Graham Hancock Talks Consciousness on C2C

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

This is a long and fruitful interview with Graham Hancock. He discusses the TED censorship fiasco, the follow-up to Fingerprints of the Gods now in development, as well as some in-depth background on his new historical fiction War God about the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The interview with Hancock starts around the 38 minute mark.

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Broken Things

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Some years ago, I found myself living in an area that, let's say, would not have been my first choice. Dog owner. Sometimes you have to take what you can get. It wasn't a bad little place but I was never comfortable there. And I started to have health problems. Allergies that I thought were under control worsened dramatically. I was just uncomfortable. The place, the entire area, simply felt... wrong. One evening, as I was coming off the highway and driving into the neighborhood, I had the distinct sense of moving through a membrane into a much darker, heavier energy, and the thought that came to me unbidden was "Indian burial ground." Suddenly, I was certain of it. I had been living on top of an Indian burial ground and that was why it had always felt so dreary, so dissonant, so corrupted.

Several years later, after I'd long been out of there -- I'd only been able to stand it briefly -- I was doing readings in new age bookshop. One of my clients there, I learned, had lived in the same neighborhood. She had also found it to be an unhappy, uncomfortable time. I mentioned my theory to her -- that I was convinced it was on an Indian burial ground. A few weeks later I received a note from here in the mail. It contained a newspaper clipping. There was some new construction in that area and they'd turned up a number of artifacts that seemed to indicate that they were digging on an Indian burial ground.

Some things you just shouldn't do.

So I was very saddened to hear that it's open season on ancient Mayan pyramids in Belize.

A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday.

The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial center dates back at least 2,300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.

"It's a feeling of Incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity ... they were using this for road fill," Awe said. "It's like being punched in the stomach, it's just so horrendous."

Indeed.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they can do much to prevent this kind of desecration in Belize. Even though the law technically protects pre-Hispanic ruins like this one, they lack the funding and infrastructure for enforcement. This is not the first time a Belizean ruin has been desecrated and it probably won't be the last. Similar destruction is occurring in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras.

I was reminded recently of the desecration of one of my most beloved sites: Teotihuacan. Many were sickened when Wal-Mart decided to build a store on an outer edge of the ancient complex. For me, it was particularly painful because of my time there -- a time when I experienced a kind of rebirth. Teotihuacan is magical, otherworldly. And Wal-Mart is evil.

In December, the New York Times revealed the massive bribery scheme that allowed Wal-Mart to build on protected land. In a recent blog post, archaeologist Dr. Donna Yates expounded on the damage allowed by Wal-Mart's alleged $24 million "investment."

We archaeologists often find our discipline difficult to explain to outsiders, specifically outsiders with an unyielding eye for unnuanced commercial development. Just because the core of Teotihuacán is massive and visible, doesn’t mean that the archaeology stops at the edge of the temple. Rather it extends, under the ground, in all directions, hidden from view but waiting to be exposed and studied. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it is not there.

. . .

It is this periphery, these outer zones of sites, that are most at risk for destruction from development. It is difficult to convince planning authorities to protect this kind of past simply because people cannot believe what they cannot directly see. Even worse, it is in these areas that the average people lived: the people who built the massive pyramids, not the people who lived in them. The archaeology of real life, of workers, of farmers, of craftspeople, of the everyday is the hardest to preserve. It gets paved over and destroyed.

. . .

I share in the outrage surrounding the allegations of corruption involved in this scandal, however I urge readers to not lose sight of what we may have lost. Luis Gálvez, a leader of the workers’ union of the state National Institute of Anthropology and History, has stated that the Walmart at Teotihuacan is an “offence against Mexico”. I would contend that it is more than that. It is an offence against our shared cultural heritage. Everyone who visits the site, everyone who climbs the Temple of the Sun to look out over the Valley of Mexico and imagine the vast ancient city, painted bright colours and sparkling in the Central American sun will either have to pretend not to see the Walmart or ask themselves why it is there.

Indeed a number of artifacts were turned up by Wal-Mart's construction crew.

They found the remains of a wall dating to approximately 1300 and enough clay pottery to fill several sacks. Then they found an altar, a plaza and nine graves. Once again, construction was temporarily halted so their findings could be cataloged, photographed and analyzed.

The ensuing firestorm resulting from that find was not enough to keep Wal-Mart from greasing the wheels of "progress."

Elsewhere in the complex, Teotihuacan is still slowly revealing its mysteries to more patient archaeologists.

