Atlantis Beneath the Ice (13 page)

Now, two sciences, geology and astronomy, are pushing back humankind’s achievements to a time well before any known civilization. Bauval and Gilbert’s astronomical evidence followed the same measurements that had led Posnansky to conclude that an advanced civilization once existed. Geology and astronomy are working in tandem to provide evidence that our notion of the age of civilization is flawed. But archaeologists, the scientists most directly involved with the human past, have never discovered any physical evidence for the existence of
any civilization as old as 9600 BCE. All that changed with the discovery of the world’s oldest monumental buildings.

GÖBEKLI TEPE, THE WORLD’S OLDEST
MONUMENTUAL ARCHITECTURE

It is one of the most sensational archaeological discoveries ever made. Known as Göbekli Tepe, this “temple” complex covers an area of twenty-two acres of Turkish territory just north of the Syrian border. Initially, archaeologists thought that the large limestone slabs rising out of the ground were Byzantine graves. But when Dr. Klaus Schmidt and his team from the German Archaeological Institute excavated deeper, they realized that this was a much more significant site than the initial examination of the slabs had indicated.

The Byzantine “grave stones” crowned a series of eighteen-foot-high T-shaped stone pillars, many of which weighed sixteen tons. Schmidt estimates that the strength of as many as five hundred people would have been needed to move the massive pillars, “the oldest known example of monumental architecture” in the world,
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from their quarry half a kilometre away.

The exploration of Göbekli Tepe is still in its infancy with only about 10 percent of the site having been excavated. But one astonishing fact has already bewildered archaeologists. The most sophisticated and colossal pillars, which date to 11,600 years ago, were found at the oldest levels of the site. Archaeologists believe that humans had not yet domesticated animals or developed the wheel at this time. So how could primitive hunters and gatherers possibly transport such massive pillars? We just don’t know. What we do know is that the building techniques at Göbekli Tepe degenerated from 11,600 years ago onwards. Pillars that were erected after that were smaller and less sophisticated.

Dr. Schmidt was aware that the earliest evidence of agriculture in the world is to be found at key archaeological sites that lie within a
hundred mile radius of Göbekli Tepe. Curious about which came first, agriculture or the Göbekli Tepe site, he concluded that Göbekli Tepe was built
before
agriculture began. So what force was strong enough to motivate primitive foragers to suddenly build monuments of such astonishing size? Dr. Schmidt’s answer to the mystery is religion. The powerful human impulse to create a holy place for ceremony, he suggests, anchored people to one place. Once it was constructed, Göbekli Tepe drew them like a magnet to its monuments. Agriculture was developed after its emergence as a holy location in order to feed temple workmen and the pilgrims who were increasingly attracted to the complex.

Dr. Schmidt audaciously argues that the very existence of the monuments implies that both priests and stone masons practiced their craft at the site. While we can imagine the rise of a priest class at this early stage in human cultural development, it is more difficult to imagine hunters and gatherers suddenly developing the technical skills to cut, shape, and transport immense limestone pillars. Where did their building knowledge come from? Where is the evidence of a gradual accumulation of engineering knowledge? Where are the failed attempts at monument building? And why did construction skills so dramatically decline over time?

These questions aren’t answered by Dr. Schmidt’s bold religionbased idea because his fixation focuses on which event came first: the construction of Göbekli Tepe or the rise of agriculture? But we ask the even bolder question: Is there a connection between Göbekli Tepe and Atlantis?

The earliest and most sophisticated sixteen-ton T-shaped pillars uncovered at Göbekli Tepe date to the same century that saw the end of Atlantis. The loss of an advanced civilization whose survivors reemerged around the globe would explain why the oldest constructions at the site are the most sophisticated. The Atlanteans were formidable monument builders. Their engineers had the needed expertise, built up by trial and error over centuries, to conceive and design such an elaborate complex.

Plato relates that the fall of the great civilization brought with it a dark age during which the sum of knowledge declined dramatically. When the last Atlantean died their sophisticated building knowledge began to fade. While the Atlanteans undoubtedly tried to pass on their technical skills to succeeding generations, the highly developed civilization that allowed them to develop those skills in the first place was gone. Without the Atlantean civilization to back them, the succeeding generations eventually lost their knowledge of the craft of building.

