Tool from Cro-Magnon – Louis Lartet Collection (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
crâne de l’un des individus de l’abri de Cro-Magnon, moulage vitrine du Musée de l’Homme, Paris (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Over and over again we find these odd clues that point to an ancient civilization
that existed something over 12,000 years ago. There has been a raging controversy
for generations between pro-Atlanteans and anti-Atlanteans about this. There seem
to be sufficient archaeological remains to justify a serious scientific study based on
such a hypothesis but so far, there are no “takers” in the mainstream scientific
community. Archaeology and ethnology, being observational sciences, and not
experimental sciences, have built their entire framework upon the study of those
remains. And when we look closely at the array of discoveries in those fields, we
note bits and pieces of cultures of almost unspeakable age. The fact that
uniformitarian science barely allows the idea of cataclysmic destruction to be part
of the hypothesis cripples archaeologists and, in the end, may make fools of them
all.
Without the algorithm of cyclic cataclysm, archaeologists cannot fully
understand what they observe, nor can they explain the anomalies here and there,
and the lack of other evidence that ought to be here and there (if one assumes great
antiquity of civilization with no cataclysms). The fact seems to be that, what does
continue to exist in terms of archaeological remains from times before 7,000 or
more years ago, have been subjected to geological and cosmic cataclysms of
almost incomprehensible violence and few major relics remain for perusal. Those
few, however, are cast aside as the anomalies of archaeology and ethnology, and
224 The Secret History of the World
their very existence is buried or denied in efforts to avoid toppling the house of
cards so laboriously established by those sciences.
Nevertheless, we find that all over the globe, with few exceptions, these studies
break down almost completely right around 7,000 to 10,000 BC, at which point
they meet with what mathematicians call a “discontinuity”. Immediately after this
discontinuity, all of the hot-spots of ancient civilization that archaeologists accept
as valid suddenly appear with no indication of gradual, uniformitarian
development. What is more, there seems to be considerable indication that these
developments were degenerate remnants of something already lost in the mists of
antiquity.
Entire libraries of books have been written demonstrating this antiquity of man
and his civilizations, but it has not yet been accepted, even in principle, by any
branch of modern science. The scientific thought police oppose any type of
cataclysmic change in the structure of the earth and will go to any extremes to
avoid coming to grips with its evidence. And yet, as we will see, science breaks
down again when it is forced to contemplate the origin of man’s intellectual
development.
Ancient Flight?
Is there any “hard” evidence for this ancient, worldwide, high civilization? I
don’t want to spend too much time going over all of it and attempting to reproduce
the fine efforts of other writers. But, just to cover the subject briefly, one of the
most telling pieces of hard evidence is included in Charles Hapgood’s book, Maps
of the Ancient Sea Kings. Hapgood, a Professor of Anthropology, included in his
book a most interesting letter from a group of cartographers in the United States
Air Force. The statements in this letter, to my knowledge, have never been
challenged. In fact, the letter itself doesn’t receive much attention, though
Hapgood is certainly referred to as a crank often enough. The letter refers to a
series of highly technical analyses of several maps that Dr. Hapgood presented to
the cartographers. After their study, they wrote:
It is not very often that we have the opportunity to evaluate maps of ancient origin.
The Piri Reis (AD 1513) and the Oronteus Fineaus [sic] (AD 1531) maps sent to us
by you, presented a delightful challenge for it was not readily conceivable that they
could be so accurate without being forged. With added enthusiasm we accepted this
challenge and have expended many off duty hours evaluating your manuscript and
the above maps. I am sure you will be pleased to know that we have concluded that
both of these maps were compiled from accurate original source maps, irrespective
of dates. The following is a brief summary of our findings:
The solution of the portolano projection used by Admiral Piri Reis, developed by
your class in Anthropology must be very nearly correct; for when known
geographical locations are checked in relationship to the grid computed by Mr.
Richard W. Strachan (MIT), there, is remarkably close agreement. Piri Reis’ use of
the Portolano projection (centred on Syene, Egypt) is an excellent choice, for it is a
developable surface that would permit the relative size and shape of the earth at that
(latitude) to be retained. It is our opinion that those who compiled the original map
had an excellent knowledge of the continents covered by this map.
As stated by Colonel Harold Z. Ohlmeyer in his letter (July 6, 1960) to you, the
Princess Martha Coast of Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, appears to be truly
represented on the southern sector of the Piri Reis Map. The agreement of the Piri
Reis map with the seismic profile of this area made by the Norwegian-British -
Swedish Expedition of 1949, supported by your solution of the grid, places beyond
a reasonable doubt the conclusion that the original source maps must have been
made before the present Antarctic ice cap covered Queen Maud Land coasts.
