LOST CIVILISATION

 INTRODUCTION

Much thought has gone into the idea that history may not have got the genesis of civilisation correct. But this is totally ignored by academe. Historians and archaeologists are not to blame for this, as such. They can only work with the evidence before them. And the evidence in favour of an alternative genesis is slight.

 The problem becomes worse with the role played by pseudoscholars. Personally, I believe they play an important role, going to places others fear to tread. But so often they take the slight evidence available and sensationalise it out of all proportion. Is there any wonder historians and archaeologists run a mile from any form of speculation? They may be wrong – they may feel they are wrong themselves – but if understanding of an alternate genesis of civilisation is to be had, it must be measured and sensible.

Here, I hope I do go forward in a measured and sensible way. Chances are historians and archaeologists will still class me as a pseudoscholar, but that is just snobbery. After all, I’m not a historian or archaeologist. And if I’m accepted as speaking sense, what’s the point of them training in the first place?

What follows are my impressions on the possibility of a lost world that was the genesis of civilisation. If you agree or disagree, or have something to add, join the debate. I must begin with that word that is anathema to historians and archaeologists. Stay calm. Atlantis.

(c) Anthony North, December 2006

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HOW TO CREATE A CHARACTER

Stories need characters, but if you simply match the character to the story, then it will fail. To create a successful character you need to be much more subtle, and take advantage of a rich storytelling culture that has been around for millennia.
We are told that stereotypical characters are cliché, and this is quite true. But an advance on the stereotype can provide a character that can literally get under the skin of the reader, and if successful you’re a winner straight away.
It is all to do with the archetype. The psychologist Carl Jung realized that archetypal characters exist in dream and myth. Principal archetypes are the sage, the mother, the hero, the child, the seductress and the trickster.
You will find them throughout myth. The sage ranges from Jupiter to our image of God. Now guess who he is in Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. Why are those characters so good? Because they take their form from myth.
Throughout life we constantly soak up images of these mythological archetypes, and we do so because, in reality, they are expressions of stages of our lives. The mythological character is our psyche writ large.
The writer who can successfully transfer this image to a story is helped by a lifetime’s enculturation. Consider the hero of myth, the loner, coming from nowhere, vanquishing the monster and transforming people’s lives. Hercules? Or James Bond.

Click Writing Index for more writing advice.

© Anthony North, November 2006

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Sustainability, or sustainable development, is the environmentalist’s call to industry. At present, industry looks to the environment and takes what it wants in order to make a profit. It has no real regard for what it is taking, or the effect on the planet.
Sustainability requires the industrialist to treat natural resources in the same way he treats his bank account. A healthy economy requires capital to be retained, which earns interest that can be spent. If you use capital, the interest declines.
Natural resources work in the same way. Any product, animate or inanimate, has a ‘capital’ which produces an ‘interest’ which can be used. For instance, the interest of a fish stock or forest is a percentage of what it is can replenish itself.
If the amount taken from a natural resource is above the amount it can naturally replenish, then the overall species cannot be sustained. As such, continual use of the capital will eventually remove the resource from the planet/

