The Missing Lands

by Freddy Silva

  Blonde and green-eyed, and still lovely as a grandmother. Monika Matamua of the Ngati Hotu of New Zealand — and Egypt and the Middle East.

  All in all, fifteen New Zealand tribes feature fair skin, red hair and green eyes, or blonde hair and blue eyes, and most of them claim a part in the nation’s prehistory, the one academics and latter-day Maori claim does not exist.

  THE ART OF LONG OCEAN TRAVEL

  Monica's DNA aside, there is an artefact that may corroborate the Ngati Hotu’s presence in the Andes. A large stone bowl unearthed by a farmer in 1958 near Lake Titicaca is inscribed with a fertility figure and inscriptions in two languages, one Puqara, the other proto-Sumerian from c.3000 BC.28 It has been a mystery as to how a proto-Sumerian bowl of such antiquity could have appeared in the Bolivian altiplano five thousand years ago. Now it appears to have been taken there by the ancestors of at least two peoples from the Middle East.

  Virtually every flood myth of god-men who come out of nowhere to rebuild human civilization connects them with the sea in some way, they always arrive on boats or double-hull canoes, leading to the conclusion they were master seafarers with long-term experience of navigating the open ocean as well as a proficiency in astronomy that moved them efficiently from A to B. They were intimate with the Earth's topography and clearly knew where they were headed, setting down a precedent for later people to follow.

  One of the anomalies surrounding these long distance navigators centers around two massive cedarwood boats concealed in deep pits at the foot of the pyramids of Giza. The Egyptians of the historical period were not known for their seafaring skills, allegedly opting to become masters of chariots and calm navigation up and down the Nile. The boats contravene this theory. The largest of the two is 141 feet long, with a high prow than would have made it not only an extraordinarily stable sea-going vessel but would have out-performed even the formidable Viking knarr and sixteenth century European galleys, products of expert shipbuilding from people with a long, solid tradition of sailing the open seas.29 Therefore, either ancient Egyptians were master seafarers, or a select group of foreign master seafarers arrived in Egypt from the eastern oceans and left behind a legacy of ocean travel. Could these people have made regular, long distance voyages from as far as South America? Given the influence of Egyptian language on islands throughout the Pacific, along with Thor Hyerdahl's famous Kon Tiki voyage, the answer is, highly probable.

  RED HAIR AND LONGHEADS

  In 1928 more than three hundred skeletal remains were found near Paracas by Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello, all bearing the most extreme examples of elongated skulls ever found. Because of the dry climate, some still had hair attached — red hair, and the color was not a result of a change in pigment from burial in soil containing tannins or iron.

  Nor was their elongation the product of deliberate cranial deformation. It is well known that Peruvian mothers bound the heads of infants so that in time their skulls would come to resemble those of the gods of old, presumably to bestow higher social status upon their offspring. The practice was still popular in the Middle Ages in central and southern Europe, when high-ranking treaty brides from Romania and Bulgaria with deliberately induced elongated skulls were married off to nobles to cement political alliances.30 However, at first impression, such skulls look really unnatural, ridiculous, cone headed.

  The Paracas skulls, on the other hand, are simply unusual and, despite the deformation, they bear an air of grace. According to Brien Foerster, director of the Paracas History Museum, such skull elongation is caused by genetics, with some of the elongated skulls' cranial volume being up to 25 percent larger and 60 percent heavier than conventional human skulls. Thus they could not be deformed purposely through flattening or head binding, since the skull's shape can be changed by cranial deformation yet its volume and weight remain the same.

  Andean longheads. Cranial volume is 25% larger than human skulls.

  The Paracas skulls are also significantly different to homo sapiens in that they have highly pronounced cheek bones, larger eye sockets, and most importantly, no sagittal suture — the connective tissue joint between the two parietal bones of the skull. There is also the issue with the position of the foramen magnum — the opening at the base of the skull though which the spinal cord passes — which on the Paracas skulls is in a different location and cannot be the result of artificial binding, it is a purely genetic trait.31

  And that wasn't the end of it. Hair sequencing determined these individuals to have come from a H2A genetic population group found in Eastern Europe, while bone powder tests revealed a T2B group which heralds from Mesopotamia.32

  Further DNA tests on the skulls revealed mitochondrial DNA with mutations unknown in any human, primate or animal known so far. In other words, we are dealing with a new human type that is very different to Homo sapiens, Denisovians or Neanderthals. Plus, the Paracas skulls share DNA with other elongated cranium people found between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea,31 a region that includes Armenia, and once adjacent to Persia and Mesopotamia.

  And thanks to a grandmother in New Zealand we now have a clearer picture of just how far around the globe the people of this region journeyed.

  7. BUILT BEFORE THE FLOOD REDUX

  With much evidence supporting the existence of a megalithic building culture throughout the Pacific before and after the flood, it is reasonable to ask if their handiwork exists in New Zealand.

  In the middle of a forest to the east of Lake Taupo there is a cryptic structure called the Kaimanawa wall, consisting of rectangular blocks of volcanic stone — ignimbrite, according to a government geologist — each weighing four tons. With their smoothed faces and squared corners, the regular shape of the blocks is inconsistent with the action of weathering on ignimbrite.

