by Colin Wilson
Like the eight sites listed above, Avebury, Abydos and Nippur were linked to the Yukon Pole, but they were also, Rand observed, all slightly misaligned to the Hudson Bay Pole.
Was it possible, he wondered idly, that these three had been the ‘original’ sacred sites? He had already told me he suspected that the time of the Yukon Pole was regarded by later generations as a kind of Golden Age, so it would be natural that the original ‘markers’ should have been related to it.
He had another reason for believing these three sites to be unique. When he studied their latitudes, he realised they were all one degree ‘out’ when compared with the other seven earlier sites mentioned above. According to Rand’s calculation, for example, in order to match the pattern of the other seven sites, Avebury should have been at 45 degrees north, but was actually at 46. Abydos and Nippur should both have been at 10, but were actually at 11.
Supposing that, during the time when Avebury, Abydos and Nippur were the only sacred sites, something extraordinary happened; some cosmic event, like a close encounter with a comet, that caused a one-degree shift in the earth’s crust. We must bear in mind that one degree on the surface of the earth is about seventy miles. And if it happened fairly quickly, the result must have been fairly traumatic – although, of course, nothing like the 30-degree slide of 9,600 BC.
Such an ‘earlier shift’, which Rand refers to as the ‘X-event’, could explain why Avebury, Abydos and Nippur were misaligned by one degree. The X-event would have acted, as he put it, as a ‘kick in the ass’, and sixty-six more ‘catastrophe-predictors’ were hastily established to supplement the initial three at Avebury, Abydos and Nippur. I asked Rand: ‘When do you think this X-event occurred?’ His answer was: ‘I don’t know. All I know is that it was before 9,600 BC ’
Without a date and physical evidence to substantiate the X-event, Rand admits that this idea of ‘early-warning’ bases must remain pure speculation. But he points out that Enoch seemed to have foreknowledge of the coming flood when he spoke to Noah. That knowledge could plausibly have come from changes in the position of Avebury, Abydos and/or Nippur following a one-degree ‘mini-displacement’.
Rand also believes that his blueprint theory can find the lost city of Atlantis.
In the second half of the 1980s the study of ‘mitochondrial DNA’ (DNA inherited only from females) led to the discovery that modern humans all sprang from one ‘mitochondrial Eve’ about 200,000 years ago. The footprints of an anatomically modern woman were discovered in South Africa in 1997; she had walked across the Langebaan Lagoon 117,000 years ago. In short, there is now a consensus that modern humans emerged before 100,000 years ago.
100,000 years ago the Arctic Circle was centred upon the Yukon Pole.
The usual date given for the emergence of Cromagnons is about 40,000 years ago, when they appeared in Europe. Where were they between 100,000 years and 40,000 years ago?
Rand’s suggested answer is Lesser Antarctica. According to Hapgood’s The Path to the Pole, the North Pole was in the Yukon 100,000 years ago. Note that the Antarctic Circle extended towards southern Africa where, we know, the remains of anatomically modern humans were found. The presence there of seashells, along with the human fossils dating to 92,000 years ago, means our ancestors knew how to exploit the ocean from an early date. But how could they have travelled from southern Africa to South America and Antarctica?
Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated that the ocean currents act as silent conveyor belts, like the moving sidewalks in airports. If modern humans were exploiting sea resources on the shores of South Africa during the Yukon Pole, then it is entirely predictable what would happen to them when — as was bound to
100,000 years ago, the ocean currents in the South Atlantic would have carried people from South Africa to America and Lesser Antarctica
The ‘Atlantis Channel’ separated mainland Antarctica from the islands lying towards South America.
happen – some were swept out to sea. We know that Japanese sailors made their way across the wider Pacific Ocean, landing in California and eventually finding their way to Arizona.14 In 1999 fossils discovered in Brazil proved to belong to an Australian Aborigine.15
Ocean currents in the southern hemisphere move in a counter-clockwise direction. The following map shows the ocean and wind patterns prior to 91,600 BC: People on boats or rafts could have been carried from South Africa, up the west coast of the continent, and across the South Atlantic, to Brazil or Argentina – and to the ice-free regions of Lesser Antarctica. At this time there would have been a channel between the mainland and Antarctica’s chain of islands, which Rand calls the ‘Atlantis Channel’. This would have had an impact upon the ocean and wind currents because it would have allowed passage into the Pacific side of Lesser Antarctica.
