OLDWORLD

DONNELLY AND THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD

The most influential of these writers was the American politician and amateur historian, Ignatius Donnelly. In his 1882 bestseller, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, Donnelly set out his theory that Atlantis had really existed and had been the ‘master’ civilisation that founded most of the world’s subsequent great civilisations, from Egypt to the Incas. Modern conceptions of Atlantis still owe much to Donnelly’s vision of a mighty civilisation with advanced technology and wisdom. He also argued that the myths and legends of many cultures derived from faded race memories of Atlantean history, so that the gods of Norse or classical mythology were based on real kings, queens and heroes of Atlantis, and that when Atlantis was destroyed in a great cataclysm, survivors of the deluge colonised other parts of the world and founded new civilisations.

As evidence for his theory, Donnelly pointed to ancient transatlantic cultural similarities such as pyramid building and sun worship, claiming that Mayan petroglyphs and Egyptian hieroglyphs both stemmed from the Atlanteans, who invented writing (along with astronomy, metallurgy, glass, the compass and various other attributes of civilisation). Donnelly pointed out that many cultures shared myths of great floods and migrant culture heroes who founded civilisations. He also claimed that many plants and animals on either side of the Atlantic were obviously related, pointing to the existence of a now-submerged land bridge across the ocean.

DONNELLY’S LEGACY

Most of Donnelly’s evidence has since been disproved; he was wrong about the similarities between the Mayan language and Mediterranean ones, and more powerful theories have arisen to explain trans-Atlantic similarities between animals and plants. But he had sowed the seeds of Atlantean ‘studies’ as we know them today.

Several other scholars of varying credibility took up the Atlantean baton, particularly with reference to the Mayan and Aztec cultures. This was due partly to the relative vacuum of knowledge about these mysterious civilisations, and partly to the suggestive presence of pyramids, sun-worshipping and other attributes. But could there also have been a hint of condescension, verging on the racist – the assumption by European/white scholars that the ‘inferior’ Native American races could not have created their own civilisations from whole cloth, but must owe their achievements to inspiration from an essentially classical/ European progenitor?

Once more was known about the Mayans, Aztecs, Incas and others, however, it was generally accepted that their language, writing, architecture and science were indigenous, and that many of the interpretations and translations of pre-Colombian texts that had appeared to support Atlantean theories were simply wrong.

LEMURIA

Lemuria first surfaced to visibility in the by-lanes of Victorian science, but the foundations for the metropolitan fascination with Earth’s lost worlds and vanished pasts were laid in the closing decades of the eighteenth century with two important developments. The first of these was the discovery of “deep time” in the 1780s. Up until then, most scientists and educated opinion considered the earth to be about 6,000 years old. Yet this reckoning, based on Biblical chronology, was soon at odds with the nascent science of geology, which was fast revealing that the earth’s surface had undergone vast transformations at a rate that could not be accommodated within such a short time span. Beginning with the Comte de Buffon, who estimated the age of the world to be around 75,000 years in 1774, many scientists progressively jettisoned the Christian calendar in favor of a new secular chronology in which the birth of Earth as a functioning planet was pushed further and further back in time. In Robert Wood’s estimation, “to join battle with the ‘prejudice of human time’ (i.e., to accommodate all past times to the scale provided by human memory) was to prove the great crusade of the heroic age of Geology.” By the opening years of the nineteenth century, the limits of humanly remembered time had been blasted. The bottom had dropped out of a hitherto finite earth history, opening up a deep (and to some, a dark) abyss, waiting to be filled by human imagination.

The Indian Ocean formed a continent which extended from the Sunda Islands along the southern coast of Asia to the east coast of Africa. This large continent of former times Sclater, an Englishman, has called Lemuria, from the monkey-like animals which inhabited it, and it is at the same time of great importance from [sic] being the probable cradle of the human race, which in all likelihood here Wrst developed out of anthropoid apes.

So wrote the German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) in 1870 in the second edition of his best-selling Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, translated into English in 1876 as The History of Creation.90 Haeckel’s identification of Lemuria as “the probable cradle of the human race” distinguishes his labors of loss from the place-making of natural historians, biologists, and geologists. In so identifying it, Haeckel wrests Lemuria from the world of zoogeography, where it had circulated as a faunal highway and paleocontinental connection, and inserts it instead into the all-important grand narrative of the primeval history of man that so many were attempting in the second half of the nineteenth century. At the very least, this means that in his evolutionary and ethnological labors of loss, Lemuria lingers on into the Pliocene instead of disappearing in the early Tertiary period, or earlier, as it does for the zoogeographer or the geologist. As a Pliocene place-world, it enables both the appearance of humans and their dispersal across the globe as so many races. In other words, for the first time, Sclater’s lost continent comes to rest within the horizon of human reckoning, leading some even to boldly suggest that it was its submergence and loss that might be remembered in legends of an antediluvial world prior to the Noachian Deluge.

