana, of M.I.T., an authority on the history of science who is the coauthor, along with Hertha von Dechend, of the book Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission through Myth , in which the authors hypothesize that an advanced scientific knowledge was encoded into ancient myth.



Hancock points out. "Once you accept that mythology may have originated with highly advanced people. then you have to start listening to what the myths are saying." What the myths are saying. he believes. is that a great cataclysm struck the world and destroyed an advanced civilization and a golden age of mankind. And cataclysm is a recurrent feature in the life of the earth and will return.



The messages from many ancient sources. including the Bible. point to a recurrence of such a cataclysm in our lifetime. Notwithstanding such views. Hancock insists he is not a prophet of doom. His point is. he says. "We've received a legacy of extraordinary knowledge from the past. and the time has come for us to stop dismissing it. Rather. we must recapture that heritage and learn what we can from it. because there is vitally important information in it."



The stakes couldn't be higher. "I'm convinced that we're locked today in a battle of ideas." he says. "I think it's desperately important that the ideas that will lead to a recovery of our memory as a species triumph. And therefore we have to be strong. we have to be eloquent and argue clearly and coherently. We have to see what our opponents are going to do. how they are going to try to get at us. and the dirty tricks that they are going to try and play. We have to fight them on their own ground."



15 - The Central American Mystery

What Could Explain the Failure of Mainstream Science to Unravel the Origins of Mesoamerica's Advanced Ancient Cultures?

Will Hart

It has been twenty-three years, yet I remember the morning like it was yesterday. A mist shrouded the jungle above the Temple of the Inscriptions. A series of roaring sounds suddenly split the silence as a band of howler monkeys made their way through the trees. It startled me. I thought the sounds might be those of a jaguar, but the cacophony added to the sense of mystery.



My head was exploding. By the time I had reached Palenque, we had already visited dozens of archeological sites, from the northernmost part of Mexico down to the Yucatan Peninsula and Quintana Roo. I was steeped in questions and mysteries. Several things had become clear to me: The cultures that built the pyramids and other buildings had been advanced in the arts and sciences. I had seen many beautiful things, as well as mind-tugging enigmas.



The Olmec civilization surprised me the most. I had read about the Maya and knew of the Aztecs, but I was unprepared for what I found in Villahermosa: large stone heads with Negroid features and stone stelae carved with depictions of curious ambassadors. The figures clearly were not from any Mexican culture.



These artifacts were more than just a fascinating puzzle; they represented a headache for science. They were an anomaly. Who had carved the heads? Who had created the stelae? Where did they get the models for these heads and figures? These were questions that arose because of the way scientists have reconstructed the human history of Mesoamerica. Africans don't fit, nor do the cloaked Caucasian figures carved on the stelae. They shouldn't be there; however, they are surely there.



Scientists do not claim to have solved this enigma. Anthropologists and archeologists admit they do not know much of anything about Olmec culture. Thus. we don't know the ethnic group or the language and we know nothing of the Olmecs' social organization. beliefs. or traditions. No one has any idea why they carved the helmeted heads and then buried them. It doesn't make a lot of sense. We don't usually bury monuments (if that is what they are).



The only records we have are the monuments they left behind. which are impressive. But how do we understand them? Where do they fit into the mosaic of human history? There are no direct clues in Mexico. The Olmecs didn't leave us any written records. However. we do have a clue.



The Bible is an extremely important document. It doesn't matter whether or not you are a believer. It contains a very ancient accounting of human history compiled from a variety of early sources. At least. this is true of the Book of Genesis. But it is not always easy to decode. Do we find any reference in the Bible that might help us solve the Olmec enigma?



Turning to Genesis. chapter 11. we read: "Now the whole Earth used the same language and the same words." This indicates that there was a period in man's history when a global human civilization existed. We learn that during that epoch. men wanted to build a tower: "Come. let us build for ourselves a city. and a tower whose top will reach into heaven; and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole Earth." The fact that the Olmec civilization presents science with an anomaly indicates something quite profound: The data does not fit the current model. Scientists can't change the observable data; it is as hard as data can get. But they could change the model to conform to the data. There is the rub. Anthropologists and archeologists have a huge investment in that model. an intellectual edifice that has been built up over generations.



