SECRETS OF LOST RACES #3
FOLLOWING IN THE TRACKS OF ANCIENT EXPLORERS
THE ARK?
The final events leading up to the Great Flood are still
shrouded in the deepest mystery. There simply are no historical
accounts other than the Bible story and the Babylonian Gilgamesh
epic that can cast adequate light on one of the most mystifying
tragedies of the ancient world. Perhaps because of this, these
two venerable traditions are to be treasured more than any other
account. Taken side by side, the stories reveal the stark terror
that swept over the darkening world as the waters increased.
The Gilgamesh epic says, "And when the storm came to an end and
the terrible waterspouts ceased, I opened the windows and the
light smote upon my face; I looked at the sea, tentatively
observing, all humanity had turned to mud, and like seaweed the
corpses floated.
"I sat down and wept, and the tears fell upon my face."
(Lines 128-137)
"And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth
day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat." (Genesis 8:4)
While the convulsive waters of the Deluge swirled around the
ark, inside this stronghold existed another world all its own.
Floundering on the angry waves for a period of 150 days before
finally coming to rest on the mountains of Ararat, the ship
provided shelter and refuge for Noah's family and representatives
of the animal kingdom. Seven days after the massive door in the
side of the ship had been shut tight, the first torrential rains
and the initial shattering earthquakes from the depths of the
antediluvian seas marked the end of one world and the
beginning of another. For a full thirteen months, the survivors
lived amidst chaotic destruction, yet they themselves remained
totally preserved from the cataclysm, safely inside the
self-supporting vessel as it traveled through a hostile
environment.
While the DIMENSIONS of the ship are still DEBATEABLE
because of the UNCERTAINTY of the length of the cubit, the
measure used in the Biblical account, most scholars maintain that
the ship's length of 300 cubits, width of 50 cubits and height of
30 cubits should be translated to read 450 by 75 by 45 feet.
Ancient manuscripts give various interpretations of the
dimensions of the survival vessel, the oldest being Origen's
description of the ark in "Homilies on Genesis." He says,
"Judging from the description, I imagine that it had a
rectangular bottom and that the walls converged gradually as they
rose to the top, where the width was only one cubit. . . ."
Origen continues, "Given the conditions resulting from the rain
and the Deluge, a more appropriate shape could not have been
given to the ark than this narrow summit which let the rainwater
run down, like a roof, and this rectangular bottom flat on the
water, keeping the ark from pitching or sinking under the action
of the wind and the waves because of the animals' restlessness."
But what about the specifications? you wonder. Why that
specific ratio? Why not, for example, 300 by 200 by 20, or some
other ratio? The specifications mentioned in Genesis speak of a
boxlike construction, but not a square box; however, in the
Gilgamesh epic, the ark was but a crudely designed cubic vessel
having a tendency to turn with each gust of wind as if caught in
a gigantic whirlpool.
Noah's ark was different.
Its length-to-breadth ratio of six to one (300 cubits to 50)
has great advantage over the cubic contraption of the Babylonian
epic. From the standpoint of stability and rolling, the ratio of
6:1 is about as nearly perfect as can be desired. Some of the
mammoth tankers of today have a ratio of 7:1. The shipbuilder I.
K. Brunel designed the ocean liner known as the "Great Britain"
in 1844. The vessel's dimensions were 322 by 51 by 32 and 1/2
feet - proportions nearly identical to the dimensions of Noah's
ark. Whereas Noah's ship ranks as the first of its kind, Brunel
had several thousand years of shipbuilding expertise to rely on,
but all the accumulated knowledge he could draw from did not give
him a better ratio than that of the ark.
Was Noah perhaps acting on advice supplied by a technology
that had already reached its summit?
In addition to the speculations concerning the nature and
size of its cargo, there are many other aspects of life aboard
the ark that deserve close scrutiny. It has often been thought
that the only light source on the ark was a window in the roof
which permitted the sunlight to penetrate to the interior of the
vessel; however, this would not have been very practical, First,
any free opening to the outside world would have allowed the
water to pour in profusely during the torrential rains of the
first 40 days; second, with storm clouds brewing above them,
there were probably many overcast days and therefore very little
sunlight; and third, a series of windows at the top would have
lighted only the upper deck, and that dimly, leaving the
remaining decks in darkness. If there was a light source, it had
to be contained within the vessel itself. Any open fire as a
source of light would have been out of the question. The tsohar,
powered by electricity (?), may well have been their sole means
of illumination. Here at least was something that provided a
constant light for the entire Flood voyage and that could have
been evenly dispersed on all decks.
But what about air and potable water? Is it possible that
the ship contained its own oxygen cycle, using collected plants
as the method for air regeneration? Is it possible that Noah
actually stored oxygen on the ark to enable him and his cargo to
remain alive during the initial phase of the voyage, when the
ship was sealed airtight as a precaution against the raging
elements? If the antediluvians were familiar with hydrocarbons
such as asphalt, as indicated in the ancient records, then they
must have had the chemical proficiency to create and manipulate
liquid oxygen. It is therefore not surprising to learn that the
manufacture of oxygen was known in the immediate post-Flood era.
In the Prince's Library of Ujjain in India, there is a
well-preserved document called the "Agastya Samshita" which dates
back to the first millennium B.C. It contains a detailed
description not only of how to construct an electric battery, but
also how to utilize this battery to "split" water into two gases
- the electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen. Storing
potable water aboard the ark may have generated many problems,
for even though the various legendary accounts tell us that Noah
lived on the ship for approximately a year, no mention is made of
the food and water necessary for the sustenance of his family and
the cargo of livestock. Is it possible that the ship contained
watertight storage compartments in which these vital supplies
were kept, or did Noah perhaps employ a system that pumped water
from the sea and filtered out all impurities, thereby making it
drinkable?
While speculation reigns when we are attempting to explain
the multiplicity of problems Noah must have encountered on his
year-long voyage into the unknown, the question of animal cargo
as cited in diverse accounts still baffles even the most
liberal-minded investigator..... different animals did board the
ark.... feeding and caring for these animals must have been a job
of unbelievable proportions. In addition, a system must have been
devised to guarantee that procreation did not occur too often,
especially among the more fertile animals, so that the danger of
overcrowding could be avoided. It is thought that perhaps the
animals' metabolic rates were lowered. If this was achieved, then
the feeding and mating would not have been so frequent. Perhaps
this was accomplished by artificial means, using the scientific
knowledge that Noah and his family possessed. Yet the lowering of
their metabolism did not eliminate the need for feeding and care.
It is possible that through some form of mechanization, a system
of chutes and troughs was used along which food and water were
distributed from the storage areas. A similar arrangement may
have disposed of animal waste, which was either stored or perhaps
ejected from the ark during the voyage. I prefer to think in
terms of the latter possibility: knowing when to feed the animals
and clean them, etc., demands a knowledge of time; however,
during the first 40 days of the Flood, when the ship was
completely shut up, there was no natural means of keeping track
of time. Despite this obstacle, Noah was able to maintain an
accurate and detailed diary of events as recorded in Genesis 7
and 8, which indicates that he may have possesse an artificial
means of measuring time, probably a mechanical device. This is
not unlikely, for at least one example of a timekeeping apparatus
from the post-Flood era has been found near Greece. It was
discovered in 1900 on the day before Easter Sunday, when sponge
divers working off the Greek island of Antikytheros located a
sunken Greek cargo vessel filled with bronze statues and other
ancient artifacts. From various inscriptions, the shipwreck
remains were dated between 80 and 50 B.C.
