The fact that our science, which also influences the media, wishes to know nothing about all this, is simply a sign of its failings. But there isn’t much point in getting overheated about it in one’s own little greenhouse. As Marcus Aurelius, a Roman Caesar once said, “It is senseless to get annoyed with the world, for it isn’t in the least bit bothered if you do.”
A Final Word on Atlantis
A number of years have passed since I wrote the manuscript for Odyssey of the Gods. But the flow of information has not abated. Almost on a monthly basis, texts from ancient books land on my desk, books which have been available for hundreds of years, whose content may go back millennia, which someone at some point has decided to translate. But these ancient translations are not a monolithic block. In contrast to the exact sciences, the information-gathering sciences are alive and adapt to new findings. Information gathering sciences, in which indicators are put in order and words are weighed, are not dogmatic. Science is alive. Time never stands still.
Where actually did Atlantis lie? As long ago as 1954, L. Sprague de Camps in his book Lost Continents1 presented a list of 50 locations where various researchers assumed Atlantis to be. They included North Africa, Ceylon, Mongolia, Spitsbergen, Carthage, Cadez (the old name for Cadiz), the Atlas mountains, Tartessos (Spain), South Africa, Tunisia, Malta, central France, the Caucasus, the western Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Sahara, East Prussia, the Baltic, the Ahaggar mountains (Algeria), Greenland, Iran, Central America, Iraq, the Crimea, the West Indies, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Catalonia, the British Isles, the Arctic, a continent in the Pacific, Australia, and southern India. And since 1954, Crete, Bimini, Santorini, the Azores, the southern tip of Japan and, the most recent location, Troy have been added.
Until some dive boat photographs the ruins of Atlantis, it remains meaningless to speculate about its geographical location. Every researcher can come up with reasonable grounds why Atlantis should lie in his favored location. And yet no one has found it.
As I made clear in this book, I take Plato’s description seriously. Atlantis did exist. But, when?
Plato assures us that the Egyptians saved all the information from ancient times in written documents in their temples and preserved it from destruction.2 According to these temple records, a war had taken place between Atlantis and the mainland, and this had been 9,000 years ago. If we add on the time from Plato to the present day, that would come to more or less 11,400 years. Strange, because the classical Greek historiographer Herodotus refers to similar figures. He is also called the “father of historiography.” In the second book of his Histories, Herodotus recounts his visit to Thebes (the present-day Luxor). The priests had shown him 341 statues with a brief explanation for each. These 341 statues correspond to 11,340 years. In the time preceding these 11,340 years, the gods had resided on earth, and “since that time there has been no god in human form in Egypt any more…. The Egyptians are very certain of that because they continuously calculated and recorded the periods of the kings and high priests.”3
Why are there no written records from that time, which lies more than 10,000 years in the past? Look it up in Plato (my emphasis in italics):
“The reason is as follows: the destructions which are and will be visited upon humanity are numerous and of many different kinds, the mightiest of them through fire and water, other smaller ones through innumerable other causes. Because the story you, too, tell, that a long time ago Phaethon, the son of Helios, took control of his father’s chariot but, incapable of keeping to his father’s path, destroyed wide swathes of land through fire and was himself killed by a lightning bolt—that may sound like a fairy tale, but in truth it represents a deviation of the heavenly bodies revolving around the earth and a cataclysm on the earth’s surface through a great conflagration, recurring after long intervals of time.”
If Plato is right, there must have been a planetary catastrophe in our solar system x-thousand years ago. “A deviation of the heavenly bodies revolving around the earth…” How did anyone know anything about the planetary orbits 2,400 years ago? In the 17th century, Galileo Galilei was to be put to death because of what he said about the planets. That is what the Inquisition wanted. But all the things taught by Galileo could already be found in Plato. Furthermore, a planetary catastrophe would have affected other peoples on earth. After all, the earth is a sphere which revolves around its own axis once every 24 hours. Are there records of that anywhere else outside the Mediterranean area?
