Read Who Built the Moon? Online
Authors: Christopher Knight,Alan Butler
Who Built the Moon?
Christopher Knight
has worked in advertising and marketing for over thirty years, specialising in consumer psychology and market research.
His writing career began almost by accident after he had invested seven years conducting research into the origins of Freemasonic rituals and he has written four books to date, co-authored with Robert Lomas. His first book,
The Hiram Key,
was published in 1996 and it immediately went into the UK top ten bestseller list and remained in the chart for eight consecutive weeks. It has since been translated into thirty-seven languages and sold over a million copies worldwide, becoming a bestseller in several countries. He now divides his time between marketing consultancy and historical research for writing books.
Alan Butler
qualified as an engineer, but was always fascinated by history, and made himself into something of an expert in astrology and astronomy. Since 1990, he has been researching ancient cultures, pagan beliefs and comparative religion and has published four successful books on such topics as the Knights Templar and the Grail legend. He is also a published playwright and a very successful radio dramatist.
Previous books by Christopher Knight
(co-authored with Robert Lomas)
The Hiram Key
The Second Messiah
Uriel’s Machine
The Book of Hiram
Previous books by Alan Butler
The Bronze Age Computer Disc
The Warriors and the Bankers
The Templar Continuum
The Goddess, the Grail and the Lodge
By Christopher Knight and Alan Butler
Civilization One
BUILT
THE MOON?
Alan Butler and Christopher Knight
The publisher would like to thank the following people, museums, and photographic libraries for permission to reproduce their material. Every care has been taken to trace copyright holders. However, if we have omitted anyone we apologize and will, if informed, make corrections to any future edition.
Figure 4 Drawing of Calendar Stone – Courtesy of Philip Stooke, University of Western Ontario
List of plates
Plate 1 The Earth – Courtesy of NASA
Plate 2 The Moon – Courtesy of NASA
Plate 3 The Sun – Courtesy of NASA
Plate 4 The Lascaux Caves
Plate 5 The Lascaux Caves reconstruction – Hans Hinz
Plate 6 The Abri Blanchard Bone – Musée des Antiquites Nationales, Saint-Germain-en-Laix/ Photo RMN/Martine Beck-Coppola
Plate 7 The Willendorf Venus – Naturalhistorisches Museum, Vienna/The Bridgeman Art Library
Plate 8 Moon craters – Courtesy of NASA
Plate 9 Drawing of Knowth Moon surface – Courtesy of Dr Philip Stooke, University of Western Ontario
Plate 10 Volcano – Courtesy of NASA
Plate 11 Mountains – Photodisc
Plate 12 Newgrange – Kate Butler
Plate 13 Ring of Brodgar – Sue Anderson
Plates 14–17: Earthrise; Footprint on the Moon; Apollo 17 Insignia; Lunar Module – Courtesy of NASA
Plate 18 Lightning strike – Photodisc
For my Mother, my brother Peter and in loving memory of my Father. CK.
For my good friends Henry and Michelle. AB.
Acknowledgments
Kate Butler, for her usual invaluable assistance with proofs and index.
Penny Stopa and the editorial team.
Fiona-Spencer Thomas, who was wonderful as always.
Hilary Newbigen, for her customary apposite comments and advice.
Michael Mann, who continues to encourage, advise, and assist.
For most people the suggestion that the Moon could be artificial is about as sensible as saying that it is made of green cheese. This is a perfectly reasonable response based on everything that we know about the world we live in, where there are just two kinds of objects: those that are here because the random forces of the Universe – that we call ‘nature’ – caused them to exist; or because they were manufactured by human hand.
However super-rational our scientific community considers itself to be, there are still huge numbers of people who believe things that are not proven by empiric means. In a recent poll it was found that no less than ninety-two per cent of Americans say they believe in God
1
– and other surveys indicate that many millions of people are equally convinced that aliens have visited our planet.
