The Atlantis Blueprint (43 page)

Rand points out that there would have been plenty of inhabitable land on Lesser Antarctica that would fall within these latitudes.

The authors settle on latitude 55 degrees north, which takes them to Scotland and, of course, Rosslyn Chapel. There is an unusual astronomical fact about 55 degrees that captures their imagination: ‘We found it very interesting that the rising points of the sun at the summer solstice and winter solstice
form a perfect right-angle at the latitude of 55 degrees North, forming a “square year”.’
¹⁸

In this book we have noted that 55 degrees, 37 minutes north is a phi distance from the equator to the North Pole. Rand suggests that Lomas and Knight have found the correct latitude at which Enoch saw Uriel’s machine, but Rand argues that it was on Lesser Antarctica, and that the original device may date back almost 100,000 years. (And if this assertion seems breath-taking, bear in mind that Uriel’s machine is actually a simple arrangement of posts or standing stones for studying the heavens, and that this book has tried to demonstrate that ancient man has been studying the stars for tens of thousands of years.)

Rand says:

Here, Rand points out, we have mountains, a rising hill on a plain and even possibly Plato’s hot springs that could be the source of the ‘initiation of ice streaming’.

The location of the satellite image turns out to be at 55 degrees 15 minutes south during the Yukon Pole, between Lomas and Knight’s ideal of 55 degrees and the blueprint Golden Section latitude of 55 degrees, 37 minutes. Is the ‘strikingly circular’ structure beneath 1,400 metres of ice in Lesser Antarctica the lost city of Atlantis? The search for the lost city is a quest that has been abandoned. But the Atlantis blueprint offers a key to unlock this possible site. Like Rennes-le-Château, Nanking, Rosslyn Chapel and the ‘pyramid’ off the waters of Yonaguni, the ringed structures glimpsed beneath the ice of Antarctica are linked by a phi latitude to the Yukon Pole. Was the city constructed, tens of thousands of years later, to commemorate the first settlement of those early men on Antarctica?

Is there a lost city beneath the ice of Antarctica?

Rand Flem-Ath

In November of 1993 I received a fax from John Anthony West that started me on a four-year quest. The article that slipped through the fax machine that day had been written by an Egyptian-born construction engineer by the name of Robert Bauval. Little did I suspect that Bauval would soon become known for his revolutionary theory that the pyramids of Egypt were a mirror image of the constellation of Orion (see
The Orion Mystery).
However, in the article I read that day Robert had taken his idea even further. He revealed that not only the pyramids but also that most famous of all sculptures, the Sphinx, was orientated to the constellation of Orion as it appeared in 10,500
BC
(see
The Message of the Sphinx).

John followed up his fax with a telephone call
—
one of our earliest conversations. He had read the original manuscript of our book
When the Sky Fell
(see website at www.flem-ath.com) and had volunteered to write an Afterword. Our theory that Antarctica could hold the remains of Atlantis was framed by the concept of a geological phenomenon known as earth crust displacement about which I had spent years corresponding with Charles Hapgood. I had concluded, based on extensive research into the origins of agriculture
and the late Pleistocene extinctions, that 9,600
BC
was the most probable date of the last displacement.

After discussing details about the Afterword for
When the Sky Fell,
John, in his usual direct manner, asked me: ‘If Bauval is right that the Sphinx points to a date of 10,500
BC
how do you reconcile that date with your time period of 9,600
BC
for the last displacement of the earth’s crust?’

John had put his finger on a very important point. If the Sphinx had been built before the crustal displacement, as Bauval’s data indicated, then the monument’s orientation would have been changed as the earth’s crust shifted, resulting in a misalignment. But the fact remains that the Sphinx – indeed the whole Giza complex – is precisely aligned with the earth’s cardinal points. ‘Either Bauval’s calculations of the astroarchaeology are incorrect or your date of 9,600
BC
is wrong,’ John said. ‘How sure are you of that date? Could you be wrong by 900 years?’

‘John,’ I replied, ‘a host of archaeological and geological radiocarbon dates indicate unequivocally that the last catastrophe occurred in 9,600
BC.
I’m sticking with that. Perhaps the ancient Egyptians were memorialising an earlier date that was tremendously significant to them, not necessarily the date that the Sphinx was carved.’

In October of 1996 Robert Bauval and I continued the friendly debate at a conference in Boulder, Colorado. I was convinced that the Sphinx was constructed immediately
after
9,600
BC
and explained why. ‘Imagine,’ I began, ‘that an asteroid or giant comet hit the United States today, utterly destroying the entire continent and throwing the whole culture back to the most primitive of living conditions. Then imagine that a team of scientists, perhaps safely under the ocean in a submarine, survived the cataclysm and decided to commemorate their nation and leave a message for the future by constructing a monument aligned to the heavens. What date would they choose to mark the memory of the United States of America? Would it be 1996, the year that their world ended? I don’t think so. I believe that they would orientate their monument to 1776 – the date that the nation was born. And, in the same way, I think that although the Sphinx was created around 9,600
BC
it is orientated to 10,500
BC
because that date was significant to their culture.’

