The lost civilization enigma : a new inquiry into the existence of ancient cities, cultures, and peoples who pre-date recorded history

265 Pages·2013·3.68 MB·English

by  Coppens

T L C E
HE OST IVILIZATION NIGMA
LOST
THE
CIVILIZATION
ENIGMA
A N I I
EW NQUIRY NTO THE
E A C , C
XISTENCE OF NCIENT ITIES ULTURES,
P W P -D
AND EOPLES HO RE ATE
R H
ECORDED ISTORY
P C
HILIP OPPENS
best-selling author of
The Ancient Alien Question
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I was 10 years old, my history professor told us to do a small project on
an Egyptian monument of our choice. I chose the Great Pyramid. I do not
remember the grade I got—though it was good. I enjoyed Egypt so much that,
for my own entertainment, I made the same report on the other two pyramids of
the Giza Plateau. More than a decade later, I was asked to promote Marcel
Mestdagh’s studies on the Megalithic Civilization and make it available to a
foreign—that is, non-Dutch—audience. I don’t know when this seed was
planted, but it was growing by the age of 10 and, in 1994, had reached maturity.
Ever since, I have walked this path with the help of others, whom I have to
thank.
Early on, in Belgium, the likes of Patrick Bernauw and especially Arnold
Eloy were instrumental on my voyage of discovery. Since 1995, I have been
helped by Herman Hegge, when together we created Frontier Sciences
Foundation.
In my circle of friends, I would like to specifically thank: Theresa Byrne;
Mary Parent; Patrick Ruffino; Paige Tucker; Jason Gossman; Sarah Symons;
Marc Borms; Chris Norman; Duncan Roads; Cris Winter; Gerard Lohan; Eileen,
Cathy, and Janeth Hall; Debbie Nicastro; Dawn Molkenbur; Stan Zaidinski;
Fausto Callegarini; Tobi and Gerda Dobler; Marianne Wilson; Cynthia James
and Carl Studna; JoAnn Parks and MAX; Peter van Deursen and Anneke
Koremans; Isobel Denham; Duncan and Linda Lunan; Laura Marini; Kelly Cole;
Wendy Vincent and Peter Shoesmith; and Susan Marek. Apart from being the
best friends anyone could desire, you make life beautiful. By default, I will have
forgotten some, and I sincerely apologize for that!
I thank the research and devotion of the following authors and often friends:
Robert Bauval; Graham Hancock; Greg Taylor; Wim Zitman and Hendrine;
Hugh Newman; Sam Osmanagic and Sabina; Florence and Kenneth Wood;
Robert and Olivia Temple; Howard Crowhurst; Hugh Newman; Andy Collins;
David Hatcher Childress and Jennifer; Michael Cremo; Gary Evans; Ralph Ellis;
John Ritchie; Gavin Menziens; Alice Gerard; and Marcus Allen.
This book would not have come about without the vision of Michael Pye at
New Page Books. You and the team at New Page do formidable work, mostly
behind the scenes, in delivering new and exciting information to the world.
I would like to thank the thousands of Facebook friends and followers, who
allow me to have a great virtual banter on a daily basis! I would like to thank
allow me to have a great virtual banter on a daily basis! I would like to thank
Nespresso, for allowing me to make delightful coffee in the morning, which is a
true miracle when writing.
Each and every member of the Coppens, Sonck, Harkey, and Smith family,
though I need to specifically mention my parents, my brother, Tom, and his
wife, Kathleen, and my nephews, Daan and Arne, Papa and Mama, as well as
Patrick, Conor, and Shane.
Finally, I thank Kathleen. Without her, I am no one. With her, I can do
everything. A few weeks ago, we created a special drink—blanquette, a type of
sparkling wine from the South of France, to which we added a caramel liqueur—
and now, I toast this very drink to you, celebrating the completion of this book.
Semper.
North Berwick,
April 12, 2012
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1:
The New Inquisition
Chapter 2:
Lost Civilizations of the Old World
Chapter 3:
Lost Civilizations of the New World
Chapter 4:
The Big A: Atlantis
Chapter 5:
Prehistoric Genius
Chapter 6:
Earth, Several Tens of Thousands Years
BC
Chapter 7:
Creating Heaven on Earth
Conclusion
Appendix:
A World of Lost Civilizations
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
INTRODUCTION
Is history as the history books teach us? Or is civilization—when humanity
began to cultivate plants, work metals, build monuments, and live in organized
settlements—far more complex and older than we assume? As a 10-year-old
child in school, my teacher taught that Greece was the cradle of civilization,
even though in 1981, it was obvious that this was no longer the case: Egypt and
Sumer were known to be far older civilizations, but somehow the textbooks used
in Belgian schools had not caught up with “facts.”
Thirty years later, the situation has somewhat changed, but the criticism
leveled at “textbook historians” remains: There reigns a paradigm that even
though we no longer believe that God created the world in 4004 BC, we still
assume that civilization could not possibly have existed previously. Before 4000
BC, it is widely assumed, our ancestors were pretty much savages. That is simply
not the case.
The latest archaeological findings have pushed the boundaries of civilization
much further back, to 10,000 BC, with sites such as Jericho and, most recently,
Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. The existence of Jericho and Çatal Höyük has been
known for decades, and has been dated to 8,000 BC, but I challenge you to open
your child’s schoolbooks, or any popular book on archaeology, and find a
reference to these cities in there. The few archaeological publications that do,
treat these sites as stand-alone pockets of civilization, even though they are all
situated within hundreds of miles of each other. The obvious answer seems to be
that they were part of one culture, but no such argument is explored by scientists.
When it comes to truly “lost” civilizations, such as the lost civilization of
Atlantis, historians even ridicule anyone considering making a scientific study of
it. They argue that Plato created an idealized society, rather than report a
historical account, for the historians “know” there was no such civilization in
