Our Cosmic Ancestors (23 page)

Prehistoric sites in the United States are not very popular. The Medicine Wheel of Wyoming is known because of its unique division into 28 parts similar to the 28 equal sectors of the Maltese cross, but generally the exploration in the United States has barely started. Most of these prehistoric sites are located in the so-called 'Bible belt', where there is very little interest in pagan temples of the past. However, this situation has recently begun to change rapidly since even the farmers of the fertile Middle West are coming to realize the value of their megalithic monuments and archaeological sites.

Before I close this chapter on Celtic temples I have to mention a kind of configuration that is neither a circle, nor an ellipse, nor an ovoid. It is formed by a combination of a half-circle and a half-ellipse. The very little known and perfect example of this form is a temple called `Long Meg and Her Daughters', which is situated in the north of England along an ancient Roman wall in Little Salkeld, Cumberland. This temple can also be measured by the Celtic foot and the ancient formula 22:7 of the circle.

The northern part of the monument is a half-ellipse with a long axis of 294 Celtic ft. and a half short axis of 105 Celtic ft. The southern part of the temple is a half-circle, with a 147 Celtic ft. radius. The north-south axis of the site is 30
^°
off the meridian, which could be a consequence of the displacement of the terrestrial poles since the temple was built. The perimeter of the Long Meg must have been originally 858 ft, or 396 Celtic ft. for the northern part, and 462 Celtic ft. for the southern. Translated into our present metric system, the surface of this site is exactly 4,500 sq. m, perhaps another of the recurring mysteries of the metric system. The temple is in such poor state that it is difficult to make out which stones make what alignments. Too many are missing. It seems quite clear, however, that this too was an astronomical site built to measure time. But why the odd shape?

Some think that these configurations are the first signs of prehistoric geometry and that the different dimensions of this temple had the proportions of the sacred triangle of Sumer with sides in the ratio of 3:4:5. This is not impossible, but it would be very difficult to prove it. There could be another simpler explanation, easier to demonstrate conclusively, that will be discussed in a later chapter of this book. The fact is that the apparent diameters of the Sun and the Moon vary appreciably during the years.

These variations of the apparent magnitude can be determined by sighting the object between two poles placed at different intervals in a circle and observed from the centre at a constant distance. It can also be done at a variable distance from one of the centres of an ellipse, using poles spaced evenly on the ellipse. It is further possible that the elliptical orbits of the planets and the Sun and the Moon suggested some religious laws to our ancestors and that they found mystical meaning in the reproduction of such lines on the ground. It is even possible that they had been told to do this long, long ago when our ancestors coming from outer space transmitted their wisdom to earthlings.

All the prehistoric temples, whatever their form and whether built in stone, wood, or heaps of dirt, had but one purpose - to measure time, long periods of time, extending over many generations. Oral transmittance was too vague to be trusted over millennia. For a very long time, science ignored these temples and the Church destroyed many of them. Now these megalithic sites have become very popular, mostly because of the work done by Colin Renfrew, a young English archaeologist, who proved that many of them are much older than any other known relic of human civilization, older than the pyramids of Egypt or the Tower of Babel.

It seems that quite a few among the megalithic sites could be as old as 12,000 years, the time when Atlantis allegedly disappeared into the ocean. It will take some time to prove it, but I do not doubt that it will be done. Right now, official science is beginning to recognize that some dolmens and menhirs in France, Ireland, England, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco are 9,000 or 10,000 years old. And all of these sites are clearly grouped around the eastern coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, like landing sites for an invading army of refugees. The hypothesis of the survivors of the sunken Atlantis becomes more believable with every day spent in exploration. First there is the phenomenon of the Gaelic, Basque, Breton, or Portuguese dialects, that all resemble the dialect spoken in the Azores and Canary Islands by the Guanche people, which may be directly derived from the language spoken in Atlantis. Then there is the discovery of the strange blood groups. The Basques, people of unknown origin inhabiting the Pyrenees regions of both France and Spain, have a rare blood group pattern that is found only among other people speaking strange dialects and living near ancient menhirs and dolmens.
Could this be the blood of the Aflanteans or even the divine blood transmitted by the astronauts?