Ultimately, Dr. Schmidt concludes that the construction of Göbekli Tepe as a religious center caused an unprecedented influx of people, which, in turn, led to the development of agriculture as a means to feed these workers and pilgrims. But there is no more actual evidence for this idea than the possibility that the sudden emergence of agriculture near Göbekli Tepe was the result of advanced skills practiced by the survivors of a lost civilization.

Monument building and the rebooting of agriculture were happening
simultaneously
11,600 years ago as the Atlanteans desperately tried to rebuild their civilization. At Göbekli Tepe we find exactly the kind of construction projects that we would expect to be built by survivors of a devastated, advanced culture. The site tantalizes as it holds out one piece of the large puzzle that is our lost legacy. Like the megalithic structures at Tiahuanaco in the central Andes that so intrigued Arthur Posnansky and the colossal 180-metric-ton stones used to construct the Sphinx Temple that have fascinated John Anthony West, this evocative place offers one of the latest challenges to traditional assumptions about human existence at the close of the ice age.
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ANCIENT LANGUAGES AND COMPUTERS

But what became of the incredible architects of these remarkable temples in Bolivia, Egypt, and Turkey? How and why did they perish? We can find some clues in the central Andes, back at the site of the uncompleted city of Tiahuanaco.

The tale is told by the Aymara, who still live on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The Aymara are a very ancient and proud race. More than 2.5 million people speak the Aymara language, raise llamas, and grow potatoes along the lakeshore, just as their ancestors have for thousands of years. Even the renowned Incan Empire borrowed heavily from their ancient customs of sun worship, agriculture, and the use of llamas.
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The Aymara tell of strange events at Titicaca after the Great Flood. Strangers attempted to build a great city on the lake. An Aymara myth retold by an early Spanish visitor tells of how an ancestor crossed Lake Titicaca and with his warriors “waged such a war on the people of which I speak that he killed them all.”
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After struggling so long and so hard to survive the ravages brought by the last earth crust displacement, these strangers perished, not by the hand of nature, but by the spears and arrows of their own species. Something drove the Aymara to rise in rebellion against the foreigners. Perhaps they were forced to labor on the great city of Tiahuanaco? Did they discover that the strangers were not, after all, gods? Were the Aymara outraged by the prospect of laboring for mere mortals?

The Aymara’s contribution is not confined to a distant myth whispered by the waves lapping at the reeds of Lake Titicaca. When the twentieth-century’s unique wand, the computer, passes over the Aymara language, it reveals an amazing secret. In 1984, Ivan Guzman de Rojas, a Bolivian mathematician, scored a notable first in the development of computer software by showing that Aymara could be used as an intermediate language for simultaneously translating English into several other languages. Guzman’s Atamiri (the Aymara word for “interpreter”) was used as a translator by the Panama Canal Commission in a commercial test with Wang Laboratories.

How did Guzman accomplish, using a simple personal computer, a task that experts at eleven European universities, using advanced computers, had failed to complete? “His system’s secret, which solved a problem that had stumped machine translation experts around the
world, is the rigid, logical and unambiguous structure of Aymara, ideal for transformation into a computer algorithm.”
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In addition, “Aymara is rigorous and simple—which means that its syntactical rules always apply, and can be written out concisely in the sort of algebraic shorthand that computers understand. Indeed, such is its purity that some historians think it did not just evolve, like other languages, but was actually constructed from scratch.”
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The Aymara were productive farmers, but is it likely that they would spend their leisure time constructing a language? Such a development is more likely the product of an advanced civilization, one capable of constructing the Temple of the Sun and the Great Sphinx.

Could it have been the survivors of the lost island paradise who gave the Aymara a language so precise and grammatically pure that it would become a tool for the most advanced technology of our own century? What other advances in science might we glean from a language spoken by peasants on the highlands near Lake Titicaca?