Among the finds brought to the surface was a lump of
corroded bronze and wood, which was transported together with the
other artifacts to the National Museum in Athens. Several
attempts were made to unravel the mystery of the bronze and wood
mass, but all were unsuccessful. It was not until 1958 that the
unidentified rusting mass came to the attention of Dr. Derek J.
de Solla Price of Cambridge University. Using an innovative
process for restoring oxidized objects, Dr. Price was able to
salvage bits and pieces of the mass, and by combining these he
tried to rebuild the device.
To his amazement, he discovered that the lump had contained
parts of an intricate miniature planetarium-computer fashioned
from a special bronze alloy. The reconstructed machine was a
small box containing more than twenty gearwheels intermeshed in a
complex differential system. A crank spindle set the gears in
motion at various speeds, turning pointers on three dials that
calculated the rising and setting times and phases of the moon,
and the positions of the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter
and Saturn, all with astonishing accuracy. What's more, it also
indicated the time of day.
The Antikytheros clock's construction exceeded the technical
capabilities of the Greeks or any other recognized ancient
civilizations - yet there it was. Its underlying concept must
have originated in an earlier, still more advanced culture,
probably that of the pre-Flood world. It is significant that the
Antikytheros machine's main function was to calculate the passing
of time through simulation of the movement of the heavenly
spheres. Could there possibly be a connection with the way in
which Noah reckoned his time in Genesis 7 and 8? His calculations
also were based on the lunar calendral system, marking off the
passing of a solar year.
We do not know, of course, what power source turned the
crank spindle of the Antikytheros machine, but it probably was
the same source that also lit the tsohar.
We will never know exactly what measures Noah took to
preserve life during that year of confinement aboard the ark, but
occasionally information will surface concerning the fact that
somewhere there exists an account which tends to illuminate this
dark period in man's history. In the months prior to the 1950
attempt of the Oriental Archaeological Research Expedition to
find the illusive ark on Mount Ararat, the contents of a curious
exchange of letters between Dr. Aaron J. Smith, the expedition's
leader, and Dr. Philip W. Gooch were revealed, and if we ever
needed to be shaken into changing the pace of our final
arrangements for the trip to Turkey, this correspondence
certainly did it. Quoting from what he claimed were ancient
records in the possession of a Masonic order to which he
belonged, Dr. Gooch gave the following information to an
unsuspecting Dr. Smith: "There was a living witness on the ground
who covered all the fine details of what went on during the Flood
and after the Flood until her death in her 547th year," he wrote
to Smith. "She was God's living witness, Noah's daughter-in-law,
the wife of his son Japheth, a student of Methuselah, under whom
she was apprenticed, and who taught her all that had preceded the
Flood. She was educated in all the history of the human race up
to that time. Her book - she called it her diary - is filled with
things that occurred from Adam (?) to her death, and seems to me
to be the most complete record of early human history ever
recorded. Many of the problems confronting geologists today can
easily be understood after one reads Amoela's diary. At her
death, dying in the arms of her youngest son, Javan, her diary
was placed in her mummified hands in a crystal quartz case, with
tempered gold hinges and clasps, and was discovered by a
highranking Mason in the latter part of the last century. The
original and the translation are now in the possession of the
Order."
Subsequent correspondence with Dr. Gooch did not result in
concrete evidence concerning the whereabouts of Amoela's diary,
and his death shortly thereafter widened the credibility gap even
more, as he never revealed the name or chapter of the Masonic
lodge.
(Probably because it never existed. As this is a story from the
Mason world, I doubt it is true - Keith Hunt)
Was Amoela's diary fact or fiction? It is now evident that
we will never know the sources of Dr. Gooch's information. One
thing, however, we do know. When the great door in the side of
the ark was finally unsealed, it opened onto a totally new world,
devoid of the life that once had been and ready to receive the
life that had been preserved. The rampaging Flood waters had
swept away the great technological antediluvian civilization,
shattered it into a million pieces and deposited it in the bowels
of the earth, away from the sight of the earth's only remaining
tenants.
(As the flood was LOCAL and did not cover the entire globe [see
the studies on "Noah's flood was not Universal"] other objects of
science back then were covered over by local eathquakes, and
other natural changes in the earth's turning - Keith Hunt)
For many centuries Christians have regarded the Mount of
Ararat in eastern Turkey as the final resting place of the ark
and the spot where the post-Flood civilization began. Only the
Genesis account of the tragedy mentions Ararat - all other
traditions are silent on this issue. This may be one of the
reasons why not all archaeologists agree that the mountain we
know today as Ararat is the same one mentioned in Noah's account
even though the Turkish name for the mountain means "Mountain of
the Ark," and the Persian name for it is translated "Mountain of
Noah." The Babylonian legend indicates that the ship was stranded
on Mount Nisir, and the Moslem world holds to the view
that Mount Djudi is the location. The latter opinion, however, is
hardly worth considering, as an increasing number of Islamic
scholars have speculated that Mount Djudi may in reality be
identical to Mount Ararat....
At various times in history, "Armenia" and "Ararat" have
been used interchangeably to describe the same area, and even
today, Ararat is the name of the province in which the famous
mountain is located. Perhaps it is because of the many traditions
that have attached themselves to Mount Ararat that the Armenians
have always referred to the mountain as the "Mother of the
World."
Can there be something to this? Are there perchance factors
that strengthen this traditional view of Ararat as the
springboard of the post-Flood culture'? Concerning the Genesis 10
record of the dispersion of tribes and nations in the dawning
days of Middle East history corroborating this "Mother of the
World" concept, Professor W. F. Albright, internationally
recognized as one of the leading authorities on Middle East
archaeology, says, "It stands absolutely alone in ancient
literature without a remote parallel even among the Greeks. . . .
'The Table of Nations' remains an astonishingly accurate
document. . . . [It] shows such remarkable 'modern' understanding
of the ethnic and linguistic situation in the modern world, in
spite of all its complexity, that scholars never fail to be
impressed with the author's knowledge of the subject."
The list he refers to mentions the descendants of Noah, the
offspring of his three sons. It gives the first generation of
descendants of each son, and, what is more important, it lists
the names, which often provide us with clues to their history and
dwelling place. The first and second generations left their mark
in Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor. Assyria, Phoenicia, Armenia, the
Persian Gulf region and lands in between. The third generation
(c. 3230-2780 B.C.) moved into Europe, Spain, southern Arabia,
Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt, the Black Sea region, and Babylonia.
The fourth generation (c. 3096-2647) made swift moves into the
area presently called Yemen, the land that subsequently was known
as the home of the Queen of Sheba. When the fifth generation
(3001-2597 B.C.) arrived on the scene. the record tells of the
descendants of Eber, meaning "pilgrim, migrant," the father of a
widely scattered people called Habiru. Very little is known about
the individual accomplishments of these people until the fifth
generation is reached. Peleg (2867-2528 B.c.), whose name means
"division, a measurement," is then mentioned, for Genesis 10:25
states, ". . . the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the
earth divided.
GEOGRAPHY
It is very apparent from the generation list of the sons of
Noah that the post-Flood peoples spread rapidly across the
surface of the earth. In just the second generation, the
grandchildren of the patriarch had settled in lands from Iran to
Spain, from northern Europe to Ethiopia. The following generation
and their offspring were of course even more widespread. It also
becomes obvious that in order for the Genesis 10 genealogy list
to have been composed, there must have been an advanced degree of
communication among all these people. Someone living during the
colonizing of these distant lands had the ability to correspond
with all the descendants over a relatively long period of time -
otherwise the composition of such a detailed listing as the
"Table of Nations" would have been impossible. This communication
between remote regions presupposes an early knowledge of
geography. In fact, there is ample evidence that not long after
the Deluge, the descendants of Noah carried out an extensive
survey of the entire globe, mapping and charting every continent!