It is our opinion that the accuracy of the cartographic features shown in the
Oronteus Fineaus [sic] Map (AD 1530) suggests, beyond a doubt, that it also was
compiled from accurate source maps of Antarctica, but in this case of the entire
continent. Close examination has proved the original source maps must have been
compiled at a time when the land mass and inland waterways of the continent were
relatively free of ice. This conclusion is further supported by a comparison of the
Oronteus Finneaus [sic] Map with the results obtained by International Geophysical
Year teams in their measurements of the subglacial topography. The comparison
also suggests that the original source maps (compiled in remote antiquity) were
prepared when Antarctica was presumably free of ice. The Cordiform projection
used by Oronteus Fineaus [sic] suggests the use of advanced mathematics. Further,
the shape given to the Antarctic continent suggests the possibility, if not the
probability, that the original source maps were compiled on a stereographic or
gnomonic type of projection (involving the use of spherical trigonometry).
We are convinced that the findings made by you and your associates are valid, and
that they raise extremely important questions affecting geology and ancient history,
questions which certainly require further investigation.
We thank you for extending us the opportunity to have participated in the study of
these maps. The following officers and airmen volunteered their time to assist
Captain Lorenzo W. Burroughs in this evaluation: Captain Richard E. Covault,
CWO Howard D. Minor, MSgt Clifton M. Dover, MSgt David C. Carter, TSgt
James H. Hood, SSgt James L. Carroll, and AIC Don R. Vance.
Lorenzo W. Burroughs, Captain,
USAF Chief, Cartographic Section
8th Reconnaissance Technical Sqdn
(SAC) Westover, Mass.139
The Antarctic ice cover is supposed to be millions of years old. Who could have
made a map of Antarctica when it was not covered by ice, and when? Why is it
that we believe this ice cover to be so old? And if it is not, how old is it really and
why does it present the appearance of being millions of years old, assuming it does
so to the trained scientist?
Charles Hapgood heard about these maps at a particular point in his life when he
was studying the ice ages. A copy of an ancient map had been found in the
Topkapi Palace in Istanbul in 1929, and a Turkish naval officer had presented a
copy of it to the US Navy Hydrographic Office. It was examined by scholars who
noted that the map represented Antarctica before it was covered with ice. Yet, the
map was painted on parchment and was dated to 1513, over 300 years before
Antarctica was officially “discovered”. Core samples taken by the Byrd Antarctic
Expedition showed that the last warm period in the Antarctic ended around 4,000
BC. It began about 9,000 years before that. The only conclusion that could be
drawn was that someone had mapped Antarctica at least 6,000 years ago. Hapgood
discovered that there were more of these ancient maps – portolans, as they are
called – and that some of them strongly indicate that the mapmaker had an aerial
view of what he was mapping! Hapgood himself writes:
The evidence presented by the ancient maps appears to suggest the existence in
remote times, before the rise of any known cultures, of a true civilisation, of an
advanced kind, which either was localized in one area but had worldwide
commerce, or was, in a real sense, a worldwide culture. This culture, at least in
some respects, was more advanced than the civilizations of Greece and Rome. In
geodesy, nautical science, and mapmaking it was more advanced than any known
culture before the 18th century of the Christian Era. It was only in the 18th century
that we developed a practical means of finding longitude. It was in the 18th century
that we first accurately measured the circumference of the earth. Not until the 19th
century did we begin to send out ships for exploration into the Arctic or Antarctic
Seas and only then did we begin the exploration of the bottom of the Atlantic. The
maps indicate that some ancient people did all these things.[…]
When I was a youth I had a plain simple faith in progress. It seemed to me
impossible that once man had passed a milestone of progress in one way that he
could ever pass the same milestone again the other way. Once the telephone was
invented, it would stay invented. If past civilizations had faded away it was just
because they had not learned the secret of progress. But Science meant permanent
progress, with no going back.[…] S.R.K. Glanville writes in The Legacy of Egypt:
“It may be, as some indeed suspect, that the science we see as the dawn of recorded
history was not science at its dawn, but represents the remnants of the science of
some great and as yet untraced civilization.”
By a series of analyses, Hapgood and others came to the conclusion that there
was an ancient civilization whose center or “home base” was Antarctica itself.141
The fact that it was a global society, just as our own is, was also evident to these
researchers from other clues. This was, to put it mildly, not an acceptable idea to
the uniformitarian view of evolution.
Dr. Hapgood never used the word “Atlantis” in his book. He knew the value of
his academic reputation and that he just couldn’t go there. But that was not a
problem for Erich von Daniken.
Von Daniken’s book Chariots of the Gods? came out in 1967 and proposed that
the ancient portolans, side by side with other anomalies, suggested the presence
and influence of extraterrestrial “gods” in ancient times. I find this to be a curious
sort of “damage control” that attempts – in a left handed way – to support the
uniformitarian hypothesis since it suggests strongly that mankind himself was
incapable of creating an advanced civilization on his own.
