We are Not the First
by Andrew Tomas
Introduction
Hundreds of intellects, past and present, played a part in this book. The
author acted merely as an orchestra conductor. His musicians comprised
classic writers, priests of old Egypt, Babylon, India and Mexico,
philosophers of ancient Greece and China, scholars of the Middle Ages, and
lastly modern scientists. The theme of this composition is the Genesis of
Knowledge and its periodic crescendos and diminuendos in history.
Three aims are set in this work:
● To show that in former eras people possessed many scientific notions that
we have today.
● To demonstrate that the technical skills of the men of antiquity and
prehistory have been greatly under-estimated.
● To prove that certain advanced ideas of the ancients on science and
technology came from an unknown outside source.
"Civilization is older than we suppose," is the principal thesis of this treatise.
With the advance of science the concept of the size and age of the universe
has been radically changed in the last four hundred years. Farseeing men
such as Bruno, Galileo or Darwin defied their narrow-minded
contemporaries and argued that the world was greater and more ancient than
men had believed.
Two hundred years ago the French naturalist Bufion estimated the age of the
earth. He thought that our planet had cooled down 35,000 years ago, and that
life had appeared about 15,000 years ago. This chronology of the French
scholar was certainly more rational than the general belief in England at the
time of the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837 that the earth and man
were created in 4004 B.C.E.
But geology and Darwinism exploded this mediaeval concept and twenty five years later, Lord Kelvin added ten million years to the terrestrial age.
Thanks to perfected techniques the age of the crust has been determined to
be 3.3 billion years while that of the planet itself 4.6 billion years. In only
two hundred years the age of the earth's crust was raised from 35,000 to
3,300,000,000 years! A few decades ago man was considered to be about
600,000 years old. New finds in South, and East Africa extended the life
span of homo sapiens to two million years. The discovery of anthropoid
teeth and jaws in southern Ethiopia by the Chicago anthropologist F. Clark
Howell confirmed the figure as early as 1969.
A tendency to move back the origin of civilization has been noticeable in the
field of history as well. Before Schliemann, no savant in Europe could
conceive of Troy existing as early as 2800 B.C.E. Before the excavations of
Evans in Crete, no historian had the audacity to imagine a Minoan culture
2,500 years before our era. Four decades ago there was not a scholar in the
world who could envisage a high civilization in the Indus Valley co-existing
with the early dynasties of Egypt. How many scientists were there a quarter
of a century ago who could accept the idea of Central American civilizations
having had an uninterrupted existence for 4,000 years? Yet the ruins of the
city of Dzibilchaltun in Yucatan are a mute witness to this truth.
The rationale of the conclusion that the origin of man and the appearance of
civilization might be less recent than accepted at present, can clearly be seen
from the above examples. The mass of historical data presented in this work
demonstrates the presence of an archaic science in the past. But who were
the teachers of the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and Greeks from whom
we ourselves received a store of knowledge through the Arabs?
Surrounded by the marvels of our technology and science, we are losing
contact with the people of former epochs to whom we owe so much. Man is
civilized only when he remembers his yesterday and dreams about tomorrow.
The primate began to leave the animal kingdom by developing a superior
brain and upright posture. He became a true 'man' when he ventured into the
domain of abstract thought - religion, mathematics, art and music. The true
criterion of man's growth was his ability to soar in the world of ideals; to
appreciate beauty, to distinguish between right and wrong, to form
abstractions. Until he reached that state, man was still a link between the
quadrupeds and the bipeds.
Science, the empirical observation of the world around us, and philosophy,
the formulation of generalizations, have helped man to arrive at more correct
views concerning the universe. The history of civilization is the story of the
ascent of man in the mental World. It was William Prescott, the great
Americanologist, who said: "A nation may pass away and leave only the
memory of its existence, but the stories of science it has gathered up will
endure forever."
Have you, like the author, walked around the pyramids of Giza awed by the
giant size of the stones and amazed by the thinness of the joints between
them? Have you stood in Mexico City before the paintings of Quetzalcoatl
flying in a winged ship, startled by this prehistoric notion of aviation? Have
you seen canoes with stabilizers in the Pacific and admired the islanders who
have made ocean voyages for thousands of years?
Have you strolled through the slumbering city of Pompeii and examined the
bricks with in crusted gravel, like modern concrete, which the Roman slaves
made? Have you visited the shrine inside the colossal bronze Buddha in
Kamakura, Japan, and marveled at the skill of Japanese metallurgists seven
hundred years ago? Have you walked around the megaliths of Stonehenge
and tried to solve a riddle - how men wearing skins could have designed and
erected this computer in stone?
If you have, then you would want to follow the author on a sight-seeing trip
to the land of the past. This book is about real people, actual places and
authentic events. What is more, it is about the things our predecessors
thought and dreamed about a long time ago. During the past three or four
hundred years science has been rediscovered rather than discovered.
Babylon, India, Egypt, Greece and China were the cradle of science.
"The old devices have been re-invented; the old experiments have been tried
once more," said Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. This
book is about penicillin before Fleming, about aeroplanes before the Wright
Brothers, about the moons of Jupiter before Galileo, about voyages to the
moon before Apollo probes, about the atomic theory centuries before
Rutherford, about electric batteries before Volta, about computers before
Wiener, about science before this Scientific Age.
A fragmentary account of the adventures of ancient man in the scientific
realm is not a history of science. But this sketch will reveal unorthodox
historical facts of educational value, provoke speculation as to the reasons
for the presence of advanced scientific and technological concepts in early
civilizations, or at least entertain the reader by a story stranger than fiction.
Chapter 1:
The Days and Nights of Knowledge
This rather naive image of the earth was drawn by Cosmas Indicopleustes, a
scholar-explorer of the 6th Century in his Christian Topography. However, a
thousand years before Cosmas' book, philosophers had a different and much
more accurate idea of the shape of the earth. Pythagoras (6th century B.C.E.)
taught at his school in Crotona that the earth was a sphere. Aristarchus of
Samos (3rd century B.C.E.) deduced that it revolved around the sun.
Eratosthenes, the librarian of Alexandria (3rd century B.C.E.), computed the
circumference of our planet.