MONTEZUMA

After studying the mythology of the Aymara and raking over the remains of their Temple of the Sun, Posnansky concluded that Tiahuanaco, the abandoned city of Lake Titicaca, was originally populated by people from Aztlan, the lost island paradise of the Aztecs.
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The Aztecs ruled a vast empire that stretched the length and width of Central America. In the spring of 1519, they became terrified that their world was coming to an end.

Imagine the following scene from five centuries ago: It is almost sunset. Montezuma, priest, warrior, astronomer, and first lord of the Aztecs, methodically prepares for his evening salutation to the sun. For these few moments the tumultuous empire of the Aztecs is at peace. Darkness approaches quickly as the sun slants behind the mountains that crowd the city of Teotihuacan, in what is now Mexico. Montezuma
drapes himself in the comfort of ancient ritual as he prepares to meet the night.
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Two humble fishermen are brought into the hall to be presented to their venerated leader. The shuffle of their feet disturbs the temple’s silence as they move toward him, avoiding his gaze to look back at the creature they drag behind them.

Montezuma’s eyes dart toward the awkward bundle they offer him so nervously. It is a large gray crane, its ashy wings pinned against the fishermen’s mesh net. Montezuma recognizes this important Aztec symbol. It is traditional that on the tense morning of a battle two feathers from the long-legged crane be inserted in each warrior’s hair as a symbol of readiness to fight to the death. A strange, smoky mirror protrudes from the bird’s head. The fishermen quiver, prepared for the worst if Montezuma is angered by his interpretation of this sign.

A smile touches his lips, and the lord of the Aztecs leans back, gathering his ceremonial robes around him. He dismisses the fishermen, showering them with compliments and treasures to reward their capture of this wonderful bird. Montezuma hopes that this unexpected omen means that Blue Hummingbird, the god of war, has been transformed into a crane. Aztec legend dictates that on this day the Aztecs will conquer all their enemies.

As the last hot dust of the Mexican day sifts through the apertures in the temple’s carved stone, Montezuma’s shiver of anticipation is suddenly laced with fear. As he watches the magical obsidian mirror, the scene changes to daytime over the sea and a sandy beach. It is written of this vision, “Up from the waters came the strange bearded men on their hornless deer. They advanced and before them came fire and destruction.”
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Montezuma gazes on a vision of the devastation of his world. The fear gnaws at him as he remembers other vile omens that have haunted the empire in recent years. In 1509, a great light appeared on the eastern horizon.
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Later, three comets and three terrifying earthquakes brought chaos to the Aztecs. Nature’s furies were followed by a strange vision visited on Montezuma’s sister. She saw their precious capital destroyed
by bearded men of gray stone who came from the sea.
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Perhaps most ominous of all, for no apparent reason, the lake on which the Aztec capital rested began to flood.

Montezuma has not forgotten that in 1508, the year before the wondrous light appeared on the eastern ocean, the planet Venus, symbol of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, challenged the sun by crossing its path. Could this sign mean that Blue Hummingbird’s hated enemies, the Toltecs, would be returning? Quetzalcoatl was the ancestral king and esteemed god of the ancient Toltecs, the former glorious rulers of Mexico before the Aztecs, and Montezuma’s personal bloodline is traceable to the imperious Toltecs. He is torn by the implication of the omens. How can he welcome the enemies of Blue Hummingbird?

Montezuma’s fear of disaster is tempered with his knowledge of the Plumed Serpent’s reputation as a great god. It is his duty to correctly interpret and act on the omens. Everything depends on it. No battle, however fierce, has ever disturbed his soul like the whisper of doubt that this twilight has brought, when this crane, carrying a strange, dull mirror reflecting disaster, was placed at his feet. The people of the Aztec Empire are restless and nervous. Wild rumors are everywhere, rumors of floating mountains carrying odd strangers.

Montezuma is painfully aware that historical parallels are lining up against him. As ninth ruler of the Aztecs, he stands at the peak of their power and should be exulting in his honored position. Instead he is torn by doubts and fears. The Toltecs also had nine kings before the Plumed Serpent left them and they fell from power. Is he to be the ninth and final king of the Aztecs? The gods must be consulted.