Our history is incomplete, or else we would not have to ask the questions. Who are we? Where did we come from? What caused civilization to occur so suddenly five thousand years ago? These are the prevailing questions anyone interested in ancient history and prehistory would like to know the answers to. Perhaps the mystery itself is why I, and others like me, keep searching.

What we do know through the miracle of technology is that geneticists have been able to trace our modern human roots to a time between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago, and a place somewhere in the southern regions of Africa. Yet, civilization as we know it appeared only 5,000 years ago. What was mankind doing for all that time before ‘civilization?’ Aside from hunting and fishing, the traditional answer is relatively nothing except for exploring and moving into all corners of the world. That itself is a puzzle. How could primitive peoples, that we are led to believe they were, manage to explore, navigate, and migrate into every corner of the world prior to the birth of civilization? Aimless wandering? Nonetheless, it is the standard theory taught to millions of students across the world.

In light of the archeological evidence and the way history has developed as a social science over the past two hundred years, I guess you could call my approach to understanding history the skeptic’s approach. It is good to be skeptical, so I am skeptical – skeptical of what I have been taught all these years, that is. Some things in history simply don’t add up such as Egypt’s Great Sphinx and Great Pyramid, or the twelve hundred ton blocks forming the foundation of the Baalbek temple in Lebanon.

The Enigmatic Sphinx

Twelve years ago I watched Charlton Heston in the television documentary The Mystery of the Sphinx narrate the research of John Anthony West and Geologist Dr. Robert Schoch on how the Sphinx was much older than we had been taught to believe. For me, the compelling evidence was the undulating patterns of erosion where rainfall melted away soft spots in the walls of the Sphinx’s enclosure. According to the documentary, such features were not at all similar to patterns left by wind erosion. For such erosion to occur, the Sphinx must have been carved long before North Africa turned into a desert when rainfall was abundant. Evidence like this helped to inspire John Anthony West to claim, “Egyptian civilization was not a development, it was a legacy.”

Indeed, such a claim with its supporting evidence was a shot, of sorts, heard around the world. ‘Foul!’ cried the guardians of the historical establishment. Where’s the evidence that any such culture with the capabilities to do so carved such a large monument more than 7,000 years ago! They wanted more evidence. So did I.

The problem with proving that such a culture existed is that in ancient history all is theory. It seems there is never enough evidence to come to a conclusion about anything. As a consequence, any theory becomes a probability based on the interpretation of evidence. However, when new evidence is presented and new theories are put forth, the subjectivity of paradigm reinforcement comes into play. It is a strong influence that can sometimes overwhelm objectivity.

Objectivity is an important issue, particularly with enigmas such as the Sphinx. Dr. Schoch claims that he achieved such objectivity in his geological analysis of the Sphinx, and openly admits that he “thought it was improbable [that the Sphinx was that old], but it was worth looking at further.”1 More than fifty years ago the French Egyptologist René Schwaller de Lubicz also noticed that the weathering of the Sphinx enclosure looked more like water erosion than wind erosion. I see no reason not to believe Dr. Schoch or the observations from René Schwaller.

Although the dating of the Sphinx remains controversial, at least two other geologists who have also been to Giza agree with Schoch’s conclusion, in part, that water was the source of erosion. Yet, for modern scholars who disagree with Schoch’s analysis when the Sphinx was carved, and when Egyptian civilization began remains hypothetical at best.

All the debate, interpretation, and various viewpoints of modern scholars seem to obfuscate the issue. Why not put a little confidence in what the ancient Egyptians themselves claim?

Prehistory According to the Ancient Egyptians

The ancient Egyptians were dedicated record keepers, and there is no mention of who built the Sphinx in their archives. What they do say about their history is that it reaches far back into remote times. According to the Papyrus of Turin, which is a complete list of kings up to the New Kingdom, before Menes (3000 BC) the:

...venerables Shemsu-Hor, [reigned] 13,420 years
Reigns up to Shemsu-Hor, 23,200 years [2]

These last two lines in the king’s list are explicit. So, the total years of Egyptian history, from their perspective, according to their own documents, goes back 36,620 years. The late twentieth century Egyptologist Walter Emery seems to have agreed in principle. He believed that ancient Egypt’s written language was beyond the use of pictorial symbols even during the earliest dynasties. According to his research, signs also were used to represent sounds only along with a numerical system. At the same time hieroglyphics had been stylized and used in architecture, a cursive script was already in common use. His conclusion was that:

All this shows that the written language must have had a considerable period of development behind it, of which no trace has as yet been found in Egypt.3

Why should we not take the ancient Egyptians at their word? We should. Here lays the historical context for an antediluvian Sphinx from the ancient Egyptians themselves. But, is there any evidence civilization held any type of advanced knowledge?