Oddly enough, the peoples further back in time had greater scientific
knowledge than the nations of later historical periods. Until the second part
of the 19th century scholars and clerics of the West thought that the earth
was but a few thousand years old. Yet ancient Brahmin books estimated the
Day of Brahma, the life span of our planet, to be 4,320 billion years. This
figure is close to that of our astronomers who calculate it to be about 4.543
billion years. It is fairly obvious that knowledge has had its days and nights.
Science emerged from mediaeval darkness during the Renaissance. By
studying classic sources savants rediscovered truths which had been known
to ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Hindus or Greeks for many centuries.
These waves of progress can be followed back over seven or eight thousand
years - the frontiers of history. They can be explained by changes in
ideology, a new economic or political system as well as by the impact of
great minds on society. However, the presence of certain scientific
knowledge in ancient times can not be easily accounted for unless it is
assumed that the skills and knowledge of the ancients have been drastically
underestimated. Even then a certain number of riddles will remain, calling
for a reappraisal of the history of science. The presentation of these
problems constitutes one of the aims of this book.
In 1600, the Dominican monk Giordano Bruno was burnt alive at the Piazza
del Fiore in Rome after having been convicted as a heretic. In one of his
books he stated that there are an infinite number of suns in the universe and
planets which revolve around them. Some of these worlds might be
populated, he said.
This brilliant speculation of Bruno, though four hundred years ahead of his
era, actually preceded him by two thousand years, because ancient Greek
philosophers had believed in the plurality of inhabited worlds. Anaximenes
told a disappointed Alexander the Great that he had conquered but one earth
whereas there were many others in infinite space. In the third century before
our era Metrodotus did not think that our earth was the only populated planet.
Anaxagoras (5th century B.C.E.) wrote about 'other earths' in the universe.
Until Descartes and Leibnitz the Europeans had no concept of the million in
mathematics. But the ancient Hindus, Babylonians and Egyptians had
hieroglyphs for one million, and manipulated astronomical figures in their
records. The Egyptians had an apt symbol for the million; an amazed man
with raised hands. We owe everything in mathematics and science to ancient
India for the most important and yet cheapest gift to the world - the zero.
Mediaeval cities of France, Germany, England and other countries were
usually built by accident without any planning. The streets were narrow,
irregular, with no sewage facilities. Because of unsanitary conditions
epidemics devastated these crowded towns. Yet around 2500 B.C.E. the
cities of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, in what is now Pakistan, were as
carefully planned as Paris or Washington. Efficient water supply, drainage
and rubbish chutes were provided. Besides public swimming pools many
homes had private bathrooms. Let us recollect that until the end of the last
century this was a luxury in Europe and America.
Before the latter part of the 16th century Europeans had neither spoons nor
forks on their tables - they used only knives and fingers. Yet the people of
Central America had these one thousand years before the appearance of
Cortes. In fact, the ancient Egyptians had used spoons even earlier - in 3000
B.C.E. This historical detail puts things in the proper perspective to the
shame of the Europeans.
The Aztecs were living in a Golden Age when the conquistadors invaded
Mexico: Montezuma literally walked on gold because his sandals had soft-
gold soles. There was also a Golden Age in the Land of the Incas when the
Spaniards came - the temples of Pachacamac near Lima were fastened with
golden nails that were found to weigh a ton, when removed. There was a
Silver Age in Peru in the days of Pizarro - his soldiers shod their horses with
silver.
To show how the expansion of Europe was conducted at the expense of the
Golden Age races of the Americas, let us examine the gold reserves of
European nations in the year 1492 when Columbus set sail on his voyage to
the New World. The total amount of gold in Europe at the time was ninety
tons. After robbing the empires of Mexico and Peru, the gold reserves of
Europe increased eight times, just one hundred years later!
But was there a Golden Age of Science? Did the priests of Peru, Mexico,
India, Egypt, Babylon, China and the thinkers of Greece endeavour to
preserve its memory? Our science has only rediscovered and perfected old
ideas. Step by step, it has demonstrated that the world is more ancient and
vaster than it was thought only a few generations ago. In the last one
hundred and fifty years the Space-Time frontiers of the universe have been
pushed far back.
In the fluctuations of scientific knowledge down through the ages a curious
fact becomes evident - the possession of information which could not have
been obtained without instrumentation. Occasionally, knowledge has
appeared as if out of nowhere. These problems require an unbiased approach.
One of the greatest handicaps that the historian is confronted with is lack of
evidence. If it were not for the burning of libraries in antiquity, history
would not have had so many missing pages. The past of many a former
civilization would look different without these blank spots.
Firstly, let us review this destruction of cultural records.
The famous collection of Pisistratus in Athens (6th century B.C.E.) was
ravaged. Fortunately, the poems of Homer edited by the Greek leader's
literati, somehow survived. The papyri of the library of the Temple of Ptah
in Memphis were totally destroyed, the same fate befell the library of Pergamum in Asia Minor containing 200,000 volumes. The city of Carthage,
razed to the ground by the Romans in a seventeen-day fire in 146 B.C.E, was
said to possess a library with half a million volumes.
However, the greatest blow to history was the burning of the Alexandrian
Library in the Egyptian campaign of Julius Caesar during which 700,000
priceless scrolls were irretrievably lost. The Bruchion contained 400,000
books and the Serapeum 300,000. There was a complete catalogue of
authors in 120 volumes with a brief biography of each author.
The Alexandrian Library was also a university and research institute. The
university had faculties of medicine, mathematics, astronomy, literature, as
well as other subjects. A chemical laboratory, astronomical observatory,
anatomical theatre for operations and dissections, and a botanical and
zoological garden were some of the facilities of this educational institution
where 14,000 pupils studied, laying the foundation of modern science.
The Roman conqueror was also responsible for the loss of thousands of
scrolls in the Bibractis Druid College at what is now Autun, France.
Numerous treatises on philosophy, medicine, astronomy and other sciences
perished there. The fate of libraries was no better in Asia, as Emperor Tsin
Shi Hwang-ti issued an edict whereby innumerable books were burned in
China in 213 B.C.E.
