Ancient Traces

by Michael Baigent

  Evidence of an unprecedented command of technology was discovered here: hundreds of knives, daggers, arrow-heads and lances, of flint or obsidian, all worked to an incredible and unique level of accomplishment, far in advance of any others known in the Near East at that time. Obsidian, in particular, is an extremely hard volcanic glass and flakes split off can have a cutting edge as thin as one molecule across, far sharper than any modern metal blade.

  There also were found highly polished obsidian mirrors, finely pierced beads, jewellery and textile work of the highest standard, including carpets – evidence of a comfortable standard of living. These settlers did not use pottery but had wooden and basketwork which, for its sophistication and excellence, is unparalleled elsewhere at the time.

  Their technical accomplishment was so great that we still do not know how they created some of their manufactured objects. We do not know how they polished their hard obsidian mirrors without leaving a single scratch; stone beads have been found, also some of obsidian, which, extraordinarily, have a hole drilled through them which is so fine that a modern needle cannot be pushed into it. It is impossible to think how they could have created them without using very hard metal drills. Yet somehow they managed it.2 Perhaps one day we shall learn their secret.

  A well-developed and elaborate religion thrived, centred, it appears, upon a Mother Goddess who was perceived as three people in one: a young woman, a pregnant woman and an old crone. To serve this cult, even in the very small part of the city excavated to date, over forty shrines or sanctuaries have been excavated although not all were in use at the same time.

  In other words, so far as archaeology is concerned, the urban culture at Çatal Hüyük was unique; it had no apparent forerunners, no apparent sites nearby where the talents the inhabitants displayed might have been learned.

  The inhabitants must have learned their craft techniques somewhere. But this could not have been in any known contemporary communities such as those found at Jericho in the Jordan vally or Jarmo in the Kurdish highlands. For these communities did not display anything remotely resembling the same level of culture and craftsmanship.

  It is absurd to believe that this urban sophistication appeared, suddenly, from nowhere, around 8000 BC. It is blindingly obvious that settled culture must have begun developing much earlier and elsewhere.

  The question is, where and when?

  Surviving the Cataclysmic Ice Age

  From around 80,000 years ago an immense ice-cap with huge glaciers reached deep into Europe, Russia, Canada and the United States. An ice-cap, perhaps a mile or more thick in the north, covered all of Ireland, most of England as far south as the London area, and stretched across Europe. In North America an ice-cap almost two miles thick reached as far south as St Louis and Philadelphia; further south still were endless plains of arctic tundra.

  This, of course, would not have been an insupportable problem for humans living at the time because the areas of southern Europe, North and Central Africa and Central America would not have been so affected, although it is thought that the general world temperature would have been much lower, the cloud cover and rainfall higher. If humanity had not developed an urban culture by then, it would have been under considerable pressure to do so, for people would have needed shelter from the rain and cold winds.

  We have always thought of mankind at this early period as leading a nomadic hunter-gatherer life, seeking shelter when necessary within caves. This much is true, but true only to the extent that remains of humans have been found in caves. We need to be cautious regarding the conclusions we draw from this. It is rather like future archaeologists finding bodies in Second World War bomb-shelters and assuming that this was the norm for twentieth-century culture.

  Early man did not just live in caves. Even hundreds of thousands of years ago, shelters were built, some apparently permanent. In France the Terra Amata site near Nice, perhaps 300,000 years old, has revealed what appear to be post holes and stone circles which the discoverer, French scientist Henry de Lumley, argues are the remains of substantial shelters.3 As is often the case, this site is controversial and not all agree with his conclusion.4 More certain are the finds at Bilzingsleben, in Germany which are dated to around 400,000 years ago. Archaeologists have excavated three circular structures made of bone and stone with a diameter of nine to thirteen feet. They are considered to be foundations of structures which comprised a permanently occupied site. The most curious find here, which raises many questions about the potentially high level of culture reached by these early people, is an area, paved with bones and stone, twenty-seven feet wide. The director of research, Dietrich Mania, believes that the inhabitants ‘intentionally paved this area for cultural activities’.5

  Potentially portable ‘tents’ or ‘windbreaks’ have been found constructed of mammoth bones at the 60,000-year-old site of Molodova on the Dnestr river, Russia.6 At Dolni Vestonice, in Romania, a group of five dwellings has been found dating up to 28,000 years, the largest being over fifty feet long. Nearby were the remains of a pottery kiln. This was used apparently only for firing small clay figurines since no domestic pottery has been found.7

  Such solid shelters are fixed; they cannot be moved with a nomadic tribe. Hence a tribe must stay in one place, must domesticate animals and grow crops to supply the needs of food. To supply food for a sedentary population the members of the community must develop specialization of labour and attempt to produce a commodity surplus in order to trade for those goods they cannot grow or make. They need to establish patterns of land usage and ownership, must gather together for mutual aid, for defence and for trade. Such a mutually supportive culture, protected from the elements by well-constructed shelters, and from hunger by effective food production, is the best way for human beings to survive in an erratic, perhaps hostile, environment.

