I managed to scare my wife with Graham Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods back in 1995 by informing her that the poles are going to flip and we will all freeze like the mammoths in Siberia. Well, there were some dubious claims in that book. The supposed Antarctis in the Piri Reis map was drawn from recent information from Portuguese explorations of South America which could not possibly mean Antarctic, the Olmec heads were not showing Africans but American Indians, the Nazca lines are not thousand years old and neither are the statues in the Easter island.
I wonder what those Nazca lines could be? I came up with a possible (and very possible wrong) idea that they could be figures for birds to know to return home. That is, trained birds. The old way, like in Noah’s story, to find land was to have on the boat birds. You can sail the seas keeping the track by the stars and sun, but how to find a new land to settle. So you let a bird fly as a trial and if it does not return, then there must be land somewhere near. Then you let another bird fly and follow its flight, sail some distance and then let a third bird fly. So you get to a new land, but how to get back home in a cloudy day? South America is rather long, it is not enough to find some coast. But birds can be trained and if they see a figure they were though to recognize as home, they will guide you home. The Nazca lines are close to the shore. Maybe Peruvian Indians were exploring the Pacific Ocean trying to find new land. We know that humans explored seas a very long time ago. Australia was populated 60,000 years ago and there never was a land bridge there (though 18,000 ybp there almost was). In some way Australian aborigines found land. I think they used birds. I would have and the myths tell about this trick.
It is even possible that Peruvian Indians finally found the Easter Islands. Nazca lines date to 500 BC – 500 AD. The Easter Island was settled by Polynesians between 300 AD and 1200 AD. They were for sure Polynesians, but there is the mysterious Hanau eepe people, the long ears, who according to a local myth though the inhabitants stone carving and in the earlier versions of the myth were the original inhabitants. Thor Heyendahl thought Hanau eepe came from Peru. Scientists do not believe it, of course, but it is possible. They have sweet potatoes in the Easter Island, and that is a South American plant. And there are the mysterious statues all around the Easter islands. They could be signs for travelers to recognize the settlement, but more likely to tell any potential new settlers, like American Indians, to stay out. Those statues are dated to 1250 AD to 1500 AD, but that is not a problem: probably they did not want more immigrants.
Even the scary possibility that the poles might flip was not a real one. The mantle of the Earth can indeed move freely over the core, but the mantle has an uneven distribution of mass and it will move to a position where the inertial energy is minimized. As it happens to be that the Northern hemisphere has more land and thus more mass than the Southern hemisphere, the minimum inertia is when the Earth axis is as it is now, unless continents drift to different places, of course. A real pole wonder can happen and has happened in the far away past, but it needs a change in the distribution of the mass. Melting polar ice does not cause a big enough change, so geographic poles will not flip when the ice melts as a result of global warming. The magnetic poles can flip, but that is another issue. It can cause increased radiation on the Earth and cause extinctions of species, but the geographic poles will not flip.
Thought, they may move for a while and then fast move back. Geographic poles do move some meters even now. Assuming we are hit by a comet, the impact may be large enough to move the axis. It comes back after a while, but we may have frozen like the mammoths. Or, it is not quite so. That is, assume the axis is moved and we are in the new North Pole. How fast does it get cold? As fast as it gets cold when the sun is darkened, because what is warming is the sun. Every night the sun is out and it does not get cold very fast since the Earth is warm and takes some time to cool. The mammoths in Siberia froze much faster than that. Such fast freezing cannot be a result of real pole wonder. It can be a result of very, very cold air coming from very, very high latitudes of the atmosphere, as would happen if a comet struck the Earth and there came a huge explosion with sucked air from above. And that is probably what happened. It can happen any time, only the probability of a comet hitting the Earth is very small.
Obviously, I was not so impressed by the 1995 book, but Hancock writes very well. It was a pleasure to read the book, and there were some good theories, like that the Sphinx has a body weathered by water and may be much older than what is accepted. The Sphinx is Horus pictured as a lion with a human face and the face has Egyptian headdress from the time of the Old Kingdom, but the profile does not look Egyptian and the head is too small. I think Robert Schoch’s theory is very interesting and well argued. The face may have been carved around 2600 BC and it may originally have been a lion’s head and derive from 7000-5000 BC when it rained in the area. Hancock’s proposal that the Sphinx would have been built 10,500 BC I find less probable because I do not think the lion Zodiac sign was used at that time. People certainly observed stars, and not only circumpolar stars, at that time. Circumpolar stars humans have observed since the time Deneb was the Pole Star, as is shown by a cave drawing. They also observed several other stars and constellations, like Orion, Sirius, Taurus, and I am fairly sure of Gemini as Twins occur so often in myths. But Lion as a lion is for me doubtful.
