The clever scholars of today hold fast to the principle of the “simplest possibility,” of the solution that is “nearest to hand.” But this blinds them to any other perspective. They are imprisoned in their habits of thought, for they take the answer nearest to hand to be the one and only solution. So why study any further? This method, even if it is given the holy stamp of scientific approval, offers only half-solutions to deeper questions. One of these non-solutions, which lulls science into happy slumbers, is derived from knowledge which the ancient Greek mathematicians had—Euclid, for example, who lived in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, and who gave dissertations in Egypt and Greece. He wrote several textbooks which dealt not only with the whole spectrum of mathematics but also all of geometry including proportions, or confusing subjects such as “quadratic irrationality” and “stereometry.” Euclid was a contemporary of the philosopher Plato, who in turn occasionally got involved in politics. Plato is said to have sat at Euclid’s feet and listened to his dissertations on geometry. So it may be tempting to believe that Plato was so enthused by the mathematical genius Euclid that he decided to turn this knowledge to practical use, in building projects which he, as a politician, might have a hand in organizing. So what did Plato know?
In the dialogue The Republic, Plato tells his conversation partners that area is part of geometry. In another dialogue (Menon or “On Virtue”), he even enters into discussion with a slave, and uses the fellow’s lack of knowledge to demonstrate higher geometry. But it is in the dialogue Timaeus that things really start coming thick and fast, where the problem of proportions, of the product and square numbers is mentioned, as well as what we call the “golden ratio.” The following quote may be incomprehensible to people like me who never managed to follow higher mathematics. But it shows the high level of mathematical discussion that went on more than 2,500 years ago:
For when out of three numbers, whether products or square numbers, the middle one relates to the last as the first to the middle, and equally the last to the middle as the middle to the first, it then comes about that if one moves the middle to the first and last position, and places the first and last instead in the middle, the relationship always remains the same. But if they always remain in the same relationship to one another, they form a unity together. Thus if the earth were to have become a simple surface without depth, then a middle realm would have sufficed for it to unite itself with the two other realms.38
This goes on until one’s head is splitting. After plowing through the following horrendous sentence I gave up all desire to follow Plato’s mathematical explanations:
But since new gaps of 3/2, 4/3 and 9/8 arose within the original gaps through this unification, all gaps of 4/3 were filled by the gap of 9/8, and thus left in each a small part over as further gap, whose limits relate to one another in the ratio of 256 to 243.39
What is the subject of this complicated Platonic dialogue? The creation of the Earth. After spending a few weeks in Plato’s company, I no longer understood why Galileo Galilei caused such a stir with his “new” doctrine, and why the Christian Inquisition wished to kill him in the 17th century. Everything which Galileo taught was already there in Plato—such as the fact that the Earth is a globe, or that our planet orbits the sun. Yet all this, including the laws of gravity, was dealt with in ancient Indian texts even longer ago. It seems that the ancients knew an awful lot more than our secondary school pupils are told. Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (AD 61–113), who must have studied Plato and Euclid, gives us this impressive demonstration of the knowledge he got from them:
There is a great dispute amongst the scholars and the common people about whether the earth is inhabited by people whose feet [on opposite sides of the globe] are turned towards each other. The latter ask why it is that the “opposite-footed” don’t fall. As if the “opposite-footed” ones might not ask exactly the same question about us…. It does however seem miraculous that the earth forms a globe, with all the vast surfaces of the oceans…. This is why it is never day and night at the same time all over the earth, for night comes to the side opposite to that on which the sun shines.40
ODYSSEY OF THE GODS
Metallic plates like this one found in Cuenca, Ecuador, are thousands of years old.
The dam of Marib in Yemen was constructed by the queen of Sheba.
The alleged site of ancient Troy.
The foundations of the Apollo Temple at Delphi.
The ruins of the small temple of the goddess Athena in Delphi.
This sculpture, or stele, from Copan, depicts a god. What is he holding in his hands? Is the cross-shaped object between his legs meant to represent some kind of flying belt? The rocket belts of today look similar.
This image from Olympia shows the megalithic part of the stones.
The Machine of Anticythera can be seen at the Greek National Museum in Athens.
The entrance (above) and dome (below) of the “Treasure House of Atreus” at Mycenae. No one knows what was once stored there.
The Piri Reis map: At the lower edge one can see the ice-free outline of Antarctica, with outlying islands.
On the island of Malta these rail-like tracks run everywhere. Some of them vanish into the depths of the Mediterranean.
This anthropomorphic sculpture from Copan is a riddle to this day. Does it reflect a long-lost, forgotten technology?
The Omphalos, or “Navel of the World”: This copy, in the Delphi Museum, comes from Roman times. The original boasted precious stones at the points of intersection.
Nothing new under the sun! So does the geometric network linking the Greek temples come from Plato or his predecessor Euclid? Were the holy places only allowed to be built at geometrically determined points? If so, where did these points come from? Where did this geometry itself come from? Why these proportional relationships? Why the golden ratio?
