by Freddy Silva
A window on Nan Madol. Thousands of basalt columns larger than these were moved from the other side of the island to build an entire city.
Pohnpeians originally called this enchanted citadel Soun Nan-leng (Reef of Heaven). According to legend it was created by the sorcerers Olisihpa and Olosohpa upon arriving from a sunken land to the west called Kanamwayso, and indeed the remains of another citadel have been located offshore at a depth of ninety feet. The two brothers sought a place to build Soun Nan-leng in honor of Nahnisohn Sahpw, god of agriculture, whereupon they performed rituals and levitated the huge stones with the aid of a flying dragon.
Sections of Nan Madol still above sea level.
There’s a resemblance here to the exposed structures made from columnar basalt atop Gunung Padang on the island of Java, but what is really striking about this out-of-place megalithic wonder is that it was designed to form a restricted sanctuary, it was designed to be separate from the island, much like a sacred enclosure, as though its inhabitants wished to create an isolated society. Like the long heads of Malta, these people were different, particularly the two brothers who were said to be much taller than the natives.
TAIWAN AND TULAN, PLACES OF REEDS
The Taiwanese flood myth describes how the giant snake Bonum blocked the flow of rivers until the entire world was submerged except the highest peak, Tongku Saveq (Mountain of Shelter). Two people were forewarned by gods to listen to a great change in the sound of the sea at the time of the full moon, whereupon they were to make haste for the mountain. There they received refugees from a sunken land called Tulan, from which Taiwan takes its name.36
Tulan or Tolan, if we recall, is the name given by the K'iche' Maya to a missing homeland, the Place of Reeds.
Below the mountain lies Sao Pa and its large concentration of megaliths, twenty-one feet tall by a few inches slim, not unlike the proportions of the stone pillars of Göbekli Tepe, and Stennis, a stone circle on the remote northern Scottish island of Orkney. And just as Stennis was designed by people with a keen knowledge of astronomy, so the site at Sao Pa was carefully chosen to mark the Tropic of Cancer where, on the summer solstice, an upright stone casts no shadow.
Geodetically, Sao Pa also sits precisely 90º east of Giza.
Menhirs at Sao Pa, below the Mountain of Shelter.
One of the flat-faced megaliths was taken to the Taiwan Museum. It features a pair of large cubes carved in relief. Anyone who’s climbed to either Naupa Huaca or the Moon Temple of Wayna Picchu in Peru will recognize the same design protruding from their respective centerpiece megaliths. Again we must ask, is this evidence of a group of astronomer architects from the same academy regrouping and rebuilding after the flood, and if so, what evidence remains of their previous work?
Megalith at Sao Pa. Same knobs as in the Osirion, Menkaure’s Pyramid, and Andean temples.
The answer may lie seventy miles east of Taiwan and eighty feet below sea level, on the island of Yonaguni. The megaliths of Sao Pa mark the Tropic of Cancer in the present era, but had they been erected ten thousand years earlier they would have missed the mark by one degree of latitude, an unacceptable margin of error to any self-respecting architect of the sky.37 Back then the slow-moving imaginary line of the tropic would instead have passed through Yonaguni and its submerged citadel, a vast ledge of shaped steps, roads, passages, platforms and pillars, some astronomically oriented. To quote the geologist Robert Schoch: “Since Yonaguni is close to the most northerly position the tropic reaches in its lengthy cycle, the island may have been the site of an astronomically aligned shrine.”38
Prior to the flood this hand-carved mesa would have resembled a kind of ceremonial island, its shape reminiscent of carved bedrock outcrops found throughout Peru called intihuatana, whose angles are designed to mark significant solar, lunar and stellar events. Yonaguni may have been a larger version. A model of the entire mesa, based on measurements and photos taken over the years by divers, even resembles the enigmatic carved boulders scattered throughout Peru, with their steps, staircases and ledges leading nowhere.
The parallels abound and astound.
Those mysterious knobs, this time on the altar stone of Naupa Iglesia. Peru.
