Lost Civilizations

Jim Willis

Description

Unearthing the scientific evidence, myths, and legends of ancient civilization!

The reminders of the Ancients are everywhere. They are saved in remnants in archaeology. They are found in reminiscences in mythology. They are recorded in books, story, song, and stone. Who were these people, aliens, man-or-myths? Do we still see their influences today? What remains of these inhabitants of the jungles, lost cities, and dwellings underground, underwater and beyond? How did they rise? Why did they fall? Will they rise again?

From pyramids and underground bunkers to watery graves and ancient astronauts, Lost Civilizations: The Secret Histories and Suppressed Technologies of the Ancients examines the archaeological evidence and the traces left behind by more than 70 ancient civilizations, including …

Atlantis

Göbekli Tepe

Anasazi disappearance in the American Southwest

Nazca Lines of Peru

Turkey's Çatalhöyük

Denisovan Ancestors departure

Amazon Cities in the Jungle

Neanderthal Ancestors extinction

The Eden Stories of Theoretical Physics

Underground Cities of the Grand Canyon

And many more!

From ancient Egypt, middle America, and the Nubian Desert to the frozen Antarctica, underwater ruins of Asia, and clues of visits by ancient aliens, Lost Civilizations explores the unanswered questions about the true origins of man. Might there have been advanced civilizations long before the days of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia? What do 3D imaging and new underwater mapping technology reveal? What do prehistoric artifacts, architecture, carvings, maps, and monoliths tell us? Were rising waters, erupting volcanoes, catastrophic solar flares, comet or asteroid fragments or some other unimaginable cataclysmic disasters the death of these advanced civilizations?

Touring the world and reviewing the scientific evidence, this fascinating book ties together historical events in one part of the world that produced actual effects in others. Uncovering hidden and suppressed pasts of technologically and culturally advanced ancient civilizations, it looks at how modern civilization compares and contrasts to those who have gone before. It will leave you with the sense that what has happened to past advanced civilizations might very well be happening again in our own time! With more than 120 photos and graphics, it is richly illustrated. Its helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness.

Mound Builders of the Mississippi
About 6,500 years ago, people living near what is now Baton Rouge, Louisiana, felt the need to spend endless days filling basketfuls of dirt, carrying them in endless procession to a central location, and emptying them onto a slowly growing, human-made mountain, eventually building a flat-topped, pyramid-shaped mound. This mind-numbing labor marked the beginning of the Mound Builder civilization.

Why did they do it? No one knows. But for the next 5,000 years or so, their culture would go through three well defined phases now called the Adena, the Hopewell, and the Mississippian. Although most contemporary scholars assume they were built by the indigenous people who lived there when they first made contact with Europeans, that wasn’t always the case.

In 1787, Benjamin Smith Barton first put forth the theory that the mounds were built by Vikings. Since then, the Greeks, various African tribes, the Chinese, or mysterious groups of Europeans have all been suggested. Edgar Cayce predicted we would someday learn they were built by survivors of the Atlantis tragedy.

For a while, President Thomas Jefferson championed a variation of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel theory. That is the opinion held today by many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In the Book of Mormon, which Joseph Smith translated from golden plates he found on Hill Cumorah in Palmyra, New York, it is written that three groups of Israelites (called Nephites, Lamanites, and Mulekites) were descendants of some of the lost tribes who migrated to Mesoamerica in 590 B.C.E., following the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel. Smith never suggested that they were the Mound Builders, but it was a popular theory for a while. Some Mormon scholars still believe that the descriptions of the early mound builders fits with that of a Mesoamerican civilization that eventually moved north into the Mississippi Valley.