Scientists would rather ignore the tough questions and leave the Olmecs alone in the dim mists of forgotten antiquity. That is not a very scientific approach. Where is the pursuit of truth? What happened to the scientific method? It is just not acceptable. Why?



Some ancient society built the huge mound. dragged the basalt heads about sixty miles from the quarry to the burial site (those heads weighed from five to twenty-five tons). and carved the figures into the stelae. They wouldn't have gone to all that trouble unless the people the monuments represented were important to them. This is a logical assumption to make and we can only hope that scientists in the distant future will reach the same conclusion when they study Mount Rushmore.



Since we have the artifacts. we know that there has to be an explanation for who the builders were. As with any other mystery. you search for clues. You begin in the most likely places and work your way down the list: Mexico. The problem is that the Olmecs disappeared from the scene long before Cortez arrived. None of the cultures contemporary with the Aztecs made any references to the Olmecs; they seemed to know nothing about them. And no other Negroid heads have been found in Mesoamerica. Another curious fact is that the developmental period that must have preceded the mound building and head carving is nowhere in evidence.



The Olmecs just suddenly appeared. then disappeared!

It took me years of investigation to finally realize that the most probable answer was in the Bible. and ironically. the Bible was just about the last place I had thought to look. Did the Olmecs come from outer space. as some researchers have proposed? Not necessarily. For one thing. there is no evidence to support this theory. Second. the Negroid heads and the people depicted on the stelae are obviously human.



The idea that there was a global civilization in ancient times does not conform to the current model of science. However. it is corroborated by the reference in the Bible. The problem with the scientific model is that it can't explain the available data. and that is a serious issue that has many consequences. If the problem was limited to the Olmec civilization. we might just let it go. But there are artifacts in Egypt. South America. and other parts of Mexico that also don't fit the orthodox scheme.



Scientists have often shown a willful blindness regarding artifacts and developments that they can't explain using their belief system. Worse. they have either ignored key questions or discredited the facts. Many other hard facts. the remains of lost civilizations. and the cultural records of numerous peoples corroborate the Olmec enigma and the Bible.



References to a cataclysmic flood occur in 230 different cultures. Mayan history includes the story of how the Maya came from a land to the east that had been destroyed. Herodotus's History recounted of the tale of lost Atlantis. Accounts such as these may sound like romantic myths spun out of early imaginations; however. when you stand at an ancient site surrounded by strange ruins... you begin to wonder if they just might contain more than a grain of truth.



I climbed the steps of the Temple of Inscriptions and visited the tomb of Pacal. Then I decided to take a long trip down to the Rio Usamacinta. to Bonampak and Yaxchilan. It was one hundred miles of bad dirt road. heavily rutted in places. It finally became so muddy that we mired the van up to the axles. We had nearly reached the destination; Bonampak was a short walk. I visited Bonampak.



My next destination was Yaxchilan, a ruin secreted in the jungle about eight miles from Bonampak. I decided to try and hack my way there with a machete, against the advice of the natives, who had warned me: "La selva está cerrada!" They were right. I gave up after a grueling four-hour stint in which I traveled less than a quarter of a mile. spent mostly on my belly trying to avoid razor-sharp thorn shrubs. The insects were ravaging my body.



Yaxchilan is situated on the river and is alleged to have been the center of the flourishing Mayan civilization in this region. In February 1989, James O'Kon did manage to make it to this site, one that archeologists had been studying for a century. A particular mound of rocks caught O'Kon's trained eye. Scientists had dismissed it as a minor mystery but the amateur archeologist was also a forensic engineer, and he immediately knew what this mound really was: part of a bridge.



He turned to modern technology to help prove a bridge had once existed at the site. O'Kon, a former chairman of the forensic council of the American Society of Civil Engineers. had used similar techniques during routine investigations. He compiled field information at the Mayan site and used computers to integrate archeological studies, aerial photos, and maps; to develop a three-dimensional model of the site; and to determine the exact positioning and dimensions of the bridge.

O'Kon ended up making a startling discovery: The Maya had constructed the longest bridge span in the ancient world. When he finished his calculations and computer models, the bridge turned out to be a six-hundred-foot (200 meters) span, a hemp-rope suspension structure with two piers and three spans. It connected Yaxchilan, in Mexico, with its agricultural domain in the Petén (now Guatemala), where Tikal is situated.



