“A great puzzle to archaeologists has always been the multiple and labyrinthine east and west entrances at each end of the enclosure. Originally they may have been built as a way for processional entry by people of the Neolithic era. Later, when warriors of the Iron Age were using the site as a fortress they probably found them useful as a means of confusing the attacking force trying to gain entry. The fact that so many of these ‘hillforts’ have two entrances—one north of east and the other south of west—also suggests some form of Sun ceremonial.”
With 250,000 men defending a fort, we are talking about a huge army in a very organized society! This is not a bunch of fur-wearing Picts with spears defending a fort from marauding bands of hunter-gatherers.
The questions remain though as to what huge army might have occupied these cliffside forts by the sea or lake entrances? And what massive maritime power were these people unsuccessfully defending themselves against?
The forts on the western coast of Scotland are reminiscent of the mysterious cliff top forts in the Aran Islands on the west coast of Ireland. Here we truly have shades of the Atlantis story with a powerful naval fleet attacking and conquering its neighbors in a terrible war. It has been theorized that the terrible battles of the Atlantis story took place in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and England—however, in the case of the Scottish vitrified forts it looks as if these were the losers of a war, not the victors. And defeat can be seen across the land: the war dikes in Sussex, the vitrified forts of Scotland, the utter collapse and disappearance of the civilization that built these things. What long-ago Armageddon destroyed ancient Scotland?
In ancient times there was a substance known through writings as “Greek fire.” This was some sort of ancient napalm bomb that was hurled by catapult and could not be put out. Some forms of Greek fire were even said to burn under water and were therefore used in naval battles. (The actual composition of Greek fire is unknown, but it must have contained chemicals such as phosphorus, pitch, sulfur or other flammable chemicals.)
Could a form of Greek fire have been responsible for the vitrification? While ancient astronaut theorists may believe that extraterrestrials with their atomic weapons vitrified these walls, it seems more likely that they are the result of a man-made apocalypse of a chemical nature. With siege machines, battleships and Greek fire, did a vast flotilla storm the huge forts and eventually burn them down in a hellish blaze?
The evidence of the vitrified forts is clear: some hugely successful and organized civilization was living in Scotland, England and Wales in prehistoric times, circa 1000 BC or more, that was building gigantic structures, including forts. This apparently was a maritime civilization that prepared itself for naval warfare as well as other forms of attack.
More Vitrified Ruins
Other vitrified ruins can be found in France, Turkey and other areas of the Middle East. Vitrified forts in France are discussed in the American Journal of Science (Volume 3, Number 22, pages 150-151, 1881), which carried an article entitled “On the Substances Obtained from Some ‘Forts Vitrifies’ in France” by M. Daubree.
The author mentions several forts in Brittany and northern France whose granite blocks have been vitrified. He cites the “partially fused granitic rocks from the forts of Chateau-vieux and of Puy de Gaudy (Creuse), also from the neighborhood of Saint Brieuc (Cotes-du-Nord).”17 Daubree, understandably, could not readily find an explanation for the vitrification.
Similarly, the ruins of Hattusas in central Turkey, an ancient Hittite city, are partially vitrified. The Hittites are said to be the inventors of the chariot, and horses were of great importance to them. It is on the ancient Hittite stelae that we first see the chariot being used. However, it seems unlikely that horsemanship and wheeled chariots were first invented by the Hittites. It is highly likely, for instance, that chariots were in use in ancient China at the same time.
The Hittites used the unusual double-headed eagle motif, a symbol Germany still uses today. The Hittites are also related to the amazing world of ancient India. Proto-Indic writing is found at Hattusas and scholars now admit that the civilization of India, as the ancient Indian texts like the Ramayana have said, goes back many millennia.
In his 1965 book, The Bible as History,29the German historian Werner Keller cites some of the mysteries concerning the Hittites. According to Keller, the Hittites are first mentioned in the Bible in connection with the Biblical patriarch Abraham who (in Genesis 23) acquires from the Hittites a burial place in Hebron for his wife Sarah. Conservative classical scholar Keller is confused by this, because the time period of Abraham was circa 2000-1800 BC, while the Hittites are traditionally said to have appeared in the 16th century BC.
