Quotessence
Home / Authors / Graham Hancock
Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllCataclysmDeep Human HistoryArchaeologyIce Age CivilizationsLost CivilizationsYounger DryasIce AgeCivilizationCartographyDelugesHeritageDelugeApkalluComet ImpactConsciousnessArcheologyEstablishmentExplorationHuman OriginsIce Sheets

Famous Graham Hancock Quotes

“One could imagine that a group of anthropologists and scientists sent off to study a previously uncontacted Amazon tribe today might be bound by similar strictures [not to reproduce with natives]. But suppose some of them disagreed? Suppose some of them "went native"--as used to be said of colonialists in the days of the British Empire who allowed themselves to get too close to indigenous populations they interacted with. Is that perhaps what happened to the troop of two hundred "Watchers" on Mount Hermon? Somewhere around 10,900 BC, did they break the commandments of their own culture and "go native" among the hunter-gatherers of the Near East? And were the first chance encounters with the fragments of a giant comet a century later in 10,800 BC--encounters that devastated the world--somehow blamed upon their moral lapse?”

AnthropologyReproductionWatchersCataclysmDelugeHunter GatherersComet
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“The Younger Dryas impacts, and subsequent sustained cataclysm, changed the face of the earth completely and wrought particularly significant havoc across North America. We have considered the question of huge volumes of meltwater released into the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans from the destabilized ice sheet and looked at the effects on global climate. But keep in mind that those enormous floods also devastated the rich North American mainland to the south, perhaps the best and most bounteous real estate then available anywhere. This immense and extraordinary deluge, 'possibly the largest flood in the history of the world,' swept away and utterly demolished everything that lay in its path. Jostling with icebergs, choked by whole forests ripped up by their roots, turbulent with mud and boulders swirling in the depths of the current, what the deluge left behind can still be seen in something of its raw form in the Channeled Scablands of the state of Washington today--a devastated blank slate [...] littered with 10,000-ton 'glacial erratics,' immense fossilized waterfalls, and 'current ripples' hundreds of feet long and dozens of feet high. If there were cities there, before the deluge, they would be gone. If there was any evidence of anything that we would recognize as technology there, before the deluge, it would be gone.”

ApocalypseDemolishCataclysmDelugeYounger DryasFloodsCosmic ImpactIce Sheet
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“If we accept the generally agreed date of between AD 350 and 550 for the end of the -- at least semi-historical -- 'Third Sangam', then this gives us a fixed reference point on which to anchor the chronology of the myth [...]. The date of 9600 BC for the formation of the First Sangam (or 9800 BC or 9400 BC for that matter) coincides closely enough with Plato's date for the inundation of Atlantis -- also 9600 BC -- to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. And the question continues to be this: how could Plato less than 2500 years ago, or Nakirar less than 1500 years ago, have managed by chance to select the epoch of 9600 BC in which to set, on the one hand, the sinking under the waves of the Atlantic Ocean of the great antediluvian civilization of Atlantis and, on the other, the foundation of the First Sangam in Kumari Kandam -- a doomed Indian Ocean landmass that was itself destined to be swallowed by the sea? If Plato and Nakirar were pure 'fabulists' working independently of any real tradition or real events, then isn't it much more likely that they would have chosen different imaginary epochs in which to set their flood stories? Why didn't they choose 20,000 or 30,000 years ago -- or even 300,000 years ago, or three million years ago -- instead of the tenth millennium BC? And was it just luck that this slot turns out to have been in the midst of the meltdown of the last Ice Age -- the only episode of truly global flooding to have hit the earth in the last 125,000 years?”

AtlantisCataclysmDelugeLost CivilizationsIce Age CivilizationsMeltdown
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“The fullest account we have of Oannes is found in surviving fragments of the works of a Babylonian priest called Berossos who wrote in the third century BC. [...] Oannes did not do his work alone but was supposedly the leader of a group of beings known as the Seven Apkallu--the "Seven Sages"--who were said to have lived "before the flood" (a cataclysmic global deluge features prominently in many Mesopotamian traditions, including those of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylon). Alongside Oannes, these sages are portrayed as bringers of civilization who, in the most ancient past, gave humanity a moral code, arts, crafts and agriculture and taught them architectural, building and engineering skills.”

