Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization

by Graham Hancock

  50. The constellations, as we envisage them today, of the area of the sky depicted on Pillar 43 at Gobekli Tepe.

  51. The same constellations overlaid on the figures of Pillar 43 at Gobekli Tepe. See discussion in chapter 15 and figure 50.

  52. The eerie limestone “Totem Pole” of Gobekli Tepe – a complex, hybrid entity.

  53. “Urfa Man”, the oldest three-dimensional sculpture of a human figure to have survived anywhere in the world. It dates to the same period as Gobekli Tepe and was found nearby. Note that the position of the hands matches the hand positions of the T-shaped anthropomorphic pillars of Gobekli Tepe (see, for example, plate 4).

  54. Giant “jigsaw-puzzle” walls at Sacsayhuaman, built thousands of years before the Incas according to Jesus Gamarra.

  55. Loretto Street, Cuzco. Different styles of architecture suggest the work of different cultures.

  56. Inferior architecture of the Temple of the Virgins, known to have been built by the Incas.

  57. Near Cuzco, Peru.

  58. Alaca Hoyuk, Turkey. Is it possible that the same prehistoric megalithic culture was at work in both places?

  59. The author with Jesus Gamarra at Pisac.

  60. Cave shrine. The different architectural styles evident here and at Pisac are indicative of the work of different cultures. In Gamarra’s view it is absurd to attribute everything to the Incas.

  61. Cutimbo, Peru.

  62. Gobekli Tepe, Turkey.

  63. Cutimbo.

  64. Gobekli Tepe.

  65. Cutimbo.

  66. Gobekli Tepe.

  67. Gobekli Tepe.

  68. Cutimbo.

  69. The author studying serpent with peculiarly large head carved in high relief at the “Temple of the Moon” near Cuzco.

  70. Serpent with peculiarly large head carved in high relief at Gobekli Tepe.

  71. Left: Cutimbo. Compare with 72. Right: Gobekli Tepe.

  73. Easter Island.

  74. “Urfa Man,” Turkey.

  75. “H” Blocks, Tiahuanaco.

  76. Gobekli Tepe pillar figure. Note similar hand positions in 73, 74, and 76. Note “H” motif in 75 and 76.

  77. The recycling of an ancient Easter Island head as a construction block suggests the wall is much younger than the figures.

  78. The bearded face of Viracocha, at Tiahuanaco.

  79. Bearded Easter Island head, Rano Raraku quarry. The bodies of the figures in the quarry are buried in up to 30 feet of sediment, suggesting great antiquity.

  80. Watu Palindo, the “Sage of Bada Valley,” Sulawesi, Indonesia.

  81. Painted megalithic chamber near Pagar Alam, Sumatra.

  Appendices

  Figure 73: The Orion Correlation is not “upside down.” If we look at it simply as an artistic project—make a painting (or three-dimensional model) of the three stars of Orion’s belt and then lay that painting (or model) down in the most natural way in front of us—we will find that it does match/correlate exactly with the positions of the three pyramids on the ground.

  Appendix I

  The Orion correlation is not upside down

  Modern astronomers view the sky as a curved dome overhead. So the painter in the graphic opposite is looking south at Orion, and the Orion correlation says that the three stars of Orion’s belt are represented by the three pyramids on the ground. The lowest star is represented by the Great Pyramid, the middle star by the Pyramid of Khafre (second pyramid) and the highest star is represented by the Pyramid of Menkaure (the third and smallest of the pyramids, just as the highest star is visually the smallest—least bright—of the three stars).

  Now, the Great Pyramid on the ground is the northernmost of the three, the second pyramid is in the middle, of course, and the third pyramid is the southernmost of the three. The objection of astronomers such as Ed Krupp of the Griffiths Observatory in Los Angeles is based on their modern convention that the sky is a curved dome overhead. If you view the sky that way then the highest star—which is represented by Menkaure’s Pyramid, according to the Orion correlation—is in fact the northernmost star (remember we are looking south, the sky is imagined to be curving overhead—so the higher you go, the closer you get to the north pole of the sky which is behind the painter in the diagram), and the lowest star, which is represented by the Great Pyramid, according to the Orion correlation, is in fact the southernmost star. But on the ground, the Great Pyramid is the northernmost pyramid and the Pyramid of Menkaure is the southernmost pyramid. Hence Dr. Krupp argues that the correlation is “upside down.”

