Yo-Duh Blog

[masteryoda]

Piri Reis Map

Introduction
In 1929, a group of historians found an amazing map drawn on a gazelle skin.
Research showed that it was a genuine document drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in the sixteenth century.
His passion was cartography. His high rank within the Turkish navy allowed him to have a privileged access to the Imperial Library of Constantinople.
The Turkish admiral admits in a series of notes on the map that he compiled and copied the data from a large number of source maps, some of which dated back to the fourth century BC or earlier.

The Controversy
The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how Piri Reis managed to draw such an accurate map of the Antarctic region 300 years before it was discovered, but that the map shows the coastline under the ice. Geological evidence confirms that the latest date Queen Maud Land could have been charted in an ice-free state is 4000 BC.


On 6th July 1960 the U. S. Air Force responded to Prof. Charles H. Hapgood of Keene College, specifically to his request for an evaluation of the ancient Piri Reis Map:

6, July, 1960
Subject: Admiral Piri Reis Map
TO: Prof. Charles H. Hapgood
Keene College
Keene, New Hampshire


Dear Professor Hapgood,
Your request of evaluation of certain unusual features of the Piri Reis map of 1513 by this organization has been reviewed.
The claim that the lower part of the map portrays the Princess Martha Coast of Queen Maud Land, Antarctic, and the Palmer Peninsular, is reasonable. We find that this is the most logical and in all probability the correct interpretation of the map.
The geographical detail shown in the lower part of the map agrees very remarkably with the results of the seismic profile made across the top of the ice-cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949.
This indicates the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the ice-cap.
The ice-cap in this region is now about a mile thick.
We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled with the supposed state of geographical knowledge in 1513.

Harold Z. Ohlmeyer Lt. Colonel, USAF Commander

The official science has been saying all along that the ice-cap which covers the Antarctic is million years old.
The Piri Reis map shows that the northern part of that continent has been mapped before the ice did cover it. That should make think it has been mapped million years ago, but that's impossible since mankind did not exist at that time.

Further and more accurate studies have proven that the last period of ice-free condition in the Antarctic ended about 6000 years ago. There are still doubts about the beginning of this ice-free period, which has been put by different researchers everything between year 13000 and 9000 BC.
The question is: Who mapped the Queen Maud Land of Antarctic 6000 years ago? Which unknown civilization had the technology or the need to do that?

It is well-known that the first civilization, according to the traditional history, developed in the mid-east around year 3000 BC, soon to be followed within a millennium by the Indus valley and the Chinese ones. So, accordingly, none of the known civilizations could have done such a job. Who was here 4000 years BC, being able to do things that NOW are possible with the modern technologies?

All through the Middle Ages were circulating a number of sailing charts called "portolani", which were accurate maps of the most common sailing routes, showing coastlines, harbors, straits, bays, etc. Most of those portolani focused on the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas, and other known routes, just as the sailing book which Piri Reis himself had written.
But a few reported of still unknown lands, and were circulating among few sailors who seemingly kept their knowledge about those special maps as hidden as they could. Columbus is supposed to have been one of those who knew these special sailing charts.

To draw his map, Piri Reis used several different sources, collected here and there along his journeys. He himself has written notes on the map that give us a picture of the work he had been doing on the map. He says he had been not responsible for the original surveying and cartography. His role was merely that of a compiler who used a large number of source-maps. He says then that some of the source-maps had been drawn by contemporary sailors, while others were instead charts of great antiquity, dating back up to the 4th century BC or earlier.

Dr. Charles Hapgood, in his book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (Turnstone books, London 1979, preface), said that:

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

Piri Reis had probably come into possession of charts once located in the Library of Alexandria, the well-known most important library of the ancient times.
According to Hapgood's reconstruction, copies of these documents and some of the original source charts were transferred to other centers of learning, and among them to Constantinople. Then in 1204, year of the fourth crusade, when the Venetians entered Constantinople, those maps begun to circulate among the European sailors.

Most of these maps - Hapgood goes on - were of the Mediterranean and the Black sea. But maps of other areas survived. These included maps of the Americas and maps of the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans. It becomes clear that the ancient voyagers travelled from pole to pole. Unbelievable as it may appear, the evidence nevertheless indicates that some ancient people explored Antarctic when its coasts were free of ice. It is clear too, that they had an instrument of navigation for accurately determining the longitudes that was far superior to anything possessed by the peoples of ancient, medieval or modern times until the second half of the 18th century. [...]

