EARTHQUEST NEWS

A Newsletter from Andrew Collins. Vol. 4, No. 3, Autumn 2000

 

 

Hello from the Questing Conference camp. There are no changes to the publicised line-up, although ring the conference hotline on 01702.476614 for last minute details. TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE ON THE DAY. Air tickets have already been secured for Michael Cremo, the author of FORBIDDEN ARCHAEOLOGY, and Neil Steede, the American archaeologist who has confirmed Posnansky’s findings regarding Tiahuanaco’s greater antiquity and is currently working at Maya sites in the Yucatan peninsula. All the rest of the speakers are highlighted on the flyer. I suggest you check out the fully interactive conference section of Eden – the Andrew Collins web site. This contains a full description of each lecture and also a biography of the speaker and a picture as well! There are also links to the speakers’ own web site where applicable.

ATLANTIS RESPONSE

As mentioned briefly in the last issue, the hardback edition of GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS sold out its run of 9,500 copies in just two months. The publishers, Headline, decided that they would not go into a further print run since this would increase interest in the paperback edition, which should be out in October.

Response to the book has been rich and varied. Some correspondents have added to my knowledge of Caribbean and Bahaman prehistory, while others have contacted me to put forward their own evidence for Atlantis being in some other part of the world. Some have even felt indignant that I should bring into question their own personal theories on the true location of Atlantis, particularly those who support a psychic view of this lost island empire. From these responses I have been able to determine exactly what is currently the most favoured candidate for the location of Atlantis. Curiously enough, it is not the Bahamas or Caribbean, or even the Mid-Atlantic, but Antarctica. This is most probably because of the popularity this theory has received through its promotion in books such as Graham Hancock’s FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS (1994) and Rand and Rose Flem-Ath’s WHEN THE SKY FELL (1995). The idea also features in Rand’s new book THE ATLANTIS BLUEPRINT, co-written with Questing Conference speaker Colin Wilson, which is released in October.

Although I accept that the north-west region of Antarctican continent was occupied by Late Palaeolithic settlers, most probably from Island Southeast Asia (after the work of Flavio Barbiero and see the last EARTHQUEST NEWS), there are fundamental reasons why Antarctica cannot be Atlantis. These are:

  1. Atlantis means ‘daughter of Atlas’, the daughter being the island. The name was applied in the plural, Atlantides, to islands in general located in the Atlantic Ocean. Atlas was the hero-god and Titan of Greek myth who presided over the lands in the extreme west, as well as the uncharted waters beyond the African coast. This is why the Western Ocean was known as the Atlantic (‘of Atlas’) by Plato’s age. The term was not applied to all oceans beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Those that encircled the ancient world were known as Okeanos, the Ocean River, and not the Atlantic. In consequence, it is clear that, in similar with mythical islands such as the Hesperides and the Fortunate Isles, Atlantis was located in the Western Ocean. Antarctica is due south of the African continent. Nowhere does Plato suggest that Atlantis was due south of the Pillars of Hercules.
  2. Atlantis was said by Plato to stand in front of an ‘opposite continent’, to which it was linked via a series of ‘other islands’. With point one in mind, our best shot at the identity of this ‘opposite continent’ is the Americas, suggesting that the ‘other islands’ were island chains such as the Bahamas, the Lesser Antilles and the Mid-Caribbean group. This implies that Atlantis stood in the same general vicinity as these island chains. If Antarctica was Atlantis, then what was the ‘opposite continent’ - the back end of the Asian continent? If so, what were the ‘other islands’ which linked it with Atlantis? Australia? Indonesia? It just doesn’t make sense.
  3. Plato states that where Atlantis had once stood was a shallow sea of mud and shoals, which in his day prevented ‘voyagers’ from reaching the ‘opposite continent’. Aristotle, Pseudo-Scylax and Himilco (via Avienus) also mention this shallow sea, with the last two adding that it was covered by seaweed. There seems to be little question that these ancient writers were alluding to the Sargasso Sea, the vast area of seaweed the size of Europe which stretched between the Azores in the Mid-Atlantic and the Bahamas on the western Atlantic seaboard. There is mounting evidence to show that ancient Phoenician and Carthaginian mariners reached the Sargasso Sea (Himilco, the fifth-century BC Carthaginian navigator, said it could not be crossed in four months). If Atlantis is to be placed in the vicinity of Antarctica, how might we explain Plato’s reference to the ‘shallow sea’, since none exists in the vicinity of the Antarctican continent. It makes more sense to conclude that Plato was alluding to the westerly placed Sargasso Sea.
  4. Plato tells us that ‘voyagers’ travelled via Atlantis and ‘other islands’ to the ‘opposite continent’. Moreover, that ‘in those days’ the ocean could be navigated by mariners from his own world. Surely, this describes transatlantic journeys which took place prior to Plato’s age, c. 350 BC. Evidence has recently come to light of Phoenician and Carthaginian contact with the Canary Isles as early as the sixth-century BC (after the work of Pablo Atoche Peña). The Canaries would unquestionably have been used as a maritime staging post for transatlantic journeys which could have utilised the Canary Current, the North Equatorial Current and the Trade Winds to reach the Caribbean. Moreover, there is every indication that the root language behind the Atlantis legend was not high Atlantean, or Egyptian, but West Semitic, the language of the Phoenicians and their sister colony, the Carthaginians. If Atlantis was Antarctica, how might we explain the transoceanic voyages referred to by Plato and the West Semitic root to the story?