Even more confusing to Keller is the Biblical statement that the Hittites are the founders of Jerusalem (Numbers 13:29-30).29 This is a fascinating statement, as it would mean that the Hittites also occupied Ba‘albek, which lies between their realm and Jerusalem. As we have seen, the Temple Mount at Jerusalem is built on a foundation of huge ashlars like Ba’albek. The Hittites definitely used the gigantic megalithic construction known as cyclopean—huge odd-shaped polygonal blocks perfectly fitted together. The massive walls and gates of Hattusas are eerily similar in construction to those in the high Andes and other megalithic sites around the world. The difference at Hattusas is that parts of the city are vitrified, and the walls of rock are partly melted.
If the Hittites were the builders of Jerusalem, it would mean that the ancient Hittite empire existed for several thousand years with frontiers with Egypt. Indeed, the Hittite hieroglyphic script is undeniably similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs, probably more so than any other language.
Just as Egypt goes back many thousands of years BC and is ultimately connected to Atlantis, so does the ancient Hittite empire. Like the Egyptians, the Hittites carved massive granite sphinxes, built on a cyclopean scale, and worshiped the Sun. The Hittites also used the common motif of a winged disc for their Sun God, just as the Egyptians did. The Hittites were well known in the ancient world, because they were the main manufacturer of iron and bronze goods. The Hittites were metallurgists and seafarers. Their winged disks may, in fact, have been representations of the flying machines called vimanas.
Some of the ancient ziggurats of Iran and Iraq also contain vitrified material, sometimes thought by archaeologists to be caused by the “Greek Fire.” For instance, the vitrified remains of the ziggurat at Birs Nimrod (Borsippa), south of Hillah, were once confused with the ‘Tower of Babel.’ The ruins are crowned by a mass of vitrified brickwork, actual clay bricks fused together by intense heat. This may be due to the horrific ancient wars described in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, although early archaeologists attributed the effect to lightning.
Destruction cometh; and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none.
—Ezekiel(7: 25)
Greek Fire, Plasma Guns, and Atomic Warfare
If one were to believe the great Indian epic of the Mahabharata, fantastic battles were fought in the past with airships, particle beams, chemical warfare and, presumably, atomic weapons. Just as battles in this century have been fought with incredibly devastating weapons, it may well be that battles in the latter days of Atlantis were fought with highly sophisticated and high-tech weapons.
The mysterious Greek fire was a “chemical fireball.” Incendiary mixtures go back at least to the 5th century BC when Aineias the Tactician wrote a book called On the Defense of Fortified Positions. Said he: “And fire itself which is to be powerful and quite inextinguishable is to be prepared as follows. Pitch, sulfur, tow, granulated frankincense, and pine sawdust in sacks you should ignite if you wish to set any of the enemy’s works on fire.”27
L. Sprague de Camp mentions in his book The Ancient Engineers,27that at some point it was found that petroleum, which seeps out of the ground in Iraq and elsewhere, made an ideal base for incendiary mixtures because it could be squirted from syringes of the sort then used in fighting fires. Other substances
were added to it, such as sulfur, olive oil, rosin, bitumen, salt, and quicklime.
Some of these additives may have helped—sulfur at least made a fine stench—but others did not, although it was thought that they did. Salt, for instance, may have been added because the sodium in it gave the flame a bright orange color. The ancients, supposing that a brighter flame was necessarily a hotter flame, mistakenly believed that salt made the fire burn more fiercely. Such mixtures were put in thin wooden casks and thrown from catapults at hostile ships and at wooden siege engines and defense works.
According to de Camp, in 673 AD, the architect Kallinikos fled ahead of Arab invaders from Helipolis-Ba‘albek to Constantinople. There he revealed to the emperor Constantine IV an improved formula for a liquid incendiary. This could not only be squirted at the foe but could also be used with great effect at sea, because it caught fire when it touched the water and floated flaming on the waves.