What archeologists had assumed was an insignificant rock pile turned out to be part of a crucial finding: a pier twelve feet high and thirty-five feet in diameter. Aerial photos located a second support pier on the opposite side of the river. Both piers were constructed of cast-in-place concrete with an exterior of stone masonry, which is exactly how the Mayan pyramids were made.



In interviews O'Kon, who has been studying the ancient Maya for thirty years, said, "The Maya were very sophisticated mathematically and scientifically." He claimed that the design requirements of the Mayan bridge paralleled twentieth-century bridge-design criteria.



Today we marvel at the ruins and speculate on how and why the Maya built the ceremonial sites. We shouldn't forget that they were an advanced race. They understood astronomy. They had an accurate calendar. They understood the concept of "zero" at least seven hundred years before the Europeans did. The Maya built paved roads and, as we have now learned, the longest suspension bridge in the ancient world.



What occurred to me while standing atop another pyramid, at Coba in Quintana Roo, surveying a trackless jungle was the fact that the Maya had achieved all this in a jungle. No other advanced civilization I could think of had emerged from a jungle environment. It deepens the mystery of this lost race.



The sacbe are a system of roads that interconnect the sites. This is another feature that has long puzzled scientists and independent investigators alike. The roads were built up with rocks, leveled, and paved over with limestone cement. They vary in width from eight feet to thirty feet. The mystery is simple: Why would a "Stone Age" people without wheeled vehicles or dray animals need such an elaborate and sophisticated road network?



O'Kon turned his attention to the sacbe after finishing his work on the bridge and discussed the fact that he had found the sixty-mile road that extended from Coba to Yaxuna to be as straight as an arrow with a negligible deviation. His studies have revealed the Maya were not Stone Age (he refers to them as "technolithic"). They didn't use iron. because the nearest mines were 1.500 miles away. O'Kon claims. "They used jade tools and they were harder than steel." You almost have to stand at a site and imagine the scene as it was during the peak of Mayan civilization to really grasp the magnitude and appreciate what this culture achieved. Today we see ruins and jungle and pyramids that are little more than bare stone. crumbling buildings surrounded by wilderness. However. in that day. the pyramids were coated with stucco. They were smooth and they gleamed in the sun. The walls of the structures were painted in various designs of bright colors. The courtyards were paved. The flat white roads radiated out in all directions. connecting the centers.



Yet despite the Maya's advanced knowledge of astronomy and mathematics and their achievements in art and architecture. scientists still consider them a Stone Age culture.



Time is the essence of life. Human beings have always been immersed in it. and have kept track of it in one way or another: measuring it as minutes. hours. days. weeks. months. years. centuries. and millennia. We know of many of its dimensions and we have used them to our advantage. We know, supposedly, how long ago dinosaurs roamed the earth, how long it takes for various radioactive isotopes to decay, when our early hominid ancestors branched off from apes, the layout of the human genome, the exact dates of lunar and solar eclipses long into the future.



Time causes all living things to grow old and die. It seems so obvious and ubiquitous, we are like fish and time is water. We never ask the basic questions: What is time? Do we understand it? Is it more than a system of measurement, whether of the present moment or of the age of the universe?



All cultures certainly have a focus on time; however. the Maya had an obsession with it. They tracked and measured the synodic period of Venus. which is 584 Earth days. The 365-day Mayan calendar year was more precise than the Gregorian calendar. They devised three different calendrical systems: the tzolkin (sacred calendar). the haab (civil calendar). and the long count.



The tzolkin is a cycle of 260 days (thirteen months of twenty days each) and the haab is the solar cycle. These two calendars were combined in an interlocking fashion to produce a cycle of 18.980 days. which was known as a calendar round. about fifty-two years.



Each day had a particular glyph and meaning ascribed to it. and at the end of the fifty-two-year cycle a renewal ceremony would be performed. The long count period lasted for about five thousand years. This was equivalent to an age. According to the Maya. humanity is in the fifth "Sun" or "Age." That will end about five thousand years from the beginning of their calendar. which started in 3011 B.C.E. and expires in 2012.



The longest cycle in Mayan cosmology is 26.000 years. which corresponds to the precession of the equinox. Why did the Maya have such a fascination with astronomy? Why did they create such an intricate ca