The 10,000BC Enigma

by

Steve Johnson

About 12,000 years ago, the last ice age (sometimes called the Great Ice Age) came to an end. Nobody truly knows what caused this period of glaciation in the first place and its demise is just as much of a mystery.

At that time, man was still a primitive hunter/gatherer - or so orthodox historians will have us believe. They tell us that human civilization began about 4-5,000 BC when agriculture was developed in Mesopotamia (now modern Iraq).

There is considerable evidence to suggest that early man reached a reasonably high technological level many thousands of years earlier than previously believed.

Recent discoveries on the Indonesian island of Flores show that ’homo erectus“ lived there over 800,000 years ago, but for him to reach this island would have required a sea crossing of some 12 miles. The previous earliest use of water-borne vessels was believed to be by ’homo sapiens“ about 50,000 years ago.

Not long ago a discovery was made in Morocco that may push back the boundaries of humanity's artistic abilities. The rough, human-like form (pictured right) was found near hand-axes that have been dated to 500,000 to 300,000 years old.

This means that the intellectual abilities of ’homo erectus“ and subsequent human species will have to be radically reconsidered. If humans were building boats almost a million years before previously thought, what other technological breakthroughs occurred during that epoch?

In Brittany stand hundreds of massive menhirs. The Carnac Stones are arranged in long, straight lines and huge stone circles. Archaeologists date the site to around 5,000 BC, but there is a problem with this date. Many of the rows of stones continue into the sea and an entire stone circle exists on the sea-bed. Unless Neolithic man had access to scuba-diving gear, then it seems reasonable to believe that the stones must have been placed there before water swamped the area. The last time that the site was dry land was at the end of the last ice age - around 10,000 BC.

The Egyptian civilization appeared from nowhere with a fully developed language and culture. Paradoxically, their greatest engineering achievements happened at the dawn of their civilization. Historians tell us that the Pyramids of Giza were built about 2,500 BC during the Egyptian Old Kingdom. They say that a hundred thousand men worked for 20 years to build a grand tomb for their king, Cheops. How do they know?

Nowhere, in all the hundreds of ancient sites in Egypt, is there any record of how and why the pyramids were constructed. Remember, our experts told us that it took 20 years to build the Great Pyramid. Radio-carbon studies performed in 1986  have indicated that the base of this edifice is actually one thousand years older than its summit and predate Khufu by at least 200 years and probably by many more. Why would a millennium be spent in creating a tomb for one man who was not even born when construction began?

The real mystery of the pyramids at Giza, though, is their location and orientation. Built at a time when man had a very narrow and limited view of the world, they are perfectly aligned to true-north. Not magnetic north, as might be expected if the Egyptians had stumbled upon a primitive form of compass (as the Chinese had), but true-north.

Did they simply find true north by lining up stars or using well shafts for alignments? Despite what academics and alternative authors may say, it is still a mystery.

Another alignment shows that the three pyramids are a terrestrial representation of the trio of stars in Orion's Belt. They do not exactly match the positions of the stars as they appear today, but as they appeared in the sky 12,000 years ago. Were they built nearly 8,000 years before the rise of Egyptian culture?

The nearby Great Sphinx is a real enigma. Its head is proportionately much smaller than the rest of the body. Also, why does its head seem to be less weathered than the body? Admittedly, tests show that the rest of the structure is carved from softer rock than the head, but, for the majority of its existence, the Sphinx has been buried up to its neck in sand; only the head subject to the buffeting desert winds. Even to the Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom, around 2040 BC - 1786 BC, the Sphinx was a mysterious ancient monument.

One solution to the riddle of the curiously unweathered head could be that it was recarved at some time in the distant past. This would account for its smaller size when compared to the rest of the body as well.

This structure, which had been buried in the desert sands even during the time of the Pharaohs, is covered with deep channels. It has been proved that these vertical grooves could only have been caused by sheets of water cascading over the sides of the statue. The last time that there was ’that “ much water in the Egyptian desert was 12,000 years ago as the Great Ice Age drew to a close.

On the other side of the world, high on the Bolivian Plateau of South America, lies the enigmatic city of Tiahuanaco. Orthodox historians place the construction of this vast and mysterious complex to around 500 AD. However, recent analyses of the positions of statues and monoliths show that they were aligned to various important astronomical bodies. Computer projections dictate that the only time that the sun, moon and stars were perfectly lined up with the structures at Tiahuanaco was 12-13,000 years ago. The city must, logically have been built at that time.

Staying in South America, gold Inca artefacts have been found that depict what are unmistakably elephants. The fossil record proves that elephants have not lived in South America for 12,000 years. There is also a carving at Tiahuanaco, on the famous gateway of the Sun, that bears a striking resemblance to an elephant's head.
 