Hernando de Soto led the first European expedition through the southeast, from Florida up through Georgia and the Carolinas, eventually circling back to the Mississippi. During his journey, he stumbled upon mounds built near what is now Augusta, Georgia. The leader of the indigenous people there was a person he thought to be, in his words, a “queen.” Her name was Cofitachequi. He asked her who built the mounds. She said she didn’t know, but her people were using them as burial places for nobles.
Hundreds of the mounds are formed into animal effigy figures. The most well-known is undoubtedly the Serpent Mound in Ohio. Many theories attempt to explain this mound as well as others such as the Hawk and Eagle Effigies in central Georgia. Although every theory has its champions none conclusively offers any reliable proof of authenticity. All we know for sure is that animal effigies are found from the eastern United States south as far as Peru.

Carbon dating suggests that known Native American tribes of people built these mounds in their final form. But the tradition was 6,000 years old when it was first discovered by Europeans. It started in Louisiana, but no one knows who started it, why they started it, what they were trying to accomplish, or how the mounds were used.

It must have taken an incredible amount of work. Suppose you want to build just a small earth mound. Let’s assume you can carry a cubic foot of dirt in your basket and that it takes you fifteen minutes to fill the basket, walk over to the mound, and dump it out. If you do this for eight hours a day, at the end of the day you will have carried a little more than one cubic yard of dirt. Assuming you can find a way to enlist a hundred friends to help you, you can accomplish the back-breaking task of moving 100 cubic feet of dirt in a day. But there are 40,333 cubic yards in an acre, so it will take more than a year (actually, 403 days) to move enough dirt to cover one acre of ground, three feet high. Some of these mounds cover up to 20 acres and rise to the height of a ten-story building. As the saying goes, you do the math!

The social coordination required for such a task boggles the mind. And there were thousands of these mounds scattered throughout the Mississippi River valley from Louisiana to Michigan and all the way out to the Atlantic Ocean.

What moved people to drop what they were doing and go to so much trouble? And then, at the height of the Mississippian period, right when the civilization was at its peak, they suddenly stopped. Everyone seems to have decided one day to quit what was then a 5,000-year-old tradition. Why? Did the population outstrip the food supply? Did the darker aspects of the religion turn people away? Did disease rear its ugly head? Did intertribal warfare doom them to destruction?

No one knows. But where traditional archeology stops, speculation begins, even among archeologists. The common reasons given for the decline of the Mound Building civilization is that it may have been already in decline by the early 1500s when the first European explorers arrived on the scene, bringing death and devastation in the form of diseases for which the Indian population had absolutely no natural immunity. Estimates about death rates run as high as 90 percent of the population.

What must it have felt like? What was the physical and emotional impact this would have had on the people? It was a story very similar to that which was experienced by the inhabitants of the Amazon Rain Forest. A group of strange, bearded white men show up in your village one day. They look different. They act different. They speak in a foreign language and carry tools and weapons that you have never seen before. No one warned you about these people. Until the day they arrived you never knew such people existed.

After a few days, they leave. But then people start getting sick and dying. As many as nine out of every ten people in every village begin to display the unmistakable signs of a sickness that is inevitably fatal. No one can work the fields anymore. No one can care for themselves. Your mind and spirit are reeling from the shock. You question your religion, which failed to warn you about this. You are fatigued from trying to help so many sick people who can’t take care of themselves. You turn to neighboring villages and discover that every one of them, wherever the white strangers stopped in their journey, is suffering the same plight. It feels as though the world has ended.

And that feeling is not far from the truth. The world may not have ended, but your world has. By the time the sickness has run its course, there are not enough people left to continue your way of life. The fields lie barren. Food supplies run out. And eventually all you can do is pack up your meager belongings and walk into the sunset, hoping for a better life somewhere else.

A few years go by. Then decades pass, one by one, leaving in their wake nothing but the silence of nature reclaiming its own. After a while, more Europeans come. They see the mounds that are now covered with forest and draw the mistaken conclusion that no one of any substance ever lived here. They think they are the first, so they settle down and begin to reclaim what they think is virgin land, never knowing that beneath their feet lie the bones of a thriving civilization that once experienced the same passions that are common to us all.