PastHumanityCivilizationFloodArcheologyCataclysmApkalluSeven Sages
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“The earth and all life upon it endured and was devastated by what can only be described as a globally distributed firestorm at the onset of the Younger Dryas around 12,800 years ago. In this planetary debacle, 10 million square kilometers of trees and other plant matter burned. To put that in perspective, the United Kingdom was in a state of traumatic shock in late June and early July 2018 after 4,942 acres of Lancashire moorland were consumed by wildfires. That's an area of just 20 square kilometers, but firefighters and emergency services from seven counties were utterly overwhelmed by the blaze and the military had to be brought in to assist. Meanwhile, a report in the Sacramento Bee dated July 2, 2018, opined that California's wildfire season had started early, with two 'major fires' already fought at huge expense and requiring evacuation of local residents. These two fires were estimated to have consumed 85,000 acres, which sounds an awful lot but in fact converts to just 344 square kilometers. The previous years, 2017, was California's most destructive wildfire season then on record, with a total of 1.25 million acres burned. The cost of dealing with the disaster, including fire suppression, insurance, and recovery expenditures, was estimated at US$180 billion. Yet 1.38 million acres converts to just 5,585 square kilometers--an insignificant fraction (around 0.05 percent--that is, a twentieth of 1 percent) of the 10 million square kilometers destroyed in the Younger Dryas wildfires.”

DevastationWildfiresCataclysmYounger DryasComet ImpactDebacle
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“[The Edfu Building Texts in Egypt] take us back to a very remote period called the 'Early Primeval Age of the Gods'--and these gods, it transpires, were not originally Egyptian, but lived on a sacred island, the 'Homeland of the Primeval Ones,' and in the midst of a great ocean. Then, at some unspecified time in the past, an immense cataclysm shook the earth and a flood poured over this island, where 'the earliest mansions of the gods' had been founded, destroying it utterly, submerging all its holy places, and killing most of its divine inhabitants. Some survived, however, and we are told that this remnant set sail in their ships (for the texts leave us in no doubt that these 'gods' of the early primeval age were navigators) to 'wander' the world. Their purpose in doing so was nothing less than to re-create and revive the essence of their lost homeland, to bring about, in short: 'The resurrection of the former world of the gods ... The re-creation of a destroyed world.' [...] The takeaway is that the texts invite us to consider the possibility that the survivors of a lost civilization, thought of as 'gods' but manifestly human, set about 'wandering' the world in the aftermath of an extinction-level global cataclysm. By happenstance it was primarily hunter-gatherer populations, the peoples of the mountains, jungles, and deserts--'the unlettered and the uncultured,' as Plato so eloquently put it in his account of the end of Atlantis--who had been 'spared the scourge of the deluge.' Settling among them, the wanderers entertained the desperate hope that their high civilization could be restarted, or that at least something of its knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual ideas could be passed on so that mankind in the post-cataclysmic world would not be compelled to 'begin again like children, in complete ignorance of what happened in early times.”

FoundDestructionGodsPrimevalDeep Human HistoryCataclysmRemnant
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“As the discoverer and principal excavator of Murray Springs, [...] Haynes deserves credit for drawing attention to a very curious aspect of the site--a distinct dark layer of soil draped 'like a shrink-wrap,' as Allen West puts it, over the top of the Clovis remains and of the extinct megafauna--including Eloise. Haynes has identified this 'black mat' (his term) not only at Murray Springs but at dozens of other sites across North America, and was the first to acknowledge its clear and obvious association with the Late Pleistocene Extinction Event. he speaks of the 'remarkable circumstances' surrounding the event, the abrupt die-off on a continental scale of all large mammals 'immediately before deposition of the ... black mat,' and the total absence thereafter of 'mammoth, mastodon, horse, camel, dire wold, American lion, tapir and other [megafauna], as well as Clovis people.' Haynes notes also that 'The basal black mat contact marks a major climate change from the warm dry climate of the terminal Allerod to the glacially cold Younger Dryas.' From roughly 18,000 years ago, and for several thousand years thereafter, global temperatures had been slowly but steadily rising and the ice sheets melting. Our ancestors would have had reason to hope that earth's long winter was at last coming to an end and that a new era of congenial climate beckoned. This process of warming became particularly pronounced after about 14,500 years ago. Then suddenly, around 12,800 years ago, the direction of climate change reversed and the world turned dramatically, instantly cold--as cold as it had been at the peak of the Ice Age many thousands of years earlier. This deep freeze--the mysterious epoch now known as the Younger Dryas--lasted for approximately 1,200 years until 11,600 years ago, at which point the climate flipped again, global temperatures shot up rapidly, the remnant ice sheets melted and collapsed into the oceans, and the world became as warm as it is today.”