Astrophysicist Dr. Thomas Brophy thinks so. According to Brophy, megalithic arrangements at a place called Nabta Playa in Egypt’s southern desert attest to sophisticated knowledge of astronomy; a level of knowledge that we as a modern technological society have only recently realized.

Nabta Playa Megaliths and Sophisticated Knowledge

Discovered by archeologists Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild in 1973, the Nabta Playa megaliths are an arrangement of upright stones spanning 2,500 meters. Like the spokes of a wheel the stones radiate outward to the north and south from a bizarre sculpted rock vaguely resembling a cow. Six groups of stones, extending across the ancient basin contain a total of twenty-four megaliths. Its northern end terminates at a small stone circle with two sets of stones in its center, three stones in each set. They represent the stars of Orion’s belt, and the stars of its head and shoulders. Wendorf and Schild as well as Brophy have identified this circle as a calendar.

According to Brophy’s analysis, the calendar circle is a user-friendly star map of the constellation Orion applicable between 6400 and 4900 BC – not really all that extraordinary. However, this applicability is in reference to the northern arrangement of three stones within the calendar circle. The southern three stones within the calendar circle represent Orion’s head and shoulders as they appeared on the meridian on summer solstice sunset around 16,500 BC. According to Brophy, the date of 16,500 BC is symmetrically opposite the 5,000 BC depicion of the Orion's Belt stars. In other words, in terms of the precession both dates are at the maximum and minimum tilt angle of the Orion constellation. For Brophy this arrangement meant that:

The stone diagram illustrates the time, location, and tilting behavior of the constellation of Orion through the 25,900-year equinox precession cycle, and how to understand the pattern visually.4

That is extraordinary, and there’s more. Upon further analysis Brophy discovered that the northern group of megaliths represent the distance to Earth from Orion’s belt stars Ainilam, Ainitak, and Mintaka. (One meter at Nabta Playa equivalent to 0.799 light-years.) Even more fantastic, the southern group of megaliths represented their radial velocity, the speed at which the stars are moving away from Earth. How could this be unless those who constructed the megalithic arrangement were thinking like astrophysicists?

It was initially believed that the center stone that loosely resembles a cow, referred to as ‘Complex Structure A,’ was a burial marker. However, the area beneath it was excavated to no avail. The only artifact found was a strange map-like sculpture carved into the bedrock.

Brophy examined Marek Puszkarski’s sketch of the sculpture, as well as Schild and Krolik’s sketch. Over this sketch, he superimposed the location of the sun and the galactic center correlated to the direction of the spring equinox’s heliacal rising of the galactic center in 17,700 BC. Again, it was a match:

Astonishing as it may be, the bedrock sculpture underneath “Complex Structure A” at Nabta Playa appears to be an accurate depiction of our Milky Way Galaxy, as it was oriented astronomically at a specific time: vernal equinox heliacal rising of the Galactic Center in 17,700 BC.5

Skeptical? Sure. But, what are the chances of the megaliths being perfectly and randomly aligned in the way Brophy describes by a people without astronomical knowledge? According to Brophy, Orion’s stars being aligned with the megaliths are less than two chances in a million, which is far beyond the requirement for accepting a scientific hypothesis as valid. Now, not only do we have a historical context for a Paleolithic civilization, but also evidence that the civilization developed advanced astronomical knowledge.

Re-evaluating The Great Pyramid

From a tomb to a mystical initiation temple, there is no shortage of theories describing why the Great Pyramid was built, and what it was used for. One thing is certain. It is the world’s most magnificent and massive structure ever built.

In order to objectively evaluate various theories describing the Great Pyramid’s purpose, a theory has to describe every single chamber and passageway. Under these requirements most theories fail. The traditional theory – the tomb theory – quickly fails.

Why would the designers of such a colossal tomb change their minds twice as to where to place the king’s chamber? First, the king was to be buried in the subterranean chamber, then to what was to become known as the queen’s chamber, and finally the decision was made that there was to be a third chamber clad in granite. Such drastic structural changes during construction fly in the face of reason for any monumental building project, past or present. According to German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink who pioneered the exploration of the shafts in the Queen’s chamber, “they did not embark on a reckless building spree but that the structure was already carefully planned before work commenced, with the consistent application of expertise that was still relatively simple for the period.”6

Of course, there have never been any human remains found in the pyramid nor does its interior design resemble any later tomb décor from subsequent Egyptian dynasties. It seems to me what we have been taught is more paradigm than possibility. I think manufacturing expert Christopher Dunn, author of The Giza Power Plant, [7] would likely agree with that statement. He is no stranger to the Great Pyramid and the Giza Plateau. Over the past twenty years he has visited and re-visited Egypt in order to examine and re-examine what he believed the pyramid was designed and used for: the production of energy.