© Anthony North, November 2006

ATLANTIS

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Did Atlantis once exist? We first hear of Atlantis in the ‘Timaeus’ and ‘Critias’; dialogues by the Greek philosopher Plato, written about 350BC. Claiming to have heard the story from Solon, who heard it from a priest of ancient Egypt, Atlantis was a fantastic island beyond the ‘Pillars of Hercules.’
Existing in the deep past, it had an ideal government and boasted immense wealth and power. Having superior technology, the Atlanteans were the ultimate of humanity, but eventually their growing corruptness led to their destruction, the island eventually sinking below the sea.
Derided by later Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, the story was seen as a simple myth until 1882 when US Congressman Ignatius Donnelly took an interest. Donnelly was fascinated by the similarities between ancient Egyptian culture and that of Central and South America.
Arguing that both cultures had a single source, he theorised that they were the products of the survivors of the destruction of Atlantis which, to him, was located in the Atlantic Ocean.
About the same time, the medium and founder of the Theosophical Society, Madame Helena Blavatsky argued that the Atlanteans were a psychically developed people known as the Fourth Root Race. A previous evolutionary stage of man, they were an expression of the assent (or descent?) from celestial beings.
At the turn of the century, occult philosopher Rudolf Steiner advanced the psychical nature of the Atlanteans by describing them as physically weak but with immense intellect, memory and psychic powers that enabled them to control the universal life force that permeated all things.
Descended from the fabled Lemurians who communicated telepathically, the At1anteans had a greater grasp on the physicality of the wor1d, and devised the first languages.
American medium Edgar Cayce was the next to enter the Atlantis debate. From the ‘life readings’ of 1,600 people, he realised that many individuals were reincarnated Atlanteans. He, himself, had been an Atlantean in a previous life, as well as a high priest of Egypt 10,600 years ago.
To him, the Atlanteans gained power through the use of crystals, but their increasing materialism and self-indulgence led to their destruction. As to the location of Atlantis, he cited Bimini in the Bahamas, close to the Florida coast.
In 1940 he predicted that part of Atlantis would rise up from the sea in 1968. This did not occur, but in that year strange, geometric ruins were discovered on the sea bed close to Bimini. Controversy reins to this day whether the structures are natural or man made.
It is easy to dismiss the ideas of Blavatsky, Steiner and Cayce as wild speculations, and in the late 1960s this seemed to be confirmed with the theory of a Greek archaeologist who offered a logical and almost certainly true foundation to the Atlantis myth.
Around 1500BC a huge volcanic eruption destroyed the island of Santorini, laying waste coastal regions of eastern Greece and northern Crete. Practically destroying the pre-Greek Minoan culture, survivors went on to populate Greece and laid the foundations of Greek society.
The Minoans were known to be advanced for their time, and when added to the known sinking of Santorini, it is attractive to see this as the genesis of Atlantean mythology. Until we bring into the debate the Giza Plateau in Egypt.

(c) Anthony North, December 2006

GIZA PLATEAU

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The Giza Plateau in Egypt has added an extra dimension to the story of a lost civilisation, suggesting that there was, indeed, an advanced society far earlier than archaeologists and historians are prepared to accept.
The Giza Plateau is best known for its line of three pyramids guarded by the magnificent Sphinx. The largest of the pyramids is known as the Great Pyramid of Giza, built around 2500BC by the pharoah Khufu, or Cheops in Greek.
The only survivor of the Seven Wonders of the World, some 2,300,000 blocks are used in its construction, which would have taken 100,000 labourers twenty years to complete. Its four corners have been confirmed to align with the four points of the compass and its height in relation to its base suggests that the builders knew the value of pi.
Inside the pyramid are the King’s and Queen’s Chambers, each of which have a northern and southern shaft leading to the extremities of the construction. In March 1993, German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink brought his small robotic video-camera, Upuant 2 to Giza.
Upuaut 2 was sent up the southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber. It managed to travel just sixty metres before it found its path blocked by a limestone door with two copper handles. Since then, another door has been found behind the first.
Speculations have arisen from the work of writers Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval. They noticed that one of the southern shafts pointed directly to the star, Sirius, whilst the other southern shaft pointed to the lowest of three stars in the belt of Orion.
Intrigued by this precision, Bauval went on to notice that the three stars in the belt of Orion are not perfectly aligned, but the smaller star is off-set. Looking to the lay-out of the three pyramids at Giza, he noticed that the third pyramid was equally off-set. It was thus argued that in the pyramids, the ancient Egyptians were attempting to replicate the heavens upon Earth. However, the story was not as simple as that.
The pyramids are out of line with the belt of Orion. However, using computer technology, they showed that the pyramids would have been perfectly aligned in 10,500BC, long before the accepted genesis of Egyptian culture. So whilst it is correct to assume that the pyramids were built around 2500BC, the site had been first used 8,000 years earlier.
Further controversy has arisen from a new understanding of the Sphinx. This huge half man, half lion structure is thought to have been built at the same time as the pyramids. However, the American self-styled Egyptologist John Anthony West disagrees.
The Sphinx has a number of vertical fissures which, claimed West, can only be explained by water erosion. As significant rainfall capable of creating this effect has not occurred in Egypt since 6000BC, then the Sphinx must be at least 8,000 years old.
Geologist Dr Robert Schoch of Boston went on to confirm such damage as due to water erosion. West then brought in seismography specialist Dr Thomas Dobecki from Houston in an attempt to find out exactly when the Sphinx was carved. Dobecki went on to prove that the structure had been built in distinct stages over at least 3,000 years.