Hundreds of mysterious spheres lie beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, an ancient six-level step pyramid just 30 miles from Mexico City.

The enigmatic spheres were found during an archaeological dig using a camera-equipped robot at one of the most important buildings in the pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacan.

Clearly there is much still be discovered through the painstaking process of archaeological examination that doesn't destroy the integrity of such ancient marvels. Yet, I'm not convinced that even archaeologists approach these sites in the right spirit. I have more than once had the experience of walking through museums and encountering angry spirits around items that they don't seem to want displayed.

After having communed with the spirits at Teotihuacan -- spirits who demanded offerings and placed conditions before we could even step onto some of the structures -- I am left heartsick at the lack of respect paid by a retailer already well known for cannibalizing communities. And I can't help thinking there will be a price to pay for helping itself to to this one.

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Viking Sunstone Discovered?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Add another reason to love crystals. Scientists now believe that simple calcite is the Viking Sunstone of legend.

Ancient lore has suggested that the Vikings used special crystals to find their way under less-than-sunny skies. Though none of these so-called "sunstones" have ever been found at Viking archaeological sites, a crystal uncovered in a British shipwreck could help prove they did indeed exist.

The crystal was found amongst the wreckage of the Alderney, an Elizabethan warship that sank near the Channel Islands in 1592. The stone was discovered less than 3 feet from a pair of navigation dividers, suggesting it may have been kept with the ship's other navigational tools, according to the research team headed by scientists at the University of Rennes in France.

. . .

Because of the rhombohedral shape of calcite crystals, "they refract or polarize light in such a way to create a double image," Mike Harrison, coordinator of the Alderney Maritime Trust, told LiveScience. This means that if you were to look at someone's face through a clear chunk of Icelandic spar, you would see two faces. But if the crystal is held in just the right position, the double image becomes a single image and you know the crystal is pointing east-west, Harrison said.

These refractive powers remain even in low light when it's foggy or cloudy or when twilight has come. In a previous study, the researchers proved they could use Icelandic spar to orient themselves within a few degrees of the sun, even after the sun had dipped below the horizon.

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Fingerprints of the Gods: The Sequel?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Graham Hancock has posted some details on a forthcoming sequel to Fingerprints of the Gods. The post on Facebook appears to be open to the public. Fingerprints was the first of Hancock's books I ever read. As I wrote here, it was put into my hands as if by magic and started a love affair with his work that has spanned more than a decade. So I am thrilled at the prospect of a newly updated version.

I thought I’d share two of the developments, one in the field of archaeology, one in the field of geology, that persuaded me some years ago that it was time to begin work on a sequel to “Fingerprints of the Gods”. Please note, however, that what I’m going to outline in this short post is only a very small part of the much wider range of accumulated evidence I’ll present in the sequel – powerful new discoveries and new understandings in many different fields that have come to light slowly, piece by piece during the past two decades. Taken together, I believe these new findings provide overwhelming support for the thesis I put forward nearly twenty years ago in “Fingerprints” of a titanic global cataclysm in the window between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago, around the end of the last Ice Age, that wiped out and destroyed almost all traces of a great global civilisation of prehistoric antiquity. I’m already well ahead with the research and I aim to complete writing of the book by December 2014 and to publish in the autumn of 2015.

Emerging from mainstream science – which has so often ridiculed and dismissed my work – the first piece of evidence that made me realise there was a new story to be told was proof that north America was struck by several pieces of a giant fragmenting comet 12,900 years ago (i.e. 10,900 BC), causing an extinction-level event all around the planet, radically changing global climate and initiating the sudden and hitherto unexplained thousand-year deep-freeze right at the end of the Ice Age that geologists call the Younger Dryas.



The second early clue was the discovery in Turkey of an extraordinary 12,000-year old megalithic site called Gobekli Tepe, which is on the scale of Stonehenge but 7,000 years older than any of the other great stone circles known to history anywhere else in the world. Furthermore the best megalithic work at Gobekli Tepi is the oldest and the site was deliberately buried 10,000 years ago only to be rediscovered, and to have its importance and mysterious nature recognised long after the publication of “Fingerprints of the Gods”.

