Six Great Enigmas of Ancient Civilisations

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Ancient Civilisations:

Six Great Enigmas

By WILL HART & ROBERT BERRINGER

We stand today at an unprecedented turning point in human history. In

recent years two versions of ancient history have formed. One, we

shall call `alternative' history, the other we shall refer to

as `official' history. The former ponders over a variety of anomalies

and tries to make sense out of the corpus of evidence, i.e., the

pyramids and timelines, why they were built, by whom and when. The

latter conducts digs, catalogues pottery shards, and tries to defend

its proposal there are no enigmas, and virtually everything is

explained.

 

At one point perhaps as late as fifteen years ago these two camps

seem to be engaged in an informal dialogue. That all changed after,

1) the Great Sphinx redating controversy caught Egyptologists off

guard and, 2) the impact of Chris Dunn's book The Giza Power Plant:

Technologies of Ancient Egypt at the end of the last decade.

 

There is no more dialogue and no more polite, gloves on debate. The

proponents of `official' history have taken an increasingly political

and ideological approach to the issue. They now do little more than

offer pronouncements of the historical `truth' on the one hand, and

denounce of all those who dare challenge officialdom on the other.

 

In this context we offer evidence that our `scholars', the

gatekeepers who control our institutions of `higher learning', refuse

to consider.

 

The Great Pyramid – Precision Engineering

 

This colossal structure, the last of the seven ancient wonders and

the largest stone building in the world, still provokes awe,

controversy and a plethora of theories that inspire bitter debate to

this day. Instead of going over the well-established mysteries, we

would like to shine new light on this important enigma that appears

out of place in `Stone Age' Egypt.

 

The real challenge the Great Pyramid still poses to us in the opening

decade of the Third Millennium is the physical plant itself.

Theorists have gone on endlessly speculating about how it was built

and the metaphysical, cultural and religious significance and/or

symbolism behind its construction. Though several authors have

offered tantalising possibilities, none have been conclusively

proven.

 

The mystery remains unsolved.

 

To begin with, the massive size – the staggering volume and weight of

the building blocks – remain problematic. With an estimated 2.3

million blocks with a weight of about 4 million tons, the pyramid is

two-thirds the mass of the Hoover Dam. The sheer size and the numbers

of blocks that had to be quarried and moved into place, presents

numerous architectural, construction and engineering headaches.

 

These issues have been raised time and again, yet are still

unsettled. It is time to move on and define the even more difficult

issues. We consider the core `hard' problems to be those that reflect

precision engineering and assembly line manufacturing accomplished on

a massive scale. The primitive tools scenario concocted by

Egyptologists does not explain the following tasks:

 

1. Creating precision-cut casing blocks weighing 16 tons, fitted

together and held by a super-glue mortar that maintained a tight seal

forming a nearly seamless shell.

2. Leveling the 13-acre limestone bedrock base to a degree of

accuracy only recently achieved with laser technology.

3. Squaring the base to True North with minimal deviation.

4. Excavating the `Descending Passage' 350 feet into solid bedrock at

a 26-degree angle while keeping the tunnel arrow-straight for its

length.

5. Bringing the massive 48-story pyramid together around complex

internal structures, retaining the true shape to enable the builders

to form the apex. (These internal structures include four enigmatic

ventilation shafts and a coffer in the King's Chamber that is too

large to have been moved through the opening. It shows evidence of

having been cut with a jewel-tip saw.)

6. Extensive usage of different types of machined granite inside the

Great Pyramid chambers.

 

The father of modern Egyptology, Sir Flinders Petrie, marvelled at

the precision and size of the casing blocks. He carefully measure the

blocks and found that "the mean thickness of the joints are .020 and

therefore, the mean variation of the cutting of the stone from a

straight line and from a true square, is but .01 on length of 75

inches up the face, an amount of accuracy equal to most modern

opticians' straight-edges of such a length."

 

The modern international engineering firm of Daniel, Mann, Johnson &

Menendhall conducted a forensic analysis of the Great Pyramid. Their

findings are evaluated in an article published in Civil Engineering.

 

The pyramid was oriented with its major sides either north-south or

east-west. This in itself was a remarkable undertaking, given the

accuracy to which it was done, because the Egyptians had to perform

the work using astronomical or solar observations – the compass had

not yet been invented. The dimensions of the pyramid are extremely

accurate and the site was levelled within a fraction of an inch over

the entire base. This is comparable to the accuracy possible with

modern construction methods and laser levelling.1

 

The summary speaks volumes between the lines. The problems with the

Descending Passage are numerous. For starters the tunnel is less than

4 x 4 feet, enough for no more than one excavator wielding a hammer-

stone at any given moment. How would our proposed digging crew

negotiate the space in the suffocating darkness once they had dug

down 50 feet and more? In addition how would the 26-degree angle be

set and maintained without lights or levels? The lack of carbon

deposits on walls and ceiling indicate that torches were not used.