Now we have a scenario whereby modern humans were transported by ocean currents to Lesser Antarctica before the crust displacement of 91,600 years ago. With the Greenland displacement of 50,600 years ago, humans suddenly reappeared in Africa, Asia and Australia. After each displacement, people spread across the world, which may not be a coincidence. Around 91,600 BC, after a crust displacement, we find the fossil remains of humans in South Africa. The 50,600 BC displacement brought a sudden influx of people into Asia and even Australia. With the last displacement of 9,600 BC a flood of humans arrived in both North and South America, as well as (if Schwaller de Lubicz is right) Egypt. The last wave of refugees carried rich tales of a lost island paradise in the south that was destroyed by a flood.
Is it not possible, Rand asks, that modern humans evolved on Lesser Antarctica during the 40,000 years of silence in the fossil record? If so, then we should find there the remains of modern humans dating back 50,000 or possibly 125,000 years or more.
Lomas and Knight have constructed ‘Uriel’s machine’ for studying the heavens, and they also deduced, from the words of the prophet Enoch, at what latitude the machine must have been located in ‘paradise’. Their analysis of this data shows, they believe, that Enoch was taken to a place between the range of latitudes 51 and 59 degrees north.16 They rule out the southern hemisphere because ‘the first thing we could be reasonably certain of was that his latitude must be north of the equator, because the only land at these latitudes to the south would place him in Chile, Argentina, Tasmania or New Zealand, which all seemed equally improbable’.17
Rand points out that there would have been plenty of inhabitable land on Lesser Antarctica that would fall within these latitudes.
The authors settle on latitude 55 degrees north, which takes them to Scotland and, of course, Rosslyn Chapel. There is an unusual astronomical fact about 55 degrees that captures their imagination: ‘We found it very interesting that the rising points of the sun at the summer solstice and winter solstice form a perfect right-angle at the latitude of 55 degrees North, forming a “square year”.’18
In this book we have noted that 55 degrees, 37 minutes north is a phi distance from the equator to the North Pole. Rand suggests that Lomas and Knight have found the correct latitude at which Enoch saw Uriel’s machine, but Rand argues that it was on Lesser Antarctica, and that the original device may date back almost 100,000 years. (And if this assertion seems breath-taking, bear in mind that Uriel’s machine is actually a simple arrangement of posts or standing stones for studying the heavens, and that this book has tried to demonstrate that ancient man has been studying the stars for tens of thousands of years.)
Rand says:
In November 1999 Rose showed me a journal article called Active volcanism beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet and the implications for ice-sheet stability’.19 She thought I might be interested because of my concern for the safety of the Lesser Antarctic ice sheet. The article spoke of possible volcanoes under the ice which were undermining the stability of the ice sheet.
Then I came to the following words: ‘Strikingly circular features in the Landsat images from ice stream E in West Antarctica might also be interpreted as volcan
ic constructs.’ I was immediately alerted because this ‘strikingly circular feature’ was near the coast along the Ross Sea. We know that Plato’s city of Atlantis was immense and circular in design and that it was carved from a small hill that stood on a plain near the ocean’s shore. All these details we outlined in When the Sky Fell.20 Now it seemed we might have stumbled upon the city of Atlantis by accident.
The authors of the article wrote: ‘This depression is underlain by a peak in the subglacial topography that is associated with a unique magnetic signature’ and brought to my mind that one of the features of Plato’s Atlantis was encircling metal walls.
The authors offered the location of the ‘volcano’: ‘Located northwest of the Whitmore Mountains (81:52:05 S, 111:18:10 W), this feature is near the proposed southern flank of the rift system, and is 100–200 km east and inslope of the initiation of ice streaming. The subglacial peak, which is 6 km wide at the base, rises 650 m above the surrounding topography to within 1,400 m of the ice surface.’21
Here, Rand points out, we have mountains, a rising hill on a plain and even possibly Plato’s hot springs that could be the source of the ‘initiation of ice streaming’.