According to orthodox history, the period of 12,000 years ago (10,000 BC) is the "upper palaeolithic", i.e. before "the neolithic", and our ancestors then are only supposed to have been hunter gatherers, and incapable of large-scale stone-cutting and engineering works. Yet the scale and perfection of the 12,000-year old megaliths at Gobekli Tepe speak of a civilisation that had already accumulated -- by that date -- thousands of years of experience of working with and setting up large blocks of stone weighing in the range of 10 to 20 tons each with one piece thought to weigh 50 tons. The site appears literally out of nowhere but even the most sceptical mainstream archaeologists (who recognise its importance but have kept very quiet about its implications for the stories we tell ourselves about the origin of civilisation) now admit that there must be a very long and so-far unrevealed background to the wonders of Gobekli Tepe. That background upsets all established models of the time-line of history and directly supports the thesis of a great civilisation, lost to history between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago, that I controversially put before the public in 1995 with “Fingerprints of the Gods”.

For a little more background on Gobekli Tepe and a few observations on how it speaks to some of Hancock's previous work, see here. Also, posted above is a Coast to Coast interview with Hancock in which he discusses lost civilizations and cataclysms that form the underpinnings for Fingerprints.

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Viking Mystery

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Archaeologists closer to solving the riddle (???) of why the Vikings left the barren wasteland that was Greenland after the end of the Medieval Warming Period.

For years, researchers have puzzled over why Viking descendents abandoned Greenland in the late 15th century. But archaeologists now believe that economic and identity issues, rather than starvation and disease, drove them back to their ancestral homes.

. . .

As the research shows, hunger could hardly have driven the ancestors of the Vikings out of their settlements on the edge of the glaciers. The bone analyses prove that, when the warm period came to an end, the Greenlandic farmers and ranchers switched to a seafood-based diet with surprising rapidity. From then on, the settlers focused their efforts on hunting the seals that appeared in large numbers off the coasts of Greenland during their annual migrations.

. . .

Although the descendants of the Vikings had adjusted to life in the north, there were limits to their assimilation. "They would have had to live more and more like the Inuit, distancing themselves from their cultural roots," says Arneborg. "This growing contradiction between identity and reality was apparently what led to their decline."

Or...

Niels Lynnerup, an anthropologist and forensic scientist at the University of Copenhagen, confirms that the Vikings of Greenland had plenty to eat even as the climate grew colder. "Perhaps they were just sick and tired of living at the ends of the earth and having almost nothing but seals to eat," he says.

Works for me.

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Largest Egyptian Sarcophagus Found

A box inside a still larger box

I've always found it kind of charming that the mummies of Egyptian royalty were kept like giant Russian nesting dolls. Now they've apparently found the largest yet.

The largest ancient Egyptian sarcophagus has been identified in a tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, say archaeologists who are re-assembling the giant box that was reduced to fragments more than 3,000 years ago.

Made of red granite, the royal sarcophagus was built for Merneptah, an Egyptian pharaoh who lived more than 3,200 years ago. A warrior king, he defeated the Libyans and a group called the "Sea Peoples" in a great battle.

. . .

Archaeologists are re-assembling the outermost of these nested sarcophagi, its size dwarfing the researchers working on it. It is more than 13 feet (4 meters) long, 7 feet (2.3 m) wide and towers more than 8 feet (2.5 m) above the ground. It was originally quite colorful and has a lid that is still intact. [See Photos of Pharaoh's Sarcophagus]

"This as far as I know is about the largest of any of the royal sarcophagi," said project director Edwin Brock, a research associate at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, in an interview with LiveScience.

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Authenticity of Space Buddha in Question

The Nazi provenance, alone, should sound a few alarm bells.

Researchers who reported that a potentially ancient Buddha statue is carved from a meteorite said they are not surprised that an expert in Buddhist history believes the statue to be a fake.

. . . 

"The non-Asian features of the 'lama wearing trousers' should be immediately obvious to any scholar in the field," Bayer wrote, referring to the statue as a "lama" or guru. The shoes, pants and sleeves of the man's garments are all wrong for ancient Tibet, he wrote. The statue's hands, eyes and ears are also shaped unusually for Tibetan art, he said.

The statue was said to have come to Germany in the possession of a pre-World War II scientific expedition commissioned by the Nazi party. Bayer called that into question, too, saying there is no documentation of the statue's transfer and arguing that it is more likely a fake created in the 20th century for the antique or Nazi-memorabilia market.

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Frankenstein Mummies of Scotland

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Not so much a horror story as an archaeological mystery, as mummified bodies cobbled together from disparate parts are turned up in Scotland.

