The Ancient Civilizations that Came Before: Self-Eradication, Or Natural Cataclysm?

The Ancient Civilizations that Came Before:

Self-Eradication, Or Natural Cataclysm?

John Martin's The End of the World, which depicts the "destruction of Babylon and the material world by natural cataclysm”. (Public Domain)

By Zakari Bziker

 

Humanity has grown so old that it has forgotten its infancy, and the origin of man is shrouded in mystery.

Conventional wisdom states that humanity was primitive in the past and then things started evolving until people emerged from the state of barbarism to become smarter and more capable. New evidence however suggests otherwise; it suggests that maybe the dawn of history was characterized by forgotten high science and technology that far exceeds modern man’s expectations of the distant past.

This view is as old as history. The ancients spoke of their past as being glorious. The account of Atlantis in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus is the most vivid memory we have of this golden age.

Medieval manuscript of Plato’s Timeas, Latin translation. (Public Domain)

One of the more modern researchers to immerse himself into a serious study of Plato’s account was the U.S. Congressman Ignatius Loyola Donnelly (1831 – 1901). He believed Atlantis to be historically accurate and gathered all the then-available evidence in favor of an early mighty civilization that was far more advanced than it had any right to be.

A few years later in 1929, a mysterious map from 1513 called the Piri Reis map was found in Istanbul. The map shows the coasts of Antarctica and South America with modern exactitude. This map rekindled the view on advanced ancient civilizations and gave it a solid ground.

More recently the book ‘Worlds Before Our Own’ (1978) by Brad Steiger exposed new facts in favor of early advanced societies. Steiger found that some advanced human artifacts were located in the lowest primordial geologic strata whereas primitive ones are in upper strata. He labeled these anachronistic items that were seemingly out of their proper place in time, “Out-of-Place Artifacts”(OPA). His book fueled a series of later works that characterized the past 30 years with a sort of rebellion towards the current worldview of the ancient past.

If advanced societies did exist, what then brought about their destruction? There are mainly two possible past events. Either these people were so advanced that they destroyed themselves, or a natural force brought about their destruction. The evidence in favor of the second event is more substantial than the first. There are however some indications of ancient warfare.

Map of the world by Ottoman admiral Piri Reis, drawn in 1513. (Public Domain)

 Ancient Creation and Destruction

“When the first atomic bomb exploded in New Mexico, the desert sand turned to fused green glass. This fact, according to the magazine Free World, has given certain archaeologists a turn. They have been digging in the ancient Euphrates Valley and have uncovered a layer of agrarian culture 8,000 years old, and a layer of herdsman culture much older, and a still older caveman culture. Recently, they reached another layer, a layer of fused green glass.”

-      (New York Herald Tribune, 1947)

Uniformitarianists would not agree on the second scenario, that ancient civilizations might have been destroyed by natural forces. They speculate that the current earth features are the result of a process of millions of years. Cataclysmists on the other hand claim that these features are legacies of a worldwide catastrophe.

The uniformitarianist view however suffers some problems and inconsistencies, for example the inaccuracy of carbon dating. This dating method presupposes an already established balance between the forming and decaying of radioactive carbon that has been maintaining its equilibrium for millions of years in earth’s atmosphere. The C14 forming however is actually greater than its decaying. No state of equilibrium has been reached yet. As a result, the C14 ratio in the atmosphere (0.0000765%) cannot scientifically be used as a benchmark in dating fossils. In other words, we cannot know the age of fossils by which we determine the age of earth strata. Therefore, we cannot be certain about the actual age of the earth features.

A second example is the vertical petrification of trees running across multiple earth geological layers that are “supposed” to be belonging to different earth epochs. These penetrated layers could only suggest that they were formed in a short period of time, a result of a rapid cataclysmal sedimentation for example, but not a process of millions of years, otherwise the petrified trees would just be an impossibility.

Another example is the striking similarities found in myths and legends across the globe of a worldwide cataclysm—more specifically a deluge. Many similar myths on this account are found in Africa, China, North America, Australia, Sumeria, and in very remote cultures that had no way to connect with one another. It is estimated that are more than 500 ancient deluge legends similar to those mentioned in the Biblical and Qur’anic accounts. These myths are actually traces of a global collective memory referring to an actual occurrence in the distant past. Add to that the genetic evidence for a past near-extinction event that took place thousands of years ago, also known as population bottleneck event that supports the cataclysm view.