The portolans studied by Charles Hapgood demonstrate that there have been
very ancient cultures, or civilizations, which may have and could have developed
methods of flight. The existence of the great megalithic structures further suggest
that the energy sources of that time may have been much simpler and more
effective than ours, and more directly associated with forces which we do not yet
comprehend. Yes, we are dealing with indirect evidence, not always of the greatest
clarity. Yet in support of such antiquity, we note that there is stonework carved out
of the solid mountain of rock in South America, which certainly antedate the
Andean glaciers, and almost as certainly predate the formation of the mountains
themselves. This work is superior in technique to anything that can currently be
produced by our mechanized civilization. It seems almost patently evident that the
construction, sculpting and tunneling of our ancestors could only have been
accomplished by forces different from those in use by us today. The problem can
be solved by admitting to a levitating force developed and used by the same
common denominator – space flight – which simplifies so many other puzzles for
us. And it seems that these very things are what the myths of antiquity, including
that most captivating story of all, the legend of the Holy Grail, are telling us.
On the basis of the evidence of an antiquity, we postulate the ancient
development of some kind of science. In either case, it is of great importance to
consider these matters in terms of the how’s and why’s and who’s. Most books on
these subjects approach the matter from one of these assumptions or the other,
with little regard to what might be behind it all when considered in light of present
day observations. For us, the most telling thing about this is that either angle is
abhorrent to science and to most religions.
In the end, nothing but the existence of an extremely ancient high civilization
answers all of the problems presented by observed and recorded facts. And that is
what led us to ask the questions about what is the wellspring of our beliefs, what is
the source of our denial and rejection of what is observable in favor of an imposed
belief system? We will come to that issue soon enough.
The Neanderthal Enigma
Let’s come back now to the idea that the earth may have been an entirely
different place in terms of cosmic environment, thus enabling the dinosaurs to live
and thrive, we can ask if other “different” environments might have existed at
other times, specifically in relation to man himself? One example that might relate
to such an idea is the extraordinarily strange disappearance of Neanderthal man.
Actually, the disappearance of a whole, distinct group of human type beings at
such a relatively recent point in history, is scary as all get-out. Just think about it:
Neanderthals were everywhere in the icy lands of Europe and Western Asia for
over 150,000 years. They were enormously strong and manifestly intelligent. What
went wrong?
It is also proposed that, at the same moment in time that Neanderthal man just
went “poof!” homo sapiens sapiens (that’s us), just dropped in for dinner, so to
speak. Is there a connection between what went wrong for Neanderthal and what
was “right” for modern man? That question is driving a lot of paleontologists
batty.
Allan Wilson and Vincent Sarich of Berkeley undertook to determine the date of
human origins via DNA analysis. They were looking at proteins because they
knew that proteins evolve by accumulating mutations. They also knew that the
proteins in related species are slightly different from one another because of the
mutations that occur after a species splits off from the “common ancestor”.
Differences in proteins can be quantified.
Well, this wasn’t so controversial a thing to be doing until Wilson and Sarich
suggested that mutations occur across the millennia at a steady rate, like the ticks
of a molecular clock. If this was true, it meant that the difference in a given protein
in any two species would indicate not only how related they were, but also how
much time had elapsed since they shared a common ancestor. In other words,
Wilson and Sarich were going to analyze some proteins and tell us when we last
were apes. Everyone was holding their breath for the answer to this one.
Wilson and Sarich’s protein analysis suggested that the common ancestor of
apes and humans had lived only five million years ago. Stretching it to
accommodate errors, they could only give it eight million years. “To put it as
bluntly as possible,”, Sarich wrote, “one no longer has the option of considering a
fossil specimen older than about eight million years as a hominid no matter what
it looks like”.
The idea that there was or was not any genetic connection between Cro-Magnon
and Neanderthal led to many hot debates. A team of U.S. and German researchers
extracted mitochondrial DNA from Neanderthal bone showing that the
Neanderthal DNA sequence falls outside the normal variation of modern humans.
The researchers compared the Neanderthal sequence with 2,051 human
sequences and 59 common chimpanzee sequences. They found that the differences
in Neanderthal DNA occurred at sites where differences usually occur in both
humans and chimps. In other words, Neanderthal was simply a different species.
When the researchers looked at the Neanderthal sequence with respect to 994
human mitochondrial DNA lineages including Africans, Europeans, Asians,
Native Americans, Australians and Pacific Islanders, they found the number of
base pair differences between the Neanderthal sequence and these groups was 27
or 28 for all groups.
There is a long and interesting case of some Neanderthal remains in a cave in
Israel that some scientists were attempting to utilize as evidence that this was the
region in which Neanderthal morphed into anatomically modern man. The
interested reader may want to have a look at The Neanderthal Enigma by James
Shreeve for a blow-by-blow account of this idea and how it was shot down. The
end result is, just to save some time, the conclusion that it was another example of
Darwinist wishful thinking.
Naturally, since the idea that Neanderthal was not the precursor to modern man
was now pretty well squashed, that meant that modern man evolved along another
line. This opened the door to the acknowledgement of certain facts that had been
rejected in earlier debates, while the Neanderthal hypothesis was still viable, but
now looked like a reasonable way out of the dilemma. Suddenly, fossils of very
old, modern humans, were acceptable, even if they existed long before the
disappearance of Neanderthal.