  The Sunken Lands

  Where would these cultures develop? The answer must be, where cultures have always developed: in the temperate, fertile lowlands, near the rivers for water and communication. Especially, culture would emerge in the delta regions where these rivers entered the sea. It is reasonable to suppose the gradual construction of urban cultures at such sites over the 60,000 years or more of the last Ice Age.

  Small boats were undoubtedly a well-used means of transport even long ago. Engravings and paintings of deep-sea fish, such as dolphins and whales, found in the ancient caves, attest to probable maritime activity. That such a technology was potentially available very early is proved by the discovery that boats capable of sailing for days in the open sea were in use in South-east Asia by perhaps 40,000 years ago.8

  Unfortunately, these broad river valleys where culture most likely developed are never very high above sea-level: the present Indus valley, for example, stretches almost 450 miles before it exceeds 300 feet high; the Mississippi reaches about 550 miles; much of western France is below 300 feet.

  At the peak of the last Ice Age, from around 24,000 BC to 14,000 BC, so much water was locked up in the ice-caps that, world-wide, it has been estimated, the sea fell by over 400 feet.9 By the end of the Ice Age, around 7000 BC, the sea had returned and regained its former level, reaching its approximate present shorelines, indicating a height rise of 400 feet.

  With the return of the sea we would expect any ancient coastal settlements to be far out on the continental shelf, beneath the waters. It has been proved that most of the present under-sea continental shelf off the coast of the United States was dry land about 9000 BC. Fishermen dragging the sea bottom for scallops and clams have found the teeth of extinct mastodons or mammoths up to 190 miles out to sea, beyond Cape Cod. They have been found at depths of up to 400 feet. The remains of horses, tapirs, musk ox and giant moose also have been found. Similar finds of mastodon teeth have come from a depth of 300 feet in Japan’s Inland Sea.10

  The shells of shallow-water oysters, normally found in tidal estuaries or lagoons, have been discovered at many different sites off the Atlantic coast of
the United States, at depths of almost 300 feet. Radiocarbon dating put them at up to 9000 BC.11 This data gives an indication of the speed at which the water rose; it suggests a very rapid rise in sea-level after this date. For the seas had stabilized by 7000 BC, hence there must have been a rise of 300 or 400 feet over the preceding 2,000 years.

  Vegetation has also appeared; ancient twigs, seeds, pollen and peat deposits have all been hauled to the surface by both fishermen and oceanographers; carbon dating has indicated that they too were submerged around 9000 BC. Scientists have also found evidence of sunken shorelines, sands and deposits of peat. All this evidence has led them to conclude that in 13,000 BC the United States continental shelf was a wide coastal plain teeming with wildlife and covered with forests. But after 9000 BC it was the sea floor.

  A mapping of the world’s land masses at their maximum during the peak of the Ice Age has revealed the true extent of extra land then available. Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania were all one continent; the Philippines, Sumatra, Borneo and Java were together connected to the land mass of continental Asia. Extensive lands extended almost 100 miles south from the tip of South Africa and a dry land passage, interestingly ice-free (while mile-high ice covered Canada and the northern United States), was available between

  Submerged land areas off the coast of the United States: showing finds of land animal teeth (mastodon and mammoth).

  Siberia and Alaska.12 In Europe the North Sea did not exist, most of the land being covered with a mile-thick ice-cap. Wide plains extended from the present English Channel into the Atlantic.

  Studies on the Mediterranean area have proved intriguing: huge temperate watered plains stretched up to 120 miles out from the present coastline of Tunisia; Malta was connected to Sicily; plains also generally extended all along the coastline of Spain, France, Italy and Greece, where many of the islands were joined. But, most remarkable of all and previously unsuspected, was the existence of a huge fertile plain, crossed by many rivers, in the upper half of the Adriatic Sea, reaching almost 200 miles south of Venice.13 It is thought that this was the most fertile area in the region and must have attracted a considerable population whose remains now lie beneath hundreds of feet of sea. It is, of course, almost impossible to search for the remnants of these settlements.

  We cannot overestimate the effect of this world-wide flooding caused by the melting ice and the changes it would have wrought to any developing cultures. The memory of its destructive horror would have seared itself into the cultural memory of the peoples living there and been communicated down through the generations in legend and mythology. The world-wide incidence of legends of a great flood could well be a residue of this event in the collective folk memory.

  One expert in the field has stated, ‘it is not an exaggeration to say that in many parts of the world the largest and most important environmental change of the past 15,000 years has been the rising level of the sea’.14

  World-wide Flooding

  The waters may have come in a terrifying few years of utter disaster, or decades of endless rains and floods. Or they may have crept slowly up over the land during millennia of inexorably rising tides and destructive storm-driven waves. However it occurred, the melting of the last great Ice Age had ended around 7000 BC.15 The glaciers and ice-caps retreated to the general position they occupy now.

  If, year after year, century after century, the tides inexorably rose and, with them, the deterioration of the weather created violent storms and waves large enough to crush the mud-brick or stone houses, what would be the reaction of the population? They would, of course, leave for higher ground, taking what they could and carrying with them their skills in building, agriculture and weaving.

  The Adriatic and Aegean Seas before the rise in sea-level after the end of the last Ice Age: showing fertile lands where early civilization may have developed prior to the widespread inundation. (The dotted line gives today’s land contours.)