God may well exist, and so too might aliens for all we know, but this book will only concern itself with hard, scientific facts. And, unlike so many of those trapped in the politically correct world of academia, our published findings will not be constrained by the demands of current convention. The information we put forward here is clear, testable and, we believe, irrefutable.
Despite the fact that the Moon is almost certainly 4.6 billion years old, we will demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt that Earth’s Moon cannot be a natural object. And then we shall explain in detail how the agency that manufactured the Moon left a series of detailed messages of what had been done and for whom it had been undertaken.
So, here is our challenge. Put aside your natural incredulity and read this book with an open mind, check out the evidence then ask yourself ‘Who built the Moon?’
We have cited three possibilities but maybe you can think of more. However, the last of our suggestions appears to us to be increasingly likely. It is a worrying, staggering, exciting and completely awesome concept. And, if there is even an outside chance that this could be the answer, the world has a major new challenge ahead of it.
The Dawn of Awareness
The entire population appeared to have simultaneously decided to evacuate every building, and the streets and car parks were quickly filling with people standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder. Traffic began to grind to a halt as drivers leaned out of their windows, and even the birds abandoned the sky to assemble in rows along guttering and telephone wires, chattering like some misplaced dawn chorus.
The large grey clouds obligingly parted to reveal a muted late- morning Sun that had a small bite out of its right-hand edge. As the dark spot grew, the birds fell silent and a sea of expectant faces became transfixed upwards. Three welders from a nearby garage became instantly popular as they passed around their dark-lensed masks, allowing the smiling onlookers a direct view of the diminishing solar disc.
Then it happened; the moment of totality arrived. The Sun disappeared for several seconds, allowing the darkness of night to wholly consume the day. Then slowly a bright sparkle materialized that soon looked like a diamond set on the band of some heavenly ring.
The last total solar eclipse of the twentieth century had just occurred on the morning of August 11
th
1999. It had begun when the Moon passed between the Earth and Sun, throwing an umbral shadow, forty-nine kilometres wide, on the North Atlantic just south of Nova Scotia. The inky black circle then swept across the ocean surface until it passed over the Isles of Scilly, off the south-west coast of England, some forty minutes later. Here the path width had expanded to 103 kilometres and was now covering the ground at a speed approaching 1,000 metres per second. The circular shadow then curved its way over Europe and on to the Middle East before crossing India and finally disappearing over the Bay of Bengal.
Such events do not happen often in the lifetime of an individual but once seen, a total solar eclipse is never forgotten. Solar eclipses occur around two to five times per year but the area on the ground covered by the totality is very small, so in any given location on Earth a total eclipse will only happen once every 360 years.
One can only imagine how primitive peoples may have feared for their lives as the Sun was apparently extinguished before their eyes. No doubt the astronomer priests of ancient time held sway over their people by having the apparently magical power of predicting such terrifying events.
But even today the magic and mystery of the eclipse is very real.
It is a very strange quirk of fate indeed that the disc of the Moon should seem, from an earthly perspective, to be exactly the same size as the Sun. Whilst we casually take it for granted that the two main bodies seen in Earth’s skies look the same size, it is actually something of a miracle. Most people are fully aware that the Moon is tiny compared to the Sun but that it is much closer to us causing them to appear as equal discs. To be precise, the Moon is 400 times smaller than the star at the centre of our solar system, yet it is also just 1/400
th
of the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
Whilst the surprisingly neat number of 400 for relative size and distance is apparently an amusing coincidence of the decimal counting system, the odds against this optical illusion happening at all are huge. Experts are deeply puzzled by the phenomenon. Isaac Asimov, the respected scientist and science-fiction guru, described this perfect visual alignment as being ‘the most unlikely coincidence imaginable’.
This perfect fit of the lunar and solar discs is a very human perspective because it only works from the viewpoint of someone standing on the Earth’s surface. But the magic of the Moon’s movements above our heads goes to even more astonishing levels. By some absolutely incomprehensible quirk of nature, the Moon also manages to precisely imitate the perceived annual movements of the Sun each month.