  The exposed portion of the wall reveals two levels of stacked blocks, and despite accumulated humus and tree roots the shape is suggestive of an ahu or perhaps the summit of a truncated pyramid. Like most pyramids, the structure is aligned to Grid North.

  Prior to visiting the Kaimanawa wall, Waitaha elders approached the Tuwharetoa, the regional Maori tribe, who informed them the stones were of no significance to them, even fell outside accepted traditional Maori boundaries.1

  I had the opportunity to visit the site with ancient history author Gary Cook and fellow enthusiasts under the cover of 'lost tourists', for reasons that will become apparent. Indeed the layered blocks have a symmetry about them and, for the most part, are fitted as well as any megalithic structure I have seen, despite long-term exposure to the elements. Standing on the top of the mound feels as though an electrical current runs up the spine, a feeling often encountered when standing near the magnetic hotspot of active sacred sites.

  The removal of another six feet of soil revealed a third, lower layer composed of larger megaliths, meticulously cut and polished as though machined in a modern factory, with hardly, if any signs of weathering. The floor was cleared of soil to reveal a perfectly smooth and level stone platform extending at least six feet away from the wall. I jumped into the rectangular hole and my feet were met by a most unexpected sound: a booming echo from below as though the platform is in fact the ceiling of a large sealed chamber.

  Exposed blocks of the Kaimanawa wall.

  Fellow researcher and author Gary Cook examines the blocks.

  The concealed lower level revels a polished block and a platform over what sounds like an inner chamber.

  The highly volcanic nature of this region has covered the area with layer upon layer of ash over two hundred feet deep, yet this is hardly the reason preventing the anomalous structure from being excavated and analyzed. Once the lower course of stones was discovered, indicating an artefact of considerable importance, the Maori council changed its tune overnight and the site became culturally significant, allowing the council to issue an official order banning any further digging.2 All this despite common knowledge that Maori never worked with stone, nor built sacred sites made
of stone. To quote the New Zealand historian Elsdon Best: “The Maori never erected anything in the form of a temple. He made no attempt to add impressiveness to his ritual performances by means of any artificial erection, indeed he was strongly prejudiced against performing rites elsewhere than out in the open. So far as we are aware, the tapu houses in which tribal lore was taught were the only buildings in which important rites were ever performed. The Maori preferred to carry out such functions in the open, not under a roof, and away from all artificial structures… Inasmuch as the tuahu, or tapu places whereat rites were performed by the native priests, were of such a simple or primitive form, it follows that there might well be a difficulty in recognising such places when seen. They were, in some cases, apparently not marked by anything, being merely a small open space... Some were marked by one or more unworked stones, or a small wooden post. Occasionally a small, rough wooden platform, elevated on stakes, termed a tiepa, was erected, on which offerings were placed… It is a peculiar and interesting fact that the Maori has never constructed in New Zealand the marae or stone pyramids of his former home in eastern Polynesia. We might think that those erections are of comparatively modern date, erected since the ancestors of the Maori left those parts, but the late Colonel Gudgeon has recorded the fact that some knowledge of them has been preserved by the Maori. An old native informed him that those marae or stepped, truncated pyramids, were places where religious rites were performed... If the Maori constructed, at great expense of labour, the great stone pyramids of Tahiti, why and how did he acquire in New Zealand such a strong distaste for anything like an elaborate altar?”3

  Geologists, in comical contradiction to the Maori, claimed the perfectly rectangular stone blocks were produced by the natural fracturing of hot ignimbrite when it cools — despite the fact that no similar example can be produced because the unconsolidated nature of ignimbrite does not allow it to form perfectly smooth and symmetrical slabs with corners that turn at ninety degrees. To their further embarrassment, when a sample of the wall was analyzed at a laboratory in Auckland it was found to be not ignimbrite but another type of volcanic stone, rhyolite, which only occurs naturally ten miles to the west of Lake Taupo, meaning that the raw material for the wall had to have been physically transported to the site.4

  Antediluvian or post-diluvial? Department of Conservation archaeologists simply debunked the site so as not to contravene the politically acceptable paradigm that no culture existed in New Zealand before the arrival of Maori in 1200 AD, despite the Kaimanawa wall being covered by debris from the 232 AD eruption of a vent in Lake Taupo which dumped a six-foot layer of ash over the region.5

  As for the Waitaha, they claim it isn't theirs either, it precedes their culture.

  THE ENLIGHTENING MOUNTAIN OF JAVA

  Before sea levels rose dramatically at the end of the Younger Dryas, the archipelago that is Indonesia was joined to southeast Asia and formed a formidable piece of land referred to by geologists as Sundaland. After the flood, Indonesia lost more habitable land than anywhere on Earth, making the search for a lost civilization in this part of the world that more enticing and, paradoxically, more difficult.6 Geometric engravings “indicative of modern cognition and behavior” have been found on Java, one of the largest islands, and dated to half a million years ago — that's over a quarter of a million years before the alleged appearance of anatomically modern humans.7

  The Javanese have been climbing to the summit of the Mountain of Enlightenment since remote times. In 1914 it was the turn of a group of archaeologists. There, they found dense undergrowth and trees sprouting out of a man-made rectangular court composed of large pieces of columnar basalt, hundreds of them. Eventually it was realized that no less than five terraces were covered with these structures, which were regularly used for meditation by local people. Despite saying so, the villagers failed to persuade the scientists that the entire hill was a man-made step pyramid.