The main claim of the 1995 book I have never questioned: there was a culture long before the Sumerians and Egyptians. The only question is how high culture we are talking about. Hancock claimed it was a high culture, and his claim was verified by the finding of Göbekli Tepe. Thus, Hancock was essentially correct, though many claims in the 1995 book are unsupported and almost certainly wrong. The 2015 book is much better. Hancock’s theses are always based on theories of some researchers and occasionally such controversial theories are correct. The pearl of the 2015 book is the 10,800 BC comet impact theory by West and others. It was controversial when Hancock wrote the book. Now it is mainstream. The evidence is strong and growing. The Earth was hit by a comet around 10,800 BC and this impact caused the Younger Dryas, an especially cold 1200 years period when the global temperature dropped 15 degrees. Ten percent of the Earth was burned. This is the global catastrophe remembered in myths from all over the world. First the gods destroyed the Earth by fire, then the sun darkened, and when the Younger Dryas ended came the Flood, the destruction of the Earth by water. These things really happened. The Flood was around 9,600 BC and it was caused by the melting of the ice caps on the poles. It was the real Flood, not Noah’s Deluge, which was the river flood in Shuruppak 2900 BC. Those Sumerians just liked to make their catastrophe as important as the real Flood. Just like today, if 10 Americans die, it is as important as when 50,000 people from the third world die.
Hancock personally contributed one important discovery in the 2015 book. It is also widely accepted by now. Actually if was not Hancock’s theory: he credits it to Paula Burley in the book. It is the claim that the Vulture stone, Pillar 43, in Göbekli Tepe is a star map (figure 1). The disc above the vulture’s wing is taken as the sun. Below the vulture is a scorpion. Hancock does not take the scorpion as the constellation Scorpion: the book suggests that most of Scorpion is in the bird right-down from the vulture. Then the vulture is Sagittarius.
Figure 1. Pillar 43 from Göbekli Tepe.
Often it is suggested that the vulture is Cygnus, but I think the interpretation in Hancock’s book is the correct one. At 1:30 AM in June 21, 2019, in Turkey, you see on the southern sky the following constellations.
Figure 2. What you see in Turkey 1:30 AM June 21, 2019, looking to the south.
I marked the disc (the sun) in Pillar 43 as a red circle. Hancock tries to scare the reader by claiming that the pillar shows our time and it is a prophecy that a comet will hit the Earth again in 20 years. Well, he would not be Hancock if he would not try such a thing.
There is one problem in Hancock’s idea: in 2019 in the June the sun is not at the place where the disc is in the pillar. Sun arises in 2019 in just the opposite direction, not between Sagittarius and Scorpio, but between Gemini and Taurus. But if we go to 9600 BC, which is just one half a precession cycle before 2019, then, around that time, the sun rose in June 21, 9600 BC exactly as shown in the figure 2.
The difference in what we see is that in those prehistoric times the constellations were higher up in the sky than today. At that time the Celestial Northern Pole was between the star Vega and the constellation of Hercules, while today Polaris is the Pole Star. I draw it in the following figure. Take the present Polar Star Polaris and find the center of precession in the constellation of Draco (Center in figure 2). Then draw a line connecting them and on the opposite side at the same distance as between Polaris and the center point, you find the Celestial North Pole 12,800 years ago, that is 10,800 BC. You can move it a bit towards Hercules to get to 9,600 BC.
Figure 3. The star map with the Celestial North Pole in 10,800 BC marked as Polar.
When looking to the south sky we see today Hercules in the summer solstice above Sagittarius and Scorpio. If we imagine that Hercules is moved up so that the Northern Pole is a bit left from Hercules, the constellations of Sagittarius and Scorpio move up and we see such constellations as Pavo, which is not seen today in the southern sky at the summer solstice. In the Göbekli Tepe Pillar 43 there is a bird below the scorpion and it can very well be Pavo, as Hancock’s book suggests. I think the constellations match quite fine and Hancock and Burley have interpreted Pillar 43 correctly as a star map, and also that it is related to the comet impact of 10,800 BC.