The evidence for this post-Flood survey of the earth has
been preserved in a number of medieval and Renaissance maps which
are extremely accurate - so accurate that the longitude and
latitude measurements, as well as the knowledge of the earth's
surface that is revealed, extend far beyond the capabilities of
the early historical cartographers. These cartographers admit -
and there is intrinsic proof of this in the maps - that their
maps were copies of still older maps whose origins were lost in
antiquity.
One map in particular that has received considerable
attention is the Piri Reis chart of 1513. Piri Reis, whose actual
name was Ahmet Muhiddin, not only distinguished himself as a
captain in the Ottoman fleet of Suleiman the Magnificent, but was
also an itinerant map maker and collector. In the most famous of
his atlases, the Kitabi Bahriye, and in the notations on his 1513
chart, he revealed that he drew his maps from a composite of
twenty older maps. Eight of these maps, he claimed, were from the
time of "Alexander, Lord of the Two Horns," i.e., Alexander the
Great. He secured other maps from a captured Spanish sailor in
1501 who told Piri Reis that he had been on Christopher
Columbus's three voyages to the New World. In exchange for his
freedom, the sailor gave the Turkish captain a number of charts
which Columbus had used in locating the islands of the Western
Hemisphere. Columbus had, in effect, only rediscovered lands
which someone else had charted centuries before.
The Bahriye Atlas remained in use after Piri Reis's death in
1554, but his chart of 1513 was lost until November 9, 1929, when
Malil Edhem, director of the Turkish National Museum, was
cleaning out debris from the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul and
discovered fragments of the old map.
The map received scant publicity when it was found, but
copies were sent to various prominent museums. It was not until
1956 that a visiting Turkish naval officer gave a copy of it to
the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office in Washington, D.C., where
Captain Arlington H. Mallery subjected the map to a comprehensive
analysis.
The first extraordinary feature about the map Mallery noted
was that it showed South America and Africa in correct relative
longitude. In the sixteenth century, when the map was drawn,
longitude was found only by guesswork. It was another two hundred
years before the correct longitudinal relationship between the
two continents was established!
Even more startling, however, was Mallery's discovery that
the map accurately showed the coastline of Queen Maud Land in
Antarctica - even though the map was drawn in 1513, and the
southern continent's existence was not verified until 1819! But
there was more. Mallery found that the islands and bays of the
depicted coastline are the same as they appear below the
antarctic ice sheet, as recently revealed by seismic echo
soundings.
In 1957 the map was presented to Reverend Daniel Lineham, S.
J., director of the Western Observatory of Boston College, who
had participated in an expedition to Antarctica. After careful
examination, Lineham reached the same conclusion as Mallery: the
Piri Reis map pictured, in great detail, regions scarcely
explored today, including an antarctic mountain range that
remained undiscovered by modern researchers until 1952. The
unavoidable conclusion was that Piri Reis must have possessed
charts drawn by someone who had mapped Antarctica before the ice
cap covered the southern continent. The Piri Reis map could not
have been a hoax, for no one in 1929, let alone in 1513, could
have reproduced the geographical knowledge this chart contained.
Following a radio broadcast about the map made by
cartographer Walters of the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office in
Washington, D.C., and Mallery and Lineham, the subject came to
the attention of Professor Charles H. Hapgood. Working with
mathematician Richard W. Strachan and students at Keene State
College, Professor Hapgood conducted a most meticulous
cartographical analysis of the map and other charts of the
Renaissance. Professor Hapgood's examination resulted in a number
of startling observations, each one of which augments the mystery
of the map's origin.
1. The center of the Piri Reis map is located at the
intersection of the meridian of Alexandria - 30 degrees East
longitude - and the Tropic of Cancer. Because all the ancient
Greek geographers based their maps on the meridian of Alexandria,
its use as a center on the Piri Reis chart confirms Reis's
statement that a number of the source maps he used dated back to
the Alexandrian period.
2. Another indication of Greek influence in the map was the
discovery that the map projection was based on an overestimate of
4 and 1/2 per cent in the circumference of the earth. Only one
geographer in the ancient world had made that overestimation -
the Greek Eratosthenes.
When the Piri Reis map grid was redrawn to correct the
Eratosthenes error, all existing longitude errors on the map were
thereby reduced to almost zero. As Hapgood noted, this could only
mean that the Greek cartographers, when they prepared their maps
using the circumference of Eratosthenes, had before them source
maps which had been drawn without the Eratosthenes error - in
fact without error at all! The conclusion is obvious: the
geographical knowledge which Piri Reis incorporated into his 1513
map ultimately originated not with the Greeks but with an earlier
people who possessed a more advanced science of map making than
even the Greeks!
3. The map as a whole reveals a remarkable accuracy of
longitude and latitude measurements. In Piri Reis's day,
instruments enabling a navigator to find correct longitude were
nonexistent. Not until the invention of the chronometer in 1765
were accurate longitude readings possible. Determination of
latitude, however, involves precise astronomical observation, but
conspicuous differences are evident when it is done by trained
men rather than by adventuresome explorers. On his first voyage
to the New World, for example, Columbus made no longitudinal
measurements and attempted only three for latitude which
incidentally were all incorrect. For almost one hundred years
after that famous voyage, European map makers, using the
guesswork of the explorers, placed such large islands as Cuba and
Hispaniola above rather than below the Tropic of Cancer!
In contrast, not only are the Caribbean, Spanish, African
and South American coasts on the Piri Reis map in correct
positions relative to each other, but even such isolated land
areas as the Cape Verde Islands, the Azores, and the Canary
Islands are accurately situated by latitude and longitude - the
first two without error and the last within less than a degree.
Hapgood commented that there simply is no way to explain the
sophistication of the Piri Reis map in terms of the comparative
ignorance of sixteenth-century cartographers. The map bears
irrefutable testimony to a scientific achievement far surpassing
the abilities of the navigators and map makers of the
Renaissance, the Middle Ages, the Arab world, or any of the
ancient geographers. It is the product of an unknown people
antedating recognized history.
4. The Piri Reis chart depicts the Caribbean region at right
angles to its normal (Mercator) position, and South America
appears stretched out. Hapgood contends that the original source
maps from which the Piri Reis map was made must have been drawn
using a circular grid based on spherical trigonometry, with the
focal point situated in Egypt. Testing this hypothesis, the
Hydrographic Office of the U.S. Navy drew a modern map using the
same grid, and in such a construction the Caribbean indeed
appeared at right angles and South America was elongated. This
type of circular projection was not fully developed in Europe
until centuries after the map was drawn. Piri Reis revealed his
unfamiliarity with such a projection by treating the land area of
the original as a flat Mercator-type relief and shifting and
splicing the original grid to compensate for the curvature! The
Piri Reis map also shows islands and several locations along the
Central and South American coast which were either briefly
explored but not accurately positioned or not discovered at all
prior to 1513. These include the Isle of Pines, Andros Island,
San Salvador, Jamaica and others. Farther down the coast of South
America, the chart shows the mouths of the Amazon and the island
of Marajo, correctly shaped and perfectly located in longitude
and latitude.
Undoubtedly, the most intriguing feature of the Piri Reis
map is the coastline of Antarctica, showing the region of Queen
Maud Land. Modern seismic maps disclose that this coast is a
rugged one, with numerous mountain chains and individual peaks
breaking through the present levels of ice. The Piri Reis map
shows the same type of coast, but without the ice. In one
instance, Mallery discovered two bays on the Piri Reis map where
the seismic map showed land; however, when the experts were asked
to check their measurements, they found that the
sixteenth-century map was correct after all.