Climate ChangeExtinctionPaleontologyCataclysmYounger DryasIce SheetsPleistocene
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“The fully qualified Indian marine archaeologists who had dived on the structure in 1993 had not hesitated in their official report to pronounce it to be man-made with 'courses of masonry' plainly visible -- surely a momentous finding 5 kilometers from the shore at a depth of 23 metres? But far from exciting attention, or ruffling any academic feathers, or attracting funds for an extension of the diving survey to the other apparently man-made mounds that had been spotted bear by on the sea-bed -- and very far indeed from inspiring any Tamil expert to re-evaluate the derided possibility of a factual basis to the Kumari Kandam myth -- the NIO's discovery at Poompuhur had simply been ignored by scholarship, not even reacted to or dismissed, but just widely and generally ignored.”

AuthorityAcademiaArchaeologyMasonryDeep Human HistoryCataclysmMarine ArchaeologyUnderwater Structures
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“Indian thought has traditionally regarded history and prehistory in cyclical rather than linear terms. In the West time is an arrow -- we are born, we live, we die. But in India we die only to be reborn. Indeed, it is a deeply rooted idea in Indian spiritual traditions that the earth itself and all living creatures upon it are locked into an immense cosmic cycle of birth, growth, fruition, death, rebirth and renewal. Even temples are reborn after they grow too old to be used safely -- through the simple expedient of reconstruction on the same site. Within this pattern of spiralling cycles, where everything that goes around comes around, India conceives of four great epochs of 'world ages' of varying but enormous lengths: the Krita Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Davapara Yuga and the Kali Yuga. At the end of each yuga a cataclysm, known as pralaya, engulfs the globe in fire or flood. Then from the ruins of the former age, like the Phoenix emerging from the ashes, the new age begins.”

HistoryCyclesRebirthDeep Human HistoryCataclysmEpochs
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“Then there's the pillar statue in the semi-subterranean temple at Tiahuanaco [Bolivia]. Like the Totem Pole of Göbekli Tepe, it is anthropomorphic. Like the Totem Pole at Göbekli Tepe, it has serpents writhing up its side. Like the Totem Pole at Göbekli Tepe, the long fingers of its hands almost meet in front of its body. The face is human not animal, however, and it's heavily bearded. Nonetheless, the figure of an animal is carved on the side of its head and this animal resembles no known species more closely than it does Toxodon, a sort of New World rhino that went extinct during the cataclysms at the end of the Ice Age around 12,000 years ago. This isn't pareidolia--the figure is definitely there. So there's only one question--and it's difficult to answer: is this a depiction of Toxodon, or is it some creature of the artist's imagination?”