  A mountain that is a step pyramid. The summit temples of Gunung Padang.

  It would be nearly one hundred years before another archaeologist by the name of Danny Hilman Natawidjaja took an interest in the site and assembled a team to conduct a geophysical survey using ground penetrating radar, electrical resistivity and seismic tomography. Up to this point the Indonesian scientific community had arbitrarily assigned a date of 1000 BC to the rectangular court on the summit. The assessment was based on pure guesswork. When Natawidjaja conducted the first radiocarbon tests on organic matter beneath the megaliths, the results indeed clustered around 500 to 1500 BC, so no surprises there.

  This all changed when the team expanded their investigation into the interior of the hill using tubular drills. The extracted core samples contained fragments of worked columnar basalt, indicating that far below the summit there lay older, man-made megalithic structures. At this point the accompanying organic matter began to yield radiocarbon dates that were about to make the rest of the scientific community very uneasy: at a depth of 90 feet the dates quickly climbed from 3000 BC to 9600 BC, 11,000 BC, culminating at an uncomfortable 22,000 BC. Natawidjaja’s team had successfully proved this step pyramid spanned all three Dryas periods and then some. His conclusions were affirmed by Robert Schoch — the geologist best known for dating the sphynx enclosure in Egypt to the end of the Younger Dryas — who concurs Gunung Padang may have been in use for as much as 24,000 years. Layer Three of the excavation was particularly interesting because of the extensive damage to the man-made structures at the radiocarbon date of c.9600 BC, the general period of the great flood.8 Subsequent layers indicate that people survived the event and added to the structure over millennia, just as they did at sites in Egypt, Peru, Yucatan, and Göbekli Tepe.

  Indeed mainstream archaeologists didn’t like any of this one bit. A very public campaign was quickly undertaken to discredit Natawidjaja, insisting he was disturbing an archaeological site without following scientific protocol (he’d strictly adhered to protocol), and undertaking illegal digs without government permission (he’d been granted permission from the President himself). Finally in a desperate attempt to stop further excavation (and limit any potential embarrassment), they petitioned the President with the argument that the date for the site had already been professionally established at 1000 BC so there was no further need to explore and disturb the site. So much for the open-mindedness of science.

  Obviously the President saw through the rouse because, shortly after, Danny and his team resumed excavations. The results were impressive and added to what is already an explosive piece of evidence in support of an antediluvian civilization in Indonesia. The presence of a pyramidal structure covered by centuries of debris is unmistakable, and buried beneath twenty feet of soil lies a large open chamber in the middle of the monument.9

  There is additional circumstantial support for the 9600 BC date at the site. To the southwest of Gunung Padang lies the coastal town of Pelabuhan Ratu (Harbor of the Queen), dedicated to a mythical Queen of the Southern Ocean, a goddess who ruled over a now submerged city.10 More tellingly on Sunda — an island across the Java Sea — traditions describe the great flood as submerging all mountains except Gunung Padang.11

  FLOORED IN OKLAHOMA

  On a typical hot June day, a team of construction workers was busy digging the foundation for a new warehouse on the Broadway Extension of 122nd Street between Edmond and Oklahoma City. The year was 1969. As they dug deeper into the rock shelf they finally reached the ancient limestone seabed, whereupon they noticed something out of character: an ancient mosaic floor covering several thousand square feet and containing perfectly round post-holes. Given the depth of sediment under which it was found, the artefact could have been tens of thousands of years old.

  Predictably the story generated a heated debate among experts. “I am sure this was man-made because the stones are placed in perfect sets of parallel lines which intersect to form a diamond shape, all pointing to the east,” stated Durwood Pate, an Oklahoma City geologist who stu
died the site. “We found post holes which measure a perfect two rods from the other two. The top of the stone is very smooth, and if you lift one of them, you will find it is very jagged, which indicates wear on the surface. Everything is too well-placed to be a natural formation.”12

  The conclusion seemed reasonable. But Dr. Robert Bell, an archaeologist from the University of Oklahoma, was nonplussed. To him, the find was a natural formation because he could see no evidence of mortar — apparently ignorant of megaliths in Peru and Egypt, all of which were built with unmatched precision without a splash of mortar. Still, at the Oklahoma site a different type of mud was clearly distinguishable between each stone and the soil, leading a second geologist, Delbert Smith, to remark: “There is no question about it. It has been laid there, but I have no idea by whom.”13

  There was also the issue of the holes, which had been placed 16.5 feet apart or precisely 6 Megalithic Yards, the unit of choice used by megalithic temple-builders around the world.14

  Mosaic floor near Oklahoma City, potentially 30,000 years old.