An international team of archaeologists have discovered that two mummies found on an island off the coast of Scotland are, like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, composed of body parts from several different humans. The mummified remains, as much as 3,500 years old, suggest that the first residents of the island of South Uist in the Hebrides had some previously unsuspected burial practices.

. . .

The two primary skeletons were buried in a fetal position and showed evidence of having been preserved. Chemical evidence suggests they were mummified by being placed in nearby peat bogs for a year or longer. The high acidity and low oxygen content of the bog prevents bacteria from breaking down body tissues. After preservation, the skeletons were apparently removed from the bog and buried.

But the skeletons did not "look right" to the researchers. The female's jaw didn't fit into the rest of her skull, for example. Closer examination of the male, they reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science, showed that arthritis was present on the vertebrae of the neck, but not on the rest of the spine. The lower jaw had all of its teeth, while the upper jaw had none; but the condition of the lower jaw's teeth showed that they had been paired with upper teeth. The team concluded that the skeleton has been assembled from parts of at least three bodies, some of which were separated by several hundred years of time.

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Did All Dinosaurs Have Feathers?

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Exceptionally well-preserved fossil evidence shows feathers on an early, meat-eating dinosaur, suggesting that plumage on the giant creatures was far more common than previously known.

Previously, paleontologists have found feathers only on coelurosaurs—birdlike dinosaurs that evolved later than so-called megalosaurs such as Sciurumimus.

Because Sciurumimus is not closely related to coelurosaurs, the new fossil suggests feathered dinosaurs were the norm, not the exception, Rauhut said.

"Probably all dinosaurs were feathered," he added, "and we should say good bye to the familiar image of the overgrown lizards."

. . .

According to the study authors, this "obviously" suggests that dinosaurs' common ancestor had feathers, which passed the trait on to each branch of the dinosaur family tree. (See pictures of big, bad, bizarre dinosaurs in National Geographic magazine.)

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An Ancient Mystery Tops an Ancient Mystery in Syria

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Wars are real archaeology blockers. Sometimes I think it's by design -- a deliberate attempt at some level of consciousness to keep humanity from its own secrets. The latest distraction from discovery is in Syria. This one involves something they're calling "Syria's Stonehenge" and there is much to recommend it as a site of interest.

Fifty miles north of Damascus is an ancient monastery, which is a fascinating site all on its own. But in 2009, archaeologist Robert Mason of the Royal Ontario Museum discovered remnants of a much older monument nearby.

The monastery itself, also called the Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian, was built in the late 4th or early 5th century, he said, and contains several frescoes from the 11th and 12th century depicting Christian saints and Judgment Day. He told the audience at Harvard that he believes it was originally a Roman watchtower, partially destroyed by an earthquake and rebuilt.

But the desert puzzle is much older.

Bits of tools Mason found nearby suggest the mystery he discovered in the desert is much older than the monastery. It may date to the Neolithic Period or early Bronze Age, 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, the Gazette said.

So, Mason found ancient masonry tools. He also found remnants of stone circles, lines, and some evidence of tombs. If, indeed, this is a prehistoric sacred site, it speaks to that mysterious habit the ancients had of building sacred sites on top of sacred sites, as if the location on the earth itself holds some deeper significance.

But for now, as the military conflagration in Syria grows, we'll just have to take a wait and see attitude.

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Fingerprints of the Neanderthals

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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As discussed, a recent discovery attributes what is possibly the world's oldest art not to Homo sapiens but to Neanderthals.With results of the finished study now published in Science, comes a more thorough reassessment of Neanderthals and their place in prehistory.

Several times in the past 10 years scientists have had to rewrite the textbooks on Neanderthals, the latest species of human to go extinct. Once the archetype for primitive, uncivilised behaviour, the species, illuminated through fossil excavations and lately analysis of their genome, has emerged as being not too dissimilar from our own.

Contrary to their dim-witted image Neanderthals have been found to have used tools, to have worn jewellery, and, lastly, to have interbred with our Homo sapiens ancestors to such an extent that 4% of every modern European's genome is traceable to Neanderthal origins.

In my lifetime, Neanderthals have gone from being an early stage in human evolution, to a totally separate species, to a coexisting subspecies that interbred with Homo sapiens. This is what I mean when I say that good science -- and the past itself -- is self-revising. Many of our assumptions about Neanderthals merit reexamination. It is now clear that they were not the stupid distant cousins of proto-humans. They appear to have been at least as intelligent and creative as our direct forebears. And it may well be that even some of the cave art that has been attributed to Paleolithic humans was actually the creation of Neanderthals.