THE LAND OF THE RED HILL
A rapidly encroaching ocean lost India a considerable amount of dry land, and today several cities lie far out to sea beneath the murky, sediment-laden waters of the Indian Ocean, one of the most evocative being Mahabalipuram, the City of Bali the Giant.39 But the greatest loss to the flood was the land to the south of India which once connected today's island of Sri Lanka to the mainland. The region was called Kumari Kandam.
The focal point of this ancient land of the Dravidian culture is Arunachela, the Red Hill, a Navel of the Earth where the laws and knowledge of the gods were deposited as an insurance policy against any further infringements of the sea. "Oceans will not submerge it, even at the time of the great deluge."40 The extreme antiquity of Arunachela may well be correct because the Dravidian language alone is more than 10,000 years old.41
The Red Hill takes center stage in the most ancient Tamil literature, the Tolkappiyam, itself based on an earlier work, which in turn was part of a library of truly ancient texts going back a further 10,000 years. These were housed in the First Sangam (academy), a city of knowledge founded at Tenmadurai during the age of gods by no less a figure than Siva himself.42 This antediluvian academy was composed of 549 members, among them the sage Agattiyanar, the hill god Murugan, Kubera the Lord of Treasure, and patronized by eighty-nine kings over an unbroken period of 4440 years before being consumed by a major transgression of the ocean.43
The survivors moved north and established the Second Sangam at Kapatapuram, which persevered for a further 3700 years until it too was consumed by the sea, along with the rest of Kumari Kamdan. One survivor, a Tamil prince named Thirumaaran, managed to rescue literary classics such as the Tolkappiyam and swam with them to Uttara Madurai, closer to continental India, establishing there a Third Sangam which continued for 1850 years.44 Alas it too was inundated and now sits at the bottom of the Indian Ocean to the south of present-day Madurai, a city that remains a place of great scholarship in India as though channelling its predecessors.
The scholarly argument is that the last Sangam disappeared between 350-550 AD. If we accept this at face value and calculate backwards from the years ascribed to each Sangam, we arrive at the following founding dates: Third Sangam, 1500 BC, Second Sangam, 5200 BC, First Sangam, 9600 BC, give or take a hundred years.45 This places the first Academy of the Gods firmly around the period of the flood, again confirming Tamil oral traditions, not to mention those of the K'iche' Maya and the date given to Solon by the priests at Sais. That three unconnected sources should use the same calendrical point of reference is beyond coincidence. And there's no mistake about it, the oldest Tamil texts make reference to the submergence of no less than 700 kavatham (1000 miles) of Tamil land that once consisted of forty-nine counties filled with forests, rivers and hills that, due to three major submersions by the ocean, including the great deluge, forced people to move further and further north.46 This original territory was said to have once belonged to the oldest of dynasties, one of whose kings was a man by the name Nedyon, which transliterates as Tall One.47
The descriptions of three sudden losses of land and their location between southern India and modern day Sri Lanka fit remarkably well with the three major rises in sea level that characterize the Dryas periods in this region,48 presenting a good case for the Sangams dating to at least the time of the flood, when Sri Lanka, India and Kumari Kamdan formed a whole. However, when Buddhist monks in the fourth century AD began writing down the oral traditions of Sri Lanka and compiling them into the Mahavamsa, Dipavansa and Rajavali, they describe the loss of large swathes of land beyond Sri Lanka due to three great deluges, one of which washed away "twenty miles of coast, extending inland."49 An older account appears to take place in antediluvian times and describes how the gia
nt king Ravana, ruler of a citadel with twenty-five palaces, was punished by the gods for his heinous behavior.50
So could the three Sangams be the product of an earlier tradition? Speaking at the Fifth International Conference of Tamil Studies, chairman N. Mahalingam presented further evidence from the Mahavamsa, in which it is stated that Kumari Kamdan originally extended 4900 miles further south. He further states that "the first great deluge took place in 16,000 BC, when a large part of Lemuria was submerged under the sea. The second one occurred in 14,058 BC when parts of Kumari Kandam went under the sea. The third one happened in 9564 BC when a large part of Kumari Kandam was submerged. The fourth deluge is said to have occurred between the years 2939 BC and 2387 BC and almost coincides with the birth of the Kaliyuga age."51
The periods outlined in the Mahavamsa fit within the geological parameters of the three Dryas events. And since it mentions a fourth rise in sea level — the one that altered the coastline of the Persian Gulf and whose general dates are accepted among the scientific community — it leads us to presume the more remote dates to be equally valid. But more to the point, the Mahavamsa states that the First Sangam was itself preceded by four earlier academies, meaning that we are now looking at a tradition of knowledge, gods and civilization extending well into the prehistoric era, all suddenly vanished.52
Meenakshi Temple, Madurai The city’s temple and academic culture is inherited from antediluvian academies, long since overwhelmed by the Indian Ocean.