What is the ultimate conclusion of the cartographers?
Professor Hapgood and others see no way of reconciling the
cartography of 1513 with the data on the controversial Piri Reis
map concerning the geography of Antarctica. They concur that the
chart indicates that someone possessing measuring techniques
which were not employed in Europe until the nineteenth century
mapped Antarctica before the continent was covered with ice. Core
samples taken in the Ross Sea off the Antarctic coast in 1949 by
the Byrd Expedition reveal that there was indeed a time in the
distant past when fine-grain sediments were deposited, indicating
an ice-free coast and rivers that conveyed silt down to the sea.
Surprisingly enough, the much-analyzed Piri Reis map is not the
only map to evince a futuristic knowledge of the earth in remote
history.
The Orontius Fineus map of 1531 shows rivers in Antarctica
where today mile-thick glaciers flow; the Hadji Ahmed map of 1559
depicts the Ice Age land bridge that existed between Siberia and
Alaska. The Zeno brothers, in 1380, may have accurately pictured
the topography of Greenland below the northern icecap, while the
Andrea Benincasa map of 1508 indicates that northern Europe was
covered by the farthest advance of the Ice Age glaciation.
The only realistic conclusion one can reach on the basis of
the accumulative evidence of the medieval maps is that they all
have their origin in source maps constructed by an advanced
civilization antedating any of the known ancient cultures. Years
before the Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman civilizations
existed, at a time when the Antarctic and Arctic were just
beginning to feel the advance of the unyielding sheets of glacial
ice, this unknown culture possessed a knowledge of cartography
comparable to what we have today. These people knew the correct
size of the earth; they used spherical trigonometry in their
mathematical measurements; and they utilized ultramodern
cartographical projections. In addition to their science, these
surveyors must also have had at their disposal an advanced form
of technology - instruments, and trained specialists to use them,
for measuring longitude and latitude. The pre-ancient
civilization of the past, Professor Hapgood concludes, must have
been organized and directed on a global scale.
In order to place these findings on this ancient universal
survey within the historical framework, as endorsed by Professor
Albright, we must carry our assumptions a little further by
saying that this survey had to have been made shortly after the
Flood (when the land masses were left in their present forms),
but before the ice began to accumulate at the poles.
In Genesis 10:25 we meet a descendant of Noah called Peleg
who was given his name because "in his day was the earth
divided." The usual interpretation of this passage is that it
refers to the division of nations; however, it could also mean
division as in "allotment, marking off an area, a measurement." A
more accurate translation of this historical passage could
therefore read, "Peleg, in his day was the earth measured, or
surveyed." Even more perplexing is that the record indicates that
there have been others equally involved in this cartographic
process. Mizraim, a grandson of Noah, comes to mind as one who
may have shared responsibility of charting the world. His name
means "to delineate, to draw up a plan, to make a
representation," especially in association with measuring
distances. Mizraim was the founder of ancient Egypt. It is
significant to note that at least two of the Renaissance maps
showing advanced knowledge, the Piri Reis chart and the Reinal
chart, dating back to 1510, were based on a circular projection
with the focal point in Egypt.
A third descendant of Noah who presumably also participated
in the mapping of the globe was Almodad, whose name, when
translated from the Hebrew, means "measurer." In the Chaldean
Paraphrase of Jonathan there is preserved an ancient tradition
which tells that he was the "inventor of geometry," "qui
mensurbat terran finibus" - "who measured the earth to its
extremities." Almodad is regarded as a progenitor of the southern
Arabians. Is there a connection between him and the fact that
many of the Renaissance maps revealed peculiarities of the
earth's geography which were first noticed by the Arabs, when
taken from ancient sources never fully identified?
The relationship between Peleg, Mizraim and Almodad may be
even closer than at first suspected. According to the record,
their lifespans overlap, so that the mapping process, covering
perhaps the entire period from 2800 B.C. to 2500 B.C., a span of
300 years, was extended over enough years to be total and
complete. This conclusion is backed by what we find in the
Renaissance maps. It does not leave room for speculation, for
among the maps of Antarctica, for example, the Bauche map of 1737
(copied from an older Greek map) shows the continent completely
free of ice; the Orontius Fineus map of 1531 indicates that the
center of the continent was beginning to fill with ice when its
source maps were drawn, but the Piri Reis chart of 1513 and the
Mercator chart of 1569 picture only the Antarctic coast left
uncovered by glaciers. It is therefore apparent that Antarctica
was surveyed not once but several times, before and during the
period the southern polar icecap spread over the continent. In
the Zeno brothers' map of 1339, Greenland is shown free of
glaciers as it was prior to the Ice Age, while Ptolemy's map of
the North depicts a glacial sheet advancing across south-central
Greenland, and at the same time it shows glaciers retreating from
northern Germany and southern Sweden. This could only have come
from the findings of surveying parties that tracked the areas
before, during, and after the Ice Age.
The world contains a treasure of evidence pointing toward
unceasing activity on the part of geographers, surveyors and
scientifically oriented explorers during the gray dawn of
post-Flood development.
Other Evidence of Post-Flood Geographical Surveys
The scope of the surveying techniques developed by the
ancients should not be underestimated. The sacred Hindu books,
the Puranas, refer to direct communication between India and
distant places around the world. The Indians were well acquainted
with western Europe, which they called Varaha-Dwipa. England was
known to them as Sweta Saila, or "the Island of the White
Cliffs"; and Hiranya or Ireland, as the Irish legends relate, was
visited by the Dravidians, a group of men from India. The Irish
say that they stayed for only a brief time and had come as
surveyors, not invaders. But the Indian books go far beyond
western Europe in their recollection. They describe North
America, the Arctic Ocean, South and Central America, and other
locations. Detailed research into the background of the ancient
Sumerians has also provided us with some fascinating information
which tends to connect the twelve zodiacal constellations with
the characteristics of the lands found in the directions of those
constellations. North-northwest of Sumer, toward Capricorn the
Goat, is the Caucasus region known in ancient times for its wild
mountain goats, and especially for its domesticated goats, which
were exported to Sumer. To the northwest is Aquarius the Water
Bearer, and in this direction are Asia Minor and the source of
the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In mythology, the special god of
a river was always pictured as replenishing the source by pouring
water into it. Pisces the Fish was found west-northwest, toward
the Canaanite and Phoenician coasts, famous for their fishermen
and bountiful catches - and so it continues with the other
constellations. There was always a connection between the sign of
the zodiac and the lands found in its direction, and when
contemplating the geographical knowledge demonstrated by the
zodiac and the countries it represents, one must conclude that
during a very early period in their history the Sumerians were
familiar with lands as distant as North Africa, India, Ethiopia,
the plains of southern Russia, even including all of the eastern
Mediterranean and western Asia . . . certainly far beyond the
accomplishments of a people often regarded as "primitive"
ancients.
Evidence of a World Survey in Egypt
Serious consideration must be given to the involvement of
Mizraim with the world survey that was conducted after the Flood.
We know from Egyptian history that Mizraim is regarded as the
forefather of all Egyptians, and it is significant that the
secular records of Egypt testify that from a very early period
the Egyptians were indeed knowledgeable about land measurements
and practiced sophisticated surveying techniques.