[Joao] Zilhao and his colleagues turned to a different method: uranium-thorium dating. As anyone who has seen a stalactite knows, caves are always undergoing slow change. The same processes that create stalactites and stalagmites leave thin deposits of the mineral calcite over some cave paintings. This calcite contains miniscule amounts of radioactive uranium, which decays to thorium over time.

. . .

Because the calcite came after the paintings, this sets a minimum age for the art. What researchers don't know is how long the initial calcite deposit took, so the paintings could be anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years older than the minimum dates.

The researchers took samples from 11 Spanish caves, including famed spots like Altamira with its painted herds of bison. At Altamira, they found an image of a red horse that dates back at least 22,000 years and a clublike image that is at least 35,600 years old. The club symbol has been painted over with the famous colorful bison herd, which dates to around 18,000 years ago. In other words, Altamira was a popular spot for artists for a very long time. [Images: Altamira & Other Amazing Caves]

At another cave, El Castillo in northern Spain, the researchers found primitive art of mind-boggling age. This cave contained the 40,800-year-old red disk. It also sported a hand stencil, created by an artist spitting red pigment over his or her hand to leave a handprint, that dates back more than 37,300 years.

More exact dating continues to be a problem and there is still much debate about the significance of the findings. But the one thing that is increasingly clear is that Graham Hancock's fictional accounting in of early human and Neanderthal relations in Entangled is being proved by non-fictional research.

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Dead Emperor's Army Grows

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The troop strength of the Terracotta Army guarding China's first emperor proves to be greater than thought, as 110 more warriors are unearthed.

The life-size figures were excavated near the Qin Emperor's mausoleum in China's northern Xi'an city over the course of three years, and archaeologists also uncovered 12 pottery horses, parts of chariots, weapons and tools, the official said.

. . .

Shen said experts had expected the colours on some of the warriors and wares uncovered at the site to have faded over the centuries, and were surprised to see how well preserved they still were.

The finds also included a shield that was reportedly used by soldiers in the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), with red, green and white geometric patterns.

Qin Shihuang - the Qin emperor who had the army built - presided over the unification of China in 221 BC and is seen as the first emperor of the nation.

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Mammoths of the Midwest

Mammoth mammoth bones are being retrieved from an Iowa family's backyard after their accidental discovery of a four foot femur.

The bone was discovered two years ago, and now the family's quiet home in Oskaloosa has turned into a bustling excavation site, where the bones are kept in the living room, according to ABC-affiliate ABC5-WOI in Des Moines. The University of Iowa Museum of Natural History reportedly has stepped in to oversee the research.

“The size of this discovery is quite uncommon,” Sarah Horgen, the museum's education coordinator, told ABC News. “It’s pretty exciting-–partially because the mammoth is being discovered where it died. And we know that because we’re finding very large bones right alongside very small bones.”

The mammoth bones, reported to be at least 12,000 years old, were found about 10 feet underground. "The conditions of the bones were ideal," archaeologist Marlin Ingalls of the Iowa State Archeologist's office told The Huffington Post.

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Vampire Graveyard

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Iron rods? I thought they had to be wooden stakes. Clearly I've seen too many movies. 

Archaeologists in Bulgaria have found two medieval skeletons pierced through the chest with iron rods to supposedly stop them from turning into vampires.

The discovery illustrates a pagan practice common in some villages up until a century ago, say historians.

People deemed bad had their hearts stabbed after death, for fear they would return to feast on humans' blood.

Similar archaeological sites have also been unearthed in other Balkan countries.

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Mass Burial Site Discovered in Peru

A tomb containing more than 80 human skeletons and mummies -- including numerous infants -- has been unearthed in pre-conquest Peru.

Inside were a dozen newborn babies and infants, each buried around the perimeter,‭ with their heads pointing towards the tomb.

. . .

Archaeologist Peter Eeckhout said: 'The ratio adult/children is unusually elevated at this burial.

'We have, at this stage, two hypotheses: human sacrifice or stocking of babies dead from natural causes, kept until their disposal in the tomb because of its special character.'

. . .

The area is known as one of the largest Pre-Hispanic sites in South America, and an important religious, ceremonial, political and economic center.

See more here and here.

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The Mystery of the "Body Jars"

I particularly like the jar with the skull peering out of the top. It's dark, yet whimsical.

