Hidden History: Lost Civilizations Secret Knowledge and Ancient Mysteries Read online

  HIDDEN HISTORY

  LOST

  CIVILILATTONS,

  SECRET

  KNOWLEDGE,

  AND

  ANCIENT

  MYSTERIES

  Brian HaughLon

  or my mum and dad

  Acknowledgments

  For help with photographs, I would like to thank Dr. Erich Brenner of the University of Innsbruck, David Hatcher Childress, Carlos A. GomezGallo, Julie Gardiner of Wessex Archaeology, Martin Gray of Sacred Sites, John Griffiths, Paul Haughton, Thanassis Vembos, and Rien van de Weygaert. Many thanks also to Frank Joseph for providing a wonderfully erudite Foreword while going through the traumatizing experience of moving house. Special thanks go to Michael Pye at New Page, and my ever helpful agent Lisa Hagen of Paraview. Finally, I would not have been able to write this book without the encouragement and support of my wife, Dr. A. Siokou, who also read the manuscript.

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  Contents

  Foreword ................................................... 7

  Introduction ................................................ 11

  Part I: Mysterious Places ...................................... 13

  The Lost Land of Atlantis 15

  America's Stonehenge: The Puzzle of Mystery Hill 20

  Petra: The Mysterious City of Rock 24

  The Silbury Hill Enigma 29

  Troy: The Myth of the Lost City 34

  Chichen Itza: City of the Maya 39

  The Sphinx: An Archetypal Riddle 44

  The Knossos Labyrinth and the Myth of the Minotaur 49

  The Stone Sentinels of Easter Island 54

  The Lost Lands of Mu and Lemuria 58

  Stonehenge: Cult Center of the Ancestors 63

  El Dorado: The Search for the Lost City of Gold 69

  The Lost City of Helike 74

  The Grand Canyon: Hidden Egyptian Treasure? 79

  Newgrange: Observatory, Temple, or Tomb? 83

  Machu Picchu: Lost City of the Incas 88

  The Library of Alexandria 93

  The Great Pyramid: An Enigma in the Desert 98

  Part II: Unexplained Artifacts .................................. 103

  The Nazca Lines 105

  The Piri Reis Map 109

  The Unsolved Puzzle of the Phaistos Disc 113

  The Shroud of Turin 117

  The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica 121

  Talos: An Ancient Greek Robot? 125

  The Baghdad Battery 129

  The Ancient Hill Figures of England 133

  The Coso Artifact 138

  The Nebra Sky Disc 142

  Noah's Ark and the Great Flood 146

  The Mayan Calendar 151

  The Antikythera Mechanism: An Ancient Computer? 155

  Ancient Aircraft 161

  The Dead Sea Scrolls 166

  The Crystal Skull of Doom 171

  The Voynich Manuscript 176

  Part III: Enigmatic People ..................................... 181

  The Bog Bodies of Northern Europe 183

  The Mysterious Life and Death of Tutankhamun 188

  The Real Robin Hood 192

  The Amazons: Warrior Women at the Edge of Civilization 197

  The Mystery of the Ice Man 202

  The History and Myth of the Knights Templar 207

  The Prehistoric Puzzle of the Floresians 212

  The Magi and the Star of Bethlehem 217

  The Druids 221

  The Queen of Sheba 226

  The Mystery of the Tarim Mummies 230

  The Strange Tale of the Green Children 234

  Apollonius of Tyana: Ancient Wonder Worker 239

  King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table 244

  Part IV. Some Further Mysteries to Ponder ........................ 249

  Mysterious Places 251

  Unexplained Artifacts 253

  Enigmatic People 255

  Further Information ......................................... 257

  Index .................................................... 26J

  About the Author ........................................... 211

  Foreword

  By Frank Joseph

  In response to popular dissatisfaction with mainstream scholars' often inadequate explanations of the world we live in, publishers are fielding a growing number of books posing alternative considerations to prevailing orthodoxy. In confronting official paradigms, their unconventional authors are typically provocative, but usually more imaginative than credible. Brian Haughton differs from his colleagues, because he strives for an accord between evidence accumulated by university-trained scientists and fresh theories postulated by avocational investigators. The result is Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries. It is a balance of fact and theory written with the old integrity of Roman writers, such as Livy and Cicero, who clearly set out the facts and provided leading interpretations, but invited us to come to our own conclusions. Haughton's readers will find themselves engaged in the same kind of participation that challenges their imagination by expanding it. The cause is self-evident: His is a truly encyclopedic work, dealing with 49 historical enigmas from around the globe. His work spans the deep antiquity of Britain's Stonehenge and Egypt's Great Pyramid to current discoveries

  about the Shroud of Turin and the Dead Sea Scrolls. As such, Hidden History is at once a superb introduction to these mysteries for anyone unacquainted with them, as well as a sourcebook eclectic investigators will find indispensable.