De Camp says that Byzantine galleys were armed with a flame-throwing apparatus in the bow, consisting of a tank of this mixture, a pump, and a nozzle. With the help of this compound, the Byzantines broke the Arab sieges of AD 674-76 and AD 715-18, and also beat off the Russian attacks of AD 941 and 1043. The incendiary liquid wrought immense havoc; of 800 Arab ships that attacked Constantinople in 716 AD, only a handful returned home.
The formula for the wet version of Greek fire has never been discovered. Says de Camp, “By careful security precautions, the Byzantine Emperors succeeded in keeping the secret of this substance, called ”wet fire“ or ”wild fire,“ so dark that it never did become generally known. When asked about it, they blandly replied that an angel had revealed the formula to the first Constantine.
“We can, therefore, only guess the nature of the mixture. According to one disputed theory, wet fire was petroleum with an admixture of calcium phosphide, which can be made from lime, bones, and urine. Perhaps Kallinikos stumbled across this substance in the course of alchemical experiments.” 27
Vitrification of brick, rock and sand may have been caused by any number of high-tech means. New Zealand author Robin Collyns suggests in his book Ancient Astronauts: A Time Reversal?26 that there are five methods by which the ancients or “ancient astronauts” might have waged war on various societies on planet Earth. He outlines how these methods are again on the rise in modern society.
The five methods are: plasma guns, fusion torches, holes punched in the ozone layer, manipulation of weather processes, and the release of immense energy such as an atomic blast. As Collyns’ book was published in Britain in 1976, the mention of holes in the ozone and weather warfare seem strangely prophetic.
Explaining the plasma gun, Collyns says, “The plasma gun has already been developed experimentally for peaceful purposes: Ukrainian scientists from the Geotechnical Mechanics Institute have experimentally drilled tunnels in iron ore mines by using a plasmatron, i.e., a plasma gas jet which delivers a temperature of 6,000°C.”26
A plasma, in this case, is an electrified gas. Electrified gases are also featured in the ancient book from India on vimanas called the Vymanika Shastra,33 which cryptically talks of using for fuel the liquid metal mercury, which could be a plasma if it were electrified.
Collyns goes on to describe a fusion torch: “This is still another possible method of warfare used by spacemen, or ancient advanced civilizations on Earth. Perhaps the solar mirrors of antiquity really were fusion torches? The fusion torch is basically a further development of the plasma jet. In 1970 a theory to develop a fusion torch was presented at the New York aerospace science meeting by Drs. Bernard J. Eastlund and William C. Cough. The basic idea is to generate a fantastic heat of at least fifty million degrees Celsius which could be contained and controlled. That is, the energy released could be used for many peaceful applications with zero radioactive waste products to avoid contaminating the environment, or zero production of radioactive elements which would be highly dangerous, such as Plutonium which is the most deadly substance known to Man. Thermonuclear fusion occurs naturally in stellar processes, and unnaturally in man-made H-bomb explosions.
A close-up of the Abydos jet.
“The fusion of a deuterium nuclei (a heavy hydrogen isotope which can be easily extracted from sea water) with another deuterium nuclei, or with tritium (another isotope of hydrogen) or with helium, could be used. The actual fusion torch would be an ionized plasma jet which would vaporize anything and everything that the jet was directed at—if it was to be used for harmful purposes—while for peaceful applications, one use of the torch could be to reclaim basic elements from junk metals.
“University of Texas scientists announced in 1974 that they had actually developed the first experimental fusion torch which gave an incredible heat output of ninety-three degrees Celsius. This is five times the previous hottest temperature for a contained gas and is twice the minimum heat needed for fusion, but it was held only for one fifty-millionth of a second instead of the one full second which would be required.”26
It is curious to note here that Dr. Bernard Eastlund is the patent holder of another unusual device, one that is associated with the HAARP project at Gakona, Alaska. HAARP (High Altitude Aerial Research Project) is allegedly linked to weather manipulation, one of the ways that Collyns thinks that the ancients waged warfare.