So, when the Sun is at its lowest and weakest in midwinter, the full Moon is at its highest and brightest, and in midsummer, when the Sun is at its highest and brightest, the Moon is at its weakest.
If you want to understand how extraordinary this doppelgänger effect is, stand on a hilltop or an open plain and film the Sun at midwinter sunset (its most southerly point on the horizon), at the spring equinox, again at midsummer and again at the autumn equinox. Then on those same dates film the Moon setting and you will see that they both go down at the same point on the horizon at the equinoxes (March 21
st
and September 21
st
) but the Moon will have the opposite setting point to the Sun at solstices in December and June.
2
Figure 1
This drawing shows the peculiar relationship of the Sun and Moon throughout the year as seen from Earth. At midsummer in the northern hemisphere the Sun sets north of west, whereas the full Moon sets south of west. At midwinter the situation is reversed, with the Sun setting south of west and the Moon setting north of west.
Figure 2
At the time of the spring and autumn equinox sunset happens at a due west position, whilst the full Moon also sets in this part of the sky.
It would be easy to dismiss these Sun-mimicking performances by saying that it is simply a consequence of the Moon’s distance from Earth and its orbital characteristics. And that is what most scientifically trained people will say because it is self-evidently true. But what they are really saying is ‘It is so because it is so’ – which takes us nowhere. Of course, it could, and logically has to be, one big coincidence. What else could it be? Even most of the ninety-two per cent of the American population who state that they believe in God would probably assume coincidence and only a minority might claim that it is the grand plan of the Almighty.
The Moon’s dance around the Earth that produces these startling performances is extremely complex and it is a consequence of the relative movements of the Earth and the Sun as well of the Moon itself.
The path of the Moon’s orbit is inclined at 5°9´ to the line of Earth’s path around the Sun, known as the plane of the ecliptic. The Earth is also tilted at an angle of just over 23°27´, although this is slowly decreasing so that in several million years it will reach 22°54´, after which it will again increase.
Figure 3
It follows that solar eclipses can only occur when the Moon passes through the plane of the ecliptic and the Sun’s light is blocked by the Moon. These points of intersection happen twice for each lunar orbit and are known as ‘nodes’. These nodes appear to move slowly around the background stars giving the impression of moving backwards through the calendar occurring 19.618 days earlier per year. The cycle completes every 18.618 years, which amounts to a surprisingly neat 6,800 days.
Closely allied to this node cycle is the so-called ‘Saros cycle’, which governs the periodicity and recurrence of eclipses, where each eclipse sequence has a duration of approximately 6,585.32 days (eighteen years, eleven days, seven hours, forty minutes and forty-eight seconds). The people of Ancient Mesopotamia knew of this astronomical principle and it is quite possible that earlier observers, long before written records began, were also aware of it.
However, one has to wait for three Saros cycles in order for a solar eclipse to repeat at the same spot on Earth because successive eclipses in the Saros cycle happen one-third of the way around the world from each other. You would therefore have to wait over fifty-four years to see an eclipse return to the same geographic area. There are twelve different Grand Saros eclipse series at the present time.
Human knowledge about the movements of the Moon is far older than most people might imagine. More than 25,000 years ago an early astronomer created a lunar calendar that is still intact. The bone he engraved was excavated nearly a hundred years ago at Abri Blanchard, not far from Lascaux in France. Experts agree that the markings accurately correspond with a two-month lunar calendar. Around 250 generations later another astronomer also recorded this already ancient knowledge, using various natural minerals daubed onto a cave wall to leave the image of an empty rectangle followed by a series of fourteen sooty dots. It was realized that these marks might also be a lunar calendar. The fourteen dots, it was argued, represented the face of the Moon from full to new, after which the empty rectangle would symbolize the disappearance of the Moon’s face on the fifteenth day.
If anyone doubted that the marks on the cave walls at Lascaux really was a lunar calendar, or even continued to believe counting was something that did not appear until the arrival of the written word some 5,000 years ago, another picture close by might cause them to think again. On this part of the cave wall there were twenty-nine dots, snaking around the bottom of a beautifully executed painting of a wild horse. Twenty-nine days is the period from new Moon through full Moon to new Moon again. And yet another artefact known as the Isturitz Baton, displays an even more advanced four-month and five- month lunar calendar.