This evidence of a lost technology will support and give credence to many of the other hypothesis that have been brought forward of a lost civilization in remote times. Scholars have been able to dismiss most of those evidences as mere myth, but here we have evidence that cannot be dismissed. The evidence requires that all the other evidences that have been brought forward in the past should be re-examined with an open mind." (Ibid.)

In 1953, a Turkish naval officer sent the Piri Reis map to the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Bureau. To evaluate it, M.I. Walters, the Chief Engineer of the Bureau, called for help Arlington H. Mallery, an authority on ancient maps, who had previously worked with him.
After a long study, Mallery discovered the projection method used. To check out the accuracy of the map, he made a grid and transferred the Piri Reis map onto a globe: the map was totally accurate. He stated that the only way to draw map of such accuracy was the aerial surveying: but who, 6000 years ago, could have used airplanes to map the earth??

The Hydrographic Office couldn't believe what they saw: they were even able to correct some errors in the present days maps!!
The precision on determining the longitudinal coordinates, on the other hand, shows that to draw the map it was necessary to use the spheroid trigonometry, a process supposedly not know until the middle of 18th century.

Hapgood has proved that the Piri Re'is map is plotted out in plane geometry, containing latitudes and longitudes at right angles in a traditional "grid"; yet it is obviously copied from an earlier map that was projected using spherical trigonometry! Not only did the early map makers know that the Earth was round, but they had knowledge of its true circumference to within 50 miles!

Hapggod had sent his collection of ancient maps (we will see the Piri reis map was not the only one...) to Richard Strachan, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hapggod wanted to know exactly the mathematical level needed in order to draw the original source maps. Strachan answered in 1965, saying that the level had to be very high.
In fact Strachan said that in order to draw such maps, the authors had to know about the spheroid trigonometry, the curvature of the earth, methods of projection; knowledge that is of a very high level.

The way the Piri Reis map shows the Queen Maud land, its coastlines, its rivers, mountain ranges, plateaus, deserts, bays, has been confirmed by a British-Swedish expedition to Antarctic ( as said by Olhmeyer in his letter to Hapggod); the researchers, using sonar and seismic soundings, indicated that those bays and rivers etc, were underneath the ice-cap, which was about one mile thick.

Charles Hapggod, in 1953, wrote a book called "Earth's shifting crust: a key to some basic problems of earth science", where he made up a theory to explain how Antarctic had been ice-free until year 4000 BC. (visit the Bibliography )
The theory summing up is as follows:
The reason Antarctic was ice-free, and therefor much warmer, it is to be found in the fact that, at one time, its location wasn't the south pole. It was located approximately 2000 miles further north. Hapgood says this "would have put it outside the Antarctic Circle in a temperate or cold temperate climate".

Read more information about Pole Shifting.

The reason why the continent moved down to its present location has to be found in a mechanism called "earth-crust-displacement". This mechanism, not to be confused with the plate-tectonics or the continental drift, is one whereby the lithosphere, the whole outer crust of the earth "may be displaced at times, moving over the soft inner body, much as the skin of an orange, if it were loose, might shift over the inner part of the orange all in one piece". (Charles Hapgood, "Maps of the ancient sea-kings", cited, visit the Bibliography for more info).

This theory was sent to Albert Einstein, which answered to Hapgood in very enthusiastic terms. Though geologists did not seem to accept Hapgood's theory, Einstein seemed to be as much open as Hapgood saying:
"In a polar region there is a continual deposition of ice, which is not symmetrically distributed about the pole. The earth's rotation acts on these unsymmetrically deposited masses, and produces a centrifugal momentum that is transmitted to the rigid crust of the earth. The constantly increasing centrifugal momentum produced in this way will, when it has reached a certain point, produce a movement of the earth's crust over the rest of the earth's body...." (Einstein's foreword to "Earth's shifting crust" p.1)

Anyway, whether Hapgood's theory is correct, the mystery still thrills.
The Piri Reis map is something which is not supposed to exist. I mean that by no means there was supposed to be anyone that far back in time able to draw a map of such precision; in fact the relative longitudinal coordinates are totally accurate, as stated by Official studies on the map that we saw above.
And this is a demonstration of impossible technology: the first instrument to calculate the longitude in a approximately correct way has been invented in 1761 by the english John Harrison.
Before there was no way to calculate the longitude in an acceptable way: there could be errors of hundreds kilometers....
And the Piri Reis map is just one of several which show supposedly unknown lands, impossible knowledge, precision which still today would surprise........