Leo Isaurus was another arch-enemy of culture as 300,000 books went to the
incendiary in Constantinople in the 8th century. The number of manuscripts
annihilated by the Inquisition at autos-de-fe in the Middle Ages can hardly
be estimated. Because of these tragedies we have to depend on disconnected
fragments, casual passages and meagre accounts. Our distant past is a
vacuum filled at random with tablets, parchments, statues, paintings and
various artifacts. The history of science would appear totally different were
the book collection of Alexandria intact today.
Losses of priceless documents have occurred in modern history. Once there
was a fire in the harem of the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. A young
secretary of the French Embassy drifted with the crowds nearby and saw
looters carry vases, curtains and other objects from the burning palace. The
Frenchman noticed a man with a thick volume of Titus Livius' History of
Rome, considered lost for centuries. He immediately stopped the Turk,
offering him a goodly sum for the book. Unfortunately, his purse contained
only a few coins and he promised to pay the balance at his residence to
which the Turk agreed. Suddenly, they were separated by the mob before
introducing themselves. This is how an irreplaceable document vanished
after nearly having been retrieved.
On the other hand, unexpected discoveries which filled gaps in ancient
history, have been made. About one hundred and fifty years ago the great
French Egyptologist Champollion visited the Turin Museum. In a storeroom
he came across a box with pieces of papyri.
"What's in it?" he asked.
"Useless rubbish, sir," answered the attendant.
Champollion was not satisfied with the answer and began to put the pieces
together like a jigsaw puzzle. This 'rubbish' turned out to be the only extant
list of Egyptian dynasties with the names of the pharaohs and the dates of
their reigns! It was a revelation. One can imagine how our views on
antiquity will change if more chronicles of this type are found.
The sensational find of the Dead Sea Scrolls disclosed the fact that this older
version of the Bible (2nd century B.C.E.) agreed reasonably well with the
Masoretic Text (7th century C.E.). From an historical and religious
standpoint the Dead Sea Scrolls were a tremendously important acquisition.
Apropos, the credit for this momentous archaeological discovery is
attributed to a young Bedouin shepherd who one day, while chasing a goat,
found the cave in which the scrolls were hidden in jars.
In 1549 a young, overzealous monk, Diego de Landa discovered a large
library of Maya codices in Mexico. "We burned them all because they
contained nothing except superstition and machinations of the devil," he
wrote. How could he possibly know what the books were about? With all the
brilliant philologists and electronic brains we have today, the three
miraculously surviving manuscripts of the Mayas still remain largely
undeciphered.
When de Landa had become older and received the title of bishop, he
realized what a barbarian crime he had committed. He made a search for
Mayan scripts but without success. A tradition exists that the fifty-two
golden tablets preserved in a temple, containing a history of Central America,
had been carefully concealed by the Aztec priests before the greedy
conquistadors reached Tenochtitlan. Diego de Landa wrote a work on the
Mayas but his contribution towards decoding their hieroglyphics was utterly
negligible. Had someone requested the Madrid Library one hundred years
ago for the First New Chronicle and Good Government, by Felipe Huaman
Poma de Ayala, with the date of 1565, the librarian would have been
extremely puzzled.
Neither the Madrid librarian nor any scholar in the world at that time knew
anything about this history of the Incas. The manuscript lay in obscurity for
centuries until it turned up, of all places, in the Royal Library at Copenhagen
in 1908. It was published for the first time in 1927, and is now considered to
be as good a source as Garcilaso de la Vega or Pedro de Cieza de Leon. This
is the story of just one lost book, but how many others may still be
concealed in the most unexpected places?
Until these documents from bygone epochs are located can the only sacred
texts, classic writings and myths we know of now, be considered as reliable
material for reconstructing the picture of the past? Sacred scriptures as well
as the works of Greek and Roman authors can safely be used for this
purpose. This contention will be supported later by interesting episodes from
ancient history. Mythology and folklore are thought-fossils depicting the
story of vanished cultures in symbols and allegories. By separating fancy
from fact, a reasonably correct image of past events, people and places can
be recreated from legends.
The city of Ur, referred to in the Bible as the town from which Abraham had
come, was afforded little if any geographical or historical significance by the
sages of the 19th century. Actually, until recent times few historians have
taken the Bible seriously as a source of historical data. But after Sir Leonard
Woolley had discovered the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia, the situation
began to change.
One hundred years ago no scholar took the Iliad or Odyssey of Homer as
history. But Heinrich Schliemann put faith in it and discovered the legendary
city of Troy. Then he followed the homeward route of Odysseus and
excavated the graves of Mycenae in search of the loot which the Greeks took
from Troy. He read in the Iliad Homer's description of a cup decorated with
doves which Odysseus used. In a deep shaft Schliemann found that 3,600
year-old cup!
Legends can therefore be interpreted as fanciful records of actual happenings.
Thus, for instance, the legend of the goddess Demeter, who is usually
depicted with a sickle and sheaves of wheat, portrays the introduction of
wheat into Greece, where up to that time there had been only beans, poppy
seeds and acorns. The goddess taught Triptolemus the art of agriculture and
then he traveled throughout Greece instructing the people how to grow
wheat and bake bread.
The myth of the birth of Zeus in Crete points to the Cretan origin of the
ancient Greek culture. It is interesting to note that with the exception of a
few legends, the Greeks themselves knew nothing of the advanced Minoan
civilization in Crete which had preceded their own. But as we can see,
folklore preserves history in the guise of colourful tales. Until 1952 when
Michael Ventris decoded the Linear B script of Crete - and ascertained to his
amazement that it was early Greek, no one in ancient or modern times had
taken this Zeus myth seriously.
In his Dialogues, Plato made a reference to an archaic form of the Greek
language. Naturally, his contemporaries had never heard of this lost dialect.
But late in the 19th century an old script was found which, when deciphered
in the fifties, turned out to be pre-classic Greek. Consequently, do we have
the right to distrust the words of antique writers or legends, unless and until
they can be proven wrong?
In the Critias, Plato tells the story of Solon to whom the priests of Sais in
Egypt confided in 550 B.C.E. that 10,000 years before their time, Greece had
been covered with fertile soil. In comparison to what was then, "there remain
in small islets only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called, all
the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away," according to the
Egyptian sages.