THE PTOLEMIES SUPPORT EXPLORATION

Greek Trading Ship

Ptolemy, who had accompanied Alexander all the way to the Indus River and back, took up Alexander’s idea of an expedition to Arabia. During his reign (323–285 B.C.), he sponsored an expedition under an admiral Philo, who sailed down along the Africa side of the Arabian Sea. Philo did not discover any new lands, but following his return the Egyptians under Ptolemy began to import elephants and ivory from Africa south of Egypt. Ptolemy I’s son and successor, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, established trading ports along the Red Sea, opened up trade with Yemen and Somalia, and sent expeditions that explored the coast of the Horn of Africa. Subsequent members of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, as these rulers of Egypt are known, sent still more expeditions to this region.

Admittedly, these expeditions were more concerned with trade, but each contact increased the store of knowledge of these little known locales. One of the most ambitious explorers of this era was a man who seemed to have combined commercial goals with sheer curiosity, Eudoxus of Cyszicus, a city in northwest Turkey. The adventures of Eudoxus are known only through the account in Strabo, the Greek geographer and historian (ca. 63 B.C.–ca. A.D. 24), who in turn was simply repeating the account of Posidonius (ca. 135–50 B.C.), another Greek-Roman historian. Eudoxus’s first expedition took place under Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II, who ruled the kingdom from 146 to 111 B.C. As the story went, “an Indian happened to be brought to the king by the guards of the Arabian [Gulf], who said they found him cast ashore alone and half dead, but who he was and whence he came they did not know because they could not understand his language.” After the Indian was taught Greek, “he promised to be a guide on a voyage to India for men chosen by the king.” Eudoxus is among those who went but when he returned loaded with precious stones and other valuable objects, Euergetes took all (or most of) his cargo. When Euergetes died, his widow sponsored another expedition to India; again, Eudoxus returned with valuable goods,again, the new king, seized all (or most all) of his cargo.

One would think that Eudoxus would quit at that, but while returning on that second voyage, he had been blown ashore on the east coast of Africa. Not having any notion of how large Africa was, he decided to sail around it and head straight for India, thus avoiding the Ptolemies—by heading first for its west (Atlantic) coast. He fitted out a ship and sailed across the Mediterranean, along the way taking on all kinds of cargo expected to trade in Africa and India, “and also physicians. . . . and carpenters besides.” Sailing through the Pillars of Hercules, he rounded the northwest shoulder of Africa, but before long his ship ran aground and was wrecked. He built a new ship and sailed a bit farther, but then turned back, intending to make a new voyage in a larger ship. In fact, Eudoxus probably had gone only slightly south of Morocco.

On his way back “he saw and noted down a well-watered and well-wooded but unpeopled island”—possibly one of the Canaries, possibly one of the Madeiras. After several adventures in northwest Africa, he made his way back to Spain, built two more ships, and organized yet another expedition with the goal of reaching India. Even Strabo remarks: “How was it that [Eudoxus] did not fear. . . . to sail again.” In any case, he sailed off once more into the Atlantic and down the west coast of Africa—and was never heard of again. Although some scholars question just how much of Eudoxus’s story is true, others accept it and regard Eudoxus as having earned a place in the history of exploration.

NEW WORLD PYRAMIDS

A long avenue leads to the "Pyramid of the Moon" and it is sometime thought that this avenue might have been filled with water to make a sort of canal or waterway approaching the pyramid.

Pyramid of the Moon, Teotihuacán

Pyramids in the New World, such as the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacán shown above, are unlike those in Egypt in that, rather than coming to a peak, they are level atop, forming platforms for temples. American pyramids often achieved their monumental proportions because their builders, rather than starting from scratch, would envelope old structures as fill. The Cholula pyramid, with a volume of 3 million meters, a base covering 46 acres, and a height of 198 feet, has been said to be the largest preindustrial building ever erected on earth. Yet its final bulk was achieved by various building projects over the centuries that incorporated earlier pyramids—larger than the Pyramid of the Moon. Like their Egyptian counterparts, however, the pyramids sometimes contain royal tombs painted with murals and accompanied with precious jades and, in the Post-classic period, gold ornaments. Although many have speculated about burials inside Teotihuacán’s Sun and Moon pyramids, the first evidence suggestive of a royal tomb in the Pyramid of the Moon was discovered only in 2002.