Livio Catullo Stecchini, one of the world's foremost
authorities on ancient measures, discovered a peculiar hieroglyph
that appeared on all the thrones of the pharaohs, beginning at
the Fourth Dynasty. The hieroglyph is composed of knotted ropes
symbolizing the union of Upper and Lower Egypt at the thirtieth
parallel, where the southernmost tip of the Nile Delta crosses
the meridian 31* 30' east of Greenwich, which appears to have
been established as the prime meridian of Egypt in unknown
antiquity. At the bottom of the hieroglyph are three pairs of
horizontal lines of different lengths, depicting the three sets
of values which the Egyptians gave the Tropic of Cancer. The
middle line represented the conventional tropical latitude of 24*
the lower line symbolized the actual latitude of 23* 51', and the
top line lay at the latitude of 24* 6'. This last latitude, being
15' north of the true line, is important because 15' is half the
diameter of the sun, which shows that the Egyptians understood
that it is not the center of the sun but rather its outer rim
which must be observed for geodetic survey. Precisely where 24*
6' crosses the Nile, on the island of Elephantine opposite Aswan,
the Egyptians had an important astronomical observatory.
Many significant cities of Egypt, it appears, were built in
relation to the established prime meridian of Egypt and the
Tropic of Cancer. The predynastic capital of Lower Egypt, Buto,
was located precisely on the prime meridian, 31* 30', near the
mouth of the Nile. Memphis, the first capital of unified Egypt,
was also placed on the prime meridian, at 29* 51' - exactly 6*
north of the Tropic of Cancer. In the Twelfth Dynasty the capital
was moved once again, this time to Thebes. A new central meridian
for Egypt had been established at 32* 38' east which paralleled
the eastern edge of the Nile Delta. Thebes was located where the
meridian touched an eastward bend in the Nile at 258 42' 5"
north. What is amazing is that this parallel is almost exactly
2/7 the distance between the equator and the North Pole.
The survey work of the Egyptians left its mark not only on
the land of the Nile but throughout the rest of the ancient world
as well. Stecchini has found that such early capitals as Nimrud
in Mesopotamia, Sardis in Asia Minor, Susa in Persia, and even
Anyang in China were established in relationship to the earliest
prime meridian of Egypt. In terms of latitude, Delphi and Dodona,
the two most important oracular shrines in early Greece, were
also founded in relation to Egyptian measurement, being 7* and 8*
respectively, north of Buto.
Stecchini believes that when Alexander the Great destroyed
Heliopolis, the center of Egyptian science, and replaced it with
his own center at Alexandria, he may have destroyed the last
vestiges of Egyptian survey knowledge. Far from being the great
men of science they were for so long thought to have been, the
later Alexandrian Greek geographers did nothing more than revive
in part the advanced science of geography that had preceded them.
Evidence of a World Survey in China
Among the early Chinese we find evidence that they too
possessed advanced knowledge obtained from the geographical
survey of the world taken soon after the Flood. One of the oldest
Chinese literary works that has survived is called the "Shan Hai
King," The Classic of Mountains and Seas," a treatise on
geography. Its authorship is ascribed to "the great Yu," who
became Emperor in 2208 B.C., and the date for the writing of the
treatise is approximately 2250 B.C. about a century after the
death of Almodad, the seventh-generation descendant of Noah who
"measured the earth to its extremities." For several hundred
years after its writing, the Shan Hai King was regarded as a
scientific work, but during the third century B.C., when many
Chinese records were reevaluated and condensed, it was discovered
that the geographical knowledge it contained did not correspond
to any lands known at that time. Thus, the Shan Hai King was
reclassified as myth and was relegated to an unimportant position
in Chinese literature.
Within the past few years, however, several portions of the
Shan Hai King have been reexamined, and the information they
contain has altered many previous assumptions concerning the
treatise. In the Fourth Book, entitled "The Classic of Eastern
Mountains," are four sections describing mountains located
"beyond the Eastern Sea" - on the other side of the Pacific
Ocean. Each section begins by depicting the geographical features
of a certain mountain - its height, shape, mineral deposits,
surrounding rivers and types of plants and vegetation - then
gives the direction and distance to the next mountain, and so on,
until the narrative ends. By following these clues and the
directions and distances provided, much as one would a road map,
investigators have discovered that these sections describe in
detail the topography of western and central North America.
The first section begins on the Sweetwater River and
proceeds southeast to Medicine Bow Peak in Wyoming; then to Longs
Peak, Grays Peak, Mount Princeton, and Blanca Peak in Colorado;
to North Truchas Peak, Manzano Peak, and Sierra Blanca in New
Mexico; then to Guadalupe Peak, Baldy Peak, and finally Chinati
Peak, near the Rio Grande in Texas.
The second section describes an expedition over an even more
expansive area. It begins in Manitoba, at Hart Mountain near Lake
Winnepeg, and proceeds to Moose Mountain in Saskatchewan; it goes
from there to Sioux Pass (between Andes and Fairview) in Montana;
to Wolf Mountain and Medicine Bow Peak in Wyoming; to Longs Peak,
Mount Harvard, and Summit Peak in Colorado; then to Chicoma Peak,
Baldy Peak, Cooks Peak, and Animas Peak in New Mexico; then on
into Mexico, describing the Madero, Pamachic, Culiacan and
Triangulo heights, reaching the Pacific Coast near Mazatlan.
The third section is a tour of the mountains along the
Pacific Coast: Mount Fairweather and Mount Burkett in Alaska;
Prince Rupert and Mount Waddington in British Columbia; Mount
Olympus in Washington; Mount Hood in Oregon; and Mount Shasta,
Los Gatos, and Santa Barbara in California.
The fourth and last section covers several peaks in a small
area: Mount Rainier in Washington; Mount Hood, Bachelor Mountain,
Gearhart Mountain, Mahogany Peak, and Crane Mountain in Oregon;
and Trident Peak and Capitol Peak in Nevada.
Not only is "The Classic of Eastern Mountains" a
geographical survey, but the accounts in each section give the
observations and experiences of the surveyors, from picking up
black opals and gold nuggets in Nevada to watching the seals
sporting on the rocks in San Francisco Bay. They were even amused
by a strange animal who avoided its enemies by pretending to be
dead: the native American opossum.
Other portions of the Shan Hai King, specifically the Ninth
and Fourteenth books, also describe regions in North America. One
notable description given in the Fourteenth Book is of a
"luminous" or "great canyon," "a stream flowing in a bottomless
ravine," in the "place where the sun in born." Anyone who has
witnessed a sunrise in the Grand Canyon will know what the early
surveyors had seen. Still other parts of the Shan Hai King,
currently under investigation, are said to be accounts of
explorations farther to the east, in the Great Lakes and the
Mississippi Valley areas.
It is very evident from the accuracy of the geographical
details and the personal observations in the Shan Hai King that
an extensive scientific survey of the North American continent
was made by the Chinese almost 4,500 years ago.
A World Survey - A World LANGUAGE
After the initial inquiries into the Shan Hai King were
begun, it was noticed that along many of the routes which the
surveyors of North America took, there existed several examples
of rock drawings. The most notable are Writing Rock near Grenora,
North Dakota, and Writing-on-Stone in Alberta, Canada. Yet
another rock script occurs in British Columbia, and petroglyph
expert Philip Thornburg was the first to recognize among the
stone pictures a carving of a sisutl - the Chinese dragon.
Thornburg observed, "There does seem to be an Oriental background
to them. Since they are carved in sandstone, it's virtually
impossible to say what age they are. I've found some that were
buried under a foot of topsoil. Now this wasn't the kind of
topsoil that would have washed over them. This was formed there,
placing the age of the carving around five to seven thousand
years which is really ancient for this country." Thornburg
discovered one petroglyph on Vancouver Island that had had a hole
worn through it by dripping water, proof that it had been there
for some time.