Once in a while, the newcomers discover an artifact of some kind. They might plow over the soil that was once carried, basketful by dedicated basketful, and dumped in this specific spot to form a structure that existed to fulfill a purpose that is totally beyond the comprehension of a hard-working farmer. A forgotten spirituality lies buried beneath their feet, and life goes on until someone begins to ask questions that few care about. After all, there are families to feed. The days are too short to take time out to ponder questions about the meaning of life or a possible connection to gods foreign to a Christian religion that is now considered to be the only path to the true God. It’s easier to call the old ones “primitive and superstitious,” and leave it at that.

And so it goes.

There are other possibilities, of course. In the field of what is often referred to as “alternative” or “fringe” history--meaning a history story different than the one we have been taught--there is no end to ideas. Some of the most interesting are those of Frank Joseph. When he was the editor in chief of Ancient American magazine he devoted a lot of space to the civilization of the early American Mound Builders.

According to his theory, which he derived from sources that include both historians and psychic visionaries, 3,000 years ago a people known as the Keltoi, Kelts, or Celts, migrated into the British Isles. There they learned about the existence of the Americas, which had been known to various indigenous people of western Europe for at least 20,000 years. Groups of Kelts made the oceanic journey, arriving on the eastern shores of America at precisely the same time the mysterious Adena civilization arose. They introduced technology of various kinds, including astronomy, agriculture, iron-working, road building, and European spiritual practices that had led to the need to construct megalithic architecture.

Did the European Kelts, then, merge with the Adena, becoming the first Mound Builders?

Joseph thinks so, but his theory doesn’t end there. He believes that somewhere around 300 B.C.E., Japanese seafarers known as the Yayoi, which was another a Mound Building culture that had conquered and assimilated the Jōmon people of Japan, arrived on the west coast of America. They slowly worked their way inland, leaving telltale signs of their long passage, until they met the Adena people, who were the former Kelts from Europe. Merging into one civilization, they became what we now call the Hopewell people.

Somewhere around 400 C.E., this Hopewell culture was finally decimated by attacks from Native American tribes who had the advantages of numbers and ferocity. Centuries of intertribal warfare then transpired, until the last of the Hopewell civilization were destroyed in a great and final battle that took place at the falls of the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky.

Even that, however, didn’t mark the final destiny of the Mound Builders. Joseph believes that sometime close to 900 C.E., Mayans from the Yucatan and Central America decided to move north. They immigrated to west-central Illinois and eastern Missouri, where, building on the Adena and Hopewell ruins found there, they eventually built the great Mississippian capitol of Cahokia. Aztalan, their northern outpost in southern Wisconsin, was built around 1240 C.E.

Eventually, what Joseph now calls the neo-Mayans, having spread out to cover much of the Midwest and the whole southeastern seaboard, were forced to move, following the dictates of their sacred, prophetic calendar. They evacuated the Mississippi Valley and migrated south toward the Valley of Mexico.

Some of these conclusions mesh very nicely with those of Edgar Cayce, the famous “sleeping prophet.” Archeologists may disagree, but without definite evidence we are forced to admit that there is often a lot more emotion and opinion generated by both sides than actual fact-based conclusions.
We know the mounds are there. We think they demonstrate the need for social and political authority and structure. We assume religious motivation was the deciding organizational factor. We guess disease entered into the final demise of the culture.

But all we are definitely left with is another mysterious lost civilization.
About the Author