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The Pyramid of the Moon is the second largest building in Teotihuacan after the Pyramid of the Sun. The Pyramid of the Moon is located in the northern part of Teotihuacan and it mimics the contours of Cerro Gordo. Some have called it Tenan which in Nahuatl means "mother or protective stone." The Pyramid of the Moon covers a structure older than the Pyramid of the Sun which existed prior to 200 A. D.

The Pyramid's construction between 200 and 450 A.D. completed the bilateral symmetry of the temple complex. A slope in front of the staircase gives access to the Avenue of the Dead, a platform atop the pyramid was used to conduct ceremonies in honor of Chalchiuhtlicue, the goddess of water and of the moon. This platform and the sculpture found at the pyramid's bottom are thus dedicated to Chalchiuhtlicue.

Opposite Chalchiuhtlicue's altar is the Plaza of the Moon. The Plaza contains a central altar and an original construction with internal divisions, consisting of four rectangular and diagonal bodies that formed what is known as the "Teotihuacan Cross."

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Between 100 and 500 A.D, an ancient people built a flourishing metropolis called Teotihuacan on a plateau about 25 miles (40 km) from present-day Mexico City. With its accurately aligned avenues and a huge plaza surrounded by 15 monumental pyramids, Teotihuacan was bigger than any city in Europe at that time. It covered over nearly 8 square miles (21 km2) and 200,000 people lived there. Teotihuacan was built 700 years before the Aztecs began constructing their capital city of Tenochtitlan.

It was said by the Aztecs to have been surmounted by a huge stone figure related to the moon but this figure was uncovered (weighing 22 tonnes and was somehow lifted to the top of the pyramid) and it is thought more likely that it represents a water deity. [1]

Recently, archaeologists have excavated beneath the Pyramid of the Moon. The archaeologists are looking for clues to the history of this mysterious culture. Tunnels dug into the structure have revealed that the Teotihuacan’s citizens did not remain pleased with their architectural feats for very long. Over a period of several hundred years, the pyramid underwent at least six facelifts and each new addition was larger and covered the previous structure.

As the archeologists burrowed through the layers of the pyramid, they discovered artifacts that provide the beginning of a timeline to the history of Teotihuacan. The latest find, made by a team led by Saburo Sugiyama, associate professor at Aichi Prefectural University in Japan and adjunct faculty at Arizona State University,[2] and Ruben Cabrera of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, is a tomb apparently made to dedicate the fifth phase of construction. It contains four human skeletons, animal bones, jewelry, obsidian blades, and a wide variety of other offerings. Archeologists estimated that the burial occurred between 100 and 200 A.D.

Another tomb dedicated to Chalchiutlicue was discovered a year ago. It is dated to the fourth stage of construction. It contained a single human male sacrificial victim as well as a wolf, jaguar, puma, serpent, bird skeletons, and more than 400 other relics which include a large greenstone and obsidian figurines, ceremonial knives, and spear points.

Discoveries At Teotihuacan's Pyramid Of The Moon Help Unlock Mysteries Of Western Hemisphere's First Major Metropolis

ScienceDaily (1999-09-21) -- An unexpected set of new discoveries in the ongoing excavation beneath the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan may provide critical clues in reconstructing a 2,000-year old history still mysteriously missing from the ruins of the ancient master-planned metropolis, located 25 miles from current Mexico City.

MICHAEL CRICHTON: SCIENCE INSPIRED HIS FICTION

“I don't want to just make it up": Author Michael Crichton, whose novels effortlessly blended science and suspense, died Tuesday after a battle with cancer. He was 66.

By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY

He scared millions of us by cloning dinosaurs with prehistoric DNA in Jurassic Park and by unleashing a virus from outer space in The Andromeda Strain.

But author Michael Crichton, who died Tuesday November 4, at age 66, was more than just the king of the cinematic techno-thriller whose books and screenplays became 13 movies.

He also created ER, one of TV's longest-running dramas. As a movie producer and director, he pioneered the use of computer-generated special effects.