existence in 10,000 BC. It simply cannot be. What they fail to report is that Plato
wrote about Atlantis in a book solely devoted to history, and that when skeptics
in his own time went to Egypt to discredit him, they instead returned with
verification that Egyptian columns indeed contained the story of Atlantis, as
Plato had reported. It shows, at the very least, that the ancient Egyptians believed
in a lost civilization of Atlantis. In short, it shows that the theory cherished by
historians is simply wrong.
There is even evidence that signs of civilization—tools, objects, and legends
—are tens of thousands—even millions—of years old. American author Michael
Cremo cataloged hundreds of examples in a book he titled Forbidden
Archaeology; it was his conclusion that such objects were deemed to be a “no
go” zone by archaeologists, as it would upset everything we have assumed to be
true about our history. But that legends were factual was proven in the 19th
century, when Heinrich Schliemann showed that Troy was not just a fable
invented by the ancient Greeks, but a veritable city. The myths had proven to be
true!
In fact, there is good evidence that many of the reports of lost civilizations
have always had a foundation in truth and reality. For many centuries,
chroniclers doubted the existence of civilizations in the depths of the Amazon
Rainforest. But today, Science is admitting its errors and acknowledges satellite
imagery has revealed the traces of this lost civilization. Other claims of lost
civilizations, such as Mu, remain outside of the reach of both archaeologists and
explorers, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist! As the saying goes: The
absence of available evidence doesn’t mean it is evidence of its absence!
Apart from slowly rediscovering lost civilizations, new dimensions of known
civilizations are discovered on an almost daily basis. Yet each time the
boundaries of civilization are pushed back or expanded, the messengers of this
new information are attacked. When the enigmatic Antikythera device was
discovered off the coasts of Greece in 1900, it took many decades before it was
recognized as an astronomical clock—a device that was able to graphically show
the position of the sun, moon, planets, and certain stars. Dating to Ancient
Greece, it is now heralded as the world’s first computer, but most of the research
into the device has been done by “rebel” archaeologists, who were often
ferociously attacked by their colleagues for even considering this might be what
it eventually turned out to be.
Most recently, this antagonism to expanding the scope of ancient civilizations
has been most apparent in the controversy surrounding the so-called Bosnian
Pyramids. The pyramid complex outside the town of Visoko, near the Bosnian
capital of Sarajevo, would “merely” show that a civilization known as Old
Europe, which blossomed between c. 5500 and 3000 BC, built pyramids. As Old
Europe was in any other way on par with the Sumerian and Egyptian
civilizations, why it would therefore not be able to build pyramids, is strange.
But since the discovery of these pyramids in 2005, Science ferociously tries to
maintain the existing paradigm, even threatening archaeologists not to partake in
the excavations (otherwise they will never work at other archaeological sites
ever again!). The historical time line, it seems, cannot be answered; historians
seem to cherish the dawn date of 4000 BC far dearer than the Church ever did!
There is also evidence that at least in Bronze Age Europe (c. 3000 BC) there
was contact between America and Europe. Whereas we like to believe that it
took the dawn of the 21st century for the first global civilization and economy, at
least these two continents were very much working economically together 5,000
years ago.
Our ancestors knew more than we give them credit for, and the Antikythera
device is but one example of this. Florence and Kenneth Wood have identified a
secret code that resides within Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The Greek myths
contain detailed stellar information, showing that the story has a layer that
conveys quite advanced astronomical knowledge, including an understanding of
the precession of the equinoxes, a discovery Science is not willing to credit our
ancestors with that far back. Most recently, analysis of the construction of
Göbekli Tepe has shown that it incorporates astronomical concepts (for example,
depictions of some constellations). This shows that our ancestors, 12,000 years
ago, had already mapped the stars and were aware of at least the most basic
concepts of astronomy—but likely much more. This latter conclusion can be
reached when we realize that the cave paintings in Lascaux, France, date back
20,000 years and also incorporate astronomical knowledge. Lascaux is not a
cave where our ancestors drew some scenes of their daily hunting lifestyle, but
was a religious sanctuary, containing the sacred knowledge of our times. The
cave paintings have survived, but every other aspect of this civilization has
disappeared—become lost to us.
Our history is far more interesting, far older, and more impressive than the
standard textbooks and history books present us. A Neolithic tomb at Buthiers-
Boulancourt, near Paris, contains the body of a man whose arm had been
surgically and expertly amputated—5,900 years ago. Known civilizations, such
as the Greeks, had objects that were able to visualize the orbits of the sun, the
moon, and the planets. Known archaeological discoveries, like Jericho and
Göbekli Tepe, show civilization is many thousands of years older than first
thought. Adding lost civilizations such as Atlantis to this new image, is merely
another chapter in the story of civilization. In the New World, too, what the
Spanish Conquistadors found is far more complex and far more developed than
we give the early inhabitants of America credit for.
The resulting picture is that civilization as we know it is not 6,000 years old,
but at least 12,000 years old, and that our ancestors, tens of thousands of years
ago, were already crafting tools and objects. It is definitely obvious that our