Perched on cliff edges, jars and wooden coffins containing human remains offer tantalising evidence of a completely unknown ancient people in Cambodia.

Ten burial spots have been found by archaeologists in the past nine years, one 160ft above the ground.

. . .

Dr Beavan, who is currently in Cambodia, says that this period coincides with the decline and fall of the powerful Kingdom of Angkor - builders of the famous Angkor Wat temples - which was seated in the lowlands.

See more here and here.

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DNA Testing on the Yeti

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Could the secret of the Yeti finally be answered? Maybe.

A UK-Swiss team will use DNA testing to investigate the origins of remains claimed to be from yeti and bigfoot.

The project will examine hair, bone and other material from a collection amassed by a Swiss biologist - and will invite submissions from elsewhere.

. . .

Tests up to now have usually concluded that alleged yeti remains were in fact human. But, said Prof Sykes, "there has been no systematic review of this material."

. . .

"In the last two years it has become clear that there was considerable interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals ... about 2% to 4% of the DNA of each individual European is Neanderthal," he said.

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Past and Portents in Graham Hancock's Mexico

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Well, this could explain all the piercing tones I've been getting in my head for the past couple of weeks. (Of course the supermoon hasn't helped this weekend. I mean these pics are pretty but, oh, my head.)

North America's second-tallest volcano recently rumbled to life, putting authorities on edge. Big eruptions of Mexico's massive Popocatepetl volcano are "few and far between," as one geologist says. Yet even without any dramatic fireworks, 17,800-foot (5,425-meter) "Popo" has the power to wreak havoc.

. . .

Popocatepetl lies about 40 miles (70 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City. The mountain reawakened in December 1994 after five decades of silence. Yet in the nearly 20 years since, the volcano has rarely exhibited the kind of vigorous activity that began the week of April 12.

Minor earthquakes have rocked the mountain, it has spewed out plumes of gas and ash, and multiple explosions have shot glowing rocks from the summit. [ Images of Popocatepetl in action.]

The mountain has the potential to erupt magnificently once every 2,000 or 3,000 years. "It has big eruptions, but they are so few and far between," Sheridan said. "But they have been pretty big. So that is the scary part."

I have a particular affection for the Mexico City area and tend to be sort of dialed in to earth changes there. It is an area rich in history. One of the most transformative experiences of my life involved a trip to Mexico City. And I owe at least a little of that to Graham Hancock. I was reminded of that yesterday morning when I stumbled on this lecture he did some years ago.

Fingerprints of the Gods, which he discusses here in some depth, was the first of Hancock's books I read, and it began a love affair with his writing. But the way I came to read that book was somewhat peculiar.

The book had belonged to a friend of mine. I noticed it on her bookshelf where it looked a little out of place. I borrowed it and had begun to read it when she and I had a huge falling out and I had to the give it back. I had fully intended to get the book for myself but I hadn't yet got 'round to it when, some months later, an opportunity to travel to Mexico City came up. It's a long and complicated story but suffice it to say it wound up with me going there to do a Flower of Life teacher training with Drunvalo Melchizedek.

When it came time for me to make my travel arrangements, it occurred to me that I should probably do at least a little research about the area first. I stopped by the Montclair Book Center to pick up a Fodor's. There, thoroughly misplaced in the travel section, sort of shoved in awkwardly on its side, was Fingerprints of the Gods. I picked it up and started to leaf through it. And there it was. Teotihuacan. Now, geography has never been my long suit and I really hadn't grasped until that moment that the ancient site was spitting distance from Mexico City. I really knew very little about it except that Hancock had included it as a site of some importance in advancing his theory of an ancient, lost civilization. But in the split second it took me to put those few pieces together I resolved that one way or another I was going to get there during my trip.

It occurred to me that Drunvalo might take us there as part of the seminar but I wasn't going to leave that to chance. I built an extra day into my trip so I could go there alone if needs be. As it turns out, he did not take us to Teotihuacan. Although he did take us to Cuicuilco, a round pyramid that isn't nearly as well known, and that was also an amazing experience. But the opportunity to go to Teotihuacan fell into my hands as if by magic. There was a gentleman in the class who was a professional tour guide. He graciously extended an offer to anyone who wanted to go there on the Monday following the seminar which, as luck would have it, was the day I had left open for just that purpose.

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Hancock goes into some detail in this presentation on the relevance of Teotihuacan to his theory of a lost civilization. I had read everything he had to say about Latin America, with its ziggurats and plumed serpents, before I got there. Even so, I was unprepared for the intensity of this "place where men become gods."