The deluge or great flood myth is found in cultures around the globe. (Public Domain)

The Golden Age of Skepticism and Scientism

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

—Carl Sagan

The postmodern world is a golden age of skepticism, relativism, materialism, presentism, obscuritarianism, and scientism. Such extraordinary claims would not make it to the public attention; not because the evidence is insufficient or invalid, but because it is prejudged by the current biased philosophical view of the modern age. Consequently the claim is not pursued and remains in the realm of pseudoscience. Believing in such claims presupposes a destructive event that ruined the face of the earth, thus the challenge of finding the evidence to prove it is even greater.

However, how much do we really know about the earth? We so much take the earth for granted; we think we know every inch of it when we do not even know ourselves. Absence of evidence is no evidence of absence. Dr. Melvin Cook, accomplished chemist and Nitro Nobel medalist, concluded that the earth underground oil deposits were formed as a result of a sudden and rapid burial of organic materials just a few thousand years ago. Could it be the case that underground oil deposits are prehistoric cities that turned into oil due to the sudden sedimentation and high pressure?

New Ways of Thinking

Speaking of concrete evidence, how about we start with the prehistoric structure that had been the tallest edifice on earth until the Empire State Building skyscraper was completed in 1931, and still is “the most colossal single building ever erected on the planet.”

The mighty pyramid of Khufu silently speaks louder than the chatter of skeptics. It is aligned to true geodetic North and its location is found to be the center of the earth landmass. This sort of precision entails a comprehensive knowledge of earth geography, e.g. mercator projection, which is something very unexpected of ancient Egypt. As for its structure, engineers and scientists conclude that it is impossible to replicate the great pyramid despite the sophisticated technology we have now, given the structure’s immensity and staggering precision.

 Speaking in numbers, engineer Markus Schulte speculates that the Great Pyramid alone would cost us some $35 billion. Investing such money in a colossal structure—one that is not even habitable, and without any expected profit—is something we certainly would not do today. In that sense, the question ‘how was it built?’ is less important than ‘why was it built?’

The Pyramids of Giza. (Bruno Girin, Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Science and technology change our expectations of the future. If one compares the sci-fi movies in the 50s with modern fare one can immediately feel how our attitudes towards the future have changed over time. This is due to our many breakthroughs and the new horizons and goals that seem attainable. Nevertheless, we fail to notice that advancing science and technology changes our attitudes towards the past, given the rise of new techniques and processes of investigating facts.

Building on the Ruins of the Ancestors

Painting of the many skeletons found at Mohenjo Daro (Pakistan), an exceptional ancient metropolis reduced to ruins for reasons unknown. Image source: Wikimedia

The literature of Egyptology is extensive. It is, however, drowned in the –isms: skepticism, relativism, materialism, presentism, obscuritarianism, and scientism. Nevertheless, some theories in outer circles do make sense or actually make more sense than the conventional ones.

We have the Orion Correlation Theory (1993) advanced by Robert Bauval that suggests the three pyramids at Giza plateau were built mirroring the three stars in the Orion constellation, also known as Orion’s belt. Not only that, but Bauval goes further to observe that a shaft within the Great Pyramid was, at some point in the past, oriented towards the middle star of Orion’s belt, which is the star representing the same pyramid.

“Khufu's” pyramid at Giza shown with inner shafts illustrated. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

These observations have huge implications when we relate them to an astronomical phenomenon called precession of the equinoxes. The phenomenon is a cycle the earth undergoes which lasts, according to NASA, 25,800 years. This cycle is manifested in the observable fact that the background stars and Zodiac constellations in the morning of the vernal equinoxes change across the millennia, making each Zodiac constellation last 2,125 years in those mornings when the day and night are of equal length. This cycle is either caused by the slow wobbling of the earth due to the moon’s gravitational pull, or by the whole solar system moving in a helical orbit.

The first scientific recognition of the precession cycle took place in ancient Greece (129 B.C.) by the astronomer Hipparchus. However, long before that, ancient Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica and Egypt somehow knew about the cycle and we do not know whether this knowledge was handed down from earlier times, or whether they scientifically discovered it themselves. This cycle tracks time across a large span and is, according to writer and journalist Graham Hancock, “extremely difficult to observe, and even harder to measure accurately, without sophisticated instrumentation.”