 

Once again, Petrie measured the passage and found an amazing accuracy

of .020 of an inch over 150 feet and a mere .250 inch over 350 feet

of its constructed and excavated length. We submit that this passage

with its smooth surfaces, squared shape, and accurate angle could not

have been tunnelled with primitive tools and methods.

 

The Great Pyramid remains the world's greatest wonder and ancient

enigma. We suggest researchers should pay more attention to these

details and ask about the materials used inside the Great Pyramid,

especially near the ventilation shafts. We now have two doors

blocking a very important shaft, the one that pointed to the star

Sirius in 2450 BCE.

 

The Origin Of Dogs – Biogenetic engineering

 

Now we turn to a mystery that nearly equals the pyramid, though it is

a little known conundrum hidden in the mists of remote antiquity. Let

us start with a simple question that appears to have an obvious

answer: what is a dog? It turns out geneticists in the past decade

have shown the answer is not so obvious. In fact, generations of

anthropologists, archaeologists and wildlife biologists turned out to

be dead wrong when it came to the origins of "man's best friend".

 

Prior to DNA studies conducted in the 1990s, the generally accepted

theory posited that dogs branched off from a variety of wild canids,

i.e., coyotes, hyenas, jackals, wolves and so on, about 15,000 years

ago. The results of the first comprehensive DNA study shocked the

scholarly community. The study found that all dog breeds can be

traced back to wolves and not other canids. The second part of the

finding was even more unexpected – the branching off occurred from 40-

150,000 years ago.

 

Why do these findings pose a problem? We have to answer that question

with another question: how were dogs bred from wolves? This is not

just difficult to explain, it is impossible. Do not be fooled by the

pseudo-explanations put forth by science writers that state our Stone

Age ancestors befriended wolves and somehow (the procedure is never

articulated) managed to breed the first mutant wolf, the mother of

all dogs. Sorry, we like dogs too, but that is what a dog is.

 

The problems come at the crucial stage of taking a male and female

wolf and getting them to produce a subspecies (assuming you could

tame and interact with them at all). Let us take this one step

further by returning to our original question, what is a dog? A dog

is a mutated wolf that only has those characteristics of the wild

parent, which humans find companionable and useful. That is an

amazing fact.

 

Think about those statements for a moment. If you are thinking that

dogs evolved naturally from wolves, that is not an option. No

scientist believes that because the stringent wolf pecking order and

breeding rituals would never allow a mutant to survive, at least that

is one strong argument against natural evolution.

 

Now, if our Paleolithic ancestors could have pulled off this feat,

and the actual challenges posed by the process are far more taxing,

then wolf/dog breeders today certainly should have no problem

duplicating it. But like the Great Pyramid, that does not seem to be

the case. No breeders have stepped up to the plate claiming they can

take two pure wolves and produce a dog sans biogenetic engineering

techniques.

 

The evolution of the domesticated dog from a wild pack animal appears

to be a miracle! It should not have happened. This is another

unexplained enigma.

 

Mohenjo Daro – Civil Engineering

 

Since indoor plumbing did not arrive in modern societies to any

extent until the 20th century, and urban planning has still not been

adopted much to this date in history, what we find in the ancient

city of Mohenjo Daro is anomalous indeed.

 

This city in the Indus Valley was built on a grid system about 4,500

years ago, obviously planned out and drawn up before the first brick

was laid. It had houses, some with indoor plumbing, a granary, baths,

an assembly hall and towers all made out of standard size bricks. The

streets were about eight to ten feet wide on average, and were built

with well-engineered drainage channels.

 

Mohenjo Daro was divided into two parts; the Citadel was on the upper

level and included an elaborate tank called the Great Bath that was

made of fine quality brickwork and drains. The Great Bath was 40 feet

long and 8 feet deep, a huge public facility by any standards. A

giant granary, a large residential building, and several assembly

halls were also on this upper level.

 

The Great Bath was made watertight by the use of two layers of brick,

lime-cement and then finally sealed with bitumen (tar). The bath

included a shallow section for children.

 

We should wonder how an ancient culture of which nothing is known,

not even their language, created this sophisticated city at a point

in time many thousands of years ahead of the curve? Civil engineers

do not crawl out of thatched-roof huts able to draw up plans for a

complex urban environment. We need to address the following question

to archaeologists and historians:

 

1. Where are the cities that demonstrate the path of urban

development, social and technical organisation, leading to Mohenjo

Daro?