I spent that day doing rituals with the small group of travelers and our wonderful guide. We came to realize the entire experience was one long ritual and we were not the one's directing it. Mostly, our job was to listen and do as we were told. Teotihuacan is inhabited by wise spirits of ancient origin. 

The conspiracy of events that put me in Mexico City at that particular time with those particular people is something I could only marvel at. And the process of transformation that was initiated in me at that time is something I'm still sorting out.

One of the things that struck me as I was listening to Hancock explain his research is just how impermanent it all is. I still marvel at the hubris with which so many people disregard doomsday theories. I'm not saying that I think 2012 signals such a doomsday and I think if anything is clear about the Mayan long count calendar, it's that, for all the theories, no one really understands it. It remains a tantalizing mystery. But something is happening and the energy shifts we've been experiencing are fairly amazing. So are the earth changes.

Hancock touches briefly on Charles Hapgood's theory of crustal displacement and the possibility that we may have had previous pole shifts. Whether any of that is tied into the vestiges of a lost civilization and the out of place artifacts Hancock has spent years researching is hard to say. Even harder to say is whether it will happen again. But to pretend that civilization ending cataclysms are silly wives tales is arrogant. The people of Pompeii were apparently enjoying life as usual when they found themselves engulfed by the sudden, massive eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. We certainly know more about volcanoes now than those ancient Romans did but we are no more immune to a grandiosity that convinces us that we know enough.

I was reading the other day about some new theories on the volcano that is Yellowstone. Something many Americans don't realize is that Yellowstone is actually a "supervolcano" and a full scale eruption would be devastating. The new study I was reading up on found that it might not "wipe out half of the United States, covering the rest in 3 feet of ash and pushing the world into hundreds of years of nuclear winter, challenging human civilization to a game of death and survival." So that's... kind of... good news. The bad news? It's much more active than previously believed and even a lesser eruption would be inconceivably disastrous.

My point is simply this. As tempting as it is to think that we know all we need to about the potential for sudden, radical change on this planet, history has shown over and over that we don't. And the clues are there to a prehistory of which we know nothing with any certainty. Embrace the mystery. That's all I'm saying.

A side note: I love Jungian synchronicities. As I write this I notice that the movie Matilda has come on ABC Family. It's one I've watched over and over. But the first time I ever saw it was when I was taking my red-eye flight back from Mexico City, after a full day of tromping up and down those divine temple monuments. On the nearly empty plane, I stretched out over several seats and drifted in and out of sleep, surfacing just long enough to ask myself questions like: Is that little girl making things fly around the room? This movie is about a telekinesis? Maybe I should be paying more attention? Zzzzzzzz...

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Revising Prehistory

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

A stunning discovery has turned archaeological preconceptions on their heads. The cave paintings at Chauvet are no longer the oldest known art. Paintings found in the Nerja Caves in Andalusia are at least 10,000 years older. More incredible, they were painted not be early humans but by Neanderthals. Graham Hancock's recent work puts some of this into perspective. In Supernatural he explains newer theories that the artwork done by early man is a demonstration of ancient shamanic practices far more profound than the scenes of the hunt long assumed by archaeologists. And in his first foray into fiction, Entangled, he envisions a Neanderthal man far more advanced than is currently believed. Much of this is discussed in this recently posted lecture. That said, this article in the Huffington Post is a great example of the condescending arrogance that we've been subjected to by mainstream archaeologists for years.

What is the oldest painting of, you ask? The pictures appear to be seals; the drawings are not half bad for a caveman!

Yeah. Stupid cavemen.

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Esoterica

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Has King Arthur's round table been found in Scotland?

The King's Knot, a geometrical earthwork in the former royal gardens below Stirling Castle, has been shrouded in mystery for hundreds of years.

Though the Knot as it appears today dates from the 1620s, its flat-topped central mound is thought to be much older.

Writers going back more than six centuries have linked the landmark to the legend of King Arthur.

. . .

"The finds show that the present mound was created on an older site and throws new light on a tradition that King Arthur's Round Table was located in this vicinity."

We may have been a seafarin' people since before we were even human.

A team of researchers that included an N.C. State University geologist found evidence that our ancestors were crossing open water at least 130,000 years ago. That's more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists had previously thought.

Their evidence is based on stone tools from the island of Crete. Because Crete has been an island for eons, any prehistoric people who left tools behind would have had to cross open water to get there.