Ice AgeCataclysmAnthropomorphismSerpentsGöbekli TepeTiahuanacoToxodon
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“In 1988 the German oceanographer Hartmut Heinrich was the first to come up with the firm geological evidence for such a cataclysmic 'iceberg-calving' process during the last Ice Age. By examining deep-sea drill cores sampled at various points across the North Atlantic he demonstrated the existence of widely dispersed layers of 'ice-rafted detritus' -- millions of tonnes of rocks and rocky debris that had once stood on land, that had been clawed up by the ice-sheets and that had ultimately been carried out to sea frozen into huge icebergs: 'As they melted they released rock debris that was dropped into the fine-grained sediments of the ocean floor. Much of this ice-rafted debris consists of limestones similar to those exposed over large areas of eastern Canada today. The Heinrich layers as they have become known, extend 3000 kilometers across the North Atlantic, almost reaching Ireland.' The Heinrich layers record at least six separate discharges of 'stupendous flotillas of ice-bergs' into the North Atlantic -- discharges that are now known, obviously enough, as 'Heinrich Events' and that are thought to have unfolded in concentrated bursts of activity that may, in each case, have lasted less than a century. Because of the progressive thickening of the Heinrich layers towards the western side of the Atlantic and the continuation of this trend into the Labrador Sea in the direction of Hudson Bay, it is obvious to geologists that 'much of the floating ice was sourced from the Laurentide ice-sheet'. However, other debris has been found intermingled in some Heinrich layers that 'could only have come from separate ice-sheets covering not only Canada, but Greenland, Iceland, the British Isles and Scandinavia'. Likewise, research into southern hemisphere ice-caps in the Andes and New Zealand shows that these too 'grew and then collapsed synchronously with the ice-rafting pulses recorded in the North Atlantic'. The implication [...] is that some 'global rather than regional forcing of climate change' must have been at work.”

GeologyIce AgeCataclysmDelugesIce SheetsIcebergs
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“Around 12,800 years ago, it was as though an enchantment of ice had gripped the earth. In many areas that had been approaching terminal meltdown full glacial conditions were restored with breathtaking rapidity and all the gains that had been made since the LGM were simply stripped away: 'Temperatures ... fell back on the order of 8-15 degrees centigrade ... with half this brutal decline possibly occurring within decades. The Polar Front in the North Atlantic redescended to the level of Cabo Finisterre in northwest Spain and glaciers readvanced in the high mountain chains. With respect to temperature the setback to full glacial conditions was nearly complete ...' For human populations at the time, in many except the most accidentally favoured parts of the world, the sudden and inexplicable plunge into severe cold and aridity must have been devastating. And in the Karakoram-Himalayan region, as in other glaciated areas, it is very likely that it was accompanied by a significant readvance of the ice-cap that previously had been in recession for some 7000 years.”

Ice AgeDeep Human HistoryCataclysmYounger DryasIce Sheets
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“We know from Glenn Milne's inundation data that Gozo and Malta were indeed one big island during the Ice Age, down to approximately 13,500 years ago, and that they did not take on their present form as an archipelago of three islands (with little Comino in between) until around 11,000 years ago. Accordingly, if the medieval tradition of Malta and Gozo as one big island is not a complete invention -- and why should it be? -- then, 'fantastic' though it may seem, it somehow preserves a memory of Malta as it appeared more than 11,000 years ago. It is well known that most medieval mapmakers were only copyists reproducing older maps and [...] I believe we cannot exclude the possibility that the single large island called Gaulometin of Galonia leta that has somehow survived on certain medieval maps may indeed be a representation of Malta in a much earlier time. A mental leap is required in order even to consider such a possibility. It is necessary to set aside all preconceptions about the past, and all unexamined notions of how societies evolve. Above all, we have to rid ourselves of the ingrained conviction that (despite some setbacks) the basic story of human civilization has been steadily and reassuringly onwards and upwards from the very beginning. It may not have been so. There may be tremendous gaps, of which we are blissfully unaware, in the evidence presently available to us concerning the origins and progress of civilization. In particular, there has been no sustained or serious search for very ancient underwater ruins along the millions of square kilometres of continental shelves flooded at the end of the Ice Age. So it is possible, and within the bounds of reason, that a civilization of some sort might have flourished during the closing millennia of the Ice Age and might not yet have been detected by archaeologists. A civilization not necessarily at all like our own but still advanced enough to have mastered complex skills such as seafaring and navigation (that do not call for a large material or industrial base) and to have left behind memories of the world as it looked before the flood and at various stages during the rising of the seas. The sort of civilization, perhaps, that would have built with megaliths and aligned them with navigational precision to the path of the sun. Maybe even a civilization that measured the earth, mapped it and netted it with a latitude and longitude grid. Until such a lost civilization has been entirely ruled out -- and we are far from that -- it is rational to keep our minds open to the possibility, however extraordinary it may seem, that certain ancient maps have indeed carried down to us broken images of the antediluvian world.”