The problem is, this little clue that a controversy exists is merely the end of a
thread hanging out there in public view. When you take hold of this one, oh my! It
does get deep and you do need hip-waders!
An interesting book was published a few years back entitled Forbidden
Archeology. The authors, Michael Cremo and Richard L. Thompson, were
savaged by the mainstream science critics for their “absurd ideas and ridiculous
assertions”. Most of all, it was suggested that, since they were not “experts”, they
simply could not understand the material they were assembling and, therefore, it
had no validity. Sad to say, I delayed reading this book for a rather long time
because of the negative reviews. However, as I pulled on this particular thread,
one disturbing element leading to another, I finally gave in and ordered the volume
and sat down to read it in a skeptical frame of mind. Just because it was well
written did not resolve my skepticism. Just because there were hundreds of
references to scientific papers did not persuade me that the authors had actually
come to the correct conclusions about those papers. So, I undertook to go to the
papers they cited myself.
As it turned out, I ended up reversing my opinion of Cremo and Thompson. A
great many of these scientific papers that they have cited were written in rather
plain terms that anyone could understand – even another non-expert like myself.
What is more, the fact that they have been “buried”, or marginalized, ignored,
flamed and forgotten, suggests more about the experts who have done this, and
who then adopt the jargon they use as a means of concealing that they really don’t
understand what they are doing, than it says about the authors who can clearly see
that we have serious problems reconciling the observable and empirical facts with
the “accepted theories”. By the time the reader is finished with this book, they will
be completely disgusted with the utter and absolute lies and fabrications of some
of the most influential members of the mainstream scientific community, what I
have come to call the Scientific Thought Police. When the masses of people come
New data may change this. If it can be shown that Neaderthal did evolve into modern man, or was at least one of the sources for modern man, this opens intriguing possibilities for their relationship to what we have named the organic portal.
to the realization that the power structure of any given period creates the
educational institutions that promulgate the lies and distortions that support the
political structure, and that the majority of the scientific community only “follow
the money” of the military-industrial complex, I tremble for those who have
chosen the cozy lies over the truth. Again, that raises the question as to who or
what ideology “controls” our world in such a way that science can – and is -
manipulated to support a political agenda? What is that agenda? We will come to
that.
Evidence of the Ica Stones
Recently, some objects called the Ica Stones have become a subject of much
discussion. These stones were brought to the attention of the scientific community
in 1966 when a Dr. Javier Cabrera, a Peruvian physician, received a small, carved
rock for his birthday from a poor native. The carving on the rock looked ancient to
Dr. Cabrera, but intrigued him because it seemed to depict a primitive fish. It
wasn’t long before the locals were bringing the doctor scads more of these rocks
gathered from a riverbank. He soon had a collection of more than 15,000 stones,
many etched with impossible scenes that clearly depict such dinosaurs as
triceratops, stegosaurus, apatosaurus, and human figures riding on the backs of
flying pterodactyls! What’s more, some of the scenes are of men hunting and
killing dinosaurs! Others show men watching the heavens through what look like
telescopes, performing open-heart surgery, and cesarean section births, and even
some serious pornography.
Oh dear! How can this be? We have already been told that modern man is only
about 2 million years old and dinosaurs are thought to have become extinct 65
million years ago.
Sophia Melewska, a geomorphologist, was commissioned to investigate the
rocks, summarize their content, and comment on their authenticity. After studying
the collection of Ica stones, Melewska said that she was in a state of “intellectual
shock”. Melewska is one of the scientists now trying to direct the attention of
professional research toward this mystery with little success.
Part of the problem for mainstream science is the nature of artifacts themselves.
Unlike clay figurines that have organic material (i.e., straw) in their composition,
there are no organic materials that can be dated in plain old rock. The surface of
these rocks has a varnish that is produced by bacteria and minute organisms over
millennia. Such a varnish or patina will take thousands of years to discolor and
coat each stone. The etching of the stones removed the existing varnish, revealing
the lighter rock underneath. Since these rocks have developed additional varnish in
the etched grooves, the evidence is that they were carved a very, very long time
ago.
The BBC sent a team to investigate these stones, sending Neil Steede to examine
them. Steede examined the varnish on the stones but was not able to guess at the
date. Without recourse to radiometric dating, the strata in which an object is found
can often give a clue to their age. However, these stones were revealed by
accidental erosion, and their original resting place is not known.
Acting on a rumor, Steede traveled to a nearby village where he met a local
farmer who, reportedly, was in the process of carving similar stones for tourists.
The rumors of Dr. Cabrera’s collection had brought tourists to the area, seeking
what they are assured are the “real stones”. Steede discovered that the artist was
imitating the style on the Ica stones, but his technique was not as good. What was
more telling, the varnish was absent from his grooves.
It is at this point that the Scientific Thought Police went into action, or so it
seems. They pointed to these reproductions as proof of a hoax, and dismiss any
serious study of the original collection which is still maintained by Dr. Cabrera.