In fact Piri Reis himself admitted he based his map on way older charts; and those older charts had been used as sources by others who have drawn different maps still of great precision.
Impressive is the "Dulcert's Portolano", year 1339, where the latitude of Europe and North Africa is perfect, and the longitudinal coordinates of the Mediterranean and of the Black sea are approximated of half degree.
An even more amazing chart is the "Zeno's chart", year 1380. It shows a big area in the north, going up till the Greenland; Its precision is flabbergasting. "It's impossible" says Hapgood "that someone in the fourteenth century could have found the exact latitudes of these places, not to mention the precision of the longitudes..."
Another amazing chart is the one drawn by the Turkish Hadji Ahmed, year 1559, in which he shows a land stripe, about 1600 Km. wide, that joins Alaska and Siberia. Such a natural bridge has been then covered by the water due to the end of the glacial period, which rose up the sea level.

Oronteus Fineus was another one who drew a map of incredible precision. He too represented the Antarctic with no ice-cap, year 1532.
There are maps showing Greenland as two separated islands, as it was confirmed by a polar French expedition which found out that there is an ice cap quite thick joining what it is actually two islands.

As we saw, many charts in the ancient times pictured, we might say, all the earth geography. They seem to be pieces of a very ancient world wide map, drawn by unknown people who were able to use technology that we consider to be a conquer of the very modern times.
When human beings were supposed to live in a primitive manner, someone "put on paper" the whole geography of the earth. And this common knowledge somehow fell into pieces, then gathered here and there by several people, who had lost though the knowledge, and just copied what they could find in libraries, bazaars, markets and about all kind of places.

Hapggod made a disclosure which amazingly lead further on this road: he found out a cartographic document copied by an older source carved on a rock column, China, year 1137. It showed the same high level of technology of the other western charts, the same grid method, the same use of spheroid trigonometry. It has so many common points with the western ones that it makes think more than reasonably, that there had to be a common source: could it be a lost civilization, maybe the same one which has been chased by thousands years so far?



Summary
The Piri Re'is map is often exhibited in cases seeking to prove that civilization was once advanced and that, through some unknown event or events, we are only now gaining any understanding of this mysterious cultural decline. The earliest known civilization, the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, appear out of nowhere around 4,000 B.C. but have no nautical or maritime cultural heritage. They do, however, speak reverently of ancestral people who were like the "gods" and were known as the nefilim.

Here is a summary of some of the most unusual findings about the map:


Scrutiny of the map shows that the makers knew the accurate circumference of the Earth to within 50 miles.


The coastline and island that are shown in Antarctica must have been navigated at some period prior to 4,000 B.C. when these areas were free of ice from the last Ice Age.

The map is thought to be one of the earliest "world maps" to show the Americas. Early scholars suggested that it showed accurate latitudes of the South American and African coastlines - only 21 years after the voyages of Columbus! (And remember, Columbus did NOT discover North America - only the Caribbean!) Writing in Piri Re'is own hand described how he had made the map from a collection of ancient maps, supplemented by charts that were drawn by Columbus himself. This suggests that these ancient maps were available to Columbus and could have been the basis of his expedition.

Piri Re'is own commentary indicates that some of his source maps were from the time of Alexander the Great (332 B.C.).

 

[masteryoda]

Between 17,000 years ago and 7000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, terrible things happened to the world our ancestors lived in. Great ice caps over northern Europe and north America melted down, huge floods ripped across the earth, sea-level rose by more than 100 metres, and about 25 million square kilometres of formerly habitable lands were swallowed up by the waves.

Marine archaeology has been possible as a scholarly discipline for about 50 years - since the introduction of scuba. In that time, according to Nick Flemming, the doyen of British marine archaeology, only 500 submerged sites have been found worldwide containing the remains of any form of man-made structure or of lithic artefacts. Of these sites only 100 - that's 100 in the whole world! - are more than 3000 years old.