  What the diagram demonstrates is that this is only correct according to the astronomical convention of the sky being the inside of a sphere that curves overhead. If we look at it simply as an artistic project—make a painting of the three stars of Orion’s belt and then lay that painting down in the most natural way on the ground in front of us—we will find that it does match/correlate exactly with the positions of the three pyramids on the ground.

  References

  Please note that some of the links referenced in this work may no longer be active.

  Chapter 1

  1. “The Turkish word Göbek means navel or belly.” Klaus Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe, A Stone-Age Sanctuary in South-Eastern Anatolia, Ex Oriente, Berlin, 2012, p. 88. See also http://www.ancient.eu/article/234/ and http://archive.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/turkey.html.

  2. Or “Belly Mountain.” See Klaus Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe, A Stone-Age Sanctuary in South-Eastern Anatolia, op. cit., p. 88.

  3. Interview with Professor Dr. Klaus Schmidt conducted by Graham Hancock at Göbekli Tepe, 7 and 8 September 2013. All subsequent statements by Dr. Schmidt quoted in this chapter are from the same interview.

  4. John Anthony West, Serpent in the Sky, Harper and Row, New York, 1979, p. 13.

  5. Interview with Klaus Schmidt, op. cit., and see also Klaus Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe—the Stone Age Sanctuaries: New Results of Ongoing Excavations with a Special Focus on Sculptures and High Reliefs, in Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII, 2010, p. 243.

  6. Klaus Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe—the Stone Age Sanctuaries, op. cit., p. 245.

  7. Juan Antonio Belmonte, Journal of Cosmology, Vol 9 (2010), pp. 2052–2062.

  8. See Chapter Fourteen.

  9. My friend Andrew Collins elaborates on

  these human-like characteristics of the vulture figure on p. 99 of his Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods, Bear & Co., Vermont, 2014, for which I wrote the Introduction.

  10. For further details of the

  excavations in Enclosure H see Göbekli Tepe Newsletter 2014, German Archaeological Institute, pp. 5–7. Available as a pdf here: http://www.dainst.org/documents/10180/123677/Newsletter+G%C3%B6bekli+Tepe+Ausgabe+1-2014.

  11. Klaus Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe—the Stone Age Sanctuaries, op. cit., p. 242.

  12. Schmidt elaborates on these ideas in Göbekli Tepe—the Stone Age Sanctuaries, op. cit., p. 243.

  13. Neil Baldwin, Legends of the Plumed Serpent: Biography of a Mexican God, Public Affairs, New York, 1998, p. 17.

  14. Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, William Heinemann Ltd., London, 1995, p. 130.

  15. Neil Baldwin, Legends of the Plumed Serpent, op. cit., p. 17.

  16. Gerald P. Verbrugghe and John M. Wickersham (Eds.), Berossos and Manetho: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, University of Michigan Press, 1999, p. 44.

  17. Benno Lansberger, “Three Essays on the Sumerians II: The Beginnings of Civilization in Mesopotamia,” in Benno Lansberger, Three Essays on the Sumerians, Udena Publications, Los Angeles, p. 174; Berossos and Manetho, op. cit., pp. 17 and 44; Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 182–3, 328; Jeremy Black and Anthony Green (Eds.), Gods, Demons and Symbols of Mesopotamia, British Museum Press, London, 1992, pp. 41, 82–3, 163–4.

  18. John Biershorst, The Mythology of Mexico and Central America, William Morrow, New York, 1990, p. 161.

  19. North America of Antiqui
ty, p. 268, cited in Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, Dover Publications Inc. Reprint, 1976, p. 165.

  20. Sylvanus Griswold Morley, An Introduction to the Study of Maya Hieroglyphs, Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1975, pp. 16–17.

  21. John Biershorst, The Mythology of Mexico and Central America, op. cit., p. 161.

  22. Sylvanus Griswold Morley, An Introduction to the Study of Maya Hieroglyphs, op. cit., pp. 16–17.

  23. See Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, op. cit., note 16, p. 517.

  24. Plato, Timaeus and Critias, Penguin Classics, London, 1977, p. 36.

  Chapter 2

  1. See New Scientist Magazine, cover story on Göbekli Tepe, 5 October 2013, “The True Dawn: Civilization is Older and More Mysterious than we Thought.”

  2. Plato, Timaeus and Critias, op. cit., p. 36.

  3. Email from Danny Hilman Natawidjaja to Graham Hancock, 2 October 2014.

  4. Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, Plato Never Lied: Atlantis in Indonesia, Booknesia, Jakarta, 2013.