ProgressHeritageIce AgeCataclysmLost CivilizationsIce Age CivilizationsDelugesUnderwater Ruins
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“Like the legends of Kon-Tiki Viracocha [...], the South American civilizing hero, white-skinned and bearded like Quetzalcoatl and the Apkallu sages [...], who was said to have come to the Andes during a terrifying period, thousands of years in the past, "when the earth had been inundated by a great flood and plunged into darkness by the disappearance of the sun." (Exactly like Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, and the Apkallu sages in Mesopotamia, Viracocha's civilizing mission in the Andes had been to bring laws and a moral code to the survivors of the disaster, and to teach them the skills of agriculture, architecture and engineering.”

CivilizationFloodSurvivorsSouth AmericaCataclysmApkalluKon Tiki ViracochaQuetzalcoatl
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“If the Edfu Texts contain a record of these events, as I have proposed, then we should take seriously the message they transmit, that there were survivors of the cataclysm who made it their mission to bring about: 'The resurrection of the former world of the gods. ... The re-creation of a destroyed world.' These survivors are said to have wandered the earth, setting out and building sacred mounds wherever they went, and teaching the fundamentals of civilization, including religion, agriculture, and architecture.”

DestructionLegacyResurrectionMissionApocalypseSurvivorsMessageCataclysmRe Creation
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“[The cosmic impact that started the Younger Dryas] marked the end of their story, and the end of an epoch, really. There's not a single Clovis point found anywhere in North America that's above that black mat. They're all in it or below it. And there's not a single mammoth skeleton anywhere in North America that's above it. A huge part of the die-off could have been as a direct result of the impacts themselves, but impacts and airbursts south of the ice cap, particularly as far south as New Mexico, would also have set off wildfires. There's overwhelming evidence that gigantic wildfires raged at the onset of the Younger Dryas--in fact, more soot has been found at the Younger Dryas Boundary than at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary. We did the calculations and it looks like as much as 25 percent of the edible biomass and around 9 percent of the total biomass of the planet was on fire and destroyed within days or weeks of the YDB. So in many areas if the animals weren't killed outright they wouldn't have been able to forage enough food afterwards to survive. The grass would have burned up, leaves on trees were gone. ... And you know, the other thing is that when comet fragments come in they're traveling incredibly fast and they literally punch a hole in the atmosphere. They actually push the air aside and they bring in that super cold from space, and when they explode in the air that cold plume continues to the ground and you literally have things frozen in place if they were close enough to where the plume came down. It's possible they were fried and then frozen all within a matter of seconds.”

EvidenceEpochWildfiresPaleontologyCataclysmYounger DryasCosmic Impact
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“A 24,000-year sequence recorded in a marine core from the Santa Barbara Basin, off the coast of California, exhibits the highest peak in biomass burning precisely at the onset of the Younger Dryas. ... This anomalously high peak correlates with intense biomass burning documented from the nearby Channel Islands. ... The peak also coincides with the extinction of pygmy mammoths on the islands and with the beginning of an apparent 600-800-year gap in the archaeological record, suggesting a sudden collapse in island human populations.”

CollapseExtinctionArchaeologyWildfiresDeep Human HistoryCataclysmYounger DryasComet Impact
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“SHERIDEN CAVE, OHIO: There are [Younger Dryas Boundary] peaks in magnetic spherules, meltglass, nanodiamonds, Pt, and Ir. A charcoal-rich black mat dates to the [Younger Dryas] onset and contains peak abundances of charcoal, AC/soot, carbon spherules, and nanodiamonds that are closely associated with the last known Clovis artifacts in the cave. The black-mat layer is in direct contact with the wildfire-charred bones of two mega-mammals, the flat-headed peccary (Platygonus compressus) and the giant beaver (Castoroidies ohioensis), that are the last known examples anywhere in the world of those extinct species.”