This is not because of a shortage of potential sites. It is at least partly because a large share of the limited funds available for marine archaeology goes into the discovery and excavation of shipwrecks. This leaves a shortage of diving archaeologists interested in underwater structures and a shortage of money to pay for the extremely expensive business of searching - possibly fruitlessly - for very ancient, eroded, silt-covered ruins at great depths under water. Moreover, with the recent exception of Bob Ballard's survey of the Black Sea for the National Geographic Society, marine archaeology has simply not concerned itself with the possibility that the post-glacial floods might in any way be connected to the problem of the rise of civilisations. (http://www.ngnews.com/news/2000/11/11032000/blacksea_3252.asp)

In 1997 a chain of mountains almost 2000 kilometres long and more than 3000 metres high was discovered in the South Pacific. Nobody ever knew the mountains were there before because they are under water - as, in fact, is 70 per cent of the earth's surface. Marine archaeologists -- who are looking for targets much smaller than mountain-ranges under the sea -- can therefore be forgiven for finding just 100 submerged sites more than 3000 years old in the past half century. Even at the crude mapping level, it is one of the absurdities of scientific priorities that we now have a better map of the surface of Venus than we do of the 225 million square kilometres of our own planet's sea-floor.

On land it is obvious that archaeology still has much more work to do before it can honestly claim to have fully understood (rather than merely theorised about) the process by which the great civilisations of ancient history arose. Vast areas of the earth's surface - the Sahara Desert, for example (which was green for 4000 years at the end of the Ice Age) - have hardly benefited from the attentions of archaeologists at all. And even in countries like Egypt which have been intensively excavated for more than a century new discoveries can still be made that call established views and chronologies into question.

In December 2000 excavations at Abydos in Upper Egypt by a University of Pennsylvania/University of New York team demonstrated that the intriguing religious practise of boat burial - for example the so-called solar boat of Khufu buried on the south side of the Great Pyramid of Giza - is very likely to have predynastic origins. A fleet of 14 boats found buried at Abydos a decade ago were originally assigned to the mortuary complex of Pharaoh Khasekhemwy of the Second Dynasty (circa 2675 BC). However, after thoroughly examining one of the boats (a sophisticated narrow-prowed "sewn" boat about 23 metres long made of wooden planks lashed together with rope), the excavators now believe that "the ships were buried some centuries before Khasekhemwy's enclosure was built. The fleet may have been intended for use in the afterlife of a much earlier pharaoh, perhaps even Aha [circa 2920 BC], the First Dynasty ruler of Egypt..." (http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/abydos.html) If this is the case, since the boat-burials at Abydos are far from being the work of beginners, then it seems obvious that the practise -- and the entire wonderful religious apparatus that goes with it -- must predate the First Dynasty.

But by how much?

Nobody knows.

Another interesting development also announced in December 2000 was the discovery of a group of very unusual ancient tombs at Elkab in Upper Egypt. The Elkab tombs are thought to date to the Second Dynasty, although the site itself has yielded evidence of continuous occupation from 8000 years ago until about 2000 years ago. The tombs are circular stone structures (with diameters of 18 to 20 metres) which in two cases were carefully arranged around large natural boulders. They have been compared with the Neolithic funeral mounds of Europe and, as the Belgian excavators admit, are of a type "thus far unknown in Egypt". (http://www.usatoday.com/weather/science/archaeology/egyptdawn121200.htm)

So much then for the archaeologists having the whole picture about the evolution and development of any civilisation - even ancient Egypt which has been the subject of more archaeological investigation than any other.

But now let's remember as well that along continental margins and around islands across the world an area bigger than the Unites States of America was inundated at the end of the Ice Age: 3 million square kilometres (an area the size of India) was submerged around Greater Australia alone; another 3 million square kilometres went under around South-East Asia; the Florida, Yucatan and Grand Bahama Banks were fully-exposed off the Gulf of Mexico; huge areas of land were swallowed up in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the North Sea and the Atlantic, etc, etc, etc - the list really does goes on and on.

In my view the possibility of a serious "black hole" in scientific knowledge about recent prehistory is plausible, reasonable and worthy of consideration. I therefore propose that the conclusions of modern archaeology regarding the origins and early evolution of human civilisation should be treated as provisional until a comprehensive, global, marine-archaeological survey of continental shelves down to depths of at least 120 metres has been undertaken.

 

[masteryoda]

Hi all ...

I have slowly been re-reading some of my source material, mainly "Genest: The Second Book of Revelation" and have stumbled on some things which I had missed before. Not sure how I could have failed to grasp the significance of these things but I guess I was still an infant when it came to this study when I read the book the first time. It would have saved me a great deal of work and research but let's face it, research is never wasted !