William and Mae Marie Coxon, amateur archaeologists, have
spent the last decade studying the Canadian and other petroglyphs
found around the world. The conclusion of their research has been
that at a very remote period in human history a group of people
they call the Stone-Writers left their traces on every continent.
By careful comparison, the Coxons discovered 241 special
sequences of particular geometric signs and symbols. The
distribution of examples of these sequences was 201 in the Middle
East, 171 in the Far East, and 131 in the Americas. By dating the
petroglyph remains in the Nile Valley to compare with the later
Egyptian civilization, the Coxons were able to date the
Stone-Writers' appearance as being about 1,500 years before the
rise of Egypt.
From the drawings themselves, the two researchers were able
to describe the Stone-Writers as average to above average in
height, wearing short kilts that came to the knees, much like the
ancient Egyptian laborers. They must have possessed great
strength and endurance to have penetrated into the inhospitable
terrain where many of their glyphs were found. The Coxons are
convinced that the Stone-Writers were not barbaric hunters or
nomads but an intelligent people who were systematic in what they
did; the symbols had meaning and purpose in their repetition and
locations. The Coxons note, "They traveled the oceans, or at
least the coastlines, and they penetrated far up into the
continents along the rivers. . . . Along the streams, lakes and
ocean shores, they left guide signs to mark the way for others
who followed them. . . ." The Stone-Writers were thus explorers
and geographers, probably the very same explorers and geographers
who charted the world after the Flood.
The Coxons' work in symbols is being verified by a number of
other researchers. English archaeologist S. F. Hood, after
studying tablets at the prehistoric site of Tartaria in Rumania,
discovered correlations between the tablet symbols there and
those found in Crete, Iraq, Egypt, and the Balkan countries. His
conclusion was that a system of signs was used over an extensive
area 6,000 years ago. N. Vlassa, of the Museum of Cluj, supports
these findings with discoveries of his own. Almost identical
symbols from the same time period appear at Vinca and Tordos in
Rumania, at Troy, and on the Aegean island of Melos. On the basis
of his own research and that of his colleagues, Hood believes
that a single system of glyphs originated from Iraq or some other
country in the Middle East and were disseminated from there over
a wide area in a very short time. Oswald O. Tobisch, in his work
Kult Symbol Schrift, has carried the research a step further and,
like the Coxons, sees striking parallels in symbols in Africa,
Europe, Asia and America.
Symbols left on rocks and tablets for others presupposes
communication by language.
Significant research into language usage in the past has
been done by the Irish etymologist John Philip Cohane. More
specifically, Cohane has concentrated his efforts over the last
several decades on a detailed study of the origins of words in
almost every language around the world. He has discovered that
many words contain similar root words or root combinations beyond
what mere chance would permit. These reappearing roots, Cohane
discovered early in his study, all have their origin in the
Middle East and either figure prominently in Semitic legend or
are found in the Old Testament, notably in Genesis. Cohane
commented concerning these widely dispersed root words, "This is
not to say there may not be a more logical, even earlier, point
of origin than the Semites, but if so I have not been able to
find it. On the basis of the evidence, it would seem that a high
percentage of the people of the earth today are far more closely
related than is generally assumed and that they are bound
together by at least one early blood stream that is Semitic in
origin."
Later in his research Cohane was able to establish that
there had been two major dispersals of peoples from the Middle
East in the distant past, each group taking with it a previously
established group of root words. The second of these was heavily
concentrated in a limited area of the world: the Mediterranean
basin, Europe, Africa, parts of Asia, the West Indies and Brazil.
The first dispersal, however, though its traces are less apparent
today than those of the second, covered the entire world, in a
very short time, in Cohane's opinion. He says, "If one puts a
charted overlay containing only the first group of names on top
of a map of the world and then puts on top of that another
charted overlay containing only the second group of names, the
most logical conclusion is that, in prehistoric times, instead of
one there were two dispersions from the Mediterranean, the first
truly worldwide, the second petering out along the eastern coast
of the Americas in one direction, [and] in Japan, the
Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand in the other direction.
Again, there may be a more logical conclusion to be drawn from
the data, but if so, I have not been able to think of one. And
again . . . all the key names in both groups have prominent
origin points in Semitic legends and mythology, as well as known
Semitic place names."
These findings tell us several things. The discovery of
symbol and word dispersals from a common point of origin
somewhere in the Middle East fully corroborates the historical
Genesis record and its story of the dispersal of nations from one
point. The worldwide language wave is also indicative of the
ancient geographical survey of the world, as established by the
maps found in Renaissance times. A great number of the
significant roots were found by Cohane in geographical names. For
those who seek in this a confirmation of the Biblical story, the
Genesis 11:1 description of the conditions following the Deluge
is interesting: "And the whole earth was one language, and one
speech." Cohane's second language dispersal might well be
identical with the language disturbance that followed the
confusion at the Tower of Babel, as mentioned in Genesis 11:7.
The Reason for a World Survey - The Earth's Magic Lines
It is quite evident that soon after the Flood and before and
after the language disorder, between the second and seventh
post-Deluge generations (c. 3100-2500 B.C.), the descendants of
Noah undertook a geographic survey and exploration of the entire
world's surface, leaving their traces in the form of maps,
symbols and place names. This was most assuredly accomplished
with knowledge preserved from the antediluvian era, yet why was
it done? Why did the ancients undertake such a momentous task?
Why did they decide on this type of adventure ...
There are some obvious explanations. As Noah and his family
stepped down from their survival vessel, they looked upon a world
totally alien to them. All the familiar landmarks had
disappeared. Forests were gone, rugged mountain peaks faced them
on all sides, and from the murky waters below rose the foul
stench of decay. The earth that they once had known was now wiped
completely clean of any previous civilization. It was as if they
had landed on another planet.
As the new generations were born and grew up on the
foothills of Mount Ararat, their innate curiosity concerning this
new land forced them to venture out into the hinterland, to
explore for fertile valleys, plains and forests. The record shows
that those early generations were well aware that they were the
fathers of future nations, for their names often denoted their
professions or the geographical areas they occupied. They moved
out with stubborn insistence, initiating the first "land grab" in
history, staking out their territories, and when they found an
area which was suitable to become the home of a nation, they
settled and laid claim to the newly acquired territory, reserving
it for their children and their children's children.... The
natural inclination of the post-Deluge generations would be to
search for these treasure-troves.
Professor Hapgood suggests still another reason. He believes
that the mapping of a continent on such a vast scale, as with
Antarctica, requiring much organization, numerous exploring
expeditions and many stages of data compilation, must have been
motivated by a powerful reason. He feels that economic gain may
have been this reason; yet, the exploratory expeditions did more
than merely discover and cultivate new areas; they actually
divided the earth into parcels of land, with each one bounded by
what are now called ley lines.
Until a warm summer afternoon in the early 1920s, there was
no indication other than the historical Genesis record that this
ever occurred. Alfred Watkins, a merchant whose hobby was
prehistory, was riding horseback through the Bredwardine hills
near Hereford, England. On reaching the summit of a grassy
hillock, he rested, letting his eyes gaze over the tranquil
English landscape. Suddenly he saw something he'd never noticed
before. Several church steeples were aligned straight across the
countryside. Knowing that these churches had been constructed on
the sites of prehistoric sanctuaries, he wondered whether it was
possible that they had once been linked by an invisible web of
lines. While still pondering this question, he suddenly realized
that not only ancient temples, but also mounds, old standing
stones, crosses, crossroads, sacred trees, moats and sacred wells
also stood on the same lines!