It is humbling to realize that these records were created more than ten thousand years before the Ice Age ended and the woolly mammoth disappeared.
These kinds of lunar observations are not restricted to southern France. The Ishango Bone, which was found in the Congo, Africa, also carries markings that seem to represent a lunar calendar. What is more, it is of an almost identical age to the Isturitz Baton, though it originated many hundreds of kilometres to the south and on a different continent.
The existence of lunar calendars from such an early date is of great importance to our understanding of our own development. They demonstrate a clear awareness of the passing of time and the cycles of the natural world. The discovery of an archaeological artefact is a matter of chance and is dependent on the number of objects of any particular sort that once existed. The fact that so many of these bones, antlers and paintings have been discovered is a good indication that they were not unique and that Moon knowledge was important to the Palaeolithic people of Europe and Africa, though this does give us cause to wonder why such an early lunar fascination developed.
A recent discovery has shown why such intricate observations ‘suddenly’ became possible for our distant forebears around 32,000 years ago. In July 2004, Rachel Caspari of the University of Michigan and Sang-Hee Lee of the University of California published a paper in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
, concerning comparisons of 768 different human fossils from a huge span of human development. They then divided the fossils into two groups – adults of reproductive age, which they settled on as fifteen years, and adults that lived to be twice as old, based on tooth wear.
In primitive societies, people were often grandparents by the age of thirty, if they were lucky enough to live that long.
Dr Caspari said, ‘We found this proportion of older to young adults in the fossil record increased over time and in the Upper Paleolithic that proportion just skyrocketed.’
By calculating the ratio of old to young individuals in the samples, the researchers found that their numbers soared up to fivefold in the Upper Palaeolithic group, a leap that was so surprising that the team at first questioned its own results.
This dramatic leap in average lifespan allowed individuals to grow older and wiser and afforded each of these new elders time to pass on their knowledge to the next generation of adults. The wear on the teeth suggests that this leap in longevity must have given rise to a true form of education that could build up a body of ‘species intelligence’ where the entire social group knows far more than any one individual. This would allow for the first specialization in which talented men and women were fed and protected by the group to allow them to add value to their early society.
This sudden transition from a society of children to one of ‘greybeards’ must have been a watershed that laid the foundations for what would eventually become true civilization. The period of history, known as the Upper Palaeolithic Period, marks a time when modern man was becoming established in Europe and there was an expansion of population, creating social pressures that led to the growth of trade networks, increased mobility, and more complex systems of co-operation and competition.
We could now understand why observational astronomy became the first real science for humankind. All science is based upon observation of patterns that stand out from the ‘noise’ of simple random chance and then, through understanding, we can make predictions of future events and outcomes. In this way the tides, the seasons and the movements of the heavens could be seen as being parts of a single engine driving the variations in the immediate environment of the early thinkers.
These early observational scientists would also note where patterns from completely different events appeared to be related. Why should high tide happen twice a day and rise higher when the Moon was full or when there was no Moon at all? Did the Moon have some kind of control over something as massive as the oceans? Even stranger, why did women of childbearing age lose blood once for every complete cycle of the Moon?
We can be sure that this particular fact was not lost upon these people.
Back in 1911 a French physician by the name of J G Lalanne was examining caves in Laussel, in the Dordogne, when he chanced upon something that turns out to be very illuminating in terms of the Palaeolithic mindset. Carved into the wall of a limestone rock shelter, he found a 33cm female figure. The artistry involved from so early a period is quite remarkable, the more so given that it was executed with flint tools. The naked and full-bellied woman has her left hand on her abdomen and in her right hand is holding a bison horn, in the shape of a crescent moon. Upon the bison horn there are thirteen incised lines. The Venus of Laussel, as she is called, is at least 20,000 years old.