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

Part I: Overview and Definitions

Part II: Archaeological Evidence

Göbekli Tepe: A Time Capsule for Our Era; Baalbek of Lebanon: The Mystery of the Canaanites; Turkey's Çatalhöyük: A Victim of Climate Change; Derinkuyu: The Underground City; Mesopotamia: Built by the Gods; Zep Tepi: Precursors of the First Time; Nabta Playa: Ancient Astronomers of the Nubian Desert; Thonis: Gateway to Egypt; The Sea People; Gunung Padang; Kumari Kandam: Ancient Texts and Forgotten Civilizations; Harappa vs. Mohenjo-Daro; Minoans of Crete; Mycenaean Greece; Cucuteni-Trypillians of Ukraine, Romania and Moldova: The Eden of Eastern Europe; Karahunj; Neanderthal Ancestors; Solutrian Artists of France and Spain; Doggerland; The Megalithic Builders; Denisovan Ancestors; Dragon and Griffin Megaliths of the Altai mountains; Gornaya Shoria Megaliths; The Lost Kingdom of the Shimao Ruins; Underwater Ruins and Forgotten Peoples; Olmec of Central America; Mayan Empire; Amazon Cities in the Jungle; The Inca Nation; Nazca People of Peru; The Elongated Skulls of the Paracas People; Bolivian Enigmas; The Clovis Culture; Albans of the North Atlantic; Red Paint People of the Northeast; Bog People of Florida; Mound Builders of the Mississippi; Anasazi of the American Southwest; Easter Island; Antarctica: Structures Beneath the Ice; Tamana

Part III: Mythological Evidence

The Genesis Eden Story; The Sumerian Eden Story; The Anatolian Eden Story; The Eden of the Edda Texts; The Hopi Eden Story; The Eden of Theoretical Physics; The Journeys of Enoch; The Saqqara Bird; The Quimbaya (Tolima) Artifacts; Nazca Lines (Revisited); Rukma Vimana Texts; Flying Carpets of the Kebra Nagast; Alien Craft in Familiar Myth and Legend; Flying Shields of the American West; Of Flying Brooms and Angel Wings; Atlantis; Mu/Lemuria; Cascadia and the Lost Continent of the Pacific Northwest; Joseph Smith and Lost Civilizations of the Americas; Shin-Au-Av; Quetzalcoatl and the Ancient Gods; Cantre'r Gwaelod; Hy-Brasil; Ragnarok; Amazon Warriors; Underground Cities of Naours, Cappadocia, the Giza plateau and Grand Canyon; The Reptilian Hypothesis

Part IV: A Theory of Civilizations, Past, Future and Present

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• controversial
• Ancient mysteries
• Unexplained Phenomena
• Conspiracy Theories
• Anunaki
• Homo neanderthalensis
• Neanderthal
• Denisova hominin
• Ancient Aliens
• Body (disambiguation)
• Andrew Collins
• Lemuria
• Mount Shasta
• Spirituality
• Conspiracy theory
• Atlantis
• Göbekli Tepe
• Anunnaki
• Erich von Däniken
• Mont Shasta
• Homme de Néandertal

Informations

• Publié par: Visible Ink Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781578595570
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