As far as holes in the ozone and weather manipulation go, Collyns says, “Soviet scientists have discussed and proposed at the United Nations a ban on developing new warfare ideas such as creating holes or ‘windows’ in the ozone layer to bombard specific areas of the Earth with increased natural ultra-violet radiation which would kill all life-forms, and turn the land into barren desert.
“Other ideas discussed at the meeting were the use of ‘infrasound’ to demolish ships by creating acoustic fields on the sea, and hurling a huge chunk of rock into the sea with a cheap atomic device. The resultant tidal wave could demolish the coastal fringe of a country. Other tidal waves could be created by detonating nuclear devices at the frozen poles. Controlled floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and droughts directed towards specific targets and cities are other possibilities.”
“Finally,” says Collyns, “although not a new method of warfare, incendiary weapons are now being developed to the point where ‘chemical fireballs’ will be produced which radiated thermal energy similar to that of an atomic bomb.”26
Does California’s Death Valley Show Evidence of an Atomic War?
In Secrets of the Lost Races,32Rene Noorbergen discusses the evidence for a cataclysmic war in the remote past that included the use of airships and weapons that vitrified stone cities. “The most numerous vitrified remains in the New World are located in the Western United States. In 1850 the American explorer Captain Ives William Walker was the first to view some of these ruins, situated in Death Valley. He discovered a city about a mile long, with the lines of the streets and the positions of the buildings still visible. At the center he found a huge rock, between 20 to 30 feet high, with the remains of an enormous structure atop it. The southern side of both the rock and the building was melted and vitrified. Walker assumed that a volcano had been responsible for this phenomenon, but there is no volcano in the area. In addition, tectonic heat could not have caused such a liquefication of the rock surface.
“An associate of Captain Walker who followed up his initial exploration commented, ‘The whole region between the rivers Gila and San Juan is covered with, remains. The ruins of cities are to be found there which must be most extensive, and they are burnt out and vitrified in part, full of fused stones and craters caused by fires which were hot enough to liquefy rock or metal. There are paving stones and houses torn with monstrous cracks... [as though they had] been attacked by a giant’s fire-plough.”’32
These vitrified ruins in Death Valley sound fascinating—but do they really exist?
There certainly is evidence of ancient civilizations in the area. In Titus Canyon, petroglyphs and inscriptions have been scratched into the walls by
unknown prehistoric hands. Some experts think the graffiti might have been made by people who lived here long before the Indians we know of, because extant Indians know nothing of the glyphs and, indeed, regard them with superstitious awe.
Says Jim Brandon in Weird America,34“Piute legends tell of a city beneath Death Valley that they call Shin-au-av. Tom Wilson, an Indian guide in the 1920s, claimed that his grandfather had rediscovered the place by wandering into a miles-long labyrinth of caves beneath the valley floor.
“Eventually the Indian came to an underworld city where the people spoke an incomprehensible language and wore clothing made of leather. Wilson told this story after a prospector named White claimed he had fallen through the floor of an abandoned mine at Wingate Pass and into an unknown tunnel. White followed this into a series of rooms, where he found hundreds of leather-clad humanoid mummies. Gold bars were stacked like bricks and piled in bins.
“White claimed he had explored the caverns on three occasions. On one his wife accompanied him and on another his partner, Fred Thomason. However, none of them were able to relocate the opening to the cavern when they tried to take a group of archaeologists on a tour of the place.”
It seems one local character knew how to find the place. Brandon relates that “Death Valley Scotty,” an eccentric who spent millions building a castle-estate in the area, was known to go “prospecting” when funds ran low. Death Valley Scotty would check out for a few days of wandering in the nearby Grapevine Mountains, bringing back suspiciously refined-looking gold that he claimed he had prospected. Many believe that he got his gold from the stacked gold bars in the tunnel system beneath Death Valley.34
Technology of the Gods: The Incredible Sciences of the Ancients Page 19