Questions conducted by Jaime Ortega.
Andrew Collins, is a science and history writer, who has authored a variety of books that challenge the way we perceive the past, including his best-selling The Cygnus Mystery, that delves into how ancient monuments and temples, that are still standing today, were built with an orientation towards Cygnus.
1) The biblical accounts write that before the age of Noah, (reported also by the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh) the ancients constructed with “stone” rather than on “brick” which must of come at a later age. Is it possible that Puma Punku (Bolivia), Sacsayhuanan(Peru), Xaviant Haze (Caral), Giza (Egypt), Stone Edge (England), Carnac (France), Baalbek or the city of Enoch(Lebanon); the underwater cities of Yonaguni (Japan), Old city of Dwarka (India), Bimini (Florida), Nan Magol (Guinea), the underwater city scanned in Cuba, and other lost civilizations prior to the biblical stories predate the actual flood?
The biblical Flood is an episode in the book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament. It revolves around its own religious mythos perpetuated even today by the monotheistic faiths of the Western World. On its own it cannot be put into the context of world history or geological events in time. That said, there are clear indications that the biblical Flood falls into the same category as catastrophe myth found on every continent. Most likely they are memories of the Younger Dryas impact event, which brought the world to its knees in an apocalyptic nightmare of fire, flood and destruction, which science now recognizes occurred around 10,900 BC.
If so, then do any of the sites cited here predate this terrifying event in human history? Unlikely. Only the underwater features off Bimini probably existed before this time, as some of these structures lie on ancient shorelines that antedate the Younger Dryas period, ca. 10,900-9600 BC. Dating the rest of the sites is a matter of personal belief and conjecture.
2) The Kennewick man and Luzia, are scientifically proven to predate the ethnicity of any known native American that ever roamed the American continent. In fact, both skeletons resemble that of ‘white Caucasians.’ Could the Kennewick Man found on the Columbia river in Washington, or Luzia found in Brazil that dates to 11, 500 BCE, possibly be the lost engineers of the ancient civilizations found in sites like Puma Punku, Baalbek…? In other words, could they be the actual people that died in the global flood?
Kennewick Man and the Luzia human remains found in Brazil are certainly a challenge to the understanding of the ethnicity of the first Americans. However, it is rash using terms like “white Caucasians”, especially as Kennewik Man might just as easily have originated on the Asian continent, while the Luzia human remains are regularly reported to be “negroid” in character. Unquestionably, there were migrations into the Americas from more than one point of origin, involving different human populations from different continents.
Whether the first Americans might be seen as survivors of a global flood is impossible to say, although the Younger Dryas impact event would unquestionably have displaced peoples across the globe, forcing them to move into new territories. Kennewick man lived thousands of years after this event, so his connection to this scenario is doubtful.
3) Gobekli Tepe (10.000 BCE) has astonished many modern day historians. Its located in Turkey 350 miles from Mount Ararat, close to the biblical landing of Noah. Curiously, the animals carved on the temple structure in Gobleki Tepe resemble wild animals, not found anywhere close from that geographical landmark. Another problem is that the skill to carve and geometry shown by its settlers must have come from an earlier civilization with much more experience. Personally It looks similar to flat stone structures found in Puma Punku or Stone Edge. Could the engineers of Gobleki Tepe, descend from the pre-flood civilizations that shared similitude in construction styles?
Firstly, Mount Ararat is the site where Noah’s Ark made first landfall after the Flood only in Christian tradition. Prior to the fifth century the so-called Place of Descent of the Ark was Cudi Dag (Mount Judi), near Cizre in southeast Turkey, the site revered today by Muslims, Syrian Christians, and various indigenous Kurdish sects. It was the Armenian Church who moved the location of the Place of Descent so that it might fall within their jurisdiction.
Gobekli Tepe is about 150 miles away from Cudi Dag, and the relationship is tantalizing. Is it possible that Gobekli Tepe was almost a Noah’s Ark in stone, preserving the memory of some golden age before the catastrophe events of the Younger Dryas impact event of ca. 10,900 BC? I think the answer is yes.
Moreover, there has to be a good chance that the carving skills of the Gobekli builders survived from an age anteceding the Younger Dryas impact. However, the bigger mystery is where the Gobekli builders came from, who exactly they were, and why exactly the temple complex was constructed some 12,000 years ago, matters dealt with in some detail within my new book Gobekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods.
4) Not far away from Gobleki Tepe the style of rock carving and sacrificial rituals is almost identical on sites excavated like Çayönü, Nevalı Çori, Hallan Çemi or Körtik Tepe in Turkey, Nemrik and Qermez Dere in Northern Iraq and Mureybet, Jerf el Ahmar, Tell Abr and Tell Qaramel in Northern Syria. Could these civilizations or large settlements have progressively sparked the begging of the Mesopotamian age considering the location from what seems to have originally stemmed in Gobekli Tepe?
There is little question that the creation of high profile ritual complexes like Gobekli Tepe in southeast Anatolia catalyzed events that led to both the Neolithic revolution, which began in the same region around 11,000 years ago, and also the genesis of the Mesopotamian civilization.
Even Professor Klaus Schmidt, the lead archaeologist at Gobekli Tepe, admits that Mesopotamian stories regarding the birth of the Anunna gods of heaven and earth, also known as the Anunnaki, might have had their inception at Gobekli Tepe. He talks about this in his book on the site, and even suggests it should be identified with the Mesopotamian primeval mound known as the Du-ku, which formed part of a larger mountain complex known as kharsag, or hursag.