Extrait

DEDICATION
T O THOSE WHO HAVE COME BEFORE A ND MADE US WHO WE ARE , A ND T O THOSE WHO WILL COME AFTER W HO WILL BE WHAT WE VE BECOME , M AY WE HAVE PROVED OURSELVES WORTHY .
C ONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Photo Sources
Preface
Introduction
PART I: OUT OF THE MISTS OF TIME
PART II: EVIDENCE IN STONE
Egypt and Other African Origins
Indonesia and Australia
India and Pakistan
Crete and Greece
Europe
China and Japan
Mesoamerica
South America
North America
The Pacific
Antarctica
PART III: EVIDENCE IN STORY
Eden
First in Flight
Lost Lands
Going Underground
Lost Gods and Warriors
PART IV: COULD WE BE NEXT?
Further Reading
Index
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
A few years ago, Cliff Dunning, the founder and host of Earth Ancients Radio , put me in touch with first Liz Leafloor and then Micki Pistorius at Ancient Origins . I wrote a few articles for them, and then a few more, and then did a few webinars, and along the way I developed a long-range friendship with both of them. Liz is in northern Canada and Micki is in South Africa, but it s always good to hear from them and catch up.
I didn t realise how influential they would become in my life until I heard a story from my wife s daughter in Eugene, Oregon. While standing in line at a grocery store, she somehow found herself engaged with another customer in a conversation about ancient civilizations. He remarked that she seemed to know a lot about the subject. Well, she said, my mother is married to Jim Willis. Oh yeah, he responded. Ancient Origins ! Cliff, Liz, and Micki, thanks for your help and may all your projects flourish.
Speaking of Ancient Origins , Liz and Micki decided I need to know two other authors who write for them. Elyn Aviva and Gary White are a talented couple who live in Spain, where they write and publish delightful and insightful books and articles that combine a host of subjects that I love to read about-travel, metaphysics, and history. Besides that, Gary is a retired music professor. What s not to love? We have developed a long-distance relationship that we hope to make face-to-face the next time they come to the States to visit relatives. Meanwhile, I love reading their books!
Andrew Collins and Graham Hancock have been an inspiration to me ever since I started reading their books. They are both deep-thinking scholars who are sometimes criticized by closed-minded traditionalists because they dare to follow information where it leads rather than where they have been taught it should go. I recommend any and all their books to anyone who is reading this one. Some are listed in my Further Reading at the back of this book.
When my book Ancient Gods was published a few years ago, I was asked if I might do an interview with George Noory on Coast to Coast Radio . To be honest, I didn t know much about George. I had seen him a few times on the Ancient Aliens TV show, but his radio program airs at 3:00 A.M . here on the east coast where I live. That s past my bedtime. But I dutifully drank some coffee, stayed up late, and sat on my South Carolina porch in the dark of night while we talked for two hours to each other and call-in listeners from around the world. At the end of that time he said something I ll never forget. Displaying a passion that went far beyond that which was needed to simply host a popular radio show, he asked me if I really, down deep in my heart, believed that we were not alone in the universe. He obviously cared, and cared deeply, about the subjects and people he covers so well. I was impressed and set about learning a lot more about George s television work as well. As a result, he doesn t know me very well, but I learned a lot about him. He has thus contributed leads for research that resulted in this book. All because of one heartfelt question from a fellow seeker.
My wife, Barbara, as always, contributed every step of the way. Likewise, my daughter, Jan, who now lives next door, just a hop, step, and jump through the woods, contributed to this project. Both ask penetrating questions and keep a tight rein on the romanticism that can easily influence hard, cold research. Thanks to you both!
Every writer needs someone who knows when to encourage and when to criticize, when to inspire and when to calculate. Such a person often serves as a literary agent. Annie Wilder fills that post for me, and she is invaluable.
Finally, to publisher Roger J necke and editor Kevin Hile at Visible Ink Press, for the fifth time now and as always, it s great working with you!
P HOTO S OURCES
Alex Alishevskikh: p. 373 .
Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin: pp. 52 , 54 .