Plato, Callicles, Chairephon, Gorgias, and Socrates all took part in the Gorgias dialogue—a truly intellectual bunch. First of all, Socrates emphasizes that what he has to say is his own conviction, the truth of which he can vouch for. Then he declares that geometrical wisdom is not just important among human beings, but played an important role for the gods too. But how does such knowledge get passed on from the gods to man? This is explained in the third book of Plato’s Laws. The participants speak, once again, about civilizations of the past. An Athenian asks Plato whether he believes he knows how much time has passed since there were first nations and people on the Earth.
Then the question is thrown up as to whether there may be a core of truth in the old legends. Already then! They were speaking expressly of those legends “of former numerous catastrophes which overcame mankind, through floods and other disasters, from which only a tiny proportion of humanity was preserved.”41 They talk about how only inhabitants of mountain regions survived, who after only a few generations had lost all memory of earlier civilizations. People considered what was “said about the gods as simply true, and lived their lives accordingly.” To regulate their lives after the flood, Plato said, they had to develop new rules and laws, because none of the lawgivers of former times had survived. Here is a quote from Plato’s Laws (my emphasis added): “But since we do not give laws for the sons of gods and heroes, as the lawgivers of former times, who themselves descended from gods, gave laws…no one will be able to hold it against us.”42
The gods admired by the Greeks themselves descended from other gods, from whom the original laws had been handed down. So did offspring of the gods also give orders for a geometrical arrangement of temples? Rubbish! Why should they? And Plato, Socrates, and Euclid have nothing to do with it either.
Professor Neugebauer compares Platonic geometry with that of Euclid, and with geometry from Assur and Egypt. He finds little in Plato that couldn’t be found elsewhere.43 And Professor Jean Richter discovers in the temple arrangements of ancient Greece a geometry which existed long before Euclid.44 Only the question as to why there might be a need for such g
eometrical arrangements remains unanswered. These professorial discoveries really do make all further questions redundant. The answer “nearest to hand” on this occasion does for once make other possible answers just so much time-wasting. Let me put it quite clearly: The ancient Greek mathematicians cannot have had anything to do with the geometrical arrangement of sacred sites, because these places were already regarded as sacred millennia before these mathematicians were born. Neither Euclid, nor Plato, nor Socrates had a hand in it. The mathematical knowledge of educated Greeks was astonishing, but they did not ever give orders, whether political or of any other kind, to say where a temple should be constructed—for these temples had already stood where they were for long ages of time. So how—and now we come to the central question—did the clear geometrical network over all of Greece come about?
Fairy tales begin with “Once upon a time….” I would like to start slightly differently: “Let’s just assume….” that at some distant time extraterrestrials visited our earth. These were the ur-gods. They managed to produce children: the Titans and giants who wandered the earth. These were slaughtered and new gods created—such mythological figures as Apollo, Perseus, Poseidon, and Athene. These divided the earth amongst themselves and again started to produce offspring.
The umpteenth generation of these gods was still able to impress slow-witted humans with their technical achievements. They possessed superior weapons and, in particular, they could fly! It is true that their machines were no longer much more than rattling, stinking, flying monsters, but they did propel themselves through the air after a fashion, and that was enough to impress their admiring subjects. Whoever can raise himself into the air must be divine! However, these flying tubs needed fuel, even if this was only a bit of oil, charcoal, or water for the steam engine. Their pilots knew exactly how far they could fly before they needed to refuel. It is possible that there were different types of flying vessels, for longer or shorter trips (at least this is said of the flying vehicles in ancient India).
It was very convenient for the gods that human beings set up sacred places in their honor, for it was at such places that they could collect the “offerings”; and the “mortals” were also reverent enough to serve the “immortals” in whatever way they could. The whole world thus became Shangri-La for them. It was quite logical that sacred sites always occurred at the same intervals, for after a certain number of miles the flying contraptions needed to refuel. And once the grandiose sites of offerings to the gods—or perhaps one should say their self-service stations—were there, they stayed where they were.
The families of the gods and a few close friends were also told the positions of these self-service stations: if you fly from Delphi at an angle of X, for 40 miles, you will come to Y. Fly on for 40 miles in a straight line and you will come to Z. Nothing simpler. The geometrical network thus arises quite naturally from their “refueling points” or “service stations.” And naturally the distances are all the same, since new supplies must be taken on after a certain number of miles. After all, none of the gods should get lost on the journey, no family member should come to harm because a distance was too great and the flying machine ran out of fuel suddenly.
I began this section with an assumption, no more than that. I know of no other assumption which can solve the riddle of the geometrical network in Greece more simply and elegantly. The only proviso is that one subscribes to the idea that “descendants of the gods” once really walked the earth. And if one knows how to look, one can find any quantity of ancient tales to support this.