(c) Anthony North, December 2006

A FORGOTTEN WORLD

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The pyramids of Giza suggest historians and archaeologists have the date of the genesis of civilization too late. And other intriguing evidence exists from around the world.
In the Americas, myths exist of white gods with beards coming at the dawn of their cultures by boats – the Aztec Quetzalcoatl and the Inca Viracocha, to name but two. Skeletal remains, such as Kennewick Man in Washington State, have been found, arguably Caucasian and dating back to the 7th millennium BC.
The mother culture of the Aztecs, the Olmecs, worked huge stone heads which are clearly negroid in appearance. In some regions of Peru, inland boats are made in the exact way as depicted in ancient Egypt, with the high prows of sea going vessels. Why, if they are used only in lakes?
Such things hint at the existence of a cosmopolitan sea-faring civilisation in the deep past. Indeed, basic monuments and cities are now being found off coastal regions, the Bimini Road under water in the Caribbean Sea fuelling controversy, not to mention the Yonaguni ’structure’ off Okinawa, with suspiciously man made looking trenches and holes.
To the scientist, this is all rubbish, but could there have been a lost civilisation in deep antiquity? And if so, what cataclysm destroyed it? Possibly there could have been. But maybe it is time to look at the possibility with a touch of reason rather than exotic theory. For instance, did it end in a huge cataclysm?
If we consider a single Atlantis, unluckily hit by a timely meteor, it could have. But logic dictates that if such a civilisation did exist, then it would have been a social movement involving different peoples throughout the world.
In an anthropological sense, any such civilisation would have been widespread, having evolved in a similar way to various peoples during the agricultural revolution. Am I alone in thinking that if a major cataclysm had struck, this more advanced people would have stood a better chance of survival than the more primitive hunter/gatherers?
Such a possibility discounts a global cataclysm. Something else must have been involved in its extinction. And the obvious answer is the rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age. And this offers a major clue to what such a lost civilisation could have been.
Evolutionists are now fairly convinced that the Out of Africa hypothesis is correct, in that man evolved into Homo Sapien in Africa and dispersed around the world. However, it has left them in a quandary.
The only way that man could have dispersed as he did would have involved a very early use of boats, thousands of years before we presently accept such technology existed. But would such technology have required a highly advanced man?
Not at all. Simple observation would have shown him that a log floats on water. Allow a couple of centuries of head scratching and he would have realised that if he sat on it, he would float too. Add a couple of millenia of innovation and he’d have begun to gouge it out.
Such an obvious process can be seen as simpler than the much more technical ability to light a fire, which man also achieved rather early. Of course, learning to navigate by the stars would have been a little trickier, but the present re-assessment of many ancient monuments is leading in the direction of man realising star navigation as early as lO,500BC.
Hence, we can see a much earlier degree of sea-faring skills, allowing man to populate the globe. But what would be the main repercussion of such a dispersal of mankind?
As different migrations reached foreign shores, the majority of men would revert to the old hunter/gatherer ways. But human nature dictates that some would be fascinated by the seas. What would the outcome of this be?
Bearing in mind the importance of procuring food, we can argue that, throughout the globe – and before the end of the last ice age – a rudimentary fisheries revolution broke out, much earlier than the agricultural revolution. Indeed, bearing in mind boats could already have existed, catching a fish is far easier than planting and cultivating.
But such a fisheries revolution would still have required specialisation and the regulation of society into a rudimentary civilisation. Similarly, early ports would have been static far earlier than the village communities involved in early agriculture.
As this static lifestyle led to monumental building in the agricultural revolution, we can argue that a possible earlier fisheries revolution would have caused a similar outbreak of building skill, the final temples no doubt reflecting star charts in the same way that agricultural based temples reflected the path of the sun.
We now have all the elements for a possible lost civilisation. Technologically advanced on the inland hunter/gatherer, a fisheries civilisation would not, however, be overly advanced. They would simply have reached the stage of monument building and social hierarchy at an earlier stage to that presently admitted.
Then, between about 12,000-10,000 years ago, the last ice age ended, causing a slow but inevitable rise in sea levels. Swamped, these early fisheries societies would have been forced inland, their temples and communities submerged under the sea.
Their survivors would have been assimilated or wiped out, the only survivors to prosper being the hierarchy of the architect-priest. Going on to teach building skills to the hunter/gatherer, who was just beginning to realise agriculture, they could well have laid out the first temple sites, reflecting, as they did in the past, the stars.
This is, of course, supposition. But if correct, early temples are lying just off-shore, waiting to be discovered. Has science the guts to go out and look?