Ammodramus (Wikicommons): p. 182 .
Baker Art Gallery: p. 187 .
CeeGee (Wikicommons): p. 212 .
Cliff (Wikicommons): p. 204 .
Demin Aleksej Barnaul: p. 134 .
Beinecke Rare Book Manuscript Library, Yale University: p. 25 .
Bjoertvedt (Wikicommons): p. 109 .
Brattarb (Wikicommons): p. 170 .
British Museum: pp. 233 , 354 , 356 .
Chenshilwood (Wikicommons): p. 21 .
Cristian Chirita: p. 108 .
James Churchward: p. 296 .
Elf (Wikicommons): p. 301 .
Eric Gaba: p. 200 .
Hairymuseummatt (Wikicommons): p. 111 .
Heraklion Archaeological Museum: p. 100 .
Adrian Hernandez: p. 38 .
Internet Archive Book Images: p. 342 .
Library of Congress: p. 186 .
Francis Lima: p. 126 .
Lkovac (Wikicommons): p. 180 .
Lorax (Wikicommons): p. 195 .
Lyricmac (Wikicommons): p. 230 .
Tyler Merbler: p. 323 .
Dawoud Khalil Messiha: p. 268 .
Gleilson Miranda / Governo do Acre: p. 117 .
Capt. Muji: p. 61 .
Museo Nacional de Arqueolog a y Ethnolog a, Guatamala: p. 8 .
NASA: pp. 11 , 92 , 103 , 372 .
NOAA: p. 174 .
Ordercrazy (Wikicommons): p. 241 .
Pattych (Wikicommons): p. 347 .
Raphodon (Wikicommons): p. 312 .
Raymbetz (Wikicommons): p. 72 .
Richerman (Wikicommons): p. 303 .
Herb Roe: p. 191 .
Sailko (Wikicommons): p. 145 .
Silver Spoon Sokpup (Wikicommons): p. 382 .
Smithsonian Institution: p. 378 .
The Royal Society: p. 135 .
Mikal Schlosser: p. 87 .
Shutterstock: pp. 37 , 43 , 49 , 59 , 67 , 82 , 94 , 105 , 128 , 131 , 144 , 151 , 153 , 154 , 163 , 166 , 169 , 207 , 220 , 229 , 235 , 252 , 259 , 262 , 282 , 310 , 315 , 318 , 330 , 337 , 345 , 359 , 361 , 369 , 384 , 387 , 393 .
Siyuwi (Wikicommons): p. 142 .
Chris Stringer: p. 114 .
Claire Taylor: p. 88 .
Tamiko Thiel: p. 255 .
Trocadero Museum: p. 206 .
U.S. Army: p. 238 .
U.S. Geological Survey: p. 178 .
U.S. National Park Service: p. 248 .
Bill Whittaker: p. 124 .
John Wiley: p. 28 .
World Imaging: p. 120 .
Zhengan (Wikicommons): p. 34 .
Zoepeperkoe (Wikicommons): p. 46 .
Zunkir (Wikicommons): p. 15 .
Public domain: pp. 3, 18 , 23 , 42 , 57 , 64 , 70 , 74 , 77 , 150 , 157 , 160 , 162 , 193 , 202 , 227 , 243 , 246 , 253 , 272 , 273 , 276 , 279 , 288 , 291 , 307 , 328 , 333 , 334 , 351 .
P REFACE
I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said- Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley
W hen it comes to exploring lost civilizations, Percy Bysshe Shelley s Ozymandias concisely and succinctly encapsulates the theme as only poetry can. An ancient King of Kings, who once sported a frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, constructed a monument to his glory-a glory he thought would last forever. But now, nothing beside remains. Were it not for an inscription on a monument, no one would remember who he was let alone what he stood for, when he ruled, or the extent of his reign. People once populated his mighty civilization, worked and worried, rejoiced and despaired, married and had children, lived and died. They all considered their lives to be normal. They assumed their culture would continue forever. It was all they ever knew.
But then it ended. It was soon covered by the lone and level sands that stretched far away into the distance. Time marched on.
For a while, perhaps, people read about the fabled civilization in their history books. But it eventually faded from history to legend, and from legend to myth. Then it was forgotten. Were it not for a decaying monument or stories told by a few elders, Ozymandias and his empire would effectively have been erased from memory.
But there survived a crumbling ruin of a stone monument. And legends spoke of past glory.
Evidence in stone. Evidence in story. It wasn t much. But it was something. And those who came after, if they were to ever learn the full story of who they were and from whence they came, needed to remember.
One of the first questions we ask as children is, Where did I come from? After receiving a superficial answer involving storks or hospitals, we usually put the subject aside and get about our lives. But the question refuses to remain filed away. It still lives on in our subconscious. Without really thinking about it, we spend a great deal of energy and time trying to answer it.
Who are we? Where did we come from?
If we turn to religion or science, we are told an origin story. But can that story be believed and accepted? Superficially, maybe, but hiding beneath the surface of our daily lives are doubts that manifest themselves in strange and twisted ways. Because we don t know where we came from we decide to at least try to leave something behind, expressed in accomplishments, family, work, money, some type of legacy we refer to as our body of work, or, at the very least, a pithy saying on a tombstone.
This is not