Steve Nixon and I (and probably a myraid of others now) have been searching for some significance between Poussin, Teniers, geometry (mainly pentagrams) and such. I failed to grasp the significance of Professor Cornford's analysist and how it related to what Steve and I were searching for but it has now become very clear indeed.

Firstly let's take a look at Professor Cornford's diagram ...

What is not explained here is where he got this design from and on what it was based. It looks pretty but I could never see anything in it. Boy did I have blinkers on !

As I was re-reading Geneset I noticed these two pictures that I had obviously looked at before but did not realize what they contained. Allow me to post them now and allow you all to be absolutely amazed once again with the genius of David Wood.

Here is the first one. Although I had looked at it many times I had never really analysed it. I thought it was just an ordinary pentagram. I can only say here that although I had eyes I did not see !

How I failed to read and realize that the green lines in the above image was the painting Et in Arcadia Ego will forever be a msytery to me but I now see it all so very, very clearly as I am sure you will as well as soon as I post the second image. But before that look closely at the above image and notice the beauty of the measurements of 36" and where it appears. From A to X and from X to E all 36". And from B to H and from C to G

Notice how the extended projection of the shepherd staves meet at the circumference of the circle. Notice also the absolute perfect (?) meeting of the shepherd's staff on the right extended upwards to meet the apex of the pentagram. I can not see how anyone can call this a co-incidence any longer. For now allow me one more interesting discovery as always by David Wood, without a doubt a gifted or guided genius. The dimensions of the painting are listed on the offical site of The Louvre as:

Les Bergers d'Arcadie
Et in Arcadia ego
Tableau mythologique
Ecole française - Période baroque
Dimensions : 121 cm x 85 cm
approx. de 1638 à 1640

What is never explained, at least I have never seen it anywhere else but in Geneset, is a anaylist of what dimension the painting would have to be in order for the angles in the pentagram to equal 36 degrees. If we use the "offical" size of which there are many such as 87cm x 120cm we get the angle equalling 35 not 36 at the bottom. Allow me to quote from Geneset: ... The height of the painting is 34.288 inches which appears to contribute nothing until it is multiplied[sic] [I believe it should read] divided into the length which then gives us none other than 1.618033989 - PHI ! so what is this magical length that could do so much. It is 47.18964592 ! He then goes on to tie it into the length of The Temple of Rennes le Chateau.

Here I believe is a final proof, if it were needed, that Poussin was indeed following some sort of pentagrammal geometry in the compostion of this particular work. Now that I understand the plan a little better I will begin a systematic search of other paintings to see if and how this geometry was incorporated into other paintings throughout the Renassiance. Problematic still is what it all means and was it a map of some kind ? A sign ? A code ? A message ? A warning ?

For myself I still think it is a map and using this new information will start to search in new places which have been revealed by what's in this post. For I have stumbled onto other possibilities which I need to explore and I can hardly wait to try them out.

 

[Not Jake]

It's all quite interesting.

 

[SapphirePrima]

Can we get the short version

 

[SapphirePrima]

Can we get the short version

 

[nosebleed.]

Can we get the short version

Can we get the short version

Only if you ask one more time.

 

[kypade]

Piri Reis Map
<snipt>

Do you have a link for this?
It really is fascinating.

 

[SapphirePrima]

can we get the short version of this?

 

[kypade]

People invented airplanes 6000 years ago and used them to make maps of earth we couldnt make until 1960.

 

[kypade]

The second one says Atlantis exists.

The third one says all French painters were really mathematicians.

 

[SapphirePrima]

thanks

 

[Not Jake]

It seems to me that this is the kind of topic that would have thrived back in the Community of yonder, brimming with thoughtful posts and maybe a good joke or two about a pentagram focused on a vagina.

 

[kypade]

Yonder is a place, not a time. You were looking for "yore," I think.

 

[Holly Goodhead]

First one, aliens? ...

 

[Dew k. Mosi]

First one, aliens? ...

that's ok, Holly, just make a crude reference to genitalia and you will be up to your usual standard

 

[Holly Goodhead]

that's ok, Holly, just make a crude reference to genitalia and you will be up to your usual standard

How dare you insult my intelligence, assume the position!