During and after the Spanish conquests, the so-called Books of Chilam Balam were written in Central America. Chilam means “prophet” or “interpreter of the gods”; balam means “jaguar.” These books are distinguished from one another by adding the name of the place where they are kept. Thus there is a Chilam Balam book of Mani, one of Balam, others of Chumayel, Ixil, Tekax, and so on. The books, written in Latin script but using the Yucatec language, were created between the 16th and 18th centuries. The content was compiled by many priests and written by different hands. The whole thing is a mixture of ancient stories and abstruse prophecies—a read which is often difficult to understand composed almost 500 years ago. The sources, on the other hand, from which the priests obtained their information were very ancient. These original sources are missing quite simply for the reason that the Spanish destroyed all Mayan manuscripts (except for three of which two are almost indecipherable). We might well ask whether there is anything that 500-year-old books can still tell us about the origin of humanity and the gods. I know Muslims who can recite the Koran sura by sura. I have met Christians who know the New Testament by heart, and Jews who can immediately recall the Torah (the Pentateuch with the Five Books of Moses) from memory. Many faithful know the essential content of their religions—even if not word for word off by heart. If a terrible war turned all Bibles to dust and ashes but a number of priests and pious lay people survived, the holy scriptures could be reconstructed from memory and written down again. The same thing happened in the Central America of the 16th century. Priests and tribal elders collected memories and traditional narratives from the time of the gods. Only the paper on which they were written down was new. The creation of the earth is set out in the Chilam Balam Book of Chumayel thus:
This is the history of the world as it was written down in ancient days, because the time has not yet passed for making books like this…so that the Mayan peoples may learn how they were born in this country…. It happened in Katun 11 Ahau (date), when Ah Muzencab (descending god) appeared. It was the time when fire descended, then the rope fell down, followed by the rocks and trees…. 4
The Chilam Balam Book of Mani even mentions the descent of those gods: “This is the report about the descent of one god, the 13 gods, and the one thousand gods, who instructed the priests Chilam Balam, Xupan, Nauat…”5
Besides these Chilam Balam Books, there are also ancient Mexican manuscripts in Central America. A medley of texts with many pictures ferreted out by the clever Abbé Brasseur de Bourgbourg. This Abbé Brasseur was a genius at languages. He had learned Aztec in Mexico and was able to decipher the ancient manuscripts with the help of Aztec priests. Brasseur named one of these manuscripts after his Indian teacher, Chimalpopoca. Hence the text is called Codex Chimalpopoca.6 According to the codex, the gods first created heaven and earth, then the fire drill fell down. This having been done, the gods considered which of them should in future live on earth: “Sorrowfully it is pondered by the one with the garment of stars, the wealthy of stars, the mistress in the water, the one who comes over people, stamps on the earth, Quetzalcoatl.”7
The same codex also states that the sun only became visible in the fifth eon, and in this eon “was created the earth, heaven and the four types of human inhabitants.” It has not been possible to discover from whence the ancient Mexicans knew anything about the four types of human inhabitants.
A spectral great fire and the sun darkening into eerie night are described in dramatic terms: “The second sun had been
created. Four Jaguar was its day sign. It is called January sun. It came about that the heavens fell in and the sun did not at that time follow its path. Midday had just come, immediately it turned to night.”8
What did this refer to? A geomagnetic reversal? An abrupt shift in the earth’s axis? This incomprehensible spectacle turned into a global catastrophe in the eon of the third sun:
It is called fire rain sun. In this eon it happened that it rained fire and its inhabitants were burned up…. The ancients tell that at that time the rocky sands were scattered which we see now, and the blistered andesitic lavas bubbled up, and at that time the various reddish rocks were deposited.9
What is being written about here?
As everyone knows, there is an unnatural gap between Mars and Jupiter which contains thousands of asteroids. The origin of this asteroid belt is a controversial subject to the present day. One of the theories says that the debris has come from an exploded planet. The description in the Codex Chimalpopoca would fit this theory very well. The explosion of a planet in our solar system would obscure the sun for months or, indeed, years. Cosmic dust would travel through the solar system, red hot debris hit the earth. White hot bombs would shred the thin, delicate skin of our planet, shake it and rock it—not just through such cosmic missiles but also through the shift of the gravitational forces in the solar system. The exploded planet would cause an imbalance in the complex structure of our planetary orbits. Floods, an obscured sun, and a rain of fire would be the logical consequence. To inhabitants on earth, it must seem as if the heavens are on fire and falling in on them. All the elements would be raging, the oceans pouring over the land, hurricanes whipping up the water masses, and volcanoes erupting everywhere.
Was this what was recounted in the Codex Chimalpopoca and in Plato? The continuation of this drama is described in the Popol Vuh, the holy book of the Quiché Maya.10 There we can read how human beings strayed aimlessly about and arduously sought refuge from the forces which had been unleashed. Close to starvation, increasing numbers of Indians gathered on the summit of the mountain Hacawitz—also called “resting place.” Freezing they stood in the endless night, cowering by the images of their gods, not understanding what had happened:
Sleep was not for them, nor rest. Great was their lamentation in their innermost heart that daybreak failed to come and it refused to become light. Their only expression was one of despondency, great sadness, and dejection overcame them; they were wholly bewildered by pain…. Oh, if only they could see the birth of the sun, they said, and talked much among themselves…. And then the sun rose. And little animals and big animals were overjoyed, all of them standing at the riverbeds and the ravines; and those who were on the summits of the mountains together turned their gaze to where the sun was rising….11
The Mayan kingdom is calculated on a generous timescale to have existed from 1500 BC to AD 1600. But during this time there were no global catastrophes. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans, too, would have reported about it. In the last 3,000 years, the sun has not darkened, the heavens have not burned, no flood has destroyed the face of the earth, no “gods” have descended from the firmament. So it must be assumed that the chronicles of the Central American Indians describe events which took place before their own time. No difference to Plato’s report on the other side of the earth.