Racing home, Watkins painstakingly marked all the ancient
sites and monuments he knew from his studies onto a one-inch
ordnance map, and even though finding five or six points in
alignment would have been beyond mere chance, he found himself
confronted with eight, nine and even more points, all stretching
out in precisely straight lines! Carrying his initial research a
step further, he compared his points to positions on other maps
he had marked, and discovered that the lines could be extended
for miles and miles, usually ending at a mountain peak or a high
cliff. Aided by a friend, Watkins undertook a detailed survey of
all England and Scotland and everywhere they found further traces
of a prehistoric network of dead-straight alignments that had
once extended over the entire island.
Building on the accomplishments of Watkins, Major H. Taylor
of the British Army set out, accompanied by a professional
surveyor, to do an even more detailed study of the strange
alignments. Taylor discovered more landmarks previously not
known, or at least not recorded in modern times. His findings
were eventually published in a small book entitled "The Geometric
Arrangement of Ancient Sites." But if he thought he'd have a
publishing first, he was mistaken, for a year prior to the
emergence of his book, a German geographer, Dr. Heinish, had
already presented a paper dealing with the same discoveries
before an international congress held at Amsterdam. Delivering
his paper, "Principles of Prehistoric Cult Geography," he
proposed to a hushed audience that at one time in the distant
past a magical principle had existed by which holy sites were
situated. They were placed, he submitted, on lines that were
constructed in relation to the positions of the sun, moon and
planets. In addition he claimed he had uncovered evidence that
the units of measurement used to construct these lines were, like
those of the early Egyptian geodetic surveys, based on simple
fractions of the earth's dimensions. He had found examples of
these lines not only in Britain but all over Europe and the
Middle East. Greatly impressed by the vast extent and accuracy of
the construction of these lines, Heinish concluded that they bore
testimony to the past existence of a widespread civilization that
possessed advanced knowledge of both technology and magic.
Beyond the boundaries of Britain, the lines have been found
in nearly every corner of the globe, and strangely enough,
associated with them were numerous stories of a flow of magic
energy! Ireland has many legends of fairy paths, along which
fairies and other spiritual beings are supposed to travel at
specific times of the year. Yet today these same "magic" routes
have become well-worn roads and footpaths. In his book "The Fairy
Faith of Celtic Countries," J. D. EvansWentz recalls how an old
Irish seer explained to him that mysterious currents flow along
the paths, but that their exact nature has been forgotten.
Similar research conducted by Xavier Guichard strongly
supported the findings of the British and German investigators.
Referring to several old cities in his native France, Guichard
said, "These cities were established in very ancient times
according to immutable astronomical lines, determined first in
the sky, then transferred to the earth at regular intervals, each
equal to a 360th part of the globe."
Evidence that these lines existed in remote history can be
found in ancient literature. For example, in their conquest of
the Etruscans, the early Romans noted standing stones set in
linear patterns over the entire countryside of Tuscany. Later,
during the Latin invasions of Greece, they recounted the fact
that "stone pillars" were found running straight and true along
the roads through the hilly Hellenic landscape. The Romans were
not particularly surprised at finding these straight tracks, for
they had discovered them in almost every country they subjugated:
across Europe, North Africa, Crete, and as far west as the
regions of ancient Babylon and Nineveh. We now recognize that the
Romans' reputation as builders of straight thoroughfares was
partly attributable to their simply utilizing sacred lines that
existed long before their conquests, and which they then
transformed into military and commercial routes. Even today, the
Bedouins of North Africa use the line system marked out by
standing stones and cairns to help them traverse the desert
wastes. When were these stones erected?
The nomads shake their heads when asked this question, for
even though they need the markers for survival, they know nothing
of their origin.
While the lines have been forgotten in most countries, in
other parts of the world the prehistoric line system is still
being used. One such system exists in the interior of Australia
among the aborigines, who tell of a past age, which they call
"dream time," when the "creative gods" traversed the country and
"reshaped" the land to conform to important paths called
turingas. At certain times of the year, they say, the turingas
become revitalized by the energies flowing through them, giving
new life to the adjacent countryside.
To ensure that this ancient fertilization still takes place,
the aborigines gather at specific locations during certain times
of the year, perform the ritualistic dances that have been
dictated by the passing time, and pray to the force of the lines.
They actually receive messages over vast distances and are
forewarned of the approach of strangers - all through their
system of magic lines.
On the other side of the globe, as recently as the sixteenth
century, the Incas used similar spirit lines with the Inca Temple
of the Sun in Cuzco as their hub, but no one nation has valued
the reported existence of these lines so much as the Chinese.
Until the latter part of the nineteenth century, the Chinese
practiced an art called fung-shui, or "wind and water," which
means "what cannot be seen and cannot be grasped." The duty of
the practitioners of fung-shui was to determine the flow of
lung-mei, or "dragon currents," and interpret their influence in
the regions they passed through. Every building, stone and
planted tree was so placed in the Chinese landscape as to conform
to the mysterious dragon currents that flowed along the lines.
The main paths of the forces, the Chinese believed, were
determined by the routes of the sun, moon and five major planets
across the heavens. The dragon currents controlled Chinese life
to a great extent, and in the feudal days of China, the Emperor
would emphasize the country's dependence on the mysterious force
by climbing an artificial mound called Col Hill near Peking
several times a year to measure both the planetary and
terrestrial energies and to fuse the two for the benefit of the
land. Some researchers contend that this was an attempt to
combine magic with reality.
The ancient legends of earth currents which are affected by
planetary motions and which in turn affect fertility are not
fantasy or religious superstition; they are based on very real
scientific principles. We are only beginning to realize today
that the entire surface of the earth is bathed in the energy of
the earth's magnetic field and that this field is subject to
certain influences from above and below. The strength and
direction of the magnetic currents vary according to the
positions of the sun, moon and the closer planets in much the
same way as the ebb and flow of the tides take place according to
the position of the moon. At the same time, characteristics of
magnetic currents are also influenced by the terrain over which
they flow. A flat landscape exhibits placid and regular activity,
while rocky or broken land shows disturbed behavior. Magnetic
flows are especially agitated over the geologic faults over which
many of the prehistoric ley lines have been found.
While some investigators are studying the variations of
current on the earth's surface, others are attempting to discover
what effects these same currents have on certain nonliving and
living components. After exhaustive research, involving 200,000
experiments over ten years, Giorgio Piccardi, Director of the
Institute for Physical Chemistry in Florence, Italy, has
concluded that water is extremely sensitive to electromagnetic
fields, and that as the fields are changed or influenced, so the
chemistry of water may be altered. Piccardi also found that since
the earth's energy field is subject to change by changes in the
positions of the sun and moon, chemical reactions using water as
a base also change accordingly. The Florentine chemist's work has
been verified by W. H. Fisher of the National Center for
Atmospheric Research of Boulder, Colorado, who noted further that
since water is the liquid of life, electromagnetic fluctuations
could thus affect growth. Drs. A. A. Boe and D. K. Salunkhe,
horticulturists at Utah State University, have come up with
significant results. When green tomatoes, for example, were
placed within a magnetic field, they ripened four to six times
faster than under normal conditions. The researchers also noted
that seeds of a variety of plants grew many times faster than
usual when they had been placed in a current. More recent
research has uncovered not only that the living plant is
stimulated, but that currents also affect the soil in which the
plant grows. The movement of galactic bodies, it now appears,
causes certain magnetic fluctuations which in turn increase the
fertility of plants as the chemistry of the mineral content of
the soil is changed.