ExtinctionWildfiresPaleontologyDeep Human HistoryCataclysmYounger DryasComet Impact
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“The Sanskrit texts make it clear that a cataclysm on this scale, though a relatively rare event, is expected to wash away all traces of the former world and that the slate will be wiped clean again for the new age of the earth to begin. In order to ensure that the Vedas can be repromulgated for future mankind after each pralaya the gods have therefore designed an institution to preserve them -- the institution of the Seven Sages, a brotherhood of adepts possessed of unerring memories and supernatural powers, practitioners of yoga, performers of the ancient rituals and sacrifices, ascetics, spiritual visionaries, vigilant in the battle against evil, great teachers, knowledgeable beyond all imagining, who reincarnate from age to age as the guides of civilization and the guardians of cosmic justice.”

WisdomCivilizationCycleSanskritCataclysmInstitutionSeven Sages
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“We know that relatively minor sea-level rises could set off major ice-sheet breakups, and it has been suggested by Stephen Oppenheimer that the tremendous earthquakes caused by isostatic rebalancing at the end of the Ice Age could have stirred up 'mountain-topping superwaves' in the northern regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Other than Oppenheimer's own investigations, however, my impression is that while many brilliant individual scientists have studied individual post-glacial phenomena in great depth, very little has yet been done to investigate all these phenomena together as part of a complex system or to consider the effects on the earth and its human population of multiple, interacting cataclysms -- floods, lands subsiding into the sea, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions -- all occurring at the same time.”

EarthquakesDeep Human HistoryCataclysmIce SheetsVolcanismSea Level RisesSuperwaves
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“To this day, scientists know of only two layers of sediment 'broadly distributed across several continents that exhibit coeval abundance peaks in a comprehensive assemblage of cosmic impact markers, including nanodiamonds, high-temperature quenched spherules, high-temperature melt-glass, carbon spherules, iridium and aciniform carbon.' These layers are found at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary 65 million years ago, when it has long been agreed that a gigantic cosmic impact in the Gulf of Mexico caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, and at the Younger Dryas Boundary 12,800 years ago.”

ScienceCataclysmYounger DryasCosmic Impact
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“In the case of the Younger Dryas, the jeopardy that humanity faced was not from nuclear missiles but from the incoming fragments of a disintegrating giant comet, traveling at tens of kilometers per second, with the larger fragments as deadly as hundreds of nuclear warheads. Indeed, it is estimated that the total explosive power of the comet fragments that struck the earth in repeated episodes over a period of 21 years some 12,800 years ago would have been of the order of 10 million megatons--1,000 times greater than all the nuclear devices stockpiled in the world today.”

ApocalypseJeopardyDeep Human HistoryCataclysmYounger DryasComet Impact
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“What we are looking for [...] is an agent capable--simultaneously and almost instantaneously--of bringing about all of the following: -a global flood -wildfires across an area of 10 million km2 -6 months of icy darkness followed by more than 1,000 years of glacially cold weather -a stratum of soil across more than 50 million km2 dated to the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) and infused with a cocktail of nanodiamonds, high-temperature iron-rich spherules, glassy silica-rich spherules, meltglass, platinum, iridium, osmium, and other exotic materials -a mass extinction of megafauna Wolfbach and her coauthors are forthright in their conclusion: 'Multiple lines of ice-core evidence appear synchronous, and this synchroneity of multiple events makes the YD interval one of the most unusual climate episodes in the entire Quaternary record. ... A cosmic impact is the only known event capable of simultaneously producing the collective evidence.”

FloodApocalypseDeep Human HistoryCataclysmYounger DryasComet Impact
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“My argument has long been that the Edfu Building Texts reflect real events surrounding a real cataclysm that unfolded between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago, a period known to paleoclimatologists as the Younger Dryas and that the Texts call the 'Early Primeval Age.' I have proposed that the seeds of what was eventually to become dynastic Egypt were planted in the Nile Valley in that remote epoch more than 12,000 years ago by the survivors of a lost civilization and that it was at this time that structures such as the Great Sphinx and its associated megalithic temples and the subterrranean chamber beneath the Great Pyramid were created. I have further proposed that something resembling a religious cult or monastery, recruiting new initiates down the generations, deploying the memes of geometry and astronomy, disseminating an 'as-above-so-below' system of thought, and teaching that eternal annihilation awaited those who did not serve and honor the system, would have been the most likely vehicle to carry the ideas of the original founders across the millennia until they could be brought to full flower in the Pyramid Age.”