11. SEVEN TALL SAGES AND OTHER IMMORTALS.
They could endue with power the substances on earth — Building Texts
Myths materialized around the world to record for posterity the crashing of aerial projectiles and the terrifying flood that ensued. Without exception the stories describe pockets of survivors being assisted by groups of unusual looking people who appeared from the sea to teach them the accoutrements required for starting, or re-starting, civilization.
Each group consisted of seven individuals led by a charismatic eighth; the leader is always partnered with a wife who is also his sister: Osiris and Isis in Egypt, Enlil and Ninlil in Mesopotamia, Fu Hsi and Nu Hwa in China, Izanami and Izanagi in Japan, Viracocha and his unnamed wife in the Andes, and probably Kiwa and Hotu Matu'a on Easter Island.
At this point it might be useful to recall Manu, the Indus Valley flood hero who is identified in the Bhagvata Purana as Satyavrata, Lord of Dravida (south India). Predictably this righteous man is forewarned by the god Vishnu, who comes to him disguised as a fish. Vishnu promises to return seven days later, during which time Manu is to gather seeds and animals. "On the seventh day after this, the three worlds [Third World perhaps?] shall sink beneath the ocean of dissolution. When the world is dissolved in that ocean, a large ship, sent by me, shall come to you."1
Vishnu follows up on his promise in time for the fireworks to commence. "The sea, augmenting as the great clouds poured down their waters, was seen overflowing its shores and everywhere inundating the earth."2
It strikes me that Manu was not alone aboard this ship. As Vishnu continues: "Surrounded by the Seven Sages... you shall embark on the great ship and shall move without alarm over one dark ocean.” And further along: “In the world thus confounded, the Seven Sages, Manu and the fish were beheld... the fish unwearied drew the ship over the waters, and brought it at length to the highest peak of Himavat [Himalaya]. Smiling, he gently says to the Sages, “'Bind this ship without delay to this peak.' They did so accordingly." 3
Manu with the Seven Rshis. Although only one woman is part of such brotherhoods, she often holds the most important position, as teacher of secret knowledge and propagator of the divine bloodline.
Here we are faced once more with a group of seven wisdom keepers led by an eighth, who appear within an antediluvian environment and survive the flood. They are renowned seafarers (hence the fish symbolism), they bring the gifts of civilization to the surviving human population, wear simple tunics, shun meat in favor of vegetables, grow their hair long, perform their spiritual attuning at high altitudes, and set examples of spiritual decorum that society may imitate — the foundation for the Hindu principle of dharma and the Egyptian maat. The Seven Sages advised rulers, but when those rulers stepped beyond the rules of civilized behavior, they would take on the role of kingship themselves until a legitimate individual was procured and appointed. If kings abused their power the Sages would curse them, sometimes with severe consequences.4
If these were the same magnificent seven led by Viracocha, K’uKuulKaan, Quetzalcoatl, Fu Hsi and so on, they must have had supersonic means of transportation at their disposal, because they appear simultaneously in a multitude of locations around the world. Realistically I suspect what we are dealing with here is a brotherhood, an institution emanating from a central location, or locations, each secluded from ordinary humans until circumstances force them to establish direct contact. The Mahabaratha agrees with part of this hypothesis when it claims, "there are many Seven Sages."5 And given their comfort with the open seas, they may all have lived on islands.