Here, we are told, was the birthplace of the Anunna gods. He also was where sheep and grain (that is, animal husbandry and the earliest agriculture) was given to humankind for the first time by the Anunna gods.
5) Carbon 14, has a few problems. It can date the age of the rock (even though cooled volcanic lava, wrongly estimates the age showing a process of millions of years instead, after it solidifies) , but Carbon 14 does not date the actual carving of the rock. Could it be that we have dated wrongly many of the ancient civilizations found and mixed them all together?
Measuring the amounts of Carbon 14 present in organic materials to determine the age of a site has been thwart with problems ever since it was first used in 1950s. Archaeologists are still debating on the exact levels of Carbon 14 that contributed to its presence, in order for its release to occur in the so-called half-life process, creating more than one method of recalibration of raw Carbon 14 dates. Indeed, it is considered that all Carbon-14 dates generated and published before 2004 should today be seen as suspect.
Recalibration charts can alter raw radiocarbon dates older than 10,000 years, i.e., the epoch of Gobekli Tepe, by as much as 2,000 to 5,000 years, something that has been difficult for some prehistorians and archaeologists to handle. I tried to avoid recalibrated dates in books such as Gateway to Atlantis (2000), but now realize that only by working with them can you obtain a truly synchronized vision of the past, especially if everyone else uses them.
They don’t really change the past, just make it even more intriguing as it suggests that the dating of many sites might be inaccurate by hundreds if not thousands of years. That said, confusion still rains, which is why you will see conflicting dates, even in modern academic books, on the dates for geological events and the ages of humankind (such the end of the Pleistocene, the Ice Age, which some books cite as 10,000 years ago and others as 12,000 years ago. I would certainly go for the later figure).
6) Are historians troubled by these ancient archaeological sites that don’t fit the accepted model of history? Is there a reason why historians won’t accept certain ages that surpass those that cannot be explained with factual written documentation? Is there an agenda?
Archaeologists are rarely troubled by claims of lost civilizations, or conflicting dates regarding the construction of ancient and mysterious places around the world. In honesty, they mainly ignore such claims, whether they be true or false.
One of the reasons for this is that they simply do not have the time or resources to suitably counter them, or check them out. Plus there is the fact that apathy, and a wish to remain with convention, means that nothing is every done.
7) As a student when I attended university, I was taught that ancient massive carvings and specially large massive stone geometric blocks where shaped by utilizing chisels and pickets with the help of thousands of workers. But that is impossible with pink granite, which seems to have been the preference of choice for many ancient civilizations to build massive structures. Science itself shows that iron, or copper tools would break when trying to shape granite blocks. Did they use technology?
Copper and iron tools would never have been used on their own to cut, shape or polish granite, or any hard mineral of this kind. It is the mixture of sand, usually made up of fine particles of quartz and silicia, that do all the work when mixed with a slurry in order to cause the reduction and fragmentation of hard materials.
Having said this, I think there is ample evidence that high-powered lathes, with extreme hard cutting tools, perhaps made of sapphire or even diamond, were used in places like ancient Egypt. I would also not rule out forms of sonic drilling and cutting as well, although this theory remains a matter of speculation at this time.
8) Transportation has been another mystery, far known from the accepted model that proposes using tree trunks to move massive objects. Many historical accounts including sites found in Arizona, Ancient Egypt, Cambodia, Mexico and other historical sites have shown carvings, figurines and paintings of what seems to be dinosaur like creatures on those eras. Not to mention the vast amount of legends and dragons found in almost every culture. Despite what evolution theorizes, could it make more sense these ancients used dinosaurs to erect and transport many of their massive stones as opposed to what the mainstream accepted model proposes? Also many ancient carvings show humans who were bigger in size as opposed to others, especially when comparing the size of the Pharaoh, or the Sumerian king in many depictions. Would a world of giants help to understand the construction of many of these ancient sites and would the past make more sense?
Stones showing humans in the presence of dinosaurs are fake. Period. Dragons, possibly. But not dinosaurs. There are too many fake collections out there, which people take far too seriously.
As for moving large blocks, either we have to accept that sheer force moved huge stone blocks weighing hundreds of tonnes a piece, or some form of sonic technology was employed in the ancient world. I would go with the former, but not dismiss the latter.
9) Pyramids are found in many ancient cultures. Was the world more interconnected than historians previously thought, just as much as sky scrappers are a signature of modern global interconnection?
I think the world was far more interconnected in prehistoric times, even before the end of the last Ice Age. There were cultures, peoples, and populations who were on the move all the time, either through necessity, trading and even exploitation. This is one of the reasons why similarities in architecture will always be seen at sites all over the world.
Yet in addition to this, we must accept the idea of independent innovation, meaning that human populations can develop new technologies independently. This might tell us why pyramids occur worldwide (even though their purpose varies from continent to continent).
The idea, first proposed in 1884 by American congressman and writer Ignatius Donnelly that there was a mother civilization behind all such civilizations, and that it should be identified with Plato’s Atlantis, is now discredited. No such mother civilization has been found to exist, although many smaller ones did arise in various parts of the world, and it is their remnants that we continue to uncover today.