Now it happens that inconsistencies and puzzles in science are like oxygen to my blood! My entire philosophy of science is predicated on the motto that anomalies are gateways to discovery. I usually conduct my research in a methodical and painstaking (some might say obsessive!) manner. However, over the past twenty years of investigating the problem of Atlantis and the earth’s shifting crust I have discovered again and again that chance plays a critical role in discovery.

Between writing novels, Rose works part-time at the local university library and her serendipitous approach to research ideally balances my own meticulous methods. I can’t begin to count the number of times that she has brought home a book that turned out to be
exactly
what I needed. So when she presented me with
Archaeoastronomy in Pre-Columbian America
I eagerly flipped it open.

Written in 1975 by Dr Anthony F. Aveni, one of the leading astroarchaeologists in the world, the book dropped a critical piece of the puzzle that I was trying to solve right into my lap. It appears that almost all of the major megalithic monuments of Meso-America are oriented
east
of true north. Aveni wrote that the people of Meso-America did ‘tend to lay out many of their cities… oriented slightly east of true north… Fifty of the fifty-six sites examined align east of north.’

However, I found Aveni’s explanation for this alignment wanting. He believes that the ‘Street of the Dead’, the famous avenue at Teotihuacan (near Mexico City) is the key to the whole mystery of why the monuments are strangely misaligned. This street, which runs directly toward the Pyramid of the Moon, is misaligned 15.5 degrees
east
of north. Because it points within one degree to the Pleiades constellation (a set of stars important to Meso-American mythology) Aveni views this skewed alignment as a kind of template, a master plan, for the rest of the megaliths throughout Meso-America. While this is true for Teotihuacan’s Street of the Dead it is
not true
for the other sites that Aveni lists in his book. His argument that the other forty-nine sites are merely inadequate copies of the holy alignment of Teotihuacan rang hollow.

I had a different idea. A theory based on the science of geodesy, the study of the measurement of the shape and size of the earth.

In addition to astronomical observatories, what if these Mesoamerican sites were
also
part of a vast geographical survey? My study of ancient maps had convinced me that the Atlanteans had mapped the world. What if the orientations of the most ancient cities of Mexico were remnants of a lost science – the science of geography? What if the alignment of the ancient cities were a stone stencil – a precise blueprint of a pre-deluge earth?

Teotihuacan lies upon the longitude of 98 degrees, 53 minutes west. If we subtract the 15 degrees by which it is ‘misaligned’ we get a location of 83 degrees, 25 minutes west –
less than half a degree off
Charles Hapgood’s location of the North Pole prior to 9,600
BC.

In other words, the Street of the Dead was 15.5 degrees west of the longitude that Hapgood had calibrated for the old pole.

When I made this discovery I was naturally very excited. Could it be that the ancient monuments of Mexico were orientated to the pole
before
the last earth crust displacement? The implications were profound. Such an orientation would point to the existence of a civilisation which must have held scientific knowledge of the earth’s geography. They also must have possessed sophisticated surveying methods that they put to use in America
before
the earth’s crust shifted.

I soon discovered that several important Meso-American sites (Tula, Tenayucan, Copan and Xochicalco, for instance) matched my geodetic theory. Each of their misalignments when subtracted from their current longitude yielded the longitude of the North Pole
before the last earth crust displacement
(83 degrees west). What if, I wondered, there were other sites in the Old World that were orientated to the old pole?

I began to research sites in Iraq, cradle of the most ancient civilisations.

Unlike Meso-America, these sites had not been studied in relation to their
misalignment
to the earth’s cardinal points. I had to piece together the evidence from site to site, from author to author. But the tedious task was worth it to obtain the startling result. I soon discovered that many of the oldest sites in the Middle East are
west
of today’s North Pole. Like the ancient sites of Meso-America they were orientated to the old pole.

The ancient city of Ur, its ziggurat (a stepped pyramid symbolising a sacred mountain) and its shrine to the moon god Nanna are
orientated
west
of north (towards the ‘old pole’ in the Hudson Bay).

Without control of the holy city of Nippur no ruler could rightfully claim to be the King of Sumeria. The remains of the city lie south of Baghdad where some of the most famous tablets in archaeology were unearthed at the turn of century. The tablets disclosed the Sumerian belief in the existence of a long-lost island paradise called Dilmun. The myth of Dilmun, which we show in
When the Sky Fell
is remarkably similar to the mythology of the Haida people of British Columbia, relates how the island paradise is destroyed by the god, Enlil, in a great flood. Enlil’s incredible power is honoured at Nippur with a temple and a ziggurat which is skewed
west of north.