Even when the gods’ families had long since become degenerate, certain of these parasites still seem to have managed to exploit human beings’ lack of knowledge. In his first book, Herodotus describes the city of Babylon, giving precise details of its size and such things. In the center, he says, there once stood a temple to Zeus (Belos), “with iron doors which were still there in my own day.” This had eight towers, built one upon the other. The entrance to this high tower was a stairway which spiraled around the outside of all the towers.
On the topmost tower there was a “great temple, and within it a broad bed with lovely canopies, and next to it a golden table.” No one was allowed to enter there, except for a very beautiful woman who had been chosen. This was, the priests told Herodotus, because the god personally enters the temple and sleeps in the bed, “and something similar occurs, according to Egyptian teachings, in Egyptian Thebes. There too a woman sleeps within the temple of Zeus at Thebes. It is said that these women never have intercourse with mortal men. The same is true of the priestess of the god in Patara in Lycia, when the god appears. When he appears the woman is enclosed with him in the temple at night.”
Exactly the same thing happened in the high towers of Indian temples. And it was for the same reason that the peoples of Central America built their step pyramids, with a room at the apex. It is quite clear why towers and pyramids were needed: the fellows arrived by air!
In Herodotus’ time, the gods’ families no longer existed, for otherwise he would have written about their flying ships. But in former times things had been just as the Babylonian priests told him. The gods took their pleasure with women and men, here, there, and everywhere. When the gods started to arrive less and less frequently, and eventually stopped coming altogether, the sly priests turned the whole Shangri-La to their own advantage. It was now they to whom offerings should be made, they to whom maidens and youths should be brought and to whom gold and diamonds were to be delivered. A few generations down the line the priests no longer knew how the whole thing had started—but why give up such a lucrative business?
But even the high priest was plagued by a daily uncertainty. He knew of the power of the gods from tradition, even if he understood nothing about it. And he did not know when a god might return. Wasn’t it therefore more sensible to exploit people only to the extent that was necessary to retain his own power? And hoard treasure to offer the gods on their return? That would surely appease these heavenly and incomprehensible beings, wouldn’t it?
But all these assumptions presuppose that there were flying wagons in antiquity in the first place. That can be shown to have been the case, certainly in the ancient literature.
The Indian King Rumanvat, who reigned thousands of years ago, had a “celestial ship” built in which several groups of people could be transported at once.45 There are more than 50 passages in the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata which explicitly deal with flying machines,46and the Ethiopian Book of Kings describes King Solomon’s flying wagon even indicating the speeds at which it flew.47 I have already dealt briefly with Solomon’s flights a few pages earlier. We know about his flights to the Queen of Sheba in what is now Yemen. But Solomon’s love life is more complex than that. Allow me briefly to explain:
The official title of the Ethiopian Book of Kings is called Kebra Negest. Its origins are unknown, but this large work was translated from Ethiopian into Arabic in AD 409. Right at the beginning it reports about the love affair between “Makeda,” the Queen of Ethiopia, and the Israelite King Solomon. Solomon, who claimed a monopoly on wisdom, was an insatiable playboy, according to these reports, who certainly did not restrict himself to the women in his home country in taking his pleasures. He also fetched ladies from beyond his borders. The Ethiopian queen, in turn, had heard of Solomon, including that he was rich and very handsome. So she prepared an expedition to Jerusalem. She had 797 camels saddled and numerous donkeys laden. She set up camp before the walls of Jerusalem and Solomon was so smitten by her grace and beauty that he had rich gifts sent to her:
He honored her and gave her habitation in a royal palace very close by. He sent her food for the evening and morning meal, and each day fifteen kor (an ancient Hebrew unit of measure) of finely ground wheatmeal with a great quantity of oil, from which bread for 350 people was prepared. Also accessories of porcelain platters, 10 fattened oxen and 50 sheep. Then wine, and each day eleven dazzling garments.48
&nb
sp; The gifts did their work and Solomon comprehensively seduced the beautiful queen. At her departure he also splashed out: “He made her gifts of all desirable glories and riches, dazzlingly beautiful garments and all the glories desired by the country of Ethiopia. Including a wagon that flew through the air….”49
The chronicler of the Kebra Negest clearly differentiates between vehicles with wheels which move across land and a wagon that flew through the air. Solomon wanted his lover to visit him often without always having to organize elaborate expeditions on each occasion. Nine months and five days after their first meeting, the queen gave birth to a boy whom she called Baina-lehkem. When this prince turned 22 years of age, he visited his father in Jerusalem for the first time. But the boy did not just want to get to know Solomon, he wanted more: the holy Ark of the Covenant of the Israelites. This was one wish which Solomon could not fulfill for his son. It was unthinkable that the Ark of the Covenant, which Moses had received from his God, should be given as a gift to the Ethiopians.
But the royal scion was clever. He had a perfect replica of the Ark made. One night he made the priests in the Tabernacle of the Temple drunk and stole the real Ark of the Covenant. He had the copy put in its place and the Israelites did not noticed the sacrilege until it was already too late. Because Baina-lehkem flew with his prize to Ethiopia:
Odyssey of the Gods Page 11