© Anthony North, December 2006

CRIME & SOCIETY

When Margaret Thatcher said there was no such thing as society she was wrong. But in saying it, she created a truth. We can accept this contradiction because what we class as knowledge is often simply a bias exemplified by an influential person. And armed with the bias, people can behave in such a way as to make it become a fact.
Typical is the existence of God. Rationally, we can reject the idea as superstitious clap-trap. But when a believer lives a life as dictated by the Bible, he places the idea in the real world through his actions. It seems that all we need to allow God to exist is the belief that he does.
On the same analysis, if enough people believe that society does NOT exist, then our actions will show that it doesn’t. But it is only a truth by virtue of our behaviour.
There is, infact, a relationship between co-ordinated society and the belief in a God or gods. History tells us that most co-ordinated societies lived as such because of an overriding ethos of a higher Being looking after them. Such a form of spirituality – an idea of social bonding, if you like – tends to be the opposite of individuality, which can be seen as the main element of social deconstruction. Which does, of course, suggest that we can only be harmonious in a proper society with a belief in a deity.
We can see this in action in the history of crime. Individuality seems to generate crime. This was so during the 18th century crime wave, which came at the time when an automatic belief in God was in decline. One of the central factors that brought the crime wave to an end was the work of the Wesley brothers, and their ministering of Methodism, taking religion out of the pulpit and into the street. The moral code which is the bedfellow of spirituality eased the urges towards crime.
Our present crime wave is coming at a similar time, where individuality is the ethos and religion is in decline. This suggests that the only way to stop the onslaught of crime is to rebirth a new religion – a new spirituality. However, this is not going to happen. But we are in a unique position in social evolution in that we can now look back on history and realise what is missing, thus allowing crime to thrive.
We can best see religions of the past as a form of social glue which stuck people to each other through a bonding ethos. And I do not believe it is beyond the wit of man to realise the need for a new form of secular bonding, taking the social ideals of religion and placing them in a more secular world. And I am convinced the new social glue can come from a proper understanding of the diversity, yet mutualistic existence of the natural world. Nature has its separate parts – its individuality – but it comes together in a holism of inter dependence. We should realise this and become as spiritual as the animals.

© Anthony North, March 2003

FEMINISM – WHAT ARE WOMEN NOW?

Feminism. That’s what we’re talking about here. And it’s always a touchy subject when someone like me deals with it. You know, a man!
The question is, what is involved in women gaining equality with men? Well, first of all, it is unlikely that there has ever been a society where the genders are equal. In the insect world, and in many animal types, the female is powerful and the male put down. This seems to be happening today in our society. As women gain more and more power, equality goes by the board, and the very role of man is coming under threat in the workplace and in the family. Which means, equality always was a con.
There is evidence of women-centred societies in mankind’s past. It looks increasingly like the first deities were female, expressed in the Mother Goddess, usually representing nature. This is obvious, the first religions being about fertility of woman and Earth. Such societies had no history to pass on to us. This is because they would seem to have followed a very different mind-set to modern man.
To understand this, we must look to man’s mind-set once man had moved into a position of power. This seems to have happened in the west with the rise of Monotheism, beginning with Judaism, and then Christianity and Islam. Earlier, pagan city-states were becoming man-centred, but still had female deities. But in Monotheism, the female was ousted, and in her place, man arrived on the cultural scene with his Ego.
This seems to be the primary difference, historically, between female and male centred societies. Female societies have tended to be cyclical, locked into a process of following the cycles of nature. Man-centred societies have been linear, man’s Ego requiring advancement and striving to continue to prove the value of Ego.
In the East, many societies retain the old cyclical way of life, as best seen in Hinduism. But in the west, Monotheism propelled man’s Ego to monumental wars, inventions and empires. In this sense, the modern world is very much a man’s idea.
Feminism directed its assault right into the centre of this man-world. And in doing so, the very fabric of this world has become blurred. But in one essential area, feminism is beginning to have great success – although not as great as they are hoping for. This area involves women moving into man’s traditional role as family provider and worker. But historically, isn’t there a problem here?
Women, it seems, have moved into the linear, whereas they should have tried to recreate the cyclical. So is feminism a success if the idea is to turn women into men?