All the indications are that Atlantis was located on the western Atlantic seaboard, and this indeed appears to be the second most popular theory as to the true location of Atlantis. This is for two basic reasons – firstly, the scholarly work being put forward by both my colleague Emilio Spedicato of Bergamo University and myself. Emilio sees Atlantis as Hispaniola and I see it as Cuba and the now sunken regions of the Bahamas and Caribbean. Secondly, since the late 1960s followers of Edgar Cayce have favoured this region of the globe as the place where evidence of a lost supercontinent would be found. It was in August-September 1968 that reports first surfaced concerning the alleged discovery of a ‘temple’ structure off Andros, the largest of the Bahaman islands, and a ‘road’ structure laying off the coast of Bimini’s North Island. Although neither of these features are likely to provide the hard evidence necessary to convince the archaeological world of the former existence of a prehistoric culture on the Bahaman landmass, no less than 60 sites of possible archaeological significance have come to light in its shallow waters.

The third most popular site for the true location of Atlantis is the Mid-Atlantic, the Azores in particular, which remains the dedicated atlantologists’ choice. This is because they see Plato as having proposed the existence of a huge super-continent the size of Libya (North Africa) and Asia (from the Nile across to the Indus river in Pakistan) combined. Since it was said to have been located in the Atlantic Ocean, the only obvious position for it would have been the Northern Atlantic Ocean, an idea first popularised with the publication in 1882 of Ignatius Donnelly’s classic ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. Yet as I demonstrate in GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS, the enormous size expressed for the Atlantean landmass is blatantly contradicted in Plato’s dialogues and appears to relate not to the extent of Atlantis as an island, but to the islands over which the Atlantean kings held domain. In the Critias, the second of the dialogues, the island of Atlantis is described as tiny in comparison, plausibly as little as 600 x 400 kilometres in size, a point also realised by Emilio Spedicato.

OLDEST FLORIDIANS

Recently, evidence has come to light of a sophisticated human culture existing on Florida’s Gulf coast as early as 10,000 BC. Human remains dating back 7,000 years and tools and weapons dating back 12,000 years have been found over a period of many years at a now threatened site at Fort Myers. Current excavations being conducted by marine archaeologist John Gifford of the University of Miami hope to uncover evidence of the oldest humans in North America. However, archaeologists fear that they are fighting a losing battle as pollutants from ever encroaching urban development flood the site.

The finds are coming from a 75-yard-wide sinkhole that descends to a depth of 220 feet. Known as Little Salt Spring, it is located between Fort Myers and Sarasota, and was donated to the University in 1982 following the discovery of artefacts there during the 1970s. These were found to have been preserved in a good condition due to the unique nature of the water, which has been described as ‘brackish’ and ‘anoxic’, in that it has very little oxygen whatsoever.