The day June 21 is the summer solstice. Ancient star gazers were interested in four special days only (as shown by later neolithic observatories): the summer and winter solstice and the spring and autumn equinox. Of these four days the constellations of Sagittarius and Scorpio can be seen only in the summer solstice, and this was true also between 9600 BC and 8200 BC when Göbekli Tepe was built. Thus, we can be sure that the time shown in the relief is the summer solstice. The sun is shown in the relief just above Sagittarius, thus the sun must have risen in Sagittarius in the summer solstice. In the present time sun rises between Sagittarius and Scorpio in the winter solstice and between Gemini and Taurus. Half a precession cycle ago, in 9600 BC, it was the opposite: the sun rose between Sagittarius and Scorpio in the summer solstice, just like in the relief. Thus, we can conclude that the relief pictures the time as seen in 9600 BC – 8200 BC. (Or 10,800 BC, it is pretty much the same.)
As I mentioned, Hancock argues in the book that when the sun arose in the summer solstice 9600 BC the sky did not have the configuration as in the pillar, and he concludes that the pillar shows our time and it is a prophecy of our time. Hancock is very clever and does not actually do any error. He only chooses the time of the day differently. It is true that when the sun arose in June 9600, the constellations were not as in the pillar, so the figures in Hancock’s book are correct. But the time is wrongly chosen. The sun and the constellations were as in the pillar at 1:30 AM, just as today they are as in the pillar only for some time around 1:30 AM. This is because every night the stars go around the Celestial North Pole (though we do not see stars in the day time). There never was, not will be, such a time that the stars show the constellations as in the pillar at the time the sun arises. The clue in the Vulture stone for the sun is the constellation under which the sun arises.
In 2017 some astroscientists agreed on Hancock’s interpretation and dated the comet to 10,950 BC and that the stone identifies the Taurid meteor shower associated with the comet Encke. This meteor shower hits the Earth twice a year
In the 2015 book Hancock tries to scare the reader with two prophesies. One if them is this his interpretation that the Vulture stone points to our time, the other is the ending of the Maya calendar in 2012, which Hancock used already in the 1995 book. As 2010 went already, Hancock has lengthened the time of the Maya prophecy to 2040. The Maya calendar did indeed finish in 2012 and it is correct to say that in the Maya way of counting time we are now in a new age, but both prophecies are on a weak basis. Not to say that the end of the times could not come around 2030, but that is another issue.
The 2015 book tries to connect Atlantis to the Deluge. I had to reread Plato’s Critias and Timaeus and after reading them and checking from the always as reliable Wikipedia what theories there are of Atlantis, I must say that the most probable to me looks the theory that Atlantis was a Phoenician city Tartessos, proposed e.g. by Richard Freund. When Plato describes the circles of water in the harbor of Atlantis one immediately thinks of the harbor of Carthage, though it had only one circle, but it is similar. Exactly Phoenicians tried to capture the Mediterranean from the West and occupied just those places that Plato mentions: Libya, Tyrrhenia and Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar). Hyksos, a closely related Semitic people, occupied Lower Egypt. The Egyptian priest, who is said to have told the story to Solon, mentions that Greeks were essential in stopping this invasion. Greeks were not in the Mediterranean coast in 9,600 BC, but they were there to stop Phoenicians. Greeks had a war in Sicily when Phoenicians had established themselves in the Western part of Sicily, so Greeks did stop them, and later Romans finished Carthage. In the Spain Phoenicians did in a way control a larger are than in Libya and Asia together, though Tartessos was not an island. But maybe the Egyptian considered the peninsula of Spain as almost an island. The main difference with this history and what Plato writes is that Phoenicians tried the invasion 900 years before Solon, not 9000, but this can be explained. Possibly the (true) story changed before it got to Plato, or he did not want to mention Phoenicians as Carthage was very much in existence and a competing sea power.
This naturally means that I discard Hancock’s view that Atlantis was the lost civilization that flourished before 9,600 BC, and that Atlantis was situated in Indonesia.