Now that information is scientifically correct because the soil of Greece was
rich a few thousand years ago. In that remote period the Sahara was a steppe
where abundant vegetation grew. This is but one example of the climatic
changes which have taken place in the Mediterranean basin. But how could
Plato, Solon or the priests of Sais have known about soil erosion in Greece
for so long a period unless accurate records had been kept for 10,000 years
by the Egyptian priesthood?
In describing the far north of Scythia (modern Russia), Plutarch (1st century)
spoke of a night which prevailed for six months in those regions, with a
continuous snowfall. He remarked that "this is utterly incredible". But his
portrayal of the arctic winter was surprisingly true. Plutarch also wrote a
story concerning a Phoenician fleet in the service of Pharaoh Necho. The
ships sailed from the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean and circled Africa via
the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Gibraltar. The voyage was
accomplished in the course of two years.
"These men made a statement," writes Plutarch, "which I do not myself
believe, though others may, to the effect that as they sailed on a westerly
course around the southern end of Africa, they had the sun on their right - to
northward of them". No ancient Greek could imagine the sun shining in the
north. The critical attitude of Plutarch to his own story adds even more
weight to his writings. After all, his report is accurate as the sun does shine
in the north in South Africa.
Ptolemy's Almagest lists all the geographical data available in the second
century. The astronomer describes equatorial Africa, the Upper Nile and
mountain ranges in the heart of the continent. Clearly, this savant of
antiquity had more knowledge about Africa than his European colleagues in
the first half of the 19th century.
When the exploration of central Africa in the last century disclosed the
existence of snow capped ranges, and reports to that effect were submitted to
the Royal Geographical Society in London, the learned members found them
a source of merriment. Snow on the equator? Sheer nonsense! The weapon
of scepticism is dangerous - in the past many an over-sceptical scientist
discredited himself by rash condemnation and lack of imagination.
In explaining the causes of the flooding of the Nile, Herodotus (5th century
B.C.E.) listed several theories current at the time. One of them, "the most
plausible" in his words, but nonetheless impossible in his opinion, was that
"the water of the Nile comes from melting snow". So once again it is seen
how the curve of knowledge plunges on the chart of world progress. It is not
difficult to prove the superiority of Greek thought over scholastic philosophy
in the Dark Ages. Born in antiquity, eclipsed in the Mediaeval era, science
was rediscovered by the Arabs, restored in the Renaissance and developed
by the scientific men of modern times.
But long ago there were other ebbs and flows of cultural progress. The rock
paintings of aurochs, horses, stags and other beasts in the caves of Altamira,
Lascaux, Ribadasella and others, are masterpieces not only of prehistoric art
but of art in any period. Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and Greeks painted
stylized bulls. But the bisons or horses of Altamira or Lascaux look as if
they might have been painted by a Leonardo or Picasso. The realism and
beauty of these cave paintings makes them immensely superior to the
paintings of animals in Egypt, Babylon or Greece.
Sketches and trial-pieces have been discovered in the caves, suggesting the
existence of art schools over 15,000 years ago. The rock paintings of the Cro-Magnon are more than 10,000 years older than the artistic productions of
ancient civilizations. This is yet another example of the way a wave reaches
a peak in the curve of civilization and then goes down.
Recently we have been rediscovering a forgotten science. Three hundred and
fifty years ago the great German astronomer Johann Kepler correctly
attributed the cause of tides to the influence of the moon. However, he
immediately became a target for persecution. Yet, as early as the second
century B.C.E., the Babylonian astronomer Seleucus spoke about the
attraction which the moon exercises on our oceans. Posidonius (135-50
B.C.E.) made a study of the tides and rightly concluded that they were
connected with the revolution of the moon around the earth.
The eclipse of science in the intervening eighteen centuries is only too
obvious. During the course of fourteen centuries - from Ptolemy to
Copernicus, not a single contribution to astronomy was made. Even in
Ptolemy's time thinkers looked back to former centuries for knowledge as if
there had been a Golden Age of Science in the past.
The ancient Indian astronomical text Surya Siddhanta recorded that the earth
is 'a globe in space'. In the book Huang Ti-Ping King Su Wen the learned
Chi-Po tells the Yellow Emperor (2697-2597 B.C.E.) that "the earth floats in
space". Only four hundred years ago Galileo was condemned by the
ecclesiastical authorities for teaching this very concept. Diogenes of
Apollonia (5th century B.C.E.) affirmed that meteors "move in space and
frequently fall to the earth". Yet the 18th century pillar of science Lavoisier
thought otherwise: "It is impossible for stones to fall from the sky because
there are no stones in the sky." We know now who was right.
Two thousand five hundred years ago the great philosopher Democritus said
that the Milky Way "consists of very small stars, closely huddled together".
In the 18th century the English astronomer Ferguson wrote that the Milky
Way "was formerly thought to be owing to a vast number of very small stars
therein; but the telescope shows it to be quite otherwise". Without a
telescope Democritus was certainly a better astronomer than Ferguson. It
was a case of "a large telescope but a small mind" against "a great mind
without a telescope".
When Marco Polo, his father and uncle returned to Venice from the Far East
in their dusty, outlandish caftans, they were not recognized at first. Because
of Marco Polo's stories of the fabulous riches of China and Japan, he was
immediately nicknamed Messer Millione or ("Mister Million"). A dinner
served by the Polos' relatives, was attended by the notables of Venice. Then
unexpectedly the Polos cut the lining of their heavy coats. Cascades of
precious gems flowed on to the table. The Venetians could only gasp -
Marco was telling the truth after all. There were rich empires in the Far East
and these diamonds, rubies, sapphires, jades and emeralds were a spectacular
corroboration of its existence!
The next chapter presents a number of curiosities from the history of science.
They are like the jewels of Marco Polo - tangible evidence of a distant
source of science.
Chapter 2:
Novelties in Antiquity
The achievements of modern science are phenomenal but with our
background of space shuttles, skyscrapers, wonder drugs and atomic reactors
we are apt to minimize the scientific accomplishments of the ancients. The
people of former eras had many of the problems which confront us today,
and they sometimes solved them in almost the same manner. For instance,
the ancient Romans would change some street arteries to one-way traffic
during peak hours. The city of Pompeii used arm-waving traffic policemen
to cope with the congestion.