  5. Schoch and I, who have known each other for many years, were both invited to present papers at the Gotrasawala Festival and Cultural Conference (devoted largely to discussions of Gunung Padang) that was held in Bandung on 5, 6 and 7 December 2013. A professional fieldtrip to Gunung Padang, at which Dr. Natawidjaja shared his findings, was organized as part of the Conference.

  6. Reported in Fingerprints of the Gods, op. cit., p. 420ff.

  7. Robert M. Schoch Ph.D., “The Case for a Lost Ice Age Civilization in Indonesia,” Atlantis Rising Magazine, March–April 2014, p. 41ff.

  8. “I frequently receive communications from people who wish to consult me concerning their unpublished ideas,” Einstein wrote. “It goes without saying that these ideas are very seldom possessed of scientific validity. The very first communication, however, that I received from Mr. Hapgood electrified me. His idea is original, of great simplicity, and—if it continues to prove itself—of great importance to everything that is related to the history of the earth’s surface.” From the Foreword by Albert Einstein to Charles H. Hapgood, Earth’s Shifting Crust: A Key to Some Basic Problems of Earth Science, Pantheon Books, New York, 1958, pp. 1–2.

  Chapter 3

  1. Archaeoastronomy: The Journal of the Center for Archaeoastronomy, Vol. VIII, Nos. 1–4, January–December 1985, p. 99.

  2. Thor Conway in Ray A. Williamson and Claire R. Farrer (Eds.) Earth and Sky: Visions of the Cosmos in Native American Folklore, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1992, pp. 243–4.

  3. Reported in W. Woelfi and W. Blatensperger, “Traditions connected with the Pole Shift Model of the Pleistocene,” in arXiv: 1009:578vl, 26 September 2010, p. 24.

  4. Thor Conway in Ray A. Williamson and Claire R. Farrer (Eds.) Earth and Sky, op. cit., p. 246.

  5. Cited in Richard Firestone, Allen West and Simon Warwick-Smith, The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire and Famine in the History of Civilization, Bear & Co., Rochester, Vermont, 2006, pp. 152–3.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Castoroides. Its average length was approximately 1.9 meters (six feet) and it could grow as large as 2.2 meters (seven feet). It was the largest known rodent in North America during the Pleistocene and the largest known beaver.

  8. Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, American Indian Myths and Legends, Pantheon Books, New York, 1984, p. 181.

  9. Martha Douglas Harris, History and Folklore of the Cowichan Indians, The Colonialist Printing and Publishing Company, Victoria, British Columbia, 1901, pp. 11–12.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ella E. Clark, Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1953, pp. 161–2.

  12. Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, American Indian Myths and Legends, op. cit., p. 474.

  13. New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, Paul Hamlyn, London, 1989, p. 426.

  14. Sir J.G. Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law, Macmillan, London, 1923, pp. 111–12.

  15. New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, op. cit., p. 431.

  16. http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/AlgonquinFloodMyth-Algonquin.html.

  17. From Lynd’s History of the Dakotas, cited in Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, op. cit., p. 117.

  18. For further discussion see Gail J. Woodside, Comparing Native Oral History and Scientific Research to Produce Historical Evidence of Native Occupation During and After the Missoula Floods: A Project submitted to Oregon State University, University Honors College, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Honors Baccalaureate in Natural Resources, 28 May 2008. Woodside concludes that “oral histories shared by Native people located in the area of the flood regions, when compared with actual geologic information, give evidence of occupation and survivability of Native populations in flood regions.”

  19. Carlson’s website is www.sacredgeometryinternational.com.

  20. J Harlen Bretz, The Channeled Scabland of Eastern Washington, Geographical Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, July 1928, p. 446.

  21. John Soennichsen, Bretz’s Flood: The Remarkable Story of a Rebel Geologist and the World’s Greatest Flood, Sasquatch Books, Seattle, 2008, p. 17.

  22. Ibid., p. 33.

  23. Ibid., p. 39.

  24. Ibid., p. 43.

  25. Ibid., p. 79–90.

  26. Ibid., p. 110.

  27. Ibid., p. 126.

  28. Ibid.

  29. J Harlen Bretz, “The Channeled Scablands of the Columbia Plateau,” The Journal of Geology, Vol. 31, No. 8, Nov-Dec 1923, p. 621–2.

  30. Ibid., p. 649.

  31. John Soennichsen, Bretz’s Flood, op. cit., p. 131.

  32. David Alt, Glacial Lake Missoula and its Humongous Floods, Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula, Montana, 2001, p. 17.

  33. Ibid., p. 17.

  34. Ibid.

  35. J Harlen Bretz, “The Spokane Flood beyond the Channeled Scablands,” The Journal of Geology, Vol. 33, No. 2, Feb–March 1925, p. 98.