The tools the team found are so old that they predate the human species, said Thomas Strasser, an archaeologist from Providence College who led the team. Instead of being made by our species, Homo sapiens, the tools were made by our ancestors, Homo erectus.

Will we find the God Particle in time for Christmas?

The hunt for the Higgs particle is well ahead of schedule, say researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Earlier this year they said they would either discover the Higgs or confirm it does not exist by the end of 2012.

Now, because the machine is working so well, an LHC spokesman, Professor Guido Tonelli, has told BBC News that the search could be completed much sooner.

The Higgs Boson is the particle that in the physics "Standard Model" allows other particles to have mass.

Discovery or elimination of the particle is one of the LHC's major objectives; and it could come as early as Christmas 2011.

Edgar Cayce, look out! The sleeping artist is here. A nocturnal painter believes he may be receiving artistic guidance from the spirit world.

Being an artist is so easy, Lee Hadwin can do it in his sleep, but when he is awake, the 37-year-old, who got a D in art at school, cannot paint or draw to save his life.

He discovered his nocturnal talent aged four, when he began to sleepwalk and draw on his mother’s furniture.

. . .

Since then, he has produced almost 200 sleep-pictures, selling them to collectors such as illusionist Derren Brown, with one piece fetching a six-figure sum. He does not know why he can draw only in his sleep but believes it may be spirits communicating from the other side.

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Gardens in spaaaaaaaaace!

Astronauts on the first manned missions to Mars could tend “kitchen gardens” of salad and vegetables onboard spaceships, scientists claim.

Experts say the crops would not only give crews healthy food to eat during the long journey to the red planet, but would also improve the atmosphere onboard by producing oxygen and removing carbon dioxide.

In addition, the plants suggested as suitable by a NASA scientist would require minimal tending and not take up much room on spacecraft.

Bad pizza in spaaaaaaaaace!

Domino's pizza has announced plans to conquer the final frontier by opening the first pizza restaurant on the Moon.

Domino's Japanese arm has proposed a branch on Earth's nearest galactic neighbour is the latest escalation in a pizza publicity war.

Rival chain Pizza Hut set the bar high in 2001 by delivering a pizza to astronauts orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station, but Domino's fought back last year in a series of events to mark the 25th anniversary of its arrival in Japan.

Diamonds are forever.

A newly discovered alien planet that formed from a dead star is a real diamond in the rough.

The super-high pressure of the planet, which orbits a rapidly pulsing neutron star, has likely caused the carbon within it to crystallize into an actual diamond, a new study suggests.

The composition of the planet, which is about five times the size of Earth, is not its only outstanding feature. [Illustration of the diamond alien planet]

The planet's parent star is a special kind of flashing star known as a millisecond pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star formed from a supernova. The entire system, which is only the second of its kind ever discovered, is located about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Serpens (The Snake).

Chimera alert! Spider goats developed for the military.

Researchers genetically engineered goats to produce milk which is packed with the same protein as silk spiders.

Once this is milked out it can be spun out and weaved into a material that is ten times stronger than steel.

The fabric can then be blended with human skin to make what the scientists hope will be tough enough to stop even a bullet.

Dutch researcher Jalila Essaidi said the ‘spidersilk’ project was called ’2.6g 329m/s’ after the weight and the velocity of a .22 calibre long rifle bullet.

An elephant never forgets. And elephants are smarter than we know.

Kandula, a seven year old Asian elephant living in Washington D.C.’s National Zoo, has proven that elephants are as smart as those that spend a lot of time around them have believed. In an experiment carried out by researchers at the zoo, the little elephant figured out all on his own, without resorting to trial and error, how to go get a cube to use as a footstool to help him reach some food that was just out of reach. The research team, led by Preston Foerder of the City University of New York, has published the results of their study on PLoS ONE.

Other animals (besides humans) such as chimpanzees and dolphins have demonstrated in various ways that they are capable of dreaming up solutions to problems in their head and then carrying them out. Called “aha” moments by researchers, such thinking, a form of insight, is one of the hallmarks of higher intelligence. Most people who have ever worked with elephants will attest to the fact that they are indeed intelligent creatures; though no one (at least in the research community) had ever witnessed an elephant using insight to solve a problem. This has perplexed scientists for several years, and has caused them to study the seeming paradox. It appears now that the team working with Kandula has seen it in action, that previous research had been attacking the problem from the wrong angle.

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