CivilizationSurvivorsSeedDeep Human HistoryCataclysmMegalithicPaleoclimatology
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“The origin myth of the Tukano speaks of the time, eons ago, when humans first settled the great rivers of the Amazon basin. It seems that 'supernatural beings' accompanied them on this journey and gifted them the fundamentals upon which to build a civilized life. From the 'Daughter of the Sun' they received the gift of fire and the knowledge of horticulture, pottery-making, and many other crafts. 'The serpent-shaped canoe of the first settlers' was steered by a superhuman 'Helmsman.' Meanwhile other supernaturals 'travelled by canoe over all the rivers and ... explored the remote hill ranges; they pointed out propitious sites for houses or fields, or for hunting and fishing, and they left their lasting imprint on many spots so that future generations would have ineffaceable proof of their earthly days and would forever remember them and their teachings.”

MythProofOriginDeep Human HistoryCataclysmSettleLost Ancient CivilizationsSerpent People
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image

“The suspicion that certain ancient authorities possessed good knowledge of the real shape of the Atlantic and its islands, and of the lands on both sides of it, must also arise from any objective reading of Plato's world-famous account of Atlantis. [...], this story is set around 11,600 years ago -- a date that coincides with a peak episode of global flooding at the end of the Ice Age. The story tells us that 'the island of Atlantis was swallowed up by the sea and vanished', that this took place in 'a single dreadful day and night' and that the event was accompanied by earthquakes and floods that were experienced as far away as the eastern Mediterranean. But of more immediate interest to us here is what Plato has to say about the geographical situation in the Atlantic immediately before the flood that destroyed Atlantis: 'In those days the Atlantic was navigable. There was an island opposite the strait [the Strait of Gibraltar] which you [the Greeks] call the Pillars of Heracles, an island larger than Libya and Asia combined; from it travellers could in those days reach the other islands, and from them the whole opposite continent which surrounds what can truly be called the ocean. For the sea within the strait we are talking about [i.e. the Mediterranean] is like a lake with a narrow entrance; the outer ocean is the real ocean and the land which entirely surrounds it is properly termed continent ... On this land of Atlantis had arisen a powerful and remarkable dynasty of kings who ruled the whole island; and many other islands as well, and parts of the continent ...' Whether or not one believes than an island called Atlantis ever existed in the Atlantic Ocean, Plato's clear references to an 'opposite continent' on the far side of it are geographical knowledge out of place in time. It is hard to read in these references anything other than an allusion to the Americas, and yet historians assure us that the Americas were unknown in Plato's time and remained 'undiscovered' (except for a few inconsequential Viking voyages) until Colombus in 1492.”

DiscoveryExplorationGeographyCataclysmLost CivilizationsIce Age CivilizationsDelugesLost KnowledgeSea Level Rises
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“I will not delay the reader with lengthy quotations from the very many Taiwanese flood myths that were collected from amongst the indigenous population, primarily by Japanese scholars, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Typically they tell a story of a warning from the gods, the sound of thunder in the sky, terrifying earthquakes, the pouring down of a wall of water which engulfs mankind, and the survival of a remnant who had either fled to mountain tops or who floated to safety on some sort of improvised vessel. To provide just one example (from the Ami tribe of central Taiwan), we hear how the four gods of the sea conspired with two gods of the land, Kabitt and Aka, to destroy mankind. The gods of the sea warned Kabitt and Aka: 'In five days when the round moon appears, the sea will make a booming sound: then escape to a mountain where there are stars.' Kabitt and Aka heeded the warning immediately and fled to the mountain and 'when they reached the summit, the sea suddenly began to make the sound and rose higher and higher'. All the lowland settlements were inundated but two children, Sura and Nakao, were not drowned: 'For when the flood overtook them, they embarked in a wooden mortar, which chanced to be lying in the yard of their house, and in that frail vessel they floated safely to the Ragasan mountain.' So here, handed down since time immemorial by Taiwanese headhunters, we have the essence of the story of Noah's Ark, which is also the story of Manu and the story of Zisudra and (with astonishingly minor variations) the story of all the deluge escapees and survivors in all the world. At some point a real investigation should be mounted into why it is that furious tribes of archaeologists, ethnologists and anthropologists continue to describe the similarities amongst these myths of earth-destroying floods as coincidental, rooted in exaggeration, etc., and thus irrelevant as historical testimony. This is contrary to reason when we know that over a period of roughly 10,000 years between 17,000 and 7000 years ago more than 25 million square kilometres of the earth's surface were inundated. The flood epoch was a reality and in my opinion, since our ancestors went through it, it is not surprising that they told stories and bequeathed to us their shared memories of it. As well as continuing to unveil it through sciences like inundation mapping and palaeo-climatology, therefore, I suggest that if we want to learn what the world was really like during the meltdown we should LISTEN TO THE MYTHS.”