Above all there are the traditions that mark these people as groups of fearless seafarers inured to gales and tidal waves during a fabulous past. In order to navigate the oceans, this Atlantic race naturally needed the precise calculations of sunset and moonrise and the tables that showed them where they were during their voyages. To establish these tables, they needed observatories and they built them at Stonehenge in England, at Carnac in France, and elsewhere.

The possibility that survivors of the sunken Atlantis found refuge on the east Atlantic coasts and islands 12,000 years ago may also explain why the oldest among the world's sacred texts and legends mention dates much further in the past than the oldest Mediterranean civilizations or even the Egyptian pyramids. We could here examine some of the most distant dates and try to find if there is some correlation or even a similar method of reckoning among them.

Diogenes Laertius, the Greek historian, mentions the year 49,214 before our era as the beginning of the astronomical archives of the Egyptians. This is the oldest recorded date that I know of after the Mayan starting date of 49,611 BC shown on the ceramic disc of Chinkultic. Next to it are the dates of the cave paintings in Lascaux and Altamira going back at least 27,000 years. The age of Tiahuanaco seems to be the same, but we have no precise data. But in 839 BC Babylonian priests recorded the start of the first Babylonian dynasty after the first deluge at the very early date of 24,989 BC, which also was the date of a Mayan baktun. Next in line of recorded documents is the indication in the Vatican codex that the first Mayan calendar started in 18,633 BC. The last cycle, begun in 3144 BC, is to end in the year 2020 of our era.

The Aztecs counted their time in the same way as the Mayas, by the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, but their cycles and the departure dates of these cycles were different. if the translations of the Vatican codex are correct, we live now in the fifth cycle since the creation of the world. The first Aztec cycle, according to the same Vatican source, lasted 202 conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, or 4,012 years and ended in a fantastic deluge that drowned everything and everybody.

The second cycle of equal duration ended again in a catastrophe of violent cyclones that brought total destruction. The third period of the Aztec calendar lasted 242 conjunctions of the two planets, or 4,805 years and was finished by volcanic eruptions that burned everything to a crisp. The fourth cycle of 253 conjunctions or 5,024 years ended in general famine and starvation.

We live now in the fifth Aztec cycle which began in 781 BC and should end in our year 2020, significantly the same date as given by the Mayan calendar, though not telling us what to expect at that time. If we take the starting date of 781 BC and go back 17,852 years, the sum of the first four Aztec periods, we arrive at the same first year of the Mayan calendar - 18,633 BC.

Further, we have a date that is common in two different and widely separated cultures, the Mayan and the Hindu. It is the year 11,654
BC. The Hindus counted time in periods of 2,850 years or 150
Metonic cycles of nineteen solar years each. According to my calculations their calendar started in 3104 BC. If we go back three Hindu time-counting periods of 2,850 years each, we arrive at the year 11,654 BC. The Mayas counted time by several different methods, one of them being cycles of 2,760 1/3 years that started in the year 3373 BC. Three such cycles bring us back to exactly the date of the Hindu time-counting, the famous year 11,654 BC.

Then there is the date of 11,540 BC that is common to the Egyptians and the Assyrians. The Egyptians counted by periods of 1,460 years and started one of their cycles in the year 5,700 BC. Four of these Egyptian cycles bring us back to 11,540 BC. The Assyrians counted in periods of 95 Metonic cycles of nineteen solar years each, or cycles of 1,805 years starting in 710 BC. Six of these periods result in the same date - the year 11,540 BC, with the end of the last cycle in 710 BC.
The date for the creation of the world, the year 9657 BC according to Zoroaster, is very close to the year 9564 BC, the year when Atlantis was destroyed, according to the Tibetans.