Just to drive home the point and put an end to the controversy, after the
broadcast of the BBC TV documentary, the farmer who had sold many of the
stones to Dr. Cabrera, and who had been caught carving others, was arrested and
interrogated. He was forced to admit that he had carved ALL of the stones himself
to sell to tourists! So, the “hoax” was over.
However, we soon discover that under Peruvian law, if the stones were genuine,
they belonged to the government, and if the farmer had been selling government
property to anyone, he would have gone to prison. By claiming that he had created
a hoax, the farmer was let off the hook and stayed out of jail. And rather than
determine scientifically if the stones were authentic, the authorities were satisfied
that they had dealt effectively with this troubling matter, and the farmer was
released. German journalist Andreas Fischer visited the farmer later, at which time
the poor traumatized guy revealed that he had admitted to perpetrating a hoax only
to avoid going to prison.
Regarding the Ica stones, we have three possibilities: a human civilization
existed during the age of the dinosaurs; dinosaurs survived to coexist with man; or
the stones are an elaborate hoax. Considering all the other evidence of the
Scientific Thought Police on the prowl, I vote against number three, but I can’t
claim any certainty about either of the other two solutions. I rather think that Time
Loops could be added to the list.
Other Artifacts
Now and again an anomalous artifact “pops up”. One particular little item
always fascinated me. It seems that, during mining operations in 1851, at
Dorchester, Massachusetts, blasting threw out a bell shaped vessel from its bed in
formerly solid rock. It was made of an unknown metal and was decorated with
floral inlays of silver.143
When we consider ancient archaeological evidence, most of which consists of
fragmentary bits and pieces of skeletons or stone tools, we do not get the idea of
143 Scientific American, 7:298, June 5, 1852.
232 The Secret History of the World
an ancient worldwide, advanced civilization. However, there is something about
this that we need to consider before we discard such an idea.
The first thing to think about is the fact that our own “history” is a mere 5
thousand years old. When we talk about the possible existence of man on the earth
for literally millions of years, many, many civilizations could have come and gone,
leaving little more than fragmentary remains. If the reader will have a look at some
books that show pictures of the ancient structures whose history we know, and
think, for a moment, about what might remain of our own civilization after a
period of ten thousand years, it becomes evident that even under the best of
conditions, little would remain that would be recognizable as the works of man. I
have tried to imagine what the structures of our civilization would look like after
thousands of years of abandonment. I had to admit that we have not created a very
substantial environment. The prospects of providing future archaeologists with
such elegant ruins are indeed remote! And, to assume that societies which did
leave sophisticated metropolitan centers were primitive in their technologies, and
backward, compared to our own, seems to be the ultimate in absurd conceit.
In fact, in these terms, metal is the least substantial element of all. Many
gravesites have been dug up after only a few hundred years, and metal objects,
aside from precious metals, have tended to simply disintegrate into powder. So, as
a matter of fact, the things that would be preserved the longest are objects of stone.
So, just because the only remains we find are stone does not prove that technology
of metals was not known. In fact, there is considerable evidence of metals mining
all over the earth far into dim antiquity. Further, during those inter-civilizational
periods when we might conjecture that man was forced to use whatever
implements he could to survive, stone is always there, always handy, and always
works. Thus it is that repeated periods wherein primitive stone tools are evidence,
in no way contradicts the idea of other periods of high civilization.
There is another thing we need to consider about the possible survival of
artifacts: cataclysm. The evidence that repeated worldwide cataclysms have
occurred tells us that it is very likely that, during such events, the forces of the
earth itself would grind up, pulverize, and bury the works of man so completely
that the fact that we find any traces at all is practically a miracle. You could say
that such artifacts have a very short “shelf life”!
It is generally agreed that agriculture first developed in the “Fertile Crescent” of
the Middle East. In fact, the archaeological record supports this idea. It is also
generally agreed that Pastoral Nomadism developed in the Central Asian Steppes.
Archaeology also supports this idea. However, the archaeology of these two
developments only go back to a certain relatively recent date which poses a
problem when one considers the Nostratic language hypothesis. In other words, if
an advanced civilization existed in the distant past, it was from the survivors of
this civilization that the Shepherds and agriculturalists of our present world
paradigm evolved.
About 35,000 years ago, at the same time that homo sapiens sapiens (Cro-
Magnon) was supposed to have appeared on the stage of history, simultaneously
with the mysterious disappearance of Neanderthal man, there also appeared an
explosion of representational art. It is as if the birth of culture occurred from the
primal continuum of the Paleolithic mind. Prominent among these first and most
artistic creations are diverse representations of the creatrix goddess of fertility,
complemented by sculptures and wall paintings of animals and the hunt of a more
shamanic content. The consistency and the careful beauty of these figurines is
consistent with the worship of the female as generator of the continued line of
living existence.
The mainstream explanation for this event is that while primitive men were
wandering hunters who had to remain silent in the shamanic meditation of the
hunt, the women were collecting and recognizing a wide variety of plants, talking
more and socializing and forming the foundation skills that underpinned the birth
of civilization. The myths of diverse tribal cultures hint at a previous era when
women were the founding influence in this way. The “Venuses” of Dolni
Vestonice, Willendorff, Lespugue, and Laussel date from inter-Gravitean
Solutrean 20,000-18,000 BC.