  Haughton begins with Atlantis, widely considered the greatest enigma of all (and among the most controversial). Merely presenting thumbnail sketches of all the theories used to describe it would require a full-length book in itself. But Haughton deftly sorts out the leading arguments for and against the existence and location of Plato's "lost continent," leaving us less bewildered by the plethora of contending opinions than intrigued by the possibilities for a 21st century discovery. Hidden History does not neglect Atlantis's Pacific counterpart, especially in view of recent discoveries made around the Japanese islands. Under the clear waters of Yonaguni, scuba divers recently found a pyramidal structure sitting nearly a hundred feet below the surface. Could this artificial-looking formation of massive stone be the result of a natural process? Or is it the remains of the lost civilization of Lemuria, also known as Mu, mentioned in the Hindu monastery records of Burma and India?

  The inhabitants of both Atlantis and Lemuria were said to have possessed a technology far ahead of the times in which they lived, and Haughton presents physical evidence suggesting the former existence of scientific advances at odds with the period of their invention and use. A foremost specimen includes the so-called Baghdad Battery powered by citrus juices to electro-plate statuettes with gold. Although a simple device, it nonetheless suggests that at least the fundamentals of electricity were understood and applied more than 2,000 years before Thomas Edison switched on the first electric light bulb. Haughton's comparison of the Mayan Calendar with Germany's Nebra Disc and the Antikythera Mechanism (dredged up from the bottom of the Aegean Sea), proves that the ancients were computer literate. The Mayan Calendar is well-known for its ominous prediction of global change (scheduled to occur on the winter solstice of 2012), and Haughton explains in clear language the incredibly high-level mathematics that went into the creation of this unquestionably great scientific achievement. While such sophisticated devices have been known in the West since the Spanish Conquest, 500 years ago, another pre-Indust
rial Age computer was found just two years ago in northern Germany. Dated to the Late Bronze Age (circa 1500 B.C.), the Nebra Disc is an astronomical clock of sophisticated capabilities and workmanship, far in advance of anything from the same time and place. Its mere existence implies that a higher level of material society flourished in a region far beyond the cultural orbit of the

  Greco-Roman World than previously imagined. It predates-by more than 14 centuries-a comparable instrument hauled up in a fisherman's net around the turn of the 20th century off the Greek island of Antikythera. The device is a complex intermeshing of intricate gears that historians formerly believed would not have been possible until the European Renaissance. Apparently, the Classical World had its own Leonardo da Vinci, who fashioned an efficient astronomical computer small enough to be carried aboard ships for purposes of celestial navigation.

  Earlier still, another disc has been found in the Cretan city of Phaestos, and is 200 years older than the Nebra device. While not as complicated as the German, Greek, or Mayan versions, the Minoan plate of baked clay was impressed with tiny images made by movable type, almost 30 centuries before Johannes Gutenberg's press was up and running. Haughton shows that our ancestors' technology was far more elevated that mainstream scholars would have us believe. Hidden History's description of these anomalous finds is succinct and lucid, and readers will search in vain for another book in which these examples of unexpectedly high technology are brought together in the same volume. Its inquiry ranges far beyond typical scientific accomplishments to visit "Mysterious Places"-including Easter Island, with its gaunt colossi; a preColumbian city in the Grand Canyon; and the oldest building on Earth, the enormous, quartz-fronted burial mound of Ireland's Newgrange, 30 miles north of Dublin.

  The "Mysterious People" visited are King Arthur, keeper of the Holy Grail; the Amazons, who carried women's liberation on the edge of their swords; Indonesia's race of extinct, quick-witted dwarves; and the historical facts behind the fabled figures of Robin Hood, the Queen of Sheba, and Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The fate of ancient Egypt's most famous monarch is particularly up-to-date, as Brian Haughton cites the latest CAT scan of the royal mummy. Did King Tut die of an accident that allowed his aged successor, a commoner, to usurp the

  throne? Or was covert assassination the cause? Nowhere else has such a broad collection of diverse information about ancient wonders been assembled. Haughton's obvious preference for credibility over theory combines with his powers of clear, concise presentation to make Hidden History not merely a rehash of already familiar material, but a freshly comprehensive encyclopedia of the strange and the intriguing, which will be sought out by anyone fascinated with the remote past for many years to come.

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  IntroducIion

  One of the numerous legacies of our ancient past is a bewildering variety of mysteries. Some are genuinely puzzling, while others are more easily solved with a little research. Mysterious places, such as Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid, may be famous throughout the world, but how much do we really know about their construction, purpose, and the people who built them? Strange artifacts, sometimes of unknown origin and purpose, or of inexplicably advanced manufacture can provide us with a fascinating glimpse into the often amazingly sophisticated cultures of the ancient world. And then there are the people themselves. Modern techniques such as DNA studies and Oxygen Isotope Analysis (performed on tooth enamel to locate a person's origins) are shedding fascinating new light on the enigmatic peoples of ancient history. Intriguingly, while solving one puzzle, modern scientific techniques have sometimes created others. For example, chemical analysis of the aristocrat buried close to Stonehenge 4,200 years ago shows that he was probably born in Switzerland. Which poses the question: What was he doing so far from home?

  A person's interpretation of the past often depends on what he or she wants from history. If the study of ancient

  mysteries is approached with an agenda in mind, or a belief to be proved, the odds are that some kind of evidence to fit the theory will be found. On rare occasions, such as the 19th century excavations by Heinrich Schliemann at the supposed site of Troy, this approach can yield spectacular-if not entirely accurate-results.