The Vedas specify that the closing of every Yuga or Great Age is accompanied and defined by a major pralaya (catastrophe), whereby all traces of the former Yuga are erased. It is at these junctures that such groups of wisdom keepers are selected to ride out the storm so that the accumulated wisdom may be repromulgated, ensuring the resurrection and continuation of knowledge that underpins civilization.6
From the surviving accounts in the Rgveda, the Seven Sages or Sapta Rsis, are mortal individuals who have been raised to the status of gods through their knowledge of sacred things, ostensibly knowledge handed down since the dawn of time, which they memorized, practiced, and shared with others so that the human condition might be elevated in their time. They knew of the forces of nature and how to control them, they possessed unique gifts of telepathy and clairvoyance, and generally mastered the arts leading to spiritual refinement. Not surprisingly they were esteemed as second only to the one supreme God.7 While there is no doubt this institution was replenished by fresh recruits, the Vedas do hint at reincarnation, even an extraterrestrial element, because it is said these people come to Earth periodically in order to renew Vedic knowledge.8
Izanami and Izanagi raise Japan from the ocean. Like all antediluvian gods, in addition to being married, they were also brother-sister.
So what are we to make of this, because the Seven Sages also feature prominently in the Building Texts of Egypt, in which they are described arriving from an island to the south named Ta-Neterw, "the Homeland of the Primeval Ones," following its destruction by a great flood in which the “majority of its divine inhabitants drowned.”9 The gods Hor/Horus and Twt/Thoth subsequently appear on the scene accompanied by Seven Sages, who are referred to as Aku Shemsu Hor — Shining Ones, Followers of Horus.10
THE GODS LIVE LONG. AND PROSPER
Although they cover a substantial portion of the perimeter wall of the temple of Edfu, the existing Building Texts are a mere fragment of a vast Egyptian prehistoric record recovered by Alexander the Great and the Ptolemaic pharaohs who followed. It is a fascinating narrative describing the arrival of gods and the creation of temple culture, even if it sometimes makes for confusing commentary.
It speaks of the First Occasion, when humans were given the gifts of civilization by a group of puissant male and female gods who governed the land from their seat at Iwnw and various satellite temples along the Nile. To quote the Egyptian historian Hassan: “The Egyptians believed that in the beginning their land was ruled by a dynasty of great gods, of whom Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, was the last. He was succeeded by a dynasty of semi-divine beings known as the Followers of Horus, who, in turn, gave place to the historical kings of Egypt.”11
If the First Occasion is dated correctly to 10,400 BC then the Building Texts describe the company of gods arriving in Egypt following the first destruction of Ta-Neterw at the start of the Younger Dryas, meaning part of their island was sti
ll extant until the events around the great flood finished it off for good. Once settled in Egypt, Hor and his merry companions had barely seven hundred years in which to re-establish new temple cities before facing the great flood, after which they returned to rebuild a project already in motion. This hypothesis is consistent with the level of erosion at buildings such as the Valley Temple and the Menkaure Pyramid Temple, both of which show considerable weathering of their original limestone slabs by water and a subsequent retrofitting with harder granite to address the damage.
A section of the Building Texts at Edfu.
Like the gods in whose footsteps they followed, the Aku Shemsu Hor are described as physically elegant, and possessing supernatural powers that gave them control over the forces of nature, and for this reason their collective name, Neterw, makes no distinction between an aspect of nature, an individual or a god. The three were interchangeable because their qualities were reflected in each other. For example, it was said the seven Shining Ones had the ability "to endue with power the substances on earth," foretell the future, and provide magical protection by means of symbols and the giving of names. They were creators of civilization,12 real rather than abstract beings capable of succumbing to human frailties. It was not uncommon for later individuals to take on the names of these gods as totems whenever they portrayed the qualities of such gods, hence there existed many Osiris, Twt, and Isis, just as there were many Quetzalcoatl.