The Sudden Appearance of Cro-Magnon
As we have noted, it was formerly thought by paleontologists that Neanderthal
morphed into Cro-Magnon, and that Cro-Magnon was the progenitor of human
beings as we know them today. However, aside from the problems of the Eve
Hypothesis, there are serious problems with the assumptions about when modern
human types actually appeared on Earth. Even if we take the evolving scientific
view of the present day, we find that Cro-Magnon man was something altogether
different from other anatomically modern humans.
Over and over again we read in scientific studies that Cro-Magnon man was just
an “anatomically modern human”. The experts will say: “The Cro-Magnons lived
in Europe between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago. They are virtually identical to
modern man, being tall and muscular and slightly more robust than most modern
humans.”
Notice how they slip in that “slightly more robust” bit. The fact is, the Cro-
Magnon man was, compared to the other “anatomically modern humans” around
him, practically a superman. They were skilled hunters, toolmakers and artists
famous for the cave art at places such as Lascaux, Chauvet, and Altamira. They
had a high cranium, a broad and upright face, and cranial capacity “about the same
as modern humans” (can we say larger?), but less than that of Neanderthals. The
males were as tall as 6 feet. They appeared in Europe in the upper Pleistocene,
about 40,000 years ago and “their geographic origin is still unknown”. Their
skeletal remains show a “few small differences from modern humans”.
Of course, the “out of Africa” theory advocates suggest that Cro-Magnon came
from Sub Saharan Africa and a temperate climate and that, “they would eventually
adapt to all extremes of heat and cold”. In this way, the “slight differences”
between Cro-Magnon and other forms of anatomically modern humans can be
explained away as an adaptation to cold. But, as we will see, this idea doesn’t hold
water.
Cro-Magnon’s tools are described as the Aurignacian technology, characterized
by bone and antler tools, such as spear tips (the first) and harpoons. They also used
animal traps, and bow and arrow. They invented shafts and handles for their
knives, securing their blades with bitumen, a kind of tar, as long as 40 thousand
years ago. Other improvements included the invention of the atlatl, a large bone or
piece of wood with a hooked groove used for adding distance and speed to spears.
They also invented more sophisticated spear points, such as those that detach after
striking and cause greater damage to prey.144
The Cro-Magnon type man was also the “originator” of such abstract concepts
as “time”. They marked time by lunar phases, recording them with marks on a
piece of bone, antler or stone. Some of these “calendars” contained a record of as
many as 24 lunations.
In the relatively recent past, tool industries diversified. The Gravettian industry
(25 to 15 thousand years ago), characterized by ivory tools such as backed blades,
is associated with mammoth hunters. One type of brief industry was Solutrean,
occurring from 18 to 15 thousand years ago and limited to Southwest France and
Spain. It is characterized by unique and finely crafted “laurel leaf” blades, made
with a pressure technique requiring a great skill. The industry is associated with
horse hunters. The tool industry of the Clovis Culture in North America (11 to 8
thousand years ago) is notable for its remarkable similarity to Solutrean. Some
suggest that the Solutrean culture migrated to North America around 12,000
thousand years ago.
Cro-Magnon people lived in tents and other man-made shelters in groups of
several families. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers and had elaborate rituals for
hunting, birth and death. Multiple burials are common in the areas where they
were found. What is most interesting is that from 35 to 10 thousand years ago,
there was no differentiation by sex or age in burials. They included special grave
goods, as opposed to everyday, utilitarian objects, suggesting a very increased
ritualization of death and burial..
They were the first confirmed to have domesticated animals, starting by about
15 thousand years ago (though ancient sapiens may have domesticated the dog as
much as 200 thousand years ago). They were the first to leave extensive works of
art, such as cave paintings and carved figures of animals and pregnant women.
Huge caves lavishly decorated with murals depicting animals of the time were at
first rejected as fake for being too sophisticated. Then they were dismissed as
being primitive, categorized as hunting, fertility or other types of sympathetic
magic. Re-evaluations have put these great works of art in a more prominent place
in art history. They show evidence of motifs, of following their own stylistic
tradition, of “impressionist” like style, perspective, and innovative use of the
natural relief in the caves. Also possible, considering the new concepts of time
reckoning practiced by Cro-Magnon, are abstract representations of the passage of
time, such as spring plants in bloom, or pregnant bison that might represent
summer.
Aside from pregnant women and other goddess worship iconography,149
representations of people, “anthropomorphs,” are very few, and never show the
accuracy or detail of the other animals. Humans are represented in simple outlines
without features, sometimes with “masks”, often without regard to proportion,
being distorted and isolated. At the Grottes des Enfants in France are found four
burials with red ocher, and associated with Aurignacian tools. At Lascaux, France,
are the famous caves of upper Paleolithic cave art, dated to 17 thousand years ago,
and even older, in some cases, by many thousands of years!