The first time one hears this – that the Great Pyramid was a power plant – there is a certain air of disbelief. I felt that way when I first saw his book. Nonetheless, it is one of the most objective theories put forth to date describing its purpose. From carving hieroglyphs to the granite boxes of the Serapeum, to creating intricate bowls and vases, Dunn has gone to great lengths to prove that the ancient Egyptians employed advanced machining techniques to achieve precision in the construction of their architectural and cultural treasures. As for the Great Pyramid, he has left no passageway or chamber unexamined in re-creating the model for how energy was generated.

Engineer, and Chairman of the Board of the Egyptian Tunneling Society, M.E. Abdel-Salam agrees in principle with Dunn’s analysis of ancient Egypt’s engineering capabilities, that manpower and simple hand tools alone cannot account for the precision. According to Abdel-Salam, some technologies used by the ancient Egyptians “still astound modern artisans and engineers. … even though the tools and machines have not survived the thousands of years since their use, we have to assume by objective analysis of the evidence, that something similar did exist.”8

When the Great Pyramidwas built and preceisly what it was used for, we may never know. Stone, of course, cannot be carbon dated so there is no way to know for sure how old it really is. Perhaps it is another remnant of the civilization that erected the megalithic star-viewing diagram at Nabta Playa.

Not only is there a historical context for civilization existing before 3000 BC, and the evidence that it developed advanced knowledge, but also there is an existing structure testifying to the implementation of sophisticated knowledge – the Great Pyramid.

A final hurdle in this piecing together of history is that there is still no evidence from the civilization itself or its direct descendents that it was highly sophisticated. The archeological evidence exists, but where is the link between the artifacts and the history? Surely there would be at least a story passed down the generations?

The Tower of Babel in Perspective

One need not look any farther than the most popular book of all time, the Bible. An unbiased look at the Tower of Babel story (Genesis 11:1-9) offers an interesting point of view, that is, if we take it with a little bit of seriousness. On its surface, it is just another fable where God forces his ‘will’ upon the world because he doesn't like what mankind has been up to. This time it is a tower reaching up to the heavens.

Whether the tower itself existed or not is not the point. What is, is that the story was widespread during ancient times and important enough for Moses to include in the historical chapters of his texts, known as the Torah or The Law. In writing Genesis, it is my belief that Moses used the historical knowledge he learned from his royal upbringing in Pharaoh’s house, as well as Sumerian and Akkadian traditions from his father-in-law Jethro. Although Moses’ actions were likely politically motivated in order to create a common identity for the people, part of his goal in writing was to establish a written history for the burgeoning nation state of Israel. (The other part was to create social laws.) A common history is an important element for social cohesiveness, particularly if your ancestors are at history’s center.

I believe it is doubtful he would have fabricated the Genesis stories. Most likely, he placed a Hebrew perspective on the ‘history of the time’ that was, realistically, Egyptian history – although not exclusively about Egypt.

Moses may have been conveying the same story as Plato does in the dialogs of Timaeus and Critias – the story of a great civilization, destroyed by a cataclysm told to his Uncle Solon by the Egyptian priests at Sais. Moses was also Egyptian. Coincidence? Probably not, Egypt really was the cornucopia of the ancient world.

In the Tower of Babel story there are three important points:

According to the archeological evidence as well as ancient texts, we know without a doubt that when civilization began (3000 BC) there was no single language, and that there existed a variety of languages and cultures. So, if true, what could the Tower of Babel story be referring to?

Although there is no mention of a catastrophe in Genesis chapter eleven, it is implied. How else would a civilization with a common language become scattered over the face of the Earth, then to speak many languages?

In the insurance business there is a clause that protects the insured from what is called ‘acts of God.’ These ‘acts’ are, in modern terms, natural disasters. Five thousand years ago people also attributed natural disasters to God, just as much as they do today. So, what likely happened in the Tower of Babel story is that a natural disaster of immense proportions occurred. The civilization that existed was decimated leaving only isolated pockets of survivors. Over many generations those survivors struggled to rebuild civilization, but because of geographic isolation unique languages developed in various regions.