The location of the satellite image turns out to be at 55 degrees 15 minutes south during the Yukon Pole, between Lomas and Knight’s ideal of 55 degrees and the blueprint Golden Section latitude of 55 degrees, 37 minutes. Is the ‘strikingly circular’ structure beneath 1,400 metres of ice in Lesser Antarctica the lost city of Atlantis? The search for the lost city is a quest that has been abandoned. But the Atlantis blueprint offers a key to unlock this possible site. Like Rennes-le-Château, Nanking, Rosslyn Chapel and the ‘pyramid’ off the waters of Yonaguni, the ringed structures glimpsed beneath the ice of Antarctica are linked by a phi latitude to the Yukon Pole. Was the city constructed, tens of thousands of years later, to commemorate the first settlement of those early men on Antarctica?
Is there a lost city beneath the ice of Antarctica?
Appendix 1
Blueprints from Atlantis
Rand Flem-Ath
In November of 1993 I received a fax from John Anthony West that started me on a four-year quest. The article that slipped through the fax machine that day had been written by an Egyptian-born construction engineer by the name of Robert Bauval. Little did I suspect that Bauval would soon become known for his revolutionary theory that the pyramids of Egypt were a mirror image of the constellation of Orion (see The Orion Mystery). However, in the article I read that day Robert had taken his idea even further. He revealed that not only the pyramids but also that most famous of all sculptures, the Sphinx, was orientated to the constellation of Orion as it appeared in 10,500 BC (see The Message of the Sphinx).
John followed up his fax with a telephone call — one of our earliest conversations. He had read the original manuscript of our book When the Sky Fell (see website at www.flem-ath.com) and had volunteered to write an Afterword. Our theory that Antarctica could hold the remains of Atlantis was framed by the concept of a geological phenomenon known as earth crust displacement about which I had spent years corresponding with Charles Hapgood. I had concluded, based on extensive research into the origins of agriculture and the late Pleistocene extinctions, that 9,600 BC was the most probable date of the last displacement.
After discussing details about the Afterword for When the Sky Fell, John, in his usual direct manner, asked me: ‘If Bauval is right that the Sphinx points to a date of 10,500 BC how do you reconcile that date with your time period of 9,600 BC for the last displacement of the earth’s crust?’
John had put his finger on a very important point. If the Sphinx had been built before the crustal displacement, as Bauval’s data indicated, then the monument’s orientation would have been changed as the earth’s crust shifted, resulting in a misalignment. But the fact remains that the Sphinx – indeed the whole Giza complex – is precisely aligned with the earth’s cardinal points. ‘Either Bauval’s calculations of the astroarchaeology are incorrect or your date of 9,600 BC is wrong,’ John said. ‘How sure are you of that date? Could you be wrong by 900 years?’
‘John,’ I replied, ‘a host of archaeological and geological radiocarbon dates indicate unequivocally that the last catastrophe occurred in 9,600 BC. I’m sticking with that. Perhaps the ancient Egyptians were memorialising an earlier date that was tremendously significant to them, not necessarily the date that the Sphinx was carved.’
In October of 1996 Robert Bauval and I continued the friendly debate at a conference in Boulder, Colorado. I was convinced that the Sphinx was constructed immediately after 9,600 BC and explained why. ‘Imagine,’ I began, ‘that an asteroid or giant comet hit the United States today, utterly destroying the entire continent and throwing the whole culture back to the most primitive of living conditions. Then imagine that a team of scientists, perhaps safely under the ocean in a submarine, survived the cataclysm and decided to commemorate their nation and leave a message for the future by constructing a monument aligned to the heavens. What date would they choose to mark the memory of the United States of America? Would it be 1996, the year that their world ended? I don’t think so. I believe that they would orientate their monument to 1776 – the date that the nation was born. And, in the same way, I think that although the Sphinx was created around 9,600 BC it is orientated to 10,500 BC because that date was significant to their culture.’