The modern human types that appeared in the Levant were, however, somewhat
different from Cro-Magnon. They were the sub-Saharan type, less “robust”
individuals than the Cro-Magnon “superman” of Europe.
What seems to be the truth of the matter is simply that the modern humans of the
Levant were “different” from the Cro-Magnon types that “appeared” in Europe.
Try as they would, there is simply was no way to prove that Cro-Magnon evolved
in Africa or the Levant and then moved to Europe.
But then, how to explain what happened in any reasonable terms?
What the archaeological record seems to show is that in Europe, after millennia
of almost no progress at all, even in the few areas where modern man has been
found, suddenly human culture seems to take off like an explosion with the
appearance of Cro-Magnon man. Not only does culture explode, but also new
ways of doing things, new styles and innovations that were utterly unknown in the
period immediately preceding them, suddenly appear, only to disappear again like
an outdated fad. From Spain to the Urals, sites list the developments of sewing
needles, barbed projectiles, fishhooks, ropes, meat drying racks, temperature
controlled hearths, and complex dwellings.
The most amazing part of all of it is the art. Art suddenly springs onto the
landscape, fully formed, with no period of gradual development; no signs of
childish attempts preceding it. A piece of ivory carved 32,000 years ago is as
realistic as anything turned out by the most accomplished carver of the present
day.
The Upper Paleolithic signals the most fundamental change in human behavior that
the archaeological record may ever reveal.
The only explanation for this tremendous change is that a new kind of human
appeared on the earth stage.
When we consider the difficulties of such an event, in terms of “evolution”, we
find that this presents a huge difficulty in our understanding. First of all, we still
have the problem of a 60,000-year time lag between the appearance of the sub-
Saharan modern type man who was on the scene with no “improvements” in his
technology for that length of time. If Cro-Magnon evolved in Africa, why isn’t
there a continuous record of incremental developments? By the same reasoning, if
he evolved only after crossing the Mediterranean to Europe, why isn’t there a
continuous record of incremental developments?
The most effective and popular way that science deals with this crisis is to
ignore it, to deny it, or to seek to twist the facts to fit the theory. Many
archaeologists continue to account for the cultural events of the Upper Paleolithic
by tying them to the emergence of a more modern, intellectually superior form of
human being from Africa. They propose a “second biological event” to explain
this, never mind that it left no tracks in any skeletal shape.
Nowadays, the idea is to suggest that the other “modern men” of sub-Saharan
Africa were not really fully modern. They were “near-modern”. Thus, Africa is
preserved as the origin of all mankind, and the only thing necessary was a
breakthrough in the African lineage, a “neurological event” that allowed this “new
man” to develop all these new cultural behaviors overnight, so to say.
What this amounts to is saying that the explosion of culture in the Upper
Paleolithic times did not happen earlier because other modern men didn’t have the
brains to make it happen. Unfortunately, the support for this idea amounts only to
circular logic. What’s more, it seems that if it were a “neurological event”, it
would start in a small place and spread outward. But what seems to have happened
is that it sort of exploded in a lot of places at once: from Spain to the Ural
mountains in Russia! And in fact, the Middle East is the LAST place where art
appears.
The earliest known Aurignacian sites are in the Balkans, and they are dated to
around 43,000 years ago. Three thousand years later, the Aurignacian craze is all
over Europe.
We ought to note that the Neanderthals did not have art. What’s more, there was
essentially no change in their stone tools for 100,000 years.
150 Richard Klein, Stanford, quoted by Shreeve.
Some people suggest that the impetus for culture was the sudden development of
speech. But that idea doesn’t hold much water either. If we were to look at some
of the aboriginal societies of Australia and New Guinea, they are certainly
Neanderthal like in their stone tools. But they think and communicate in languages
that are as rich as ours, and they construct myths, stories and cosmologies with
these languages. They just don’t seem to be much interested in technology.
There is another very strange thing about this explosion of homo intellectualis
technologicus: it seems to have sort of “lost its steam” around 12,000 years ago.
We have already noted the pottery making of the Jomon. Even more startling is
the fact that twenty-six thousand years ago the residents of Dolni Vestonice were
firing ceramics in kilns. But you don’t read that in archaeology textbooks. In the
standard teachings, the emergence of ceramics is linked to the functional use of
pottery which supposedly did not appear until the agricultural revolution in the
Neolithic period some 12,000 years after the kilns at Dolni were last used.
Oh dear! Did we just stumble on something interesting? Didn’t we just note that
something happened to “cool” the steam of the cultural explosion of the Upper
Paleolithic and that it happened about 12,000 years ago? And we noted that the
Jomon culture “began” at about the same time. And here we note that the
agricultural revolution occurred at about the same time as that “loss of creative
vigor”. Could the two have some connection?
In Bulgaria, a thousand miles to the east of Dolni Vestonice, there is a cave
called Bacho Kiro. It is famous for containing the earliest known Aurignacian tool
assemblages. They are 43,000 years old.