Regular scuba dives have been made into the sinkhole by a team led by Gifford, who has argued against the artificial construction of the Bimini Road. They have removed objects such as tools and weapons from ledges, caves and basins placed at different levels of different time periods. Among the items found include a completely new type of wooden tool which has been named a ‘putter’, due to its resemblance to a golf club. Six of these tools have been found which are thought to be around 8,500 years ago. In addition to the ‘putters’, a weapon has been found similar to the boomerang of Australia, Egypt and Europe. This ‘nonreturning’ variant, as it has been described, is thought to be 9,000 years old and is perhaps the oldest example of this weapon so far discovered. More significantly, a form of atlatl, a kind of spear thrower well-known among Pre-Colombian cultures of Mexico such as the Aztecs, has also been retrieved from the sinkhole. There was also a bead made from a bird’s bone, which has been drilled and is thought to be around 8,500 years old.

One of the most interesting finds was the discovery on a ledge 85 feet down of a collapsed shell of an extinct species of land tortoise. It had been pierced through by a wooden stake which revealed a Carbon-14 date of 12,000 BP (before present). The whole thing was perfectly preserved, and now Gifford and his colleagues hope to find human remains of the same age on the same ledge. If this were to be the case, they would predate North America’s oldest accepted human remains, which are those of the greatly controversial Kennewick Man, which was found in Washington State around four years ago and is around 9,000 years old.

In addition to the artefacts, an ancient cemetery has been found in peat on the edge of the sinkhole. It has produced 7000-year-old human bones, some of which were ceremonially wrapped in grass.

In past ages Little Salt Spring was filled with fresh water which would have attracted peoples from far and wide. Yet as the sea-levels rose in the nearby Gulf of Mexico at the end of the last Ice Age, the waters would have become more and more salty, driving away settlers but preserving their artefacts through to the present day. Yet now the area is being encroached once more, and this time by modern habitation and recreational facilities. Housing estates, schools and golf courses threaten the equilibrium of the sinkhole because the water run off from this urban development is pouring pollutants into the sinkhole. Gifford is currently making a number of tests in the hope that he can preserve the quality of the water for future generations. (For further information check out the Miami Herald web site Thanks to David Southwell for bringing this story to my attention).

The importance of Little Salt Spring is to emphasise just how easy it would have been for this fairly sophisticated prehistoric culture to have ventured across the Florida Straight to the Bahamas, which I suggest was inhabited prior to a major natural catastrophe around 9000-8500 BC, and plausibly afterwards in areas which were finally reclaimed by the rising sea-level between approximately 8000 and 3000 BC. The Little Salt Spring material is clear evidence that some of the most advanced ancient Americans were in Florida at exactly the right time, and so could have constituted the memory of a former Bahaman culture - Plato’s Atlantean race. I look forward to further evidence of a human presence from the Little Salt Spring site.

MYSTERIES OF THE PAST

Some 350 people packed Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 on Saturday, 4 March for the Mysteries of the Past conference. They were treated to exclusive lectures on key subjects such as crystal optics in ancient times, the location of Atlantis, transoceanic contact with the Americas and the nature of cosmic catastrophes on earth. The whole day was a huge success. Yet due to lectures overrunning (including my own) the much anticipated panel debate had to be cancelled.

The key lecture was given by Robert Temple, the author of THE SIRIUS MYSTERY and the newly published book THE CRYSTAL SUN (Century, 2000). He presented a series of slides showing optical lenses found in museums across the ancient world, including some from the British Museum. I was amazed at the sheer number which exist, showing clearly that civilisations such as the Romans, Hellenic Greeks, Carthaginians, Assyrians and Chinese were blatantly aware of this ancient technology. There were also pictures of the famous Nineveh lens found by Sir Henry Layard at the palace of the Assyrian king Sargon in the nineteenth century. This example probably dates to the seventh or eighth century BC.

I was particularly intrigued by the lenses and microscopic carvings found during excavations in Egypt. Robert explained that here was perhaps the oldest evidence for crystal lens technology, dating back as far as predynastic times, c. 3100 BC. Once more this confirms the theory that the ancient Egyptians possessed technologies that are simply denied them by conventional Egyptologists.