The Great Sphinx: Marking Time and Space

According to Bauval, the way the Giza plateau is related to the astronomical cycle is that the whole Giza site tracks time. In the immediate vicinity of the pyramids we have the Sphinx which faces east. The Sphinx shape resembles a lion, and thus Bauval claims it symbolizes the Zodiac constellation of Leo. In the morning of the equinoxes, the Sphinx, in the present era, faces the constellation of Pisces and is slightly shifting towards the constellation of Aquarius. However, if we run a computer simulation of earth’s precession backwards, we find that the Sphinx at some point in the remote past used to face the constellation of Leo from 10,970 to 8,810 BC. This is where the great pyramid becomes handy in specifying an exact date. When its shaft is aligned with the middle star of the Orion Belt we get the exact year of 10,450 B.C. Question: what is this date about?

The Sphinx of Giza, Egypt. Source: BigStockPhoto

The Orion Theory seems to give a better answer to the question ‘why’ but what about the ‘how’? No two blocks in the 2.3 million stone blocks have been found to be of equal size or weight in the great pyramid. How do they fit beautifully into a homogenous whole with an intended great precision? You would need a microprocessor to determine where each unique block, of an average of 2.5 to 15 tons, goes. It is now known in engineering and architecture that a structure that is built with unequal blocks is more likely to resist earthquakes and to last longer.

At this point it is even doubtful to think that ancient Egyptians designed and built the Giza Necropolis. We know many aspects of ancient Egyptian daily life with the minutest details. However, there is no single mention of: “Oh, by the way, we also built the pyramids!” in their hieroglyphs records and no hieroglyph inscription inside the three main pyramids.

The Grand Gallery of the Great Pyramid of Giza. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Some evidence even suggests that the site predates the legendary flood. Encrustations of natural salt were found inside the great pyramid when it was opened for the first time. Also, in his Histories, Herodotus also reported that he observed in the surrounding area of the pyramids seashells and signs of salt water calcification. All this makes one doubt the conventional knowledge of the pyramid builders, the time they were built, and why and how they were built.

Were Humans Recovering from Cataclysm?

One thing for certain is that the 10^th millennium BC is a significant date to the pyramid builders and to our conventional wisdom as well. It is when the late ice age ended, when wooden buildings and human settlements in the Americas appeared, along the domestication of animals. The remains of humans in caves, and a remarkable transformation marked with the introduction of farming, date back to the same era. All these sudden developments could signify two possible scenarios. The first is that humans were witnessing the most significant step in their long chain of evolution. The second suggests that humans were actually recovering from a worldwide cataclysm. The evidence does not matter, it is how we look at it that gives it meaning.

The ruins of Göbeklitepe in Turkey, the oldest temple in the world. What do these mysterious stones communicate to us about the very ancient past? Wikimedia Commons

One of course would not expect survivors of a cataclysm to build cities right from the start. They would have to spread out over the earth. Thus, keeping track of one another would not be possible due to the absence of a means of communication. This would eventually result in linguistic deviation, and distortion of historical accounts. Instead of progressing forward, man would have had to go through a phase of silence, struggling with nature, and using archaic tools. The knowledge we have about early archaic human cultures of the Lower Paleolithic period (Oldowan, Acheulean and Mousterian tool cultures) provides a fine description of post-cataclysm man trying to survive upon the ruins of their ancestors.

All cultures seem to have started emerging simultaneously with no substantial signs of preliminary phases in the era that followed the great decline. They went from being hunter-gatherers to becoming citizens with rights and responsibilities.

Upon the Ruins of the Ancestors

“How does a complex civilization spring full-blown into being? Look at a 1905 automobile and compare it to a modern one. There is no mistaking the process of ‘development’. But in Egypt there are no parallels. Everything is right there at the start. The answer to the mystery is of course obvious but, because it is repellent to the prevailing cast of modern thinking, it is seldom considered. Egyptian civilization was not a ‘development’, it was a legacy.”

 – John Anthony West, 1979

This emergence of civilization was undoubtedly supported by ancient wisdom and this wisdom still lingers even up to present day. The heliocentric picture of the world has its earliest traces in the ancient Sanskrit texts (e.g. Yajnavalkya, ca. 900 BC, Aryabhata ca. 550 BC) and later Aristarchus of Samos (circa 230 BC). This makes the Copernican revolution rather a revival of lost knowledge. Add to that, the 12 Zodiac constellation artificial division with a precision of 30 degree in each constellation is untraceable to any culture.