Street signs were used in Babylon more than 2,500 years ago, with curious
names as, for example, The Street on Which May No Enemy Ever Tread. At
Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, the following No Parking signs were
displayed: Royal Road - let no man obstruct it. The signs were certainly
more effective than ours, as instead of a parking ticket the chariot owner
received a death warrant!
The ancient city of Antioch was the site of the first street lighting known in
history. The Aztecs set a permanent coloured strip directly into the paved
road in order to divide the two lines of traffic. Our streets and highways
usually have only painted lines to separate the lanes of traffic.
Heron, an engineer of Alexandria, built a steam engine which embodied the
principles of both the turbine and jet propulsion. If it were not for the
repeated burnings of the Alexandrian Library, we might have had a story
about a steam-chariot in Egypt. At least we do know that Heron invented a
speedometer registering the distance travelled by a vehicle.
Excavations at Mohenjo Daro, Harappa and Kalibanga in Pakistan and India
have disclosed the surprising fact that a system of town-planning was in
operation 4,500 years ago. The streets of these ancient cities were straight
and the blocks rectangular. A superior water supply and drainage system
were also discovered.
The bricks with which these cities were built are kiln-fired. Because of their
strength they were used by the British in the construction of the railroad bed
on the Karachi-Lahore line more than one hundred years ago. It is also
remarkable that bricks manufactured today in the area of Mohenjo Daro are
made according to prototypes from the ruins. This demonstrates that
technology had reached a high peak in the distant and unsuspected past of
India, and then for some reason progressed no further. From then on
everything was done in imitation of the old techniques.
Central or hot-water heating was invented by Bonnemain at the end of the
17th century, and perfected by Duvoir. Yet 4,000 years before these
European inventors wealthy Koreans had Spring Rooms warmed by hot air
which circulated in vents under the floors. The ancient Romans used heating
of a similar kind. During the Middle Ages the scientific devices of antiquity
were forgotten, and the people of Europe had to shiver for many a century.
The prehistoric city of Catal Huyuk in Turkey is over 8,500 years old. Pieces
of carpet have been found in the ruins which were of so high a quality that
they compare favourably with the most beautiful ones woven today. No
savant in the last century would have attributed such an age to these carpets.
The beautiful head of the Sumerian Queen Shub-ad displayed in the British
Museum shows that a long time ago people were very much like us. The
lovely young lady wears an amazingly modern wig, large ear-rings and
necklace. The sophisticated girl who used cosmetics, wig and expensive
jewellery, died in a ritual suicide in 2900 B.C.E. - 2,150 years before the
foundation of Rome and 2,000 years before Moses started his writings.
For some reason the workmanship level of jewellery as well as architecture
in ancient Egypt was higher in earlier periods. Rings, necklaces, ear-rings,
diadems and crowns of the 5th-12th dynasties displayed in Cairo Museum
and the Metropolitan Museum of New York, are more perfectly made and
more beautiful than those of latter dynasties.
Among the pyramids in Egypt, the first structures are superior in
workmanship. The wave of progress markedly starts downward in Egypt
about 1600 B.C.E. Strange to say, the lowest strata of Mohenjo Daro
produced implements of higher quality and jewellery of greater refinement
than did the upper layers.
Because of the political situation in the Middle East, the Suez Canal is
closed at present. It is little known that the canal is not new. Its construction
was commenced in Pharaoh Necho's reign (609-593 B.C.E.) and completed
by the Persian conqueror Darius after the Egyptian ruler's death. In the
course of centuries, the sands of Arabia From about 2500 B.C.E to 1800
B.C.E. filled the canal. However, the Arabs had it dredged and opened for
navigation in the 7th century of our era. Because of the lack of maintenance
it was soon blocked by sands once more, and all communication between the
Mediterranean and the Red Sea cut off until 1869.
Like the story of the Suez Canal, the history of navigation has had a number
of interesting pages. Modern Italian shipping companies must have got the
idea of luxury liners from the ancient Romans. Two Roman ships found in
the twenties at the bottom of Lake Nemi in Italy were restored between 1927
and 1932. The vessels were large and wide with four rows of oars.
Accommodation was provided for one hundred and twenty passengers in
thirty cabins with four berths in each, as well as quarters for the crew. The
boats were richly decorated with mosaic floors depicting scenes from The
Iliad, walls of cypress panelling, paintings in the lounge and a library. A sun
dial in the ceiling showed the time, and it is thought that a small orchestra
entertained the passengers in the salon. The stern contained a large
restaurant and kitchen. The passengers enjoyed freshly baked bread for their
breakfasts and the menus of the meals must have been comparable with the
richness of the dining-room decoration.
Certain finds came as a complete surprise - copper heaters provided hot
water for the baths and plumbing was absolutely modern, particularly the
bronze pipes and taps. Centuries later Columbus or Magellan would not
have dreamt of such ships. The Roman patricians sailing on pleasure cruises
in the Mediterranean certainly enjoyed the dolce vita. By a strange whim of
fate these two Roman ships were destroyed - not by Carthage but by German
bombers in the final stages of World War II. Evidently, their realistic
contours tricked experienced pilots into believing that they were flying over
barges under construction.
According to Chinese chronicles the Buddhist scholar Fa-hien returned from
India around 400 C.E. He sailed from Ceylon directly to java and then to
North China across the China Sea. The ship carried more than two hundred
passengers and crew, and was larger than the vessels of Vasco da Gama
crossing the Indian Ocean over one thousand years later.
In a document called Fusang which was part of the annals of the Chinese
Empire for 499 C.E., the Chinese Buddhist priest Hoei-shin related the story
of his travels to distant lands. This country, where the monk landed after
crossing the Pacific, is thought to have been Central America. As a matter of
fact, in the course of the last century, a Chinese pirate junk reached
California. It used to be displayed at the Catalina Island near Los Angeles. In
1815 a Japanese junk was found near Santa Barbara, California, which had
drifted in the Pacific Ocean for seventeen months. By a miracle, one sailor
survived. After all, the story of Hoei-shin could be true.