  Unfortunately, evidence for a pet theory is usually obtained by ignoring conflicting data, or taking an individual artifact, person, or even place out of its original context. Let's imagine a situation where, for example, you wanted to prove that Ireland had been invaded by the Romans, even though the vast majority of archaeologists and historians are convinced it never was. There are a fair amount of Roman finds in the country, some from sealed archaeological contexts, which you could use to support your case. But if these Roman objects are looked at in greater detail and their original contexts examined, then it becomes apparent that the artifacts are of the portable variety: pottery, coins, and jewelry. Roman objects in Ireland are usually found at religious sites, such as the huge burial mound at Newgrange, north of Dublin, which were already thousands of years old by the Roman period. This would indicate that, rather than signifying a Roman invasion, the objects were the result of religious offerings by pilgrims, probably visiting from Britain. A cursory glance at the artifacts in isolation could never have arrived at this conclusion.

  Of course, one must always be careful to distinguish between genuine and spurious mysteries, and for this reason a few puzzles of the spurious category have been included in this book. It is surprising how many apparently inexplicable mysteries (especially those relating to unusual objects) prove on closer examination to have prosaic explanations. With the proliferation of Websites dedicated to ancient mysteries, secret societies, and out-of-place artifacts, stories are fabricated entirely on the Internet, without any supporting evidence or research, and are reproduced uncritically as fact. One of the best examples of these "Internet truths" is the supposedly ancient Coso Artifact, a short chapter on which is included in this book. A major problem with many of the speculations that surround unexplained ancient artifacts is that the objects are taken out of their original context in order to provide evidence for a favorite theory. Just because the peoples of prehistoric Britain and ancient Peru carved figures into the landscape doesn't mean there was any contact between the two places. What it does signify is a basic human need to express oneself using the landscape, of which the people perhaps believed themselves to be a part. The lives of many of the cultures of antiquity were full of magic and mystery, but to acquire even a partial understanding of this often entails cutting oneself off from present-day preoccupations and desires. If this is

  not done, then we are in danger of clothing the ancient peoples of the world in modern, ill-fitting garments, and transforming them into 21st century ancients who would not have been recognized in their original cultures.

  On the other hand, to deny the mysteries of the past completely, to believe that modern archaeology and science have the answers to every ancient enigma, is equally ill-advised. (It also makes dull reading.) Alternative theorists, such as Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, and Christopher Knight may sometimes be too uncritical when dealing with the evidence for lost civilizations and ancient technology, but they are better writers than most archaeologists. Academics are never going to convey the fascination of their subject to the general public if their commercial publications read like technical reports, or notes written for a lecture to a group of Ph.D. students. There are, of course, exceptions: Mike Pitts's Hengeworld, Francis Pryor's Britain BC, and Barry Cunliffe's Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples, 8000 BC to AD 1500, should be read by everyone with an interest in ancient history.

  In Hidden History, ancient mysteries are divided into three categories: Mysterious Places, Strange Artifacts, and Enigmatic People. The choice of subjects included in the book was a personal one, made to bring together the most interesting of ancient mysteries, and to cover a wide range of cultures, time periods, and types of mystery. The book has no hidden agenda; I hope my readers will use the evidenc
e presented to make up their own minds about these riddles of our enigmatic past.

  PART I

  Mysterious

  Places

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  The Lost Land of AUlanI.is

  Athanasius Kircher's map of Atlantis's possible location.

  From Mundus Subterraneus (1669).

  The magical lost land of Atlantis has captured the imagination of poets, scholars, archaeologists, geologists, occultists, and travelers for more than 2,000 years. The notion of a highly advanced island civilization (that flourished in remote antiquity only to be destroyed overnight by a huge natural catastrophe) has inspired believers in the historical truth of the Atlantis tale to search practically every corner of the Earth for remnants of this once great civilization. Most archaeologists are of the opinion that the Atlantis story is just that, a story, an allegorical tale with no historical value whatsoever. And then there are the occultists, many of whom have

  approached the story of Atlantis from the standpoint that it represents either a lost spiritual homeland (such as Mu/Lemuria), or a different plain of existence entirely. What is it about Atlantis that has inspired such diverse interpretations? Could there be any truth behind the story?

  The original source from which all information about Atlantis ultimately derives is the Greek philosopher Plato, in his two short dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written somewhere between 359 and 347 B.C. Plato's supposed source for the story of Atlantis was a distant relative of his, a famous Athenian lawmaker and Lyric poet named Solon. Solon had, in turn, heard the story while visiting the court of Amasis, king of ancient Egypt from 569 to 525 B.C., in the city of Sais, on the western edge of the Nile Delta. While at the court of Amasis, Solon visited the Temple of Neith and fell into conversation with a priest who related the story of Atlantis to him. The priest described a great island, larger than Libya and Asia combined, that had existed 9,000 years before their time, beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar) in the Atlantic Ocean. Atlantis was rule over by an alliance of kings descended from Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes, whose eldest son, Atlas, gave his name to the island and the surrounding ocean.