Robert went on to display what is arguably the most remarkable of his discoveries relating to crystal optics in ancient times. This is a Greek pot shard that actually shows a male figure with a slim conical tube held up to his left eye – the image on the cover of his book. As he pointed out, thousands of people file past this item every day and yet no one has ever proposed that it is a telescope. I have to say that this is a very convincing piece of evidence in support of his theory. Robert must be applauded for bringing this artefact to the attention of the world.

There seems little question that lenses were used as early as 3100 BC to fashion microscopic carvings in Egypt and that this tradition continued through to at least the fall of the Roman empire. Moreover, there is good reason to suppose that telescopes, plausibly made from dried plant stems such as the giant hog-weed, were used to observe the celestial and stellar bodies in a manner not popular again until the Renaissance period.

Understanding the properties of light in association with lenses, an explanation perhaps of the story of Prometheus’ who drew down the divine fire, seems to be the key to understanding the enigmas associated with the veneration of the sun from Egypt to Greece and Persia. Lenses would have had not only a practical purpose but also a religious function that focused the energy of the divine. Look out for Robert’s book, it’s a good one.

EGYPTIANS IN BRITAIN

Word comes of a new book set to cause immense controversy in archaeological circles. Penned by Egyptologist Lorraine Evans, KINGDOM OF THE ARK describes how a group of Egyptians reached Bronze Age Britain by boat around 1330-1300 BC. Moreover, those involved are thought to have been followers of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who arrived in the company of his daughter, the princess Merytaten. She was the royal wife of Smenkhkare, the relatively unknown Amarna king, who succeeded Akhenaten to the throne after his death around 1350 BC. Lorraine Evans believes that the followers of Akhenaten’s monotheistic Aten faith were escaping the religious persecutions of Horemheb, the pharaoh who succeeded the kings Tutankhamun and Aye following the death of Smenkhkare.

As absurd as this proposal might seem, Lorraine Evans has collected together considerable evidence to back up her theories. She outlines the controversy surrounding the discovery in September 1937 of three intact sailing vessels at North Ferriby in Yorkshire. Archaeologists who examined them at the time were convinced that they were of Viking origin. Due to the war effort, and the fact that the museum where the boats were housed got bombed out, the matter went unresolved. Then in the 1950s it was realised that some of the vessels’ timbers had been transported to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich before the bomb struck. Samples were thus sent to the British Museum for analysis. The results stunned everyone, for the wood provided Carbon-14 dates in the region of 1350-1300 BC (later confirmed using re-calibration processes). Moreover, in the 1980s Dr Sean McGrail of the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University, noted the similarity between the Ferriby boat remains and the design and construction of high-prowled, seagoing vessels built by the ancient Egyptians. Indeed, he compared them directly to the planked boats found at Giza. Add to this the discovery of faience beads from Akhenaten’s city at Tell el-Amarna found in Late Bronze Age barrows near Stonehenge and a necklace of similar faience beads found during 1955 in a Bronze Age burial in Tara, County Meath, Ireland, and the likelihood of Egyptians visiting Britain becomes more realistic.

Yet Lorraine does not end the story here. She has examined ancient texts which speak of the British race as being the descendants of an Egyptian princess named Scota, whose father bears the same name as the one given to Akhenaten by Manetho, the fourth century BC Egyptian historian. Before now the account of Scota’s foundation of a British royal dynasty has been discarded as a romantic fable, created in order to give the Irish and Scottish an ancient pedigree of biblical proportions. Now her story might prove to be the key to unravelling the appearance in Britain of followers of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, and plausibly even Merytaten himself, some time around 1330-1320 BC.