The concept behind this story is entirely plausible. Today, astronomers talk about a ‘Tower of Babel’ scenario, although they do not refer to it as such; a comet or asteroid impact similar to the one that rendered the dinosaurs extinct. It has happened before, and astronomers assure us that it will certainly happen again. It’s just a question of when. If it did, and 70% or more of the world’s population died what would happen to mankind? A likely result is that within the four generations after the cataclysm everything we know of today – ours cars, phones, computers, and all the other niceties society has given us – would be a dim memory. By the tenth generation who would care? Except for the tradition of telling the story of the ‘civilization that once was’ no one would, because that civilization would not be a part of anyone’s memory.

Did the Tower of Babel catastrophe really happen? I believe it did but not as result of God’s displeasure with mankind. At the end of the ice age around 10,000 years ago there was a global cataclysm that resulted in a mass extinction of animals and a fundamental change in global climate. Surely, mankind was also affected. Precisely what caused the disaster has been a matter of contention for scientists. Nonetheless, the cataclysm is a geologic fact.

Stories were remembered and passed down the generations because they were culturally important, and helped to create an identity for the people. The Tower of Babel story is part of that collective memory, part of their history. And in a sense it is also our history.

The Legacy of Cro-Magnon

The scenario I have described also helps to explain one of ancient history’s most perplexing puzzles: the sudden appearance of Cro-Magnon cultures in Western Europe. This sudden appearance of Cro-Magnon is established fact. In France and Spain hundreds of caves display thousands of truly magnificent images.

Forty thousand years ago, anatomically modern humans arrived on the Iberian Peninsula and brought with them complex social structures, diverse symbolic behavior, and, what they are most recognized for, art. The speed with which they replaced Neanderthal man, and the suddenness with which they appeared, is remarkable. From our perspective tens of thousands of years later it is no wonder that contemporary authors write of a “creative explosion” or “human revolution” when referring to the Western European phenomenon of Cro-Magnon. However, did such a “creative explosion” or “human revolution” really happen?

David Lewis-Williams, Professor Emeritus of cognitive archaeology at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa thinks not. Although it is understandable that archeologists and anthropologists describe the appearance of Cro-Magnon in these terms, they should not ignore the evidence of cultural precursors from Africa and the Middle East.

According to Lewis-Williams, the overall picture looks much less explosive, and it is in Africa and the Middle East where the seeds of the “creative explosion” exist. Africa contains the earliest evidence for the human revolution and is likely the source of modern man.9 If so, the interesting question is why are there not more archeological sites in North Africa and the Middle East dating to the Ice Age? If modern man began in the southern regions of Africa and migrated to the north and west shouldn’t those areas around the temperate climes near the Mediterranean Sea be a hotbed of Paleolithic artifacts? Common sense dictates that they should. Here’s why.

Waves of migration always extend from an established base where the necessities of life are easily obtained. In other words, migration begins at home. For the prehistoric Cro-Magnon cultures home was Africa. In and around the Mediterranean, particularly northern Africa and the eastern areas that are now submerged as a result of higher sea levels, a civilization would have been built as a consequence of northerly migration patterns. Prior to higher sea levels, the Mediterranean was likely a series of freshwater lakes similar to the Great Lakes of North America, sealed from the Atlantic by the Gibraltar dam. It would have been an ideal location for civilization to flourish.

For tens of thousands of years its people thrived, and developed unique technologies and engaged in trade, only to be decimated by catastrophe around 8000 BC. Although precisely what the catastrophe was has been debated for years, there is no question that a cataclysm occurred resulting in the extinction of numerous species around the world. Its consequence was a new topography for the Mediterranean region as well as the rest of the world. Man, of course, were among the species that suffered but managed to survive.

If a Greater Mediterranean civilization did exist, as I believe it did, its destruction would appear to us that cultures living in Western Europe and northern Africa mysteriously appeared from nowhere. Furthermore, the remnants of their civilization would appear to us as anomalies such as the Great Pyramid, the megaliths at Nabta Playa, Baalbek in Lebanon, as well as the unknown culture responsible for the temples and other structures on Malta.

The survivors, those who lived in Egypt and North Africa struggled to carry on, and with the Sahara Desert growing they found themselves migrating to the Nile Valley where water was continuously available. As the inheritors and keepers of ancient knowledge and wisdom, whom twentieth century Egyptologists refer to as the ‘dynastic race,’ they rebuilt their civilization as newcomers from the northeast migrated into the Nile Valley, providing an increasing level of manpower. Dynastic Egypt was, in a sense, the rebirth of a prehistoric civilization that once was.