The ziggurat and ‘White Temple’ of the Sumerian city of Uruk also point to Hudson Bay rather than true north. The more I looked, the more ancient sites I found in the Middle East that pointed to the North Pole
before
the last earth crust displacement. Perhaps the most poignant is Jerusalem’s ‘Wailing Wall’, the only remains of Herod’s Temple, built upon the site of Solomon’s Temple.

I now knew that I was looking at a unique geodetic phenomenon that demanded exploration. My next step was to calculate the former latitudes of the key megalithic and sacred sites of the world. If the latitudes were located at significant numbers then I could be sure that I really was on to something.

The first site I measured was, of course, the eternally compelling Great Pyramid at Giza. I calculated its co-ordinates against 60 degrees north, 83 degrees west (the Hudson Bay Pole). Giza had been 4,524 nautical miles from the Hudson Bay Pole, which meant its latitude was at 15 degrees north prior to 9,600
BC.
I found it odd that Giza, which today lies at 30 degrees north (one-third of the distance from the equator to the Pole), should have been so neatly at 15 degrees north (one-sixth the distance) before the last earth crust displacement. So I decided to study Lhasa, the religious centre of Tibet, because I knew that this city, like Giza, lies at 30 degrees north today.

Lhasa’s co-ordinates are 29 degrees 41 minutes north, 91 degrees 10 minutes east, which calculated at 5,427 nautical miles from the Hudson Bay Pole. The distance from the equator to the pole is 5,400 nautical miles (90 degrees times 60 seconds = 5,400), so Lhasa had
rested just 27 nautical miles (less than half a degree) off the equator during the reign of Atlantis. This was getting spooky. The earth crust displacement had shoved Giza from 15 degrees to 30 degrees while moving Lhasa from 0 degrees to 30 degrees. Was this coincidence?

The coincidence started to become extreme when I compared the location of Giza and Lhasa (and a host of other ancient sites) with the position of the crust over
three earth crust displacements.
I was amazed to discover that latitudes like 0 degrees, 12 degrees, 15 degrees, 30 degrees, 45 degrees came up again and again. Each of these numbers divides the earth’s geography by whole numbers. This seemed way beyond chance so I christened them ‘sacred latitudes’. Most of these sites will be familiar to anyone who takes an interest in archaeology or the sacred sites of the world’s major religions. All of these places are within 30 nautical miles (a day’s walk) of sacred latitudes and are thus more accurately aligned geodetically than Aveni’s astronomical calculations.

Sacred latitudes when the Pole was at Hudson Bay (60 degrees north, 83 degrees west)

• 0º Lhasa, Aguni, Mohenjo-Daro, Easter Island
  

• 5º Byblos, Xi’an
  

• 10º Ur/Uruk/Eridu, Thebes/Luxor, Ise, Susa
  

• 12º Babylon, Pyongyang
  

• 15º Giza Pyramids, Jericho/Jerusalem, Ashur, Nazca
  

• 30º Carthage, Quito
  

• 45º Copan, Marden
  

• Note: Cities connected by ‘/’ are located so close together that they yield the same results.
  

Sacred latitudes when the Pole was at the Greenland Sea (73 degrees north, 10 degrees east)

• 0º Quito
  

• 10º Cuzco/Machu Picchu/Ollantaytambo
  

• 12º Angkor
  

• 30º Xi’an, Pyongyang
  

• 45º Giza Pyramids, Nippur, Dahshur, Saqqara
  

Sacred latitudes when the Pole was in the Yukon (63 degrees north, 135 degrees west)

• 0º Byblos, Machu Picchu/Cuzco/Ollantaytambo, Nazca, Abydos
  

• 5º Tiahuanaco, Jericho/Jerusalem, Nippur, Babylon, Susa
  

• 10º Rhodes (Knossos, on the island of Crete, is off by 41 nautical miles)
  

• 12º Gozo (Malta)
  

• 15º Lalibala
  

• 20º Xi’an, Aguni
  

• 30º Avebury/Stonehenge, Glastonbury, Pyongyang
  

The careful reader will note that several of these sites show up in more than one table. They are actually situated at the crossing points of two (even three) sacred latitudes. For example, Giza lies at the intersection of 15 degrees (Hudson Bay Pole) and 45 degrees north (Greenland Sea Pole) and today is at 30 degrees north. Lhasa, which today is near 30 degrees north, was at the equator during the Hudson Bay Pole and only 32 nautical miles from 30 degrees north during the Greenland Sea Pole.

Other sacred interconnections include: