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Graham Hancock

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Famous Graham Hancock Quotes

“Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, [...] came to teach [the ancient inhabitants of Mexico] the benefits of settled agriculture and the skills necessary to build temples. Although this deity is frequently depicted as a serpent, he is more often shown in human form--the serpent being his symbol and his alter ego--and is usually described as "a tall bearded white man" ... "a mysterious person ... a white man with a strong formation of body, broad forehead, large eyes and a flowing beard." Indeed, [...] the attributes and life history of Quetzalcoatl are so human that it is not improbable that he may have been an actual historical character ... the memory of whose benefactions lingered after his death, and whose personality was eventually deified. The same could very well be said of Oannes--and just like Oannes at the head of the Apkallu (likewise depicted as prominently bearded) it seems that Quetzalcoatl traveled with his own brotherhood of sages and magicians. We learn that they arrived in Mexico "from across the sea in a boat that moved by itself without paddles," and that Quetzalcoatl was regarded as having been "the founder of cities, the framer of laws and the teacher of the calendar.”

TeachCivilizationAncientMexicoArcheologyApkalluQuetzalcoatl
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
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“Sumerian myths and legends of the antediluvian world do much more than speak of the five cities. They also tell an extraordinary story of how their ancestors, who lived in the 'most ancient times', were visited by a brotherhood of semi-divine beings described as half men, half fish, who had been 'sent [by the gods] to teach the arts of civilization to mankind before the Flood' and who had themselves 'emerged from the sea'. The collective name by which these creatures were known was the 'Seven Sages' and the name of their leader was Oannes. Each of them was paired as a 'counsellor' to an antediluvian king and they were renowned for their wisdom in affairs of state and for their skills as architects, builders and engineers.”

KnowledgeCivilizationMythsTeachingsDeep Human HistoryDelugeSeven SagesSumeria
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
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“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
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“After weaning the indigenous people's of Egypt: 'from their miserable and barbarous manners, [Osiris] taught them how to till the earth, and how to sow and reap crops, he formulated a code of laws for them, and made them worship the gods and perform service to them. He then left Egypt and traveled over the rest of the world teaching the various nations to do what his own subjects were doing. He forced no man to carry out his instructions, but by means of gentle persuasion and an appeal to their reason, he succeeded in inducing them to practice what he preached.”

WorldCivilizationEgyptTransmissionIndigenous PeoplesInstructionsOsiris
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
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“Berossos compiled his History from the temple archives of Babylon (reputed to have contained "public records" that had been preserved for "over 150,000 years"). He has passed on to us a description of Oannes as a "monster," or a "creature." However, what Berossos has to say is surely more suggestive of a man wearing some sort of fish-costume--in short, some sort of disguise. The monster, Berossos tells us: "had the whole body of a fish, but underneath and attached to the head of the fish there was another head, human, and joined to the tail of the fish, feet like those of a man, and it had a human voice ... At the end of the day, this monster, Oannes, went back to the sea and spent the night. It was amphibious, able to live both on land and in the sea ... Later, other monsters similar to Oannes appeared." Bearing in mind that the curious containers carried by Oannes and the Apkallu sages are also depicted on one of the megalithic pillars at Göbekli Tepe (and [...] as far afield as ancient Mexico as well), what are we to make of all this? The mystery deepends when we follow the Mesopotamian traditions further. In summary, Oannes and the brotherhood of Apkallu sages are depicted as tutoring mankind for many thousands of years. It is during this long passage of time that the five antediluvian cities arise, the centers of a great civilization, and that kingship is "lowered from heaven." Prior to the first appearance of Oannes, Berossos says, the people of Mesopotamia 'lived in a lawless manner, like the beasts of a field.”

CivilizationBabylonMesopotamiaTutoringApkalluGöbekli TepeOannes
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
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“Another point of interest about the Tiahuanaco [in Bolivia] monoliths is that their garments from the waist down are patterned in the form of fish scales. Here, too, is a parallel to the Apkallus--the bearded, "fish-garbed figures" who brought high civilization to Mesopotamia [...]. Nor is it as though bearded figures are missing from the repertoire of Tiahuanaco. Two have survived, and one on the pillar in the semi-subterranean temple has been identified since time immemorial with the great civilizing deity Kon-Tiki Viracocha, [...] who is described in multiple myths and traditions as being white skinned and bearded.”

CivilizationMythsTraditionsMesopotamiaApkalluKon Tiki ViracochaTiahuanaco
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
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“My broad conclusion is that an advanced global seafaring civilization existed during the Ice Age, that it mapped the earth as it looked then with stunning accuracy, and that it had solved the problem of longitude, which our own civilization failed to do until the invention of Harrison's marine chronometer in the late eighteenth century. As masters of celestial navigation, as explorers, as geographers, and as cartographers, therefore, this lost civilization of 12,800 years ago was not outstripped by Western science until less than 300 years ago at the peak of the Age of Discovery.”

MastersCivilizationExplorersNavigationIce AgeSeafaringLost Civilization
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
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“It was not until 2014, more than two decades after the mastodon's discovery [a mastodon scavenged by humans in the Americas], that the tide decisively turned. Built on improved understanding of processes that incorporate natural uranium and its decay products in fossil bone, a newly enhanced technique, known as 230 Th/U radiometric dating, was now available that could settle the age of the Cerutti deposit once and for all. Deméré therefore sent several of the mastodon bones to the US Geological Survey in Colorado, where geologist Jim Paces, using the updated and refined technique, established beyond reasonable doubt that the bones were buried 130,000 years ago.”

HumanityCivilizationIce AgeDeep Human HistoryPrehistory
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
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“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
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“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
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“Another extraordinary similarity concerns the presence of Seven Sages in both the Sumerian and Vedic traditions. Most ancient societies, I concede, had their sages or seers or wise men -- in India they were, and still are, called rishis. But it seems to me to be stretching coincidence too far to find a group specifically named the 'Seven Sages' prominently associated with two separate ancient cultures and to imagine that this did not come about through some sort of connection. In the case of Sumer the Seven Sages were depicted as amphibian, 'fish-garbed' beings who emerged from the sea in antediluvian times to teach wisdom to mankind. In the case of the Vedas the focus is not on the antediluvian period but on the flood itself and those antediluvians who are claimed to have survived it, namely Manu and the Seven Sages.”

WisdomKnowledgeCivilizationConnectionDelugesSeven Sages
Book:Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization
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“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
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