After that we arrive at more recent dates like the Mayan date of 8,307 BC, and the start of the Mahabharata, the great epic of ancient India, in 7,116 BC. Then there are the calendars of the Byzantines, Scandinavians, and Hebrews, which started in 5508, 4713, and 3761 BC, respectively. Most of these ancient dates have been known for centuries; but no one dared to use or publish them because Irish Archbishop Ussher of Armagh, who proposed a biblical chronology in the seventeenth century, had established that the world was created in the year 4004 BC at nine o'clock in the morning of 26 October. For centuries it was imprudent to doubt such biblical wisdom.

Now the times have changed and the oldest known dates are used by quite a few people. Different authors publish them, and sometimes their dates differ slightly because they use varying methods of calculation. Nevertheless, when all the data is sorted out by computer, only three systems of counting time emerge: the Sun-Moon-Venus method, the method using the Sun and Sirius, and the reckoning by the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn.

We can see now that the universal calendar did exist many thousands of years ago.
We have only rediscovered it.
It was based on the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, and the Mayas could start their calendar with the year 49,611 BC by using the same system that started the time-counting of the Egyptians 49,214 years before our era always in whole numbers of conjunctions of the two planets.

Out of sheer curiosity, I wanted to calculate intermediary dates by intervals of ten Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions of 198.6 years each. Since I am convinced that we will continue to discover older documented dates as we progress in our research and probably reach the date of the Nineveh constant 64,800 years ago, I made up a calendar of thirteen great Mayan cycles counting back from the end of the present one which will end in the year 2020. The thirteen cycles of 5,163 years each brought me to 65,100 years BC.

THE FOUR MOONS

There is one absolutely fantastic astronomical theory proposed quite a while ago by Hoerbiger and confirmed recently by Hans Bellamy and Peter Allen, stating that during its lifetime of several billion years, our Earth captured four moons one after another. Three of them exploded as they crashed onto Earth creating the three biggest oceans - the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian - and destroying all living things. The fourth moon is the present one which still hangs in the skies.

This theory, seen as science fiction by most scientists, would not have been discussed in this book if I had not myself discovered some surprising new facts that seem to confirm it. When I first heard of Hoerb)yr's theory, I did think that the poor man had lost his marbles. But then I remembered that once everyone regarded the German physicist Alfred Wegener's theory of the drifting continents as pure fiction, until much later discoveries proved his concept to be true. As a result, I reconsidered the possibility that our planet might have had more than one moon in the past and that Bellamy and Allen might be proven right, if we simply keep in mind that nothing in our universe is stable and that everything is in constant motion.

It is evident that our present Moon has not always been there, at the same distance from Earth as it is today. Unfortunately, our science says that this distance must have been greater in the past than now, because all satellites descend in a very slow spiral towards the planet around which they revolve. This is caused by the deceleration due to friction with cosmic dust. The smaller satellites lose their altitude faster than the bigger ones, which have more favorable ratios of mass to crosssection. But there is a contradiction here. While the laws of celestial mechanics tell us that the Moon in the past must have been farther from Earth than today, legends and sacred texts from all corners of the globe tell us the opposite - that the Moon in the past was bigger and closer to us. It even looked much bigger than the Sun. How do we solve this puzzle? Well, let's start by examining the known facts.
In the ranges of the Andes at an altitude of 13,000 feet, geologists have found stretches of marine sediment reaching 640 km all the way from Peru to Bolivia, clear evidence that the level of the ocean, only some tens of thousands of years ago, was 13,000 feet higher than it is today. Similar sediments, dating from the same geological period, have also been found in the Himalayas, in South Asia.

A geologist would be tempted to say right away that it wasn't the sea but the mountains of Peru and Bolivia that rose to this level, because the tectonic plate supporting the Cordillera range was pushed upward. But the sediment line is relatively recent compared to the millions of years since the Andes were created. So it must be the sea that once rose, as it still does around the world twice every day, except that once there was a gigantic pull that made the sea climb 13,000 feet in a huge bulging ring around the equator. Such tide could only have been produced by a big celestial body very close to the Earth. It must have been a closer and larger moon whose gravitational force pulled most of the water from all oceans into that bulging ring, like a gigantic, permanent tidal wave.