The Great Wall of China is the longest wall that has ever been built on the
face of the earth. It was constructed by three million workers in thirty-seven
years about twenty-two centuries ago. The Wall's length is 21,196
kilometres and it rises from 6 metres to 15 metres above the ground. The
wall is wide enough to allow a lane of cars in each direction. In 3100 B.C.E
King Menes of Egypt carried out a vast engineering scheme of diverting the
course of the Nile in order to build his capital of Memphis. No nation had
ever attempted to execute so gigantic a project as this.
Although porcelain flush-toilets are not necessarily a mark of a high culture,
they do prove the presence of a developed technology and sanitation. Only
two hundred years ago they were conspicuous by their complete absence.
Yet 4,000 years ago private toilets with a central system of stone drains and
ceramic pipes were common in the city of Knossos, Crete. The rooms of the
Palace of Minos were ventilated through air shafts. With its air-conditioned
chambers, excellent bathrooms and toilets, the palace was not only 'modern'
but large - as large as Buckingham Palace.
Pipes for hot and cold water have been found in tiled bathrooms at Chan
Chan, the capital of Chimu Empire in South America which flourished in the
11th -15th centuries. This technological achievement was non-existent in
Europe during the period of Richard Coeur de Lion or Jeanne d'Arc. Ancient
epics of India describe scientific accomplishments of the early people of the
land of the Ganges. These tales cease to be legends once we realize the
ingenuity of Oriental artificers.
The cave paintings of Ajanta near Bombay are admired by foreign tourists
and Indian visitors alike. A great deal has been written about the excellence
of these works of art but little has been said about the luminous paints of
these murals. In one of the 6th century catacombs there is a picture
portraying a group of women carrying gifts. When the electric light is on, the
beautiful painting lacks depth. But then the guide switches off the lights and
the onlookers remain in darkness for a few minutes until their eyes become
accustomed to it. Gradually, the figures on the wall appear to be three dimensional as if they were made of marble. This fantastic effect was
obtained by the ancient artist by the clever employment of luminous paints,
the secret of which has been lost forever.
A number of soapstone columns stand in a 12th-century temple in Halebid,
Mysore. There are polished strips on one of these rough-finish stone pillars.
When a person looks into the mirror-like surface, he sees two reflections at
the same time - himself both in an upright and upside-down position. The
unknown craftsman must have studied optics in order to have created so
extraordinary an effect.
In the city of Ahmadabad, Hujerat, there are two 11th -century minarets in
front of which stands an arch with a laconic inscription: 'Swinging towers.
Secret unknown.' The height of the minarets is 23 metres and the distance
between them 8 metres. When a group of visitors reaches the top of one
tower, the guide climbs to the balcony of the other, grips the railing and
begins to swing his minaret. Immediately the other tower commences to
sway to the amusement or alarm of the guests. These remarkable facts show
that the roots of science are buried deep in time.
In the House of the Four Styles in the ruins of Pompeii an ivory statuette of
the Indian goddess Lakshmi was discovered in 1938, which implied that
commercial and cultural ties with India must have been maintained by Rome.
If, as the author has, you have travelled and seen the shops of Madras and
Bombay, full of colourful saris, you may be surprised to find out that during
the reigns of Vespasian and Diocletian textiles from India were on sale in
Rome. But only the very rich could afford them. For silks, brocades, muslins
and cloth of gold bought in India, Rome remitted annually a considerable
sum - possibly an equivalent of forty million dollars. Silk, produced in China
since the year 2640 B.C.E, was imported into ancient Rome in - the first
century of our era. Because of the long distance and risks involved in
transport, it was sold for an astronomical price in Rome.
One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was the 135 metre high
Alexandrian Lighthouse on the island of Pharos, built of white marble. The
tower had a movable mirror which at night projected its light so that it could
be seen 400 kilometres away. Sunlight was used during the day, and fire
during the night. The lighthouse stood from 250 B.C.E. until 1326 when an
earthquake finally brought it down.
These achievements of the people of antiquity were not surpassed in later
centuries. In the Dark Ages mankind experienced a fall in scientific progress,
and it is only during the last three hundred years that science began to pick
up again.
No race had ever built 5,000 kilometre highways as the Peruvians did. They
crossed canyons and pierced mountains with tunnels that are still in use
today. The first cart and the first boat were built by the Sumerians in the
fourth millenium before our era. The next big leap in means of transport
came only in 1802 when the steam vessel was constructed, and the first train
followed in 1825. This acceleration in technology and transport was
climaxed by the invention of the aeroplane in 1903 and the first manned
flight in a spaceship in 1961.
After the voyage of Apollo 8 to the moon, the New York Times gave the
real credit for this historic feat to "men of many countries and centuries -
Euclid, Archimedes, Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, Tsiolkovsky, Oberth,
Goddard and many others". It is wise to see our achievements in this light
because behind our atomic scientists stands Democritus. Our aviation and
astronautics engineers had a predecessor in antiquity - Heron with his jet.
Back of our cyberneticians hovers Daedalus with his automatons and robots.
The source of modern science lies far away in time.
Chapter 3:
Discoveries create Problems
Paleontologists and archaeologists have produced a number of curious finds
which still await a logical explanation. The story of man will appear in a
different light if the answers are ever found. If the following facts are well founded, civilization might have had a much earlier source.
In excavations at Choukou-tien near Peking, Dr. F. Weidenreich discovered
a number of skulls and skeletons in 1933. One skull belonged to an old
European, another to a young woman with a narrow head, typically
Melanesian in character. A third skull was identified as belonging to a young
woman with the distinctive traits of an Inuit. A male European, a girl from
the tropics and another from the Arctic Circle uncovered on a Chinese
hillside! But how, in the first place, did they get to China some 30,000 years
ago? This episode out of prehistory is a mystery.
Did man in the last Ice Age possess enough technical facilities to straighten
out a giant hooked mammoth tusk? Until the discovery of spears made of
mammoth tusks by Dr. O.N. Bader near Vladimir, U.S.S.R., no scientist
suspected that prehistoric man had possessed the ability to transform a
hooked tusk into a number of straight bone spears. On the same site the
Russian archaeologists found a bone needle - a replica of our own steel
needle. Like the spears it was 27,000 years old. The fact of the making of
such artifacts by the Ice Age man was completely unexpected, and it entailed
a revaluation of views on technology in the Glacial Age.