2. How do you explain the sudden emergence of a complex society when

99.99% of the rest of humanity were living primitively?

 

These issues cannot be brushed aside with some arrogant pretence that

the questions have already been addressed and answered by digging up

and labelling pottery shards and other artefacts. We have been and

are being overly indulgent with our "soft sciences" regarding their

cavalier assertions about having all the answers. In fact, they have

very few, so why are they throwing stones at independent researchers

from behind glass towers?

 

Extraordinarily little is known about the Indus Valley civilisation

that once spanned nearly a thousand miles with other cities matching

the description of Mohenjo Daro.

 

We file this under our list of great enigmas and challenge orthodox

scholars to prove differently as with the first two of our mysteries.

 

We note that the Indus Valley civilisation was contemporary with the

Great Pyramid. It is often said this was one of the first three

civilisations, having a written script that has never been

deciphered. Now we turn next to the mother of all civilisations,

Sumer.

 

Sumeria – The Source Of Civilisation

 

Are we missing something or are our historians looking at our

earliest civilisations through a strange and distorted lens? Like

Egypt and the Indus Valley, the biblical `Land of Shinar' – the

birthplace of Abraham – was a brutally hot, largely barren, empty

desert with a mighty river cutting a swath through it. Does this

sound like the magnet that would attract late Stone Age tribes to

hunker down and pull wonders out of a hat?

 

In fact, historians thought Shinar was a piece of biblical fiction

until the mid-19th century, but now they know everything about it

with complete certitude that we, the unwashed masses, dare not

question. Nonetheless, we encourage readers to maintain an attitude

of healthy skepticism and dare to question `official history'.

 

As is the case with the culture that built the cities of the Indus

Valley, no one knows who the ancient Sumerians were or where they

came from. They called themselves `the black-headed ones' and spoke a

strange language that was unrelated to the languages of the Semitic

tribes in the region. Some linguists note a similarity between the

Sumerian language and that of the Basques, another anomalous culture.

 

We find it curious that any primitive peoples would choose the

rigours of a hostile desert environment to settle in and build a

civilisation. Why not a gentle river in a forested mountain valley?

Especially in light of the fact that Sumeria contained very few

resources, no forests, no minerals, not even the rocks that were

plentiful in Egypt.

 

How are we to explain the fact this mysterious culture managed to

invent all of the core components of civilisation under such

restrictive conditions? It occurs to us that a culture would need

minerals like copper, gold, silver and tin immediately available to

experiment with over the course of generations in order to create

process metallurgy. There is nothing simple or accidental about

making the connection between raw ores, the metals they contain, and

how to reduce them out of their native state using high heat.

 

Nevertheless, the Sumerians not only figured out geology, how to

obtained the ore, knew the levels of heat needed and how to build

kilns to achieve it, they also took very different metals and created

the first alloy, bronze. As metal-smiths were performing these feats,

other citizens were apparently creating the wheel, building cities,

ziggurats, inventing writing, movable type, the ox-drawn plow, cereal

crop agriculture, and advanced mathematics, to mention the most

notable of their innovations.

 

Something is wrong with this picture. Most human beings were counting

using their fingers, if at all, hunting animals and gathering plants

for their meals. Yet, we find the Sumerians in classrooms learning

the principles of the sexigesimal math system. Yes, the very same 60-

base system we use today to keep track of hours, minutes and seconds.

This advanced system was the first to reveal that a circle has 360

degrees and can be subdivided using 60, 30, 15, 12, etc., all

fractions of the root number.

 

Teotihuacán – Anomalous Technical Evidence

 

Teotihuacán, in Mexico, is an immense, even overwhelming

archaeological site, oriented along a twin axis. In the 1960s a team

of archaeologists and surveyors mapped out the entire complex in

great detail. The resultant map revealed an urban grid centred around

two principal, almost perpendicular, alignments.

 

>From the Pyramid of the Moon at the north end, the complex extends

south along the Avenue of the Dead beyond the Ciudadela and Great

Compound complexes for about 3.2 kilometres. To this north-south axis

we must add an east-west alignment that led from a point near the

Pyramid of the Sun to a spot of prime astronomical significance on

the western horizon.

 

Anthony Aveni, an astronomer-anthropologist, discovered that on the

day the Sun passes directly overhead in the spring of the Northern

Hemisphere (May 18), the Pleiades star cluster makes its first annual

predawn appearance. It was at this point on the western horizon that

the Pleiades set, and the builders aimed the east-west axis.