  They would also have taken their culture, their religion, their myths, their songs and stories.

  They would have no way of knowing how far the gradual flooding of their land might reach, so they would withdraw progressively to higher ground. In the now ancient legends of a world-wide flood which have survived into our time, there is consistent mention of human survival by virtue of boats and high ground.

  The ancient Greeks believed that, following a catastrophic, world-destroying flood, survivors rebuilt Greek civilization in Thessaly. Their myth echoes much of the story of Noah. It explained how Zeus, angered with mankind, sent a great flood. Deucalion was warned about this by his father, one of the demigods, and so constructed an ‘ark’ on which he and his wife rode out the flood. When the waters receded he landed upon the top of Mount Parnassus. Deucalion and his wife then reigned in Thessaly. Their son, Hellen, was regarded as the ancestor of all the Greeks who, in classical times, called themselves Hellenes.

  Was this tale an embellishment of a real folk memory of the rising sea-levels? And if so, why should Thessaly have been pinpointed as the original homeland of the Greeks?

  The Greek philosopher Plato (c. 429–347 BC) considered it ‘perfectly credible’ that this story symbolized a reality. He believed, furthermore, that civilization had existed in Greece prior to this destructive deluge; that towns had flourished on the plains and near the sea; and, further, that the Greeks had known the use of metal. But this catastrophe not only destroyed the towns, it also destroyed the knowledge of mining and working metals. The mines were all flooded and those with the skills necessary to work metal were killed. In consequence, humanity was forced back into a more primitive age which knew only the use of stone tools.

  Plato writes of his belief that the only inhabitants who would have escaped were those shepherds in the hills whom he describes as ‘scanty embers of the human race preserved somewhere on the mountain-tops’, where they later turned to farming.16 Plato’s narrative is surprisingly consistent with recent archaeological and geological conclusions.

  But there is one terrifying possibility: could it be that after several thousand years of steady melting, and steady but moderate sea-level rise, the vast polar ice-caps suddenly became unstable and rapidly, completely, collapsed with cataclysmic effect?

  Scientific analysis of very deep core samples taken from the Greenland ice-cap in 1989 revealed that around 8700 BC the last cold period of the Ice Age came to an abrupt end. The ice retreated so quickly that major climate changes occurred within twenty years and a major temperature rise of seven degrees centigrade in fifty.17 This was disaster enough. But the evidence is mounting for the existence of an even worse scenario.

  Later studies on new core samples, completed in 1993, revealed an even more dramatic picture of this event: they indicated that the most significant melting and collapse might have occurred in just one to three years.18 This is a record of utter catastrophe.

  A gradual 400-foot rise over 2,000 years or so would not go unnoticed. If, for example, since the Romans, the sea-level had risen gradually to this extent, then such a rise would constitute a major factor in our history and culture. Especially if, during that time, it had always risen.

  But if a catastrophic collapse of the ice sheet occurred over one to three years, allowing a turbulent sea literally to rush across hundreds of miles of plains and forests engulfing in its torrent all the human settlements, this would leave searing cultural scars for thousands of years. Scars which would be expected to find their tragic echo in myths and legends of a devastating flood.

  Can it be entirely without relevance, given this date of around 8700 BC for a collapse of the ice-cap and consequent rise in sea-level, that the earliest town, Çatal Hüyük, is in the Anatolian highlands and is dated at around 8000 BC? A town which, as we have mentioned, appeared mysteriously, from nowhere?

  Was it founded by survivors of the calamitous rise in sea-levels? If this is so, then the origins of its culture now lie beneath hundreds of feet of sea somewhere in the Mediterra
nean.

  But where?

  Interlude I: Why Did Everything Happen ‘Suddenly’?

  As happens so often, it took an intelligent and resourceful amateur in the field to blow apart the narrow thinking of established experts.

  Late in 1962, in the wake of the successes in space enjoyed by Russia and the United States, the American writer Alexander Marshack was commissioned to write a book explaining how humanity had achieved such a level of civilization and scientific excellence.

  During the course of his research Marshack interviewed hundreds of experts: top space officials, scientists, military commanders and the presidents of great commercial corporations. But his research did not provide the answers he had expected. He was surprised to find that none of these people had a clear idea of why or even how this cultural advance had occurred.19

  Concurrent with this frustrating research, Marshack had his wider interests in mankind kindled. He began to mull over the essential similarities of aspiration in different cultures at different eras. He concluded that there ‘was no essential difference… between the first fully modern man of some 40,000 years ago and ourselves, either in brain size or general skeletal measurement’.20 Even though the tools used by this early man were, so far as was known, only made from stone, they demonstrated great variation and complexity. Marshack found himself wondering about the origins of civilization itself.

  He confronted the ‘suddenlys’, the fact that all the cultural advances were described in the standard texts as having occurred ‘suddenly’: agriculture around 10,000 years ago; civilization in Mesopotamia; science with the Greeks. He found it impossible to believe that all these things could have happened like this, without any development. As he wrote, ‘They must have come at the end of many thousands of years of prior preparation. How many thousands was the question.’21