The famous Jericho skulls filled in with clay and shell, depict exquisite
Egyptian-like faces. They have been dated to about 6500 B.C.E., which is
roughly some 1,500 years before the beginning of Egyptian civilization. This
discovery poses many questions. Were their mummified faces the outcome
of a desire to immortalize man? If so, it provides evidence of the existence
of religion in a very early period. But abstract thinking does not come to
man overnight - it is a long process. From what source did the Jericho people
receive it?
Professor Luther S. Cressman of the University of Oregon came across two
hundred pairs of woven fibre sandals in Lamos Cave in east Nevada.
Skilfully made by an artisan they might be taken for modern beach sandals
worn in St. Tropez or Miami. When a carbon-14 test was made, their age
was shown to be well over 9,000 years.
But these sandals are young indeed when compared with the shoeprint
discovered in a coal seam in the Fisher Canyon, Pershing County, also in
Nevada. The imprint of the sole is so clear that traces of a strong thread are
visible. The age of this footprint was estimated to be over 15 million years.
But man did not appear for another 13 million years.
In other words, according to current opinion, primitive man appeared some
two million years ago, but he only began to wear shoes 25,000 years ago!
Whose footstep can it be? Dr. Chow Ming Chen made a similar discovery in
the Gobi Desert in 1959. It was a perfect impression of a ribbed sole on
sandstone, and was calculated to be millions of years old. The expedition
could not explain it.
The Brandberg rock paintings in South-West Africa depict Bushmen
together with white women. Their perfectly European profiles are painted
with a light tint, and the hair shown in red or yellow. The girls wear
jewellery and an elaborate head-dress of shells or stones. The attractive
young huntresses carry bows and water bags on their chests. They are
wearing shoes while the Bushmen are not. Some archaeologists consider
these young women to be brave travellers who must have come from Crete
or Egypt 3,500 years. ago. However, there is something peculiar about these
white girls. They look like Capsians from north Africa who lived over
12,000 years ago. Both have the same long torsos, bows, head-dress and
garter-like crossbands on their legs.
The White Lady of Brandberg studied by the Abbe Henri Breuil, is a
masterpiece. Because of her costume and a flower in her hand, she resembles
a girl-bullfighter of Crete. But for some reason no leopards or hippopotami
are painted in this art gallery. These beasts were non-existent in that part of
Africa a long time ago, whereas they are quite common now. This
circumstance opens a possibility that the epoch of the white Amazons in
Africa may be more remote.
On a rocky cliff west of Alice Springs, in the heart of Australia, Michael
Terry discovered a carving of the extinct Nototherium mitchelli in 1962.
This rhinoceros-type animal had disappeared some 2,500 years ago. In the
same place he also found six carvings of what looked like rams' heads; they
brought to his mind Assyrian pictures of the ram.
A human being about two metres tall was among the intriguing rock images.
The full legs and thighs and a mitre, resembling those worn by Pharaohs,
made the figure totally unlike the more stylized representations of the human
form drawn by the Australian aborigines. Though the figure is in a horizontal
position, it is standing as if walking down a wall.
So here we have another mystery - carvings of the extinct Australian
rhinoceros, the ram, unknown in Australia until the arrival of the English,
and a non-Australian man in a Babylonian or Egyptian tiara. Signs of
erosion of the rock carvings speak for their great age. Did men from the
Near East or Asia reach Central Australia in antiquity, and if so, by what
means? It seems that our views on the extent of the travels of ancient man
should be amended.
As man is a recent evolutionary development (approximately two million
years old), his co-existence with monsters which lived thousands or even
millions of years ago, is considered by science to be impossible. However,
Professor Denis Saurat of France has identified the heads of animals in the
calendar of Tiahuanaco in South America as those at toxodons, prehistoric
animals which lived in the Tertiary period, many millions. of years ago?
According to American writer and archaeologist A. Hyatt Verrill, the Cocle
ceramics of Panama depict a flying lizard which looks very much like the
pterodactyl that lived eons before man.
In 1924 the Doheny Scientific Expedition discovered in Hava Supai canyon,
in northern Arizona, a rock carving which looked amazingly like the extinct
tyrannosaurus standing on its hind legs. In another rock image in Big Sandy
River in Oregon, the prehistoric sculptor left a portrait of a stegosaurus, a
creature which lived before the appearance of man on this planet.
The drawings, made by scratching red sandstone with a flint, show signs of
great age. The existence of the artists must have been contemporaneous with
that of the prehistoric monsters, otherwise how could primitive man draw
beasts which he had never seen? Naturally, these impossible facts menace
the whole structure of anthropology.
About 1920 Professor Julio Tello found vases in the Nasca district near
Pisco, Peru. He was struck by the figures of llamas painted on the vessels as
the animals are shown with five toes. At the present time, the llama has only
two toes but in an early evolutionary stage, tens of thousands of years ago, it
did have five. This is not a mere conjecture because skeletons of the
prehistoric llama with five toes have been excavated in the same region.
The discovery of megalithic sculptures in Marcahuasi by Dr. Daniel Ruzo in
1952 was a momentous one. Marcahuasi, about 80 kilometres north-east of
Lima, Peru is a plateau at an altitude of 4,000 metres, where the air is cold
and hardly anything grows amidst the granite rocks.
Standing in an amphitheatre of rock, Ruzo found himself confronted by the
enormous figures of people and animals carved out of stone. Caucasian,
African and Semitic faces looked at him. Lions, cows, elephants and camels
which had never lived in the Americas, surrounded Dr. Ruzo. He spotted the
amphichelydia, an extinct ancestor of the turtle known only through its
fossilized remains.
Sculptures of the horse posed a burning question: was the carver a
contemporary of the American horse? Since the horse died out in the
Americas about 9,000 years ago, this gave an approximate date to these
ancient works of sculpture. The horse reappeared in the New World only in
the 16th century when the conquistadors brought it from Spain.
By analysing the white dioritic porphyry from which the heads were carved,
geologists arrived at the conclusion that the stone would have needed at least
10,000 years to take on the grey tint it now shows in the cuts. The
mysterious sculptors of these giant monuments were aware of the laws of
perspective and optics. Some figures can be seen at noon, others at other
times, vanishing as the shadows move.