This brings us to another curious thing about Neanderthal man: he never seemed
to go anywhere. He always made his tools out of what was locally available, and
he never seemed to travel at all. What was made where it was made, stayed there.
Nobody traded or shared among the Neanderthal groups. But it seems that right
from the beginning, Cro-Magnon man was traveling and sharing and exchanging
not only goods, but technology. If there was a better form of stone somewhere
else, the word seemed to get around, and everybody had some of it. Distinctive
flints from southern Poland are found at Dolni Vestonice, a hundred miles to the
south. Slovakian radiolarite of red, yellow and olive is found a hundred miles to
the east. Later in the Upper Paleolithic period, the famous “chocolate flint” of
southern Poland is found over a radius of two hundred and fifty miles.151
Naturally, these rocks didn’t walk around on their own. Human legs carried them.
And that leads us to our next little problem with Cro-Magnon man: You see, his
legs were too long.
One of the sacred laws of evolutionary biology is called “Allen’s Rule”. This
rule posits that legs, arms, ears, and other body extremities should be shorter in
mammals that live in cold climates, and longer in mammals of the same period
who live where it is hot. This is because having short arms and legs conserves
heat. This is supposed to explain why Eskimos and Laplanders have short legs. It
also is supposed to explain why Bantu people are leaner, and the Maasai are
extremely long and lean in their tropical open country.
The only people who seem to be mocking Allen’s rule are Cro-Magnon. They
just refused to adapt. They all have much longer legs than they ought to. Of
course, this is pounced upon as proof that they came from Africa. The only
problem with this is that it is hard to imagine people from a warm climate
migrating to a cold one by choice. Then, on top of that, to remain long-limbed for
over a thousand generations? Keep in mind that, during that time, the thermometer
kept going down and, at the glacial maximum, 18,000 years ago, it was like the
North Pole in northern Europe! So how come they didn’t adapt?
By whatever means they arrived in Europe, we ought to take note of the fact that
their presence there may be related to the fact that Europe and other nearby
locations are literally blanketed with megaliths. Indeed, it may be so that the
megaliths came long after the appearance of Cro-Magnon man, but the connection
ought not to be discarded without some consideration.
We have still another problem here, and it has to do with dating. Analyzing
mitochondrial DNA data to reconstruct the demographic prehistory of Homo
Sapiens reveals statistical evidence of explosive growth around 50,000 to 60,000
years ago. Is there a connection between this DNA evidence and the appearance of
Cro-Magnon man? If so, it would mean that the DNA is dated to twice the age that
archaeology confirms. Instead of assuming that the archaeological dates are
correct, perhaps we ought to ask the question: could something be wrong with the
dating? From a morphological point of view as well as judging by their industry
and art, these highly evolved humans who coexisted with Neanderthal man
represent a mutation so enormous and sudden as to be absurd in the context of
evolutionary theory.
What in the world are we going to do with this problem? I could exhaustively
describe the endless books and papers that seek to explain it away; to account for
it, to marginalize it, and even ignore it. But at the end of it all, the fundamental
problem still remains: a new kind of man appeared on the planet, seemingly from
nowhere, and he was smart, artistic, and however he got here, he landed in a lot of
places simultaneously.
Did I say “landed”?
Yes, I did. Am I suggesting that Cro-Magnon man was an alien? Not exactly.
We still have to consider the mitochondrial DNA of Eve. I also haven’t forgotten
that annoying problem of the Asian vs. African origins of the “first mother” that
has been so deftly dealt with by avoidance and non-answers. What do all of these
factors, taken together, suggest? Well, any farmer can figure that one out: it
suggests hybridization. But that would imply somebody doing the hybridizing.
Further, we might wish to make note of the range of this culture that suddenly
dropped in on Europe: from Spain (and a small region of North Africa) to the Ural
Mountains that are at the border of Central Asia.
The steppes of Central Asia, just north of Turkmenia, are a difficult environment
for agriculture. Goats and sheep and cattle bones are found there that date to about
4000 BC. Later, the camel and horse came into use. These cultures spoke Indo-
European languages and their members are believed to have been Caucasoid.
There have been many theories that the Caucasoid nomads of the Central Asian
steppes migrated to Europe. But, as we have seen, the initial migration may have
been from West to East. The archaeological record is uncertain, and therefore the
migrations of the Indo-Europeans (for so we may most assuredly call them) from
the Asian steppes are no longer as clear in the minds of scholars as they once
were.152 The migrations into India and Pakistan, however, do seem to have some
firmer foundation. These incursions were most likely from the Andronovo and
Srubnaya cultures as the culture described in the oldest Aryan texts is very similar
to that of the steppe nomads.
Related articles
- Collapse: Revisiting the Adam and Eve Myth (resilience.org)
- Essay: Immortality? Perhaps (literaryyard.com)
- Distinct Neanderthal Cultures Revealed in Handaxe Designs (scienceworldreport.com)
- What Plato Tells Us About Atlantis (ageoflucidity.info)