HeritageMythsAncestorsCataclysmLost CivilizationsIce Age CivilizationsDelugesLost Knowledge
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“Having a shared common source, or deriving from different but closely similar sources, provides a simple explanation for why the Cantino and Reinal maps are so much alike in almost all respects and also, crucially, why both contain similar mistakes. As I was already aware from Sharif Sakr's first report [...] these mistakes include the absence of the Kathiawar peninsula with its characteristic Gulfs of Kutch and Cambay; a distinct bulge in the north-west corner of India; enlargement of many small island groups, and a south-westerly orientation (with what Sharif describes as 'distinct lips') of the southern tip of India. In his e-mail of 23 February 2001 he then makes the crucial observation that: 'While these deviations are all errors relative to a modern map of India, they in fact match up extremely well with Glenn Milne's map of India 21,300 years ago at LGM. This inundation map shows a large indent at the mouth of the Indus, a bulge obscuring completely the Kathiawar peninsula, enlarged Lakshadweep and Maldives islands, and, most surprisingly, a SW-pointing 'mouth' shape at India's southern tip that is virtually identical to that shown by Reinal.' It seems to me that these correlations, and the others that Sharif reported [...], are obvious, striking and speak for themselves. The only questions that need to be asked about them are: (1) do they result from the workings of coincidence? Or (2) are they there because the source maps for Cantino and Reinal were originally drawn at the end of the Ice Age -- perhaps not as far back as the LGM but certainly before the final inundation of the Gulfs of Kutch and Cambay which created the Kathiawar peninsula around 7700 years ago?”

HeritageCataclysmLost CivilizationsIce Age CivilizationsDeluges
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“On 16 January 2002 India's Minister of Science and Technology released the first results of carbon-dating of the artefacts from the flooded cities of the Gulf of Cambay. The results date the artifacts to 9500 years ago -- 5000 years older than any city so far recognized by archaeologists.”

EstablishmentAncestorsArchaeologyCataclysmLost CivilizationsDeluges
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“The Red Hill was referred to in the most ancient surviving work of Tamil literature, the Tolkappiyam, which itself makes reference to an even earlier work now lost to history which in turn had supposedly been part of a library of archaic texts, all now also vanished, the compilation of which was said to have begun more than 10,000 years previously. This had been the library of the legendary First Sangam -- or 'Academy' -- of the lost Tamil civilization of Kumari Kandam, swallowed up, as Captain Narayan put it, 'by a major eruption of the sea'.”

LibraryDeep Human HistoryCataclysmTamilIce Age CivilizationsKumari Kandam
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
Create image

“An Ojibwa tradition seems relevant. It speaks of a comet that 'burned up the earth' in the remote past and that is destined to return: 'The star with the long, wide tail is going to destroy the world some day when it comes low again. That's the comet called Long-Tailed Heavenly Climbing Star. It came down here once, thousands of years ago. Just like the sun. It had radiation and burning heat in its tail ... Indian people were here before that happened, living on the earth. But things were wrong with nature on the earth, and a lot of people had abandoned the spiritual path. The Holy Spirit warned them a long time before the comet came. Medicine men told everyone to prepare. ... The comet burnt everything to the ground. There wasn't a thing left ... There is a prophecy that the comet will destroy the earth again. But it's a restoration. The greatest blessing this island [Turtle Island/America] will ever have. People don't listen to their spiritual guidance today. There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars when the comet comes down again.”

TraditionDestructionProphecyRestorationDeep Human HistoryCataclysmComet Impact
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
Create image