Why Atlantis Won’t Go Away

Although there is no evidence that a specific city named Atlantis ever existed, taken together the historical and the archeological evidence in my opinion does describe a civilization reflected in part not only by Plato’s story of Atlantis, but the Tower of Babel story as well. Interestingly, the ruins of ‘Atlantis’ have been ‘discovered’ by various researchers throughout the Mediterranean and North Africa including but not limited to Tartessos in Spain, the Atlas Mountains in Africa, the Lake of Tritons in Tunisia, Corsica, Sardinia, Thera, Sicily, Egypt, and Lebanon. Recently, in June of 2004, Rainer Kühne of the University of Wuppertal in Germany claims to have discovered the fabled city in a salt marsh off Spain’s southern coast. Satellite images depicting ancient ruins appear to match Plato’s description of rectangular structures surrounded by concentric circles.10

If there were only ruins little more could be said about Atlantis except that it is speculation. However, the engineering expertise required for the construction of Egypt’s Great Pyramid, and the astronomical knowledge depicted in the arrangement of the Nabta Playa megaliths leads me to a conclusion. The idea that an ancient, sophisticated civilization existed is more than speculation. Based upon the evidence, it is a valid theory, and that there is more in the depths of our remote past yet to be discovered.

Professional skeptics are eager to dismiss Atlantis theories site unseen as a continuing concoction in the tradition of Francis Bacon and Ignatius Donnelly. I venture to say; they wonder why Atlantis theories wont go away. There’s simply too much evidence.

Contemplating History

There is an aspect to this scenario of civilization lost and reborn that intrigues me more than anything else. The similarities between philosophical concepts described in the ancient text known as the Hermetica and those being put forth by today’s ‘new science.’ Although the Hermetic texts themselves only date back to Egypt’s first century Alexandria, their origins are believed by scholars to be older than the hieroglyphics inscribed on the walls of Sakkara’s pyramids, a collection of religious and literary writings simply known as The Pyramid Texts. “These hieroglyphics are over 5,000 years old and yet contain doctrines that are identical to those expounded in the Hermetica.”11 The Hermetic concept, what it means to be human, to experience, emerges from prehistory just as mysteriously as Egypt’s first dynasty.

In the tradition of the great physicists of the twentieth century todays ‘new science’12 has embarked upon a quest to redefine the human experience in ways reminiscent of ancient concepts: that there is no reality in the absence of observation. In the introductory episode of Cosmos (1980) Carl Sagan utters confidently “the Cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be.” I can agree with that, but what is the universe, really? Cosmologists often refer to an idea called the Anthropic Principle, that in order to explain the existence of the universe one must also explain our own existence. This line of reasoning poses interesting questions. If the universe is all there is then what meaning would the universe have without permitting its awareness? Would the universe still exist if we were not present to perceive it? Questions such as these appear to be as old as mankind itself:

The Mind, O Tat, is of the very Essence of God, if yet there be any Essence of God… Wherefore we must be bold to say, that an Earthly Man is a Mortal God, and that the Heavenly God is an Immortal Man. –Hermes Trismegistus

In contemplating history I cannot help but ask the question: Have we been here before?

End Notes:

1.Mystery of the Sphinx, Lavonia, MI: B.C. Video, 1993, documentary.
2.René Schwaller de Lubicz, Sacred Science: The King of Pharaonic Theocracy, (Inner Traditions: Rochester: VT, 1982), 86.
3.Walter B. Emery, Archaic Egypt, (New York: Penguin Books 1961), 192.
4.Thomas G. Brophy, The Origin Map: Discovery of a Prehistoric, Megalithic, Astrophysical Map and Sculpture of the Universe, (New York: Writers Club Press, 2002), 10.
5.Ibid., 54.
6.Rudolf Gantenbrink, “Ascertaining and evaluating relevant structural points using the Cheops Pyramid as an example,” 1999, http://www.cheops.org/startpage/publications/publications.htm
7.Dunn, Christopher, The Giza Power Plant. Bear & Company, Vermont, 1998.
8.M.E. Abdel-Salam, “Construction of underground works and tunnels in ancient Egypt,” Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, Volume 17, Issue 3, July 2002, 295-304.
9.David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave (London: Thames & Hudson, 2002), 97.
10.Rossella Lorenzi, “Lost City of Atlantis Found in Spain?” Discovery News, online at: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20040607/atlantis.html.
11.Timothy Freke, and Peter Gandy, Wisdom of the Pharaohs, (Tarcher: New York, 1999), 18.
12.See the works of physicists such as Evan Harris Walker, Roger Penrose, Paul Davies, Fred Alan Wolf, William Tiller, and Stephen Hawking.