Now it happens that inconsistencies and puzzles in science are like oxygen to my blood! My entire philosophy of science is predicated on the motto that anomalies are gateways to discovery. I usually conduct my research in a methodical and painstaking (some might say obsessive!) manner. However, over the past twenty years of investigating the problem of Atlantis and the earth’s shifting crust I have discovered again and again that chance plays a critical role in discovery.
Between writing novels, Rose works part-time at the local university library and her serendipitous approach to research ideally balances my own meticulous methods. I can’t begin to count the number of times that she has brought home a book that turned out to be exactly what I needed. So when she presented me with Archaeoastronomy in Pre-Columbian America I eagerly flipped it open.
Written in 1975 by Dr Anthony F. Aveni, one of the leading astroarchaeologists in the world, the book dropped a critical piece of the puzzle that I was trying to solve right into my lap. It appears that almost all of the major megalithic monuments of Meso-America are oriented east of true north. Aveni wrote that the people of Meso-America did ‘tend to lay out many of their cities… oriented slightly east of true north… Fifty of the fifty-six sites examined align east of north.’
However, I found Aveni’s explanation for this alignment wanting. He believes that the ‘Street of the Dead’, the famous avenue at Teotihuacan (near Mexico City) is the key to the whole mystery of why the monuments are strangely misaligned. This street, which runs directly toward the Pyramid of the Moon, is misaligned 15.5 degrees east of north. Because it points within one degree to the Pleiades constellation (a set of stars important to Meso-American mythology) Aveni views this skewed alignment as a kind of template, a master plan, for the rest of the megaliths throughout Meso-America. While this is true for Teotihuacan’s Street of the Dead it is not true for the other sites that Aveni lists in his book. His argument that the other forty-nine sites are merely inadequate copies of the holy alignment of Teotihuacan rang hollow.
I had a different idea. A theory based on the science of geodesy, the study of the measurement of the shape and size of the earth.
In addition to astronomical observatories, what if these Mesoamerican sites were also part of a vast geographical survey? My study of ancient maps had convinced me that the Atlanteans had mapped the world. What if the orientations of the most ancient cities of Mexico were remnants of a lost science – the science of geography? What if the alignment of the ancient cities were a stone stencil – a precise blueprint of a pre-deluge earth?
Teotihuaca
n lies upon the longitude of 98 degrees, 53 minutes west. If we subtract the 15 degrees by which it is ‘misaligned’ we get a location of 83 degrees, 25 minutes west – less than half a degree off Charles Hapgood’s location of the North Pole prior to 9,600 BC.
In other words, the Street of the Dead was 15.5 degrees west of the longitude that Hapgood had calibrated for the old pole.
When I made this discovery I was naturally very excited. Could it be that the ancient monuments of Mexico were orientated to the pole before the last earth crust displacement? The implications were profound. Such an orientation would point to the existence of a civilisation which must have held scientific knowledge of the earth’s geography. They also must have possessed sophisticated surveying methods that they put to use in America before the earth’s crust shifted.
I soon discovered that several important Meso-American sites (Tula, Tenayucan, Copan and Xochicalco, for instance) matched my geodetic theory. Each of their misalignments when subtracted from their current longitude yielded the longitude of the North Pole before the last earth crust displacement (83 degrees west). What if, I wondered, there were other sites in the Old World that were orientated to the old pole?
I began to research sites in Iraq, cradle of the most ancient civilisations.
Unlike Meso-America, these sites had not been studied in relation to their misalignment to the earth’s cardinal points. I had to piece together the evidence from site to site, from author to author. But the tedious task was worth it to obtain the startling result. I soon discovered that many of the oldest sites in the Middle East are west of today’s North Pole. Like the ancient sites of Meso-America they were orientated to the old pole.
The ancient city of Ur, its ziggurat (a stepped pyramid symbolising a sacred mountain) and its shrine to the moon god Nanna are orientated west of north (towards the ‘old pole’ in the Hudson Bay).