This carving is one of many that strongly suggest there was a very early recognition that human fertility seemed to be tied to the phases and period of the Moon. Human female reproduction is dependent on the menstrual cycle which has an average of twenty-eight days, and approximately halfway through the cycle a mature cell is released from a woman’s ovaries and becomes available for fertilization. If sexual intercourse does not take place and the egg is not fertilized, it disintegrates after a couple of days. At the end of the cycle, if no conception has taken place, menstruation begins and the cycle commences once again.
A series of intriguing studies by Professor LeRoy McDermott of the Missouri State University has suggested that these early ‘Venus’ images of the female figure were self-portraits. His analysis showed that the figurines were made from the point of view of ‘self’ rather than ‘other’ and they could only represent a women’s view of her own body both emotionally and physically as she looks downwards. Using photographic simulations of what a modern female sees of herself, McDermott demonstrates that the anatomical omissions and proportional distortions found in various Venus figurines occur naturally in autogenous, or self-generated, information. The size, shape, and articulation of the objects appear to be determined by their relationship to the eyes and the relative effects of foreshortening, distance, and occlusion rather than by any symbolic distortion. As self-portraits of women at different stages of life, McDermott believes these earliest representations of the human form embodied obstetric-al and gynaecological information and probably signified an advance in women’s self-conscious control over the material conditions of their reproductive lives.
The lunar month symbolism in the Venus of Laussel strongly suggests that women 20,000 years ago knew the length of their menstrual cycles and already equated them with the phases of the Moon. The thirteen lines on the crescent-shaped bison horn could easily relate to the thirteen menstrual cycles an average woman could expect in each year. At the same time, it is not at all uncommon for a human female to menstruate on the same Moon phase each month because twenty-eight days is merely an average, whilst the period between one full Moon and the next is 29.53 days.
The historical connection between human fertility and the Moon even extends to the word ‘menstrual’. It derives from the Latin
mensis
, meaning month, whilst the word ‘month’ is very ancient and refers to the period of four weeks as being one ‘moonth’.
The connection between human fertility and the cycles of the Moon is considered to be ‘apparent rather than actual’, but it isn’t in the least surprising that the possibility of a relationship was noticed by our ancient ancestors. The clincher probably came when someone realized that the average gestation period of a human female, from conception to birth, is around 266 days – or nine full lunar synodic cycles.
In a social and a religious sense, fertility undoubtedly played a crucial part in the lives of people at the time the Venus of Laussel was carved. It is more or less universally accepted that female deities were important to human culture for thousands of years of prehistory. Statues of pregnant women with exaggerated genitals and breasts are common from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic periods and there are strong indications of the existence of a fertility-based deity who has come down to us as ‘The Great Goddess’. The Venus of Laussel could quite easily be a representation of this deity, complete with a representation of the heavenly body with which she was equated – the Moon.
About 6,000 years ago there was an outbreak of building in stone across the western parts of Europe, particularly in the British Isles, that tells us a great deal about the Neolithic people’s fascination with the Moon.
Dr Philip Stooke, of the University of Western Ontario, Canada had always been puzzled as to why there were no maps or drawings of the Moon older than the one drawn by Leonardo da Vinci five hundred years ago. He decided to look at ancient manuscripts and the records of excavations of the Neolithic sites on the British Isles. Amongst other sites, he looked at the truly amazing prehistoric structures known as Newgrange and Knowth in County Meath, Ireland. And it was at the recently excavated Knowth that he found a 5,200-year-old carving made up of a set of lines and dots. Dr Stooke realized that this was not simply a Stone-Age doodle but a drawing of the face of the Moon. He said:
‘I was amazed when I saw it. Place the markings over a picture of the full Moon and you will see that they line up. It is without doubt a map of the Moon, the most ancient one ever found. It’s all there in the carving. You can see the overall pattern of the lunar features, from features such as Mare Humorun through to Mare Crisium. The people who carved this Moon map were the first scientists – they knew a great deal about the motion of the Moon. They were not primitive at all.’