 

[Carter]

Definately aliens.

Thats freaky ****

 

[RuntKiller]

if you really want to read things about this (piri reis map, etc.) pick up Fingerprints of the Gods....good book.

 

[War Lord]

The second one says Atlantis exists.

The third one says all French painters were really mathematicians.

I thought all French painters were cooks?

 

[War Lord]

if you really want to read things about this (piri reis map, etc.) pick up Fingerprints of the Gods....good book.

Another interesting book, it's probably out of print now but you might find it in a big city library, is called "Secrets of the Lost Races" by Rene Noorbergen.

He talks about how the ancients had access to air craft and the Hindu gods my not have been people, but names for radioactive elements because of the ages they supposedly lived to.

 

[dpm07]

This is actually old news. Those of us who have shown an interest in non-conventional exploration and archaeology are familiar with the subject material.

Map of the Ancient Sea Kings is considered the Definitive book regarding the Piri Reis Map. It is a very technical book which some people who are not intellectual enough, may find "boring". Charles H. Hapgood was considered the most well-known source of knowledge regarding this subject. He is dead now.

I personally own the book.

Here's a link which gives an abridged version of the subject material.
http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_1.htm

Graham Handcock is an excellent source of knowledge as well. I have read many of his books as well as David Hatcher Childress.

I will say that many museums refuse to comment on the subject even though the map has been authenticated. They simply will not talk about it.

 

[masteryoda]

Humanity's "Lost Civilizations"

By I. M. Oderberg


Several remarkable books have been published recently dealing with the evidence of lost civilizations and their astonishing knowledge of cycles of time. These books describe and assess remains that have either been misinterpreted or disregarded altogether as not fitting into the pattern of current theory. Taking a general view of the subject is Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization by Graham Hancock, (1) which provides widespread coverage of global evidence for the existence of an ancient civilization, including many informative illustrations.

Perhaps the most conspicuous case of an ancient civilization whose achievements are misinterpreted and ignored is that of Egypt. Most commentators briefly praise the structural perfection of the Great Pyramid of Giza, its two major companions, and the Sphinx, but only a few have the expertise or inclination to assess these achievements in technology or to explore the detailed astronomical orientations or the considerable knowledge of astronomy itself indicated by the early builders. Robert Bauval, a well-known Egyptian-born construction engineer, has co-authored two important books on these subjects. The Orion Mystery: Unlocking the Secrets of the Pyramids, written with Adrian Gilbert, (2) asks why the Pyramids at Giza were built, looks into the significance of the pyramid texts -- largely ignored since their discovery in the 1800s -- and explores the placement of the pyramids in relation to the main stars in the "belt" of Orion. This orientation was linked, moreover, to the precession of the equinoxes: that is, when the sunrise at the vernal equinox entered a new "location" or constellation of the zodiac. The authors cite evidence suggesting that the Great Pyramid may have been planned about 10,500 BC, even if built or completed later (c. 2450 BC), because the alignments are exactly calculated for the time when the constellation Leo rose at the vernal equinox, ushering in the "Age of Leo." (3) The plates and drawings are of the greatest importance in this publication, as is the case with the other books reviewed in this article.

Illustration:

Caption: As above, so below: the celestial configuration at sunrise on the spring equinox about 10,500 BC is reflected in the Giza pyramids and Sphinx. Osiris (the constellation Orion) reaches his southernmost point -- and closest proximity to earth -- marking the beginning of the 26,000-year precessional cycle. The arrangement of the three pyramids mirrors his belt of three stars, which lie directly on the north-south meridian. The constellation Leo rises in the east, where the Sphinx watches, marking the 2,160-year Age of Leo; and the Milky Way (the Egyptians' Celestial Nile) appears to flow into its earthly counterpart. (Diagram reproduced from The Mystery of the Sphinx, p. 219.)