“Contrary to history as we know it, in that remote period we call ‘prehistory’, there subsisted an embarrassing wealth of astronomical knowledge. And may I suggest that the more one looks into it, the more one feels that a race of scientific giants has preceded us.” 

– Johnathan Gray, 2004

Electricity was not actually discovered but rediscovered. There are many items made of aluminum that have been found in archaeological sites, e.g. in the burial site of General Zhou Chu (265-420 AD) while aluminum is believed to have not been created until 1854 because the process of making it strictly requires electricity.

Ancient Hindu texts describe great battles taking place and an unknown weapon that causes great destruction. A manuscript illustration of the battle of Kurukshetra, recorded in the Mahabharata.  Image source: Wikipedia

Besides physics, ancient maps gave a push to maritime exploration. The Piri Reis map perplexes modern man for its accuracy and its depiction of Antarctica long before the continent’s discovery in 1819. The map shows with fine exactitude the continent without the ice cap, detailing mountains and rivers that correspond to the Swedish-British-Norwegian seismic-echo-sounding profile in the Antarctic Expedition of 1949 (Ohlmeyer, the USAF Commander, in a letter to Charles Hapgood, 1960).

In the meantime, academia preaches that the Antarctica landmass has been under the ice cap long before mankind even ‘evolved’.

“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.”

— Tom Clancy

Any ‘anomaly’ in science could be a twinkle of a new discovery or paradigm shift that may be left unnoticed or even denied for fear of misoneism—the hatred of change. A true scientific and intellectual honesty will never be achieved unless we take into consideration the anomalous by trying to adjust or even reconstruct our theoretical assumptions accordingly— until the anomalous, as Kuhn puts it, becomes expected. We are in a desperate need not only for a paradigm shift but, most importantly, for a scientific renaissance.

Knowing our past is of great value and has huge implications on the present and future. The past, the present and the future are all one chain of events. The more we know about the past, the more we know ourselves and where we are headed. The question that remains is: do the pyramids point to the date of the cataclysm?

References

Amos W., Hoffman J. I. 2010. Evidence that two main bottleneck events shaped modern human genetic diversity. Proc. R. Soc. B 277, 131–137. From http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2842629/
Bauer, S. (2007). The history of the ancient world: From the earliest accounts to the fall of Rome. New York: W.W. Norton.
Cook, M., & Cook, M. (1967). Science and Mormonism; correlations, conflicts and conciliations,. Salt Lake City: [Deseret News Press].
Cox, R. (1997). The pillar of celestial fire: And the lost science of the ancient seers. Fairfield, Iowa: Sunstar Pub.
Dey, G. (2012). Gospel train. S.l.: Authorhouse.
Fix, W. (1978). Pyramid odyssey. New York: Mayflower Books.
Harold G. Coffin, (1969). Research on the Classic Joggins Petrified Trees. Creation Res. Soc. Annual pp. 35-44, 70
LaViolette, P. (2005). Earth under fire: Humanity's survival of the Ice Age. Rochester, Vt.: Bear & Co.
Malkowski, E. (2010). Ancient Egypt 39,000 BCE: The history, technology, and philosophy of Civilization X. Rochester, Vt.: Bear & Co.
New York Herald Tribune newspaper, 16 Feb. 1947.
Rupke, N.A., (1966). Prolegomena to a Study of Cataclysmal Sedimentation. Research Society Quarterly, Nutley, 3(1), 16-37.
Wohl, E. (2000). Inland flood hazards: Human, riparian, and aquatic communities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bauval, R., & Gilbert, A. (1994). The Orion mystery: Unlocking the secrets of the Pyramids. New York: Crown.
Dinwiddie, J. (2001). Revelations: The Golden Elixir. Lincoln: iUniverse.
Gray, J. (2004). Dead men's secrets: Tantalising hints of a lost super race. Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse.
Kuhn, T. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
West, J. (1979). Serpent in the sky: The high wisdom of Ancient Egypt. New York: Harper & Row.

From Ancient Origins @ http://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion/ancient-civilizations-came-self-eradication-or-natural-cataclysm-part-i-003967 and http://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-editorials/ancient-civilizations-came-building-ruins-ancestors-part-2-003977

For more information about lost civilisations see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/lost%20civilisations

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