  36. Cited in Stephen Jay Gould, “The Great Scablands Debate,” Natural History, August/September 1978, pp. 12–18.

  37. Cited in Victor R. Baker, “The Spokane Flood Controversy and the Martian Outflow Channels, Science, New Series, Vol. 202, No. 4734, 22 December 1978, p. 1252.

  38. Cited in Stephen Jay Gould, “The Great Scablands Debate,” op. cit.

  39. Cited in John Soennichsen, Bretz’s Flood, op. cit., p. 192.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Ibid.

  42. Ibid.

  43. Ibid.

  44. Bretz, cited in Victor R. Baker, “The Spokane Flood Controversy,” op. cit, pp. 1252–3.

  45. Bretz, cited in ibid., pp. 1252–3.

  46. Victor R. Baker, ibid., p. 1253.

  47. Bretz, writing in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, No. 39, 1928, p. 643, cited in Victor R. Baker, “The Spokane Flood Debates: Historical Background and Philosophical Perspective,” Geological Society, London, Special Publications 2008, Vol. 301, p. 47.

  48. Bretz et al writing in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, 67, 957, 1956, cited in Victor R. Baker, “The Spokane Flood Controversy,” op. cit., p. 1249.

  49. J Harlen Bretz, “The Spokane Flood beyond the Channeled Scablands, II,” The Journal of Geology, Vol. 33, No. 3, April–May, 1925, p. 259.

  50. Bretz, “Outline for a Presentation before the Geological Society of Washington,” January 1927, p. 5, cited in John Soennichsen, Bretz’s Flood, op. cit., p. 185.

  51. John Soennichsen, Bretz’s Flood, op. cit., p. 206.

  52. Lake Missoula and the Spokane flood [abstracts], Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, 1 March 1930, Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 92–3, cited in John Soennichsen, Bretz’s Flood, op. cit., p. 185.

  53. The Grand Coulee, by J Harlen Bretz, New York, American Geographical Society, 1932, cited in John Soennichsen, Bretz’s Flood, op. cit., p. 210.

  54. Cited in John Soe
nnichsen, Bretz’s Flood, op. cit., p. 222.

  55. Ibid., pp. 222–3.

  56. Bretz, “Washington’s Channeled Scabland,” p. 53, cited in John Soennichsen, Bretz’s Flood, op. cit., p. 227.

  57. John Soennichsen, Bretz’s Flood, op. cit., p. 229.

  58. Stephen Jay Gould, “The Great Scablands Debate,” op. cit.

  59. John Soennichsen, Bretz’s Flood, op. cit., p. 231.

  60. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Harlen_Bretz.

  61. J Harlen Bretz, “The Lake Missoula Floods and the Channeled Scabland,” The Journal of Geology, Vol. 77, No. 5, September 1969, pp. 510–11.

  62. Victor R. Baker, “The Spokane Flood Debates,” op. cit., p. 46.

  63. J Harlen Bretz, “The Channeled Scablands of the Columbia Plateau,” op. cit., p. 649.

  64. J Harlen Bretz, Presentation of the Penrose Medal to J Harlen Bretz: Response, Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Part II, 91, 1095, cited in Victor R. Baker, “The Spokane Flood Debates,” op. cit., p. 48.

  65. See, for example, discussion in James E. O’Connor, David A. Johnson et al, “Beyond the Channeled Scabland,” Oregon Geology, Vol. 57, No. 3, May 1995, pp. 51–60. See also Gerardo Benito and James E. O’Connor, “Number and Size of Last-Glacial Missoula floods in the Columbia River Valley,” Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, 115, 2003, pp. 624–38; Richard B. Waitt Jr., “About Forty Last-Glacial Lake Missoula Jökulhlaups through Southern Washington,” The Journal of Geology, Vol. 88, No. 6, November 1980, pp. 653–79; E.P. Kiver and D.F. Stradling, “Comments on Periodic Jökulhlaups from Pleistocene Lake Missoula,” Letter to the Editor, Quaternary Research 24, 1985, pp. 354–6; John J. Clague et al, “Palaeomagnetic and tephra evidence for tens of Missoula floods in Southern Washington,” Geology, 31, 2003, pp. 247–50; Richard B. Waitt Jr., “Case for periodic colossal jökulhlaups from Pleistocene Glacial Lake Missoula,” Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Vol. 96, October 1985, pp. 121–128; Keenan Lee, The Missoula Flood, Department of Geology and Geological Engineering School of Mines, Golden, Colorado, 2009.