For those of you who have been readers of my books since the early days, the idea that Akhenaten’s followers ending their days in Britain should come as no surprise. In my 1992 book THE SEVENTH SWORD, I suggested that displaced followers of Akhenaten, including some of his close personal aids, arrived in Britain around 1320 BC bringing with them the remains of Akhenaten’s daughter Merytaten and other holy relics (including a green stone jewel!). Although I now feel that Graham Phillips (the main inspiration for the ideas) and I probably got our facts confused in some respect, there is no way that we could have imagined that 20 years later these views would be echoed in a scholarly work by a British Egyptologist. For those wishing to know more about our thoughts on the matter, attempt to track down Graham’s 1984 book THE GREEN STONE or my own THE SEVENTH SWORD. Lorraine’s book KINGDOM OF THE ARK is published by Simon and Schuster on 27th August. Watch out for her at the Questing Conference, where she will be available to sign books and answer questions.

OTHER NEW BOOKS

Graham Phillips new book THE MARIAN CONSPIRACY (not his choice of title), published by Macmillan, is a rollercoaster ride of revelations. It begins in the suburbs of Jerusalem with Graham visiting the various sites connected with the life of Jesus and then focuses on the quest to find the resting place of the Virgin Mary. Little by little he leads the reader westwards to Britain, the only obvious haven for those escaping Roman authority in the first century AD, and then on to the Isle of Anglesey. This was the Druid stronghold until its sacking by the legions of the Emperor Nero in AD 61. Graham’s conclusion is that there is a real likelihood that the Virgin Mary ended her days on the island. Moreover, that her grave and earthly remains existed on Anglesey and were guarded by individuals who preserved the knowledge in secret through till medieval times. Moreover, that this guardian figure was synonymous with the Grail guardian in the Grail romances. All these matters are discussed in Graham’s lecture at the Questing Conference this year. The strange thing here is that at the same time that Graham was looking for the site of a certain holy well connected with the grave of the Virgin Mary in 1997, my colleague Richard Ward and I were searching Anglesey for the same well for quite separate reasons. In light of this knowledge, and the sheer fact it is a brilliant read, I recommend Graham’s book.

Another important book I read recently was THE TRIUMPH OF THE MOON by Ronald Hutton, who currently occupies the Seat of History at the University of Bristol. It catalogues the development and influences of modern pagan witchcraft, and shows that the main protagonist by far was respected Egyptologist Margaret Murray. She produced two seminal works THE WITCH CULT IN WESTERN EUROPE and GOD OF THE WITCHES, which presented the theory that European folklore and seasonal festivals were a survival of an age old witch religion. These ideas were taken literally by a man named Gerald Gardner, who almost single-handedly created the modern pagan witch religion. What I found most interesting was the influences that came to bear on the creation, or ‘revival’, of the witch cult. Throughout the nineteenth century classicists had been elevating the role of gods and goddesses to that of major aspects of the natural world, and setting up altars to them. Pan ceased to be the god of shepherds as he had been in classical myth, but instead became the regenerative power of nature – a symbol of male potency - while Diana, the huntress, was seen as the expression of femininity both in nature and in connection with the moon. Together they became the role models for the Horned God and Lady of the witch religion in a manner that had no real historical precedent.

I have an interest in this subject as Essex, my home county, produced two of the best known ‘cunning’ men of nineteenth-century English history – James ‘Cunning’ Murrell, who lived in the nearby town of Hadleigh, and George Pickingill, who lived in the village of Canewdon. I have researched both characters, and the knowledge left particularly by Murrell helps us understand the role of such individuals in rural communities. Murrell was revered locally as being able to break witches curses, cure animals, discover lost property, cast horoscopes, read people’s minds and be in two places at once. He extenuated his reputation by wearing a long frock coat, flat, wide-brimmed hard hat and thick metal goggles like something out of a sci-fi film. Furthermore, he would wander the Hadleigh downs (and Leigh-on-Sea) carrying a fancy umbrella on which was hooked a frail basket in which herbs would be placed. Both are dealt with in Hutton’s important work on this subject.

For those living within easy reach of Leigh-on-Sea, remember that on the first Monday of each month I run public meetings under the name Earthquest at the Cobham Lodge Hotel, Cobham Road, Westcliff-on-Sea. Doors open at 7.15 PM and admission is £2.50. Subjects featured so far include Egypt, Atlantis, earth mysteries, ancient technologies, questing, orgone and psi-tech experiments (with my colleague Rodney Hale). See you at the Questing Conference.