© Anthony North, March 2004

EDUCATION – PUT IT IN YER HEAD

What is education?
It seems to be many things to many people. But for most of history it has been to do with providing a rounded knowledge from which you could then go on to specialise. However, modern western society seems to have another view. Obsessed with financial success, politicians seem to think that education is now only to do with preparing us for the world of work.
Whether academic or vocational, this seems, now, to be the only ethic. But is there more to this than meets the eye? Education can be split into many categories. One of them is the imposing of a moral code. Through education, we are thought to be taught how to be nicer, more social people. This one has gone by the board of late due to liberal thinking. Put simply, liberals believe man, in his natural state, is a social animal. Hence, morality is inbred, so doesn’t need to be taught.
You only have to look at a riot, or simply a group of people denied what they want, to see that this is rubbish. Rather, man is instinctual, and will always seek what he wants. This can only be remedied by education imposing a thin veneer of morality. And by their insistence on man’s social nature, liberals are destroying the moral fabric of society.
Another important element of education is an appreciation of aesthetic value – i.e. the beauty of the world, the brilliance of man, as expressed through the arts. To many people, this is a mere distraction, but man needs more than work. But unless he is educated to know to look for those things above work, all he will do when not working is look around for trouble.
We are only enriched when we are aesthetes at heart.This is particularly seen with the loss of our ability to cope with boredom. Aesthetic values are best understood through quiet contemplation, becoming bored, and through this inactivity, triggering thoughts in the head. This is where true fulfillment comes in life, as mystics have always known. But nowadays, because this aesthetic element is no longer in education, the only thing we trigger when approaching boredom is a video game.
History is also vital to education, and a thing a modern, forward looking society hates. But how much of the feeling of emptiness in modern society is due to a lack of appreciation of how we got here? Put simply, if we don’t know where we came from, how can we know where we’re going?The bottom line is this: education is a rounding of our appreciation of experience, making us whole human beings. In this way we become able to think for ourselves. Which is maybe the problem. Politicians don’t want us to think for ourselves too much. It upsets their applecart. It seems they no longer want to educate the natives.

© Anthony North, March 2004

PREMONITION

Premonition, or correctly ‘precognition’, is the supposed ability to have foreknowledge of a future event. It can vary from ‘seeing’ a disaster before it happens, to having a ‘feeling’ that you will soon see someone.

We have all experienced the latter. As for the former, there are many examples. In 1974 a woman from Cleethorpes saw a newsflash of the Flixborough chemical plant explosion on her TV before it happened. David Booth ’saw’ an American Airlines plane swerve off the runway and crash in May 1979. He phoned the authorities. A few days later it happened at Chicago Airport.

Premonitions can come in groupings. Typical was the Titanic disaster, where dozens of premonitions came to light following the event. Indeed, many people had cancelled the voyage due to fear. But are these really premonitions?

You could argue that fears are always present about something important, such as the Titanic’s maiden voyage. Premonition, or unconscious concern? Similarly, it is estimated that there could be tens of thousands of nightmares every night in the UK alone. It is statistically inevitable that many will reflect events that actually happen.

Theories to account for premonition vary. Some believe we live in several states of consciousness, with one level seeing further into the future than the level we normally live in. Others speak of the future causing a ripple that goes back in time, picked up by some people.

A major problem for premonition is the law of causality. Basically, a cause, or action, must come before an effect. If this was not so, then the future would be pre-ordained. In such a universe there is no room for free will, so our decisions are pointless.

In one area premonition could be a definite reality. Animals will vacate an area prior to an earthquake. Something in the environment has warned them. We now know this could be down to electromagnetic release from the ground affecting the brain. And us too?

© Anthony North, November 2006