More theories than these I will not comment from Hancock’s 2015 book. It has lots of material form the 1995 book, much of which I do not quite agree, but some I do, such as that the Cheop’s pyramid does indeed give the value of 2π as the fraction of the original height divided by the length of the base. It looks like a solution to the squaring the circle, a classical problem that the Egyptians solved by covering an area with small spheres and counting them. The Greeks tried to be smart and do it with a ruler and a compass, which does not work.
The original height of the pyramid multiplied by 4320 gives the radius of the Earth. Hancock thinks the number is selected on purpose to be related to the precession. I think this can well be so. Egyptians sailed the seas. There is even a sea capable boat buried next to the pyramid. In my opinion any sea faring developed nation could fairly easily figure out that the Earth is round and be able to calculate the radius. It is because if you build h=8 m and 12 m high towers on the shore and sail your boat to a distance of a=10 km from the shore, you can see the tip of the taller tower, but you cannot see the shorter one. The radius of the Earth is about r=a2/2h=6250 km. With a more precise measurement you get a better approximation. It should not be that difficult to realize that the reason you cannot see the 8 m tower is that the water surface is curved as in a sphere and if Egyptians could calculate π, as they apparently could, they could solve this problem. I am quite sure they knew the precession cycle. Myths show that even much less civilized Finns knew that the Pole Star changes over time.
So, that Hancock got right in my opinion. But I have to solve some old problem. Let us take the problem of how ancient people could move such huge stones. Myths do not tell that they needed large numbers of workers to do it. It was done by the priests in a magical way: that is what the myths say. I can propose a magical way. It is just the law of Archimedes. As Greeks copied so much of their knowledge from Egyptians, I have no doubt Egyptian priests could have known that stones are lighter in the water than in the air. Immersed in water granite loses half of its weight. Unfortunately some 30 tons stone is still very heavy. But what if it is pseudowater: take a lot of bronze spheres and oil them with e.g. olive oil. That is almost liquid and it is incompressible like liquid should be. What might be the density of this liquid? Packing of spheres is typically 63% if done randomly. I will be generous, let us assume that it is 50% of bronze and 50% of oil or air. You guessed it. This liquid is about twice as dense as granite. If you immerse a block of granite to this liquid, the stone will pop up on the surface just like a piece of cork. You put stone plates on the ground for some 10 meters so that the bronze spheres do not disappear in the sand, and you build walls around the floor, with the stone inside, naturally. Then you fill the box with this magic liquid. The stone comes up and you move it from one end to another. Then you let the spheres out, the stone drops down. Take the walls and part of the floor and move them forward. On every step you manage to move the stone magically 5 meters. It goes up just as easily, just you need higher walls (and some strong ropes to keep the walls together). That is my magic trick. A few priests could move 30 ton stones easily. (Do not agree on building a pyramid alone before checking if this works, maybe I am wrong.)
Well, OK, I’ll solve another problem. It is about Kalevala. In the very beginning of this collection of Finnish myths there is the huge oak, which covers the day, and the small man who comes and cuts the tree down. Then the day can again be seen. You again guessed it. This is naturally of the Younger Dryas time when the sun was darkened because of the comet impact. That was the large oak and the small man with the axe is naturally the constellation of Hercules. When the Celestial Northern Pole moved to Hercules (just about 9,600 BC), Younger Dryas ended. That is why later Smith Ilmarinen is called to become the releasor of the day when the world pillar (Sampo) is stolen and it is dark. This was easy. Then I solve a problem you cannot solve (at least if you do not know Finnish). So, there is a bird landing on the large oak and this bird is called Kokko (a bonfire), but people say Kokko here means Kotka (an eagle). I have never met any Finn who would call Kotka a Kokko (though I have met one who would call Pato (a dam) Tammi (oak, but in Slavic languages tam). Earlier, when a bird is landing on the sky woman’s leg, the bird is the constellation Swan and the sky woman is the Milky Way and it is not really the leg where the bird lands on. But with the large oak this Kokko is not a bird. It is Kokko. That is the comet of 10,800 BC. So, we have the comet in Kalevala. Finns had a genetic bottleneck 20,000-10,000 years ago. It may be a good starting point to assume it was caused by the comet. This can be my small contribution of today.