Of course we are only beginning to understand the principles
behind celestial and terrestrial magnetic influences on the
earth's surface, but it seems that people in centuries past not
only knew these principles but applied them for their own
benefit.
First, these early people must have had the scientific
knowledge to be aware of the currents' existence, so they
developed a technology for detecting those currents.
Second, they must have possessed the end product of a
tremendous body of research and experimentation that covered
centuries, perhaps, and by which they knew how to manipulate the
currents toward a predictable result. We can only guess at this
from what remains of the earlier culture, for we ourselves have
not yet reached that level in our understanding. It appears that
the currents began at certain natural energy "springs" in the
earth, which were later marked as religious sites, and from here
the currents were directed to specific centers, towers or mounds
- where they were gathered and from which they were eventually
dissipated to the surrounding countryside. Astronomical
observation was of paramount importance, for only by a constant
watch over the celestial movements could the waxing and waning of
the currents be measured and anticipated.
Directing the magnetic currents seems to have been
accomplished by the placement of the standing stones along the
ley lines. Throughout recorded history, special powers have been
attributed to many of these stones by local traditions. A dolmen
or stone group near Finistre, France, for example, is said to
cure rheumatism; other neighboring stones are believed to heal
fever and paralysis. Modern investigators have discovered that
mysterious energies do emanate from a number of the stones, for
photographs of them are sometimes marred by a mist of light
surrounding their lower extremities. According to Gey Underweed,
author of "The Pattern of the Past," the standing stones served
the same purpose as the needles of Chinese acupuncture. Just as
the needles are claimed to redirect the flow of "life forces" in
the human body to restore health, so the standing stones were
placed in such a manner so as to realign earth magnetism from the
natural paths to artificial ones. Using special dowsing equipment
for detection, Underwood found evidence that the magnetic
currents in parts of his native Britain do in fact run in rows
parallel to the straight lines of the standing stones with a
precision that characterizes human construction rather than
natural patterns.
Ancient legends explain that the major purpose of the
ley-line systems was for the increase of soil fertility and plant
growth, but there appear to have been other uses for the lines as
well.
The modern Druids claim their forefathers built the ley
lines and were able to utilize the linear energies for flight. On
the day a line became "animated" by a sunrise directly down a
path, the currents were directed so as to charge a body to such a
degree that it could be levitated and made to move along the path
of a specific level of magnetic intensity. Druidic tradition
tells of such heroes as Mog Ruith, Bladud and the magician
Abiris, who possessed flying vehicles activated by the leyline
energies and were able to travel in them as far as Greece. The
stories of these flights usually end in disaster - an eclipse
takes place, suddenly terminating the power sources along the
lines, and the hero and his craft plunge to earth and
destruction.
There is scientific fact behind these stories, for an
eclipse of the sun or moon does indeed cause a sudden drop in the
level of the earth's surface magnetic activity. We find that
among many ancient cultures around the world there was an
obsession with predicting eclipses. Perhaps the reason was not so
much superstitious fear, as has always been assumed, but changes
that eclipses wrought upon terrestrial magnetic flows.
Looking at what we now know concerning the ley lines, we can
make several observations.
Examples of ley-line systems are found all over the earth -
in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas - and the
legends and traditions associated with them indicate that they
were all based on the same principle, magnetic manipulation, and
were used for the same purposes. Their conception certainly did
not originate with one group of isolated people and then slowly
spread to other neighboring groups; rather, the system appears to
have sprung up all over the world simultaneously, planned by a
culture that had surveyed the globe and charted the geographical
features that revealed the underlying major centers of magnetic
activity and inactivity. The very nature of the operation of the
lines required that for the system to work to its full potential,
all the terrestrial surface currents had to be accounted for. The
ley-line system was thus a truly global system.
Commenting on the lines, John Michell writes in "The View
over Atlantis," "A great scientific instrument lies sprawled over
the entire surface of the globe. At some period - perhaps it was
about 4,000 years ago - almost every corner of the world was
visited by a group of men who came with a particular task to
accomplish. With the help of some remarkable power, by which they
could cut and raise enormous blocks of stone, these men erected
vast astronomical instruments, circles of erect pillars,
pyramids, underground tunnels, cyclopean alignments, whose course
from horizon to horizon was marked by stones, mounds, and
earthworks.
Such a global undertaking implies the existence of a single
authority directing a unified effort involving the inhabitants of
the whole world. Also, just as local sections of the ley lines
had a specific center or even several nodes where the energies
converged, so it is likely that the single authority operated
from a world center where the energies of the entire global line
system were gathered. The system appears to have operated for a
period of time, but then something happened, something
significant enough to mark a break in world conditions and to
bring the world line system to an end. Before the event, the
construction of the system had necessitated a unified world. At
some specific point in time that unity was decisively broken. The
single directing authority lost its power, and its world center
ceased to operate. Following the event, new conditions prevailed,
and the people of the world were fragmented into factions, making
unity of effort and the coordinated working of the ley lines no
longer possible.
As Michell described it, "All we can suppose is that some
overwhelming disaster, whether or not of natural origin,
destroyed a system whose maintenance depended upon its control of
certain natural forces across the entire earth. All attempts at
reconstructing whatever it was that collapsed during the great
upheaval have ever since been frustrated by schism and
degeneration. Falling ever deeper into ignorance, increasingly at
the mercy of rival idealists, the isolated groups of survivors
all over the world forgot their former unity, and, in the course
of striving to re-create some local version of the old universal
system, perverted the tradition and lost its spiritual
invocation."
Eventually, even the perversions - the myths and legends of
past powers - were partially garbled or forgotten, and the
surviving local systems were abandoned. Today we are left with
only shadows and remnants of the former universal system.
Thanks to the discoveries made by archaeologists, much of
what was considered legendary in the Genesis account of the rise
of nations is now being found to be true. The story of a former
world unity which was broken into factions is beginning to take
on a realistic form. Founded on even older historical accounts,
the Genesis story of the Tower of Babel relates the desperate
efforts of the new generations to remain together "lest we be
scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." So they began
to construct a world center and a tower that was to reach to the
skies.
It appears that as the post-Flood populations in the settled
land around the globe were growing large enough to form the bases
of active cultures, the people of the world were worried that
their continued unity might one day be dissolved. Their fears
were justified, for they were trying to reestablish the one-world
civilization that the antediluvians had possessed. Babel was
chosen to become the capital of the world, symbolizing the
organization of the post-Flood peoples under a centralized
authority, in the same way that Cain had organized his
descendants under one rule by means of the construction of Enoch
City. The city of Babel represented a "United Nations," or a
political center for world government. The Tower of Babel, on the
other hand, intended to be a great structure reaching to the
skies, may have represented something even more significant. As
noted earlier, there very likely had been a world center where
the surface energies of the globe were eventually gathered from
the global ley-line system. We know that the place where the
currents were accumulated was usually characterized by a mound or
tower. The Tower of Babel may have been the receiving station for
the ley-line currents of the earth. By their possession of such a
center of the world's energies, the ruling authorities at Babel
literally controlled the world, for everyone who desired to
benefit from the world ley-line system would have had to serve
the rulers of Babel.
We know from all accounts that the lines were used for
occult purposes, so there were spiritual as well as material
energies involved. The post-Flood ley-line system was very
probably a reconstruction of a system used before the Flood. The
antediluvians had developed a sophisticated form of technology
that incorporated the use of both material and occult energies as
its power base, and the ley-line system was simply a further
extension of this occult technology.
..................
To be continued
|