Click image for larger view
 
In 1513, Piri Reis, a Turkish cartographer, produced a series of maps which were quite remarkable for their accuracy. One of the charts clearly shows a land bridge connecting the tip of South America with the Antarctic Peninsula. The fact that the atlas illustrates Antarctica at all is amazing. That continent was not ’officially“ discovered until  1820. What is absolutely incredible, though, is that surveys of the ocean floor show that there was indeed a land bridge between the two continents. How Reis knew of its existence is a mystery - the bridge vanished beneath the waves 11,000 years ago.

Update: A webpage looking at the projection used and how the Piri Reis map may in fact depict only a distorted view of the east coast of South America and NOT Antarctica can be accessed by clicking here.

Recently Comet Hale-Bopp visited our skies. This unusually large comet caused quite a stir and several cults sprang up as it reached perihelion. The most notorious and tragic of these was the Heaven's Gate cult. Thirty-nine of its members committed mass suicide in San Diego, California, believing that their spirits would be transported to a spaceship which was trailing Hale-Bopp. As its closest approach loomed, many publications recklessly ran "the Earth is doomed" stories - articles sparked by early fears that the comet would pass dangerously close to our planet. As it happened, Hale-Bopp missed us by many millions of miles.

Hale-Bopp has an orbit of about 3,600 years. Reverse arithmetic shows that one of its approaches occurred close to the end of the Great Ice Age.

Ancient languages scholar Zecharia Sitchin discovered that the Sumerians had named a planet "Nibiru" and they believed that it had a 3,600 year orbit. He translated a Babylonian text, which is thought to be based on an earlier, Sumerian account:

"When the sage shall call out: Flooding! It is their god Nibiru. It is the hero, the planet with four heads. The god whose weapon is the flooding storm shall turn back."

Could the Sumerians have known of Hale-Bopp's prehistoric fly-by? If so, then could the comet have been the catalyst that brought about the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose all around the world? Could it have been a precursor for the Great Flood of the ancient accounts?

A planet described as having four heads could be an ancient's description of a comet's tails. Most comets have two distinct tails - a bright dust tail and a fainter gas tail. Hale-Bopp, though, could have displayed more. Due to its irregular shape, the sun's heat struck its surface unevenly. As the surface material boiled away into space, this could have produced more than the two standard tails as the comet rotated.

Hale-Bopp did show three tails during it's latest visit. This is most unusual, usually there are just two. Perhaps during it's last sojourn through our part of the solar system it displayed four tails.

Could Nibiru, or Hale-Bopp, have caused the cataclysm of the Great Flood? There is documentary evidence to suggest that a global flood did in fact occur at some time in the past. Most of the world's religions and cultures have ancient legends that depict a worldwide deluge. Scientific research has shown that the last time sea levels rose significantly was 12,000 years ago at the end of the Great Ice Age.
 

STOP PRESS!!! It has recently been brought to my attention that Hale-Bopp does not have a 3600 year orbit. Before it's arrival in 1997, it had a 4000-odd year orbit and because of it's interaction with the gravity wells of the inner planets and Jupiter, it now has about a 2500 year orbit.
In my view, this does not discount the comet from any Nibiru myth. When we are dealing with legends and timescales that stretch back thousands of years, a few hundreds of years of difference should not be taken too stringently.

Perhaps the most enigmatic flood myth concerns the destruction of the continent of Atlantis. Plato first brought the legend to life in 400 BC when he stated that the land was destroyed by floodwaters in about 9,000 BC. This date is remarkably close to our magical time of 10,000 BC when so many events occurred that appear to have been witnessed by intelligent and advanced men.

Maybe all of these findings are the result of mere coincidence. But, if that is the case, there are an awful lot of them. Consider this:

Early man applied his technological know-how nearly a million years ago when he built boats to sail short distances. We are told that modern civilization began about 7,000 years ago. What happened between those times? The answer is clear - all the evidence points to a time when man reached a sophisticated technological level.

Man had advanced knowledge of astronomy and if the Piri Reis maps are to be believed, then much of the world had been charted thousands of years before European explorers began their voyages of discovery (Reis admitted that his maps were based on older source charts). Men had also developed advanced building techniques that enabled him to raise magnificent structures that still stand proudly today.

The world was a stable, albeit cold, place. Human civilization was flourishing. Then something happened. The great northern glacial sheets melted almost overnight and sea levels peaked dramatically. Undoubtedly, a lot of people died. Civilization slipped back. Humanity had to start again. All traces of man's ancient achievements vanished, save for the most spectacular examples - the pyramids, the Sphinx and Tiahuanaco.

Memories of that glorious past lingered, though, Plato's Atlantis accounts and the Sumerian Nibiru myth to name but two. The global legends of a great flood are another pointer to our tragic prehistoric civilization.

We may just be rediscovering our roots, but some people are suggesting that the dawn of the new millenium will be as significant as the era of 10,000 BC.

How significant this time is to become, we shall see.

© 1998 Steven  Johnson .

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Updated 16th August, 2012