The Mayans coined the term “new world” for the period which started after the destruction. In this “new world,” astronomy continued to be considered to be preeminent among the sciences. The Mayans were absolutely obsessed with it. In this context, all observation of the heavens appears to have fallen into two categories: 1) changes and movements in the firmament, and 2) cosmic catastrophes. This is confirmed by the missionary and cultural researcher Bernardino de Sahagun (1500–1590). This Franciscan monk not only undertook research into the language of the Aztecs but also of the Nahua. This group of Indian peoples already existed at the time of the Toltecs—around 100 BC. Their language, Nahuatl, was spoken by most of the rural population at the time of Bernardino de Sahagun. Now Bernardino de Sahagun was the head of the College of Santa Cruz on the Caribbean coast which was visited by many of the indigenous people. Sahagun sat down with them for weeks on end, cultivated their friendship, and asked them to tell him what they knew about the past of their tribes. He recorded the results in the Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espaňa12 (General History of the Things of New Spain). In it the indigenous people describe their fears of the celestial phenomena:
When night came, everyone was very afraid, people expected that, as they said, the fire drill would not fall down properly. Then everyone would be destroyed, the end would have come, it would become night for ever. The sun would no longer rise so that it would become completely dark. Tzitzitzimi monsters would come falling down and destroy human beings…and no one lay down on the ground, it was said, but people climbed on their flat roofs. That is the extent to which everyone was caught up in magical belief that one should beware of the heavens, of the stars whose name is ‘the many’ and ‘the fire drill.’13
The Historia also refers to “smoking stars,” although it is not clear whether the reference is to meteorites or shooting stars. And when the sun disappeared even some of the gods were perturbed when they looked on the firmament: “As it was said, those who looked there were Quetzalcoatl, also called Ecatl, then Totec, or the lord of the ring, furthermore the red Tezcatlipoca. Then those who call themselves cloud snakes.”14
The names of the Mayan and Aztec gods in Central America sound completely different from those in ancient Egypt or ancient Greece. Yet the content of the ancient records is similar in many respects. (In order to spare the reader unnecessary repetition, I refer to my last two books History Is Wrong and Twilight of the Gods.15, 16)
Besides the Piri Reis map, besides Herodotus’ number of 11,340 years, besides Plato’s remark of 9,000 years before our time (today 11,400 years), besides the gods enthroned in the heavens—both in Central America, in Greece and in Egypt—there are additional links. The archeologist Otto Muck as long as 35 years ago pointed out common linguistic roots both in Central America and in Spain:
The Basques still live in Spain and south-western France today. Plato expressly states that this part of Europe belonged to the Atlantean kingdom. The Basques were the closest neighbors of Atlantis on European soil of which there are still ethnic groups remaining…. One of these reasons is provided by the Basques themselves. They still have a clear, express memory—of Atlantis.17
Muck points out that the Basques even today still possess the same facial features with the eagle nose as the Mayans in Mexico. They still wear similar clothing today, use the same knives and cultivate their fields in the same way. Curiously, both in the Basque country and in Mayan lands there are more than a hundred words with the same roots and meaning.
The geographical location of Atlantis has not yet been unambiguously found. But all the indications are that Atlantis existed. And both Plato and the ancient Central American books mention a planetary catastrophe which happened sometime 11,400 years ago. At that time the gods lived among human beings—according to Herodotus. And like all ancient cultures, the Mayans were also longingly awaiting the return of these gods, as recorded in the Chilam Balam Book of Tizimin:
They came down from the avenue of the stars…they spoke the magical language of the stars in the heavens….Yes, their sign is our certainty that they came from the heavens…and when they come down from the heavens again they will create new order among their creation of long ago.18
There is something else that confuses me. Plato writes about a special metal—orichalcum—which was only and exclusively used in Atlantis. The special alloy of this orichalcum came directly from one of the sons of the gods, Poseidon. Orichalcum glistened like gold, was very thin, and was most similar to gold. Metal sheets have indeed been found with a very strange, paper-thin gold alloy in the highlands of Ecuador/South America.
There, in t
he city of Cuenca, there is a church called Maria Auxiliadora (“helpful Mother of God”). For more than 50 years, Father Carlo Crespi looked after the Catholic congregation. The Father enjoyed the reputation of a reliable friend of the indigenous people, and even during his lifetime, the people of Cuenca considered him a saint. Father Crespi has meanwhile died. The inhabitants built a memorial to him which every day has fresh flowers placed on it to the present day. What was so special about this Father? He listened to the indigenous people, for days on end. He won their trust and helped them in every conceivable way.
The indigenous people returned the compliment and gave the good-hearted priest ancient works of art which their families had kept hidden from the whites for centuries. They were metal sheets which looked as if they were pure gold. Father Crespi began by placing these works of art against the walls of a locked inner courtyard, but as their number grew he stacked them on top of one another in two rooms. I visited him several times in the 1970s and photographed hundreds of these strange objects. These metal sheets tell continuing picture stories. The compositions are superimposed over one another. Faces crowned by the sun, heads with radiating beams, pyramids with indecipherable characters, people in some kind of “chainmail coat.” Then there are rectangular steles made of metal with characters engraved on them which no one can decipher. In all, the steles have 14 lines with four squares in each line and a character in each square—a total of 56 squares with 56 characters.
Odyssey of the Gods Page 19