Linked with the Egyptian evidence is a newly understood heritage of the proto-Mayan people of Central America. Both civilizations recorded events affecting Earth's peoples long ago when certain solar, planetary, and stellar interactions had a drastic effect upon our planet. The Maya Prophecies: Unlocking the Secrets of a Lost Civilization by Adrian Gilbert and Maurice M. Cotterell (4) cites these prophecies and their relation to shifting continents, climatic changes, and disasters (including earthquakes, etc.) -- all involving declining sunspot activity and changes in Earth's protective "veil" or Van Allen Belt. The authors discuss the mysterious origins of the Mayan people, and their concept of time. Interestingly, researchers who have investigated Egyptian and Mayan records and interpreted the time frame of these events in our own chronological reckoning have found that both give the period beginning around 11,000 BC as a significant date. The authors particularly discuss how the rise and fall of world ages and civilizations seem to coincide with the sunspot cycle, maintaining that reduced sunspot activity coincided with a decline in Mayan fertility and the sudden end of their civilization. Some of the prophecies deal with future events but, although it is still widely believed that history tends to repeat itself, the repetition can never be an exact replica of what has gone before. Local environments vary among themselves, and the energies involved vary in their expression and impact upon each other.

The evidence in these volumes includes a recognition of the ancient knowledge of the sun's precessional cycle when its rising at the spring equinox occurs in a new place within the zodiacal "houses," needing almost 26,000 years to complete the cycle. The late Professor Livio Stecchini (Ph.D. Harvard), an acknowledged expert in ancient measurement, found evidence of what seems to be the recording of the precessional cycle in the Denderah Zodiac, taken from the ceiling of an Egyptian temple, with the north and south lines of the plane indicated in different locations.

In his Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age (1966), Professor Charles H. Hapgood provided a wealth of material to support his subtitle, in the form of mathematical data, reproductions of old maps, as well as useful appendices of evidence and, perhaps most valuable, a chapter devoted to a "Civilization that Vanished." The four new books mentioned -- Hapgood is cited in two of them -- provide additional pointers to the existence of a former civilization of high technological achievement and considerable intellectual development, called by some "Atlantis." Certainly, advanced civilizations in the distant past point to the cyclic rise and fall of human cultures and races extending much further back into "prehistory" than currently accepted.

We are indebted to Plato for the name Atlantis, much hackneyed nowadays by all sorts of somewhat fanciful assertions. Some have noted the resemblance between Plato's description of the capital of his island of Atlantis and some structures in the Americas. We find in Teotihuacan, Mexico, for example, the remains of a large city dominated by two pyramids, with streets identified by astronomer Gerald Hawkins as oriented to stars: one in the constellation Ursa Minor, another in the Pleiades, a third to Sirius -- important also to the Egyptians because of their understanding of the Sothic cycle of 1,460 years, and so on. The Mayans themselves reported that an alien race (whom they called "gods") came over the seas and taught them symbolic writing and how to build pyramids. Some modern researchers speculate that these people were the Egyptians, or that Atlantis was located in the ancient Americas. It is possible, however, that the Egyptians and ancient Americans shared a common heritage, and that in the Western Hemisphere there are remains of colonies established as parts of a global empire or by survivors of disasters that destroyed the motherland. (5)

The devastating occurrences many thousands of years ago that provided the core of myths and legends among diverse peoples, must have resulted in the annihilation of millions. Survivors migrating to different parts of those lands above the seas could have inspired the stories of visits by "gods." Who were these brilliant individuals who seemed to be gods to those other survivors? Were they not the inheritors of a great civilization who transmitted their own heritage? If we truly appraise even the so-called "cyclopean remains" still existing in a few places, we would better appreciate the marvels of engineering skills and astronomical insights these vestiges suggest. Many such emerge in the books mentioned in this article, well-documented with photographs, diagrams, and statistic tables. Pictures often tell us more than thousands of words.

Plato stated that his Atlantean island sank 9,000 years before his time, about 11,500 years ago, but as it was the last large portion of Atlantis, those fleeing the dying civilization could have come to other lands thousands of years earlier. Orthodox archeologists tend to dismiss out of hand the evidence contained in these books, and downplay the truly remarkable technological ability apparent in ancient monuments: the skill to set up enormous, perfectly cut and dressed stones in accurate alignment with stars in constellations at times when our sun entered a new zodiacal "position" relative to earth. Many of the largest stones -- some 70 to 200 tons each -- could barely be hoisted into place by modern methods. But open-minded researchers not committed to the status quo are finding more and more evidence of prehistoric civilizations of considerable attainments.

(From Sunrise magazine, April/May 1997. Copyright © 1997 by Theosophical University Press)

 

[masteryoda]

Do you have a link for this?
It really is fascinating.

http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_1.htm

But be sure to check this site out.

http://www.grahamhancock.com/library/fotg/default.htm

 

[ben_thuggin]

fascinating.