To find a 10,000 year-old museum exhibiting animals which either never
lived in South America or had been extinct for tens of thousands of years, as
well as sculptured portraits of the Africans and the Caucasians who came to
the New World within the last five hundred years, was a challenge to
orthodox science. Dr. Daniel Ruzo has lectured at the Sorbonne University
and other scientific institutions. Although official circles, having seen the
photographs of these sculptures, could hardly deny the fact of this amazing
discovery, they questioned Ruzo's theory that peoples other than the Pre-Columbian had lived in South America. However, whoever the rock
sculptors were, their co-existence with extinct animals can not be doubted.
A strange discovery was made in Costa Rica, also in the fifties. Hundreds of
perfectly shaped spheres made of volcanic rock were scattered in the jungle.
Their sizes ranged from 2 metres to a few centimetres. A number of the
larger ones weighed as much as sixteen tons. Similar globes are also located
in Guatemala and Mexico but nowhere else in the world! These balls have
raised many questions. What ancient race could have carved and polished
them so perfectly? The technical difficulties in making these spheres and
transporting them to the sites would have been enormous.
What was the purpose of the stone balls? Or are they natural geological
formations as some scientists believe? Some of the balls rest on stone
platforms which seems to indicate that they were placed there for some
reason. Many globes are arranged in clusters, straight lines or in a north-south direction. There is an indication of a geometrical pattern because some
groups form triangles, squares or circles. It has been suggested that these
megalithic markers might have some astronomical significance. It would be
interesting to draw a complete map showing the location of these globes and
then to see whether there is any resemblance to the constellations on a star
chart. However there is the alternative theory that the stone balls were used
for astronomical observation in the manner of the Stonehenge megaliths.
The giant stone heads of the Olmecs found in La Venta, Tres Zapotes and
other sites in Mexico can be classed as artifacts of a similar type. These
colossal heads carved of black basalt are from 1.5 to 3 metres high, weighing
from 5 to 40 tons. They are placed on stone stands just as the globes
described above. The nearest basalt quarries are 50 to 100 kilometres away.
How could a people without wheeled vehicles or pack animals bring these
masses of rock across swamps and jungles to the erection sites? These
immense faces of La Venta and San Lorenzo have been dated 1200 B.C.E. -
another surprise for the historians of science.
But let us put these stone heads aside and speak of real skulls. On the ground
floor of the Museum of Natural History in London, a human skull is
displayed. It comes from a cavern in Northern Rhodesia, and has a perfectly
round hole on the left side. There are no radial cracks which are usually
present if an injury is caused by a cold weapon. The right side of the skull is
shattered. The skulls of soldiers killed by rifle bullets have an identical
appearance. The cranium belongs to a man who lived over 40,000 years ago
at a time when no guns were made. An arrow could not have produced such
a perfectly round hole on the left side of the skull and shattered the right side
as well.
The Paleontological Museum of U.S.S.R. has a skull of an auroch which is
hundreds of thousands of years old. It shows a clear round hole on its frontal
part and scientific evidence has proven that although the skull was pierced,
the brain was not injured and the beast's wound healed. In that distant past,
our ancestors were supposedly armed only with clubs. The perfectly round
hole without radial lines looks very much like one made by a bullet. The
question is - who shot the auroch?
A meteorite of an unusual shape found near Eaton, Colorado, created a
riddle. An analysis by an American expert on meteorics H. H. Nininger
indicated that the meteorite was composed of an alloy of copper, lead and
zinc; that is brass, which does not exist in nature. The meteorite could not
have been 'space garbage' because it fell in 1931.
In the 16th century the Spanish conquistadors came across an 18 centimetre
iron nail solidly encrusted in rock in a Peruvian mine. The rock was
estimated to be tens of thousands of years old. Since iron was unknown to
the American Indian until the Conquest, one wonders whose nail it was. The
Spanish Viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo kept the mysterious nail in his
study as a souvenir.
According to the London Times of December 24, 1851, a Mr. Hiram de Witt
found a piece of auriferous quartz in California. When he dropped it
accidentally, an iron nail with a perfect head was found to be inside the
quartz. About the same time Sir David Brewster made a report to the British
Association for the Advancement of Science which created a sensation. A
block of stone from Kingoodie Quarry in north Britain contained a nail, the
end of which was corroded. But at least an inch of it, including the head, lay
embedded in the rock. Because of the great age of the geological strata
where these three iron nails were found, the identity of their makers remains
a mystery.
In 1885 in the foundry of Isidor Braun of Vöcklabruck, Austria, a block of
coal was broken and a small steel cube, 67 mm x 47 mm fell out. A deep
incision ran around it and the edges were rounded on two faces. Only human
hands could have made these. The son of Braun took the article to the Linz
Museum but in the course of decades it was lost. However, a cast of the cube
has been kept by the Linz Museum. Contemporary magazines such as
Nature (London, November, 1886) or L'Astronome (Paris, 1887) had articles
about this strange find. Some scientists endeavoured to explain it as a
meteorite from the Tertiary coal period. Others wanted an explanation for
the groove around the cube, its perfect form and the rounded edges, and
claimed that it had an artificial origin. The debate has never been closed.
These perplexities can not be cleared up unless a re-appraisal of prehistory is
made. The facts assembled here point to the existence of a technology at
what we have imagined to be the dawn of mankind. Two theories can
explain the artifacts described in this chapter - either there was some kind of
technological civilization in a bygone era, or the Earth has been visited by
unknown intelligences.
The true significance of many museum exhibits may have evaded our
comprehension. These cryptograms in marble, stone, wood or bronze, may
carry a significant message. In 1946 the Carnegie Institution reported an
archaeological find in Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala - a peculiar 32 centimetre
figurine of a mushroom with a human face, with widely opened eyes, at the
root. The meaning of the object was obscure. But when Spanish records of
the sacred mushrooms and their use by the Mexican priests had been studied,
experimenters decided to try these mushrooms. A state of narcotic trance
with psychedelic visions was produced. The figurine gives the whole story
symbolically.
The birth of metallurgy, chemistry, medicine, physics, astronomy,
technology and other wonderful accomplishments of the ancients will be
outlined in the following chapters.
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