 

Additionally, the Sun also sets at this point on the horizon on

August 12 – the anniversary of the beginning of the current

Mesoamerican calendar cycle (5th Sun) – determined by a consensus of

academic and independent scholars to have begun on August 12, 3114

BCE.

 

It is very clear Teotihuacán was laid out according to a set of

alignments that reflected celestial, geographic, as well as geodetic

relationships. Walking along the avenue from one pyramid to another,

up the steps to the top, and surveying the site from a multitude of

angles, one is struck by the sense of being in the middle of some

vast geometric matrix.

 

Teotihuacán was the first true urban centre in the Americas. At its

peak around 500 CE, it boasted a population of an estimated 200,000.

George E. Stuart, archaeologist and the editor of National Geographic

magazine sums up our ignorance:

 

We speak of it with awe, as we do the pyramids of Egypt, but we still

know next to nothing about the origins of the Teotihuacános, what

language they spoke, how their society was organised, and what caused

their decline.2

 

As for one the most anomalous of artefacts on the planet, in the

1900s archaeologists discovered a sheet of mica in the upper tiers of

the Pyramid of the Sun. This was no ho-hum pottery shard to catalogue

and file away in a dusty box, yet that is about how archaeologists

treated the find. To anyone with even a smattering of technical

knowledge, discovering a large sheet of mica in an ancient pyramid

site comes as a shock. In fact, it is one of the great `smoking guns'

that turn archaeologists mum.

 

Mica is an inflammable and non-conductive mineral that grows in

fairly weak plate-like structures. It is not at all useful as a

structural building material. NASA uses it as a radiation shield in

space vehicles. Mica is also utilised in electronic components and

microwave ovens, and it is a good shield for electromagnetic

radiation, like radio waves. Like the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of

the Sun has a subterranean cavity under the middle of the pyramid. A

large pyramid with layers of thick mica would be an excellent EMI

shield.

 

Its placement in the complex raises questions that we could only

answer today after the development of electronic, atomic and space

age technologies.

 

Thick sheets of mica were also found by archaeologists about 400

meters down the avenue from the Sun Pyramid, these precision-cut

sheets were of considerable size: 27.5 meters square. They were

located under a rock-slab floor of a complex now called "the Mica

Temple".

 

What possible reason could the builders have had for including a

layer of mica in any structure? It was obviously not decorative. To

add greatly to the growing mystery, the particular mica used was

traced to Brazil. Now we are getting in deep. How would a supposedly

indigenous "Stone Age" culture know that mica existed 3200 kilometres

away in the jungles of Brazil? Not only that, how did they transport

these large sheets over that long distance intact without wheeled

vehicles? Surely not via relay teams on foot travelling overland! No

large seagoing boats or ports have ever been found in ancient Mexico.

 

High Technology In Stone Age Peru

 

Lake Titicaca borders Bolivia and Peru in the Andes. The highest

large lake in the world, there are many signs it was once exposed to

the ocean. Megalithic structures like the Gateway of the Sun in

Tiahuanacu, Bolivia, also indicate a long lost past. The gateway was

carved out of one solid block, the hard way to make a gate.

 

Moving northward near Cuzco, Peru, we find even more large,

impressive and mysterious structures. Here we find walls built with

complex jigsaw type megalithic blocks similar to the more familiar

walls found at nearby Machu Picchu. Some of the megalithic structures

contain complex cut-rocks weighing over 100 tons; a few were joined

together by bronze clamps. Some of the bronze had obviously been

poured in place, a skill not available in pre-Columbian Peru.

 

Like Sumer, the high Andes is an unlikely location for Stone Age

cities, evidence of advanced technologies, and seminal agricultural

discoveries. It is well established that the region around Tiahuanco,

at 12,500 feet elevation, had been turned into a highly productive

agricultural zone. That was achieved by the building of dikes, dams,

canals and raised beds that created microclimates which protected the

plants from frost.

 

We have attempted to show our planet is full of ancient wonders and

mysteries that have yet to be solved. You can find more information

as well as our theories on who and what created these enigmas in our

books, The Genesis Race (by Will Hart) and Ancient Gods and Their

Mysteries: Will They Return in 2012 AD? (by Robert Berringer).

 

Footnotes:

 

1. `Program Management BC', Civil Engineering, June 1999, Craig

Smith, P.E., www.pubs.asce.org/ceonline/0699feat.html

 

2. `The Timeless Vision of Teotihuacán', National Geographic

Magazine, December 1995

 

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