In best-selling novels, he raised contrarian questions about global warming and sexual harassment.

And all that after graduating from Harvard Medical School.

In a statement Wednesday, his family said Crichton died in Los Angeles after a "private" battle with cancer.

His books sold 150 million copies worldwide. He never won a Pulitzer or was even nominated for a National Book Award, but did have a newly discovered dinosaur named for him in 2002: the Crichtonsaurus bohlini.

At his best, he was a master at blending fact and fantasy. He was as much a researcher as a novelist who popularized technical topics and put the science back into science fiction.

"I don't want to just make it up," he told USA TODAY in an interview in 1996. "I'd rather have something with the awkward contours of real events."

In Twister (1995), he explored the violence of nature. Sphere (1987) dealt with black holes. Rising Sun (1992) was about international economics, back when Japan seemed to be a threat.

At 6-foot-9, Crichton was hard to miss. In 1995, Time crowned him "The Hit Man" in a cover story about his commercial success in books and movies.

His breakthrough novel was The Andromeda Strain (1969), but his biggest hit was Jurassic Park (1990). Both it and its sequel, The Lost World (1995), were turned into blockbuster movies.

When he was writing the original novel, he was asked what he was doing. He replied, "I'm writing the most expensive movie ever made."

"That was said as a joke," he said later. "I thought, 'Who can make this?' This was in the late '80s. A hundred and fifty million? Maybe. Two-year-shooting script? Ridiculous. Out of the question."

Directed by Steven Spielberg, Jurassic Park went on to make $915 million worldwide. With $357 million in North American ticket sales, it's the 13th-highest-grossing movie of all time. In all, Crichton's books and screenplays generated $1.3 billion domestically and $2.8 billion worldwide.

The adaptations lost some box-office steam late in his career (the $80 million Timeline, about time-traveling graduate students from Yale, earned just $19 million in 2003), but Crichton was one of the most powerful writers in Hollywood.

He wrote and directed 1973's Westworld, about a Wild West theme park gone haywire. It pioneered the use of computer-generated special effects.

He mined his own medical training to create ER, which made George Clooney a star and is now in its 15th and final season.

"One of the things that distinguishes that show from other television shows is the degree to which it is based on real stories," Crichton said. "Viewers can tell."

His novel Airframe (1996), a technological whodunit about a midair accident, was triggered when he noticed a crew struggling to close a plane's door.

That got him thinking: "This is nothing but a big machine that someone made. I had never thought of it that way before."

The novel, which questioned air safety, also attacks TV disaster coverage for its focus on emotions at the cost of information. And that prompted a question in an interview with USA TODAY:

Was it ironic that ER's creator was complaining about TV's superficiality?

"Where's the connection?" he snapped in response. "Because ER is successful, I should think TV is wonderful? ER is entertainment; I'm talking about news. Once, those were very separate things. Now they're not, and that's part of the problem."

He seemed to enjoy stirring up controversy with his fiction.

Feminists didn't like Disclosure (1994), in which a male executive sues his female superior for sexual harassment. It was turned into a movie starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore.

Environmentalists attacked State of Fear (2004), which questioned whether global warming was a major threat. It was a novel, but it won The American Association of Petroleum Geologists Journalism Award and praise from President Bush, who hosted Crichton at the White House.

He was born Oct. 23, 1942, in Chicago and raised in Long Island, N.Y. His father was a journalist. "So it seemed like a normal occupation, to sit down and type something as your job," Crichton told the British newspaper The Guardian. "I was the weird kid who wrote extra assignments the teacher didn't ask for.

"I just did it because I liked writing so much. I was tall and gangly and awkward and I needed to escape, I guess."

His writing career began at 14, when he had an article published in the Travel section of The New York Times. He helped pay his way through medical school by writing mysteries, including A Case of Need, written under the pen name Jeffrey Hudson, which won the 1969 Edgar Award for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America.

He was known as a workaholic. He was married five times and divorced four. His fourth wife, Anne-Marie Martin, publicly complained after their divorce that his work habits left her feeling abandoned: "'It's like living with a body and Michael is somewhere else."

He is survived by his wife, Sherri, and only child, a daughter, Taylor, 19.

He cited his major influences as Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and Alfred Hitchcock. As a novelist, his plots were often better than his writing. But Crichton didn't seem bothered that he was more popular with readers than critics.

He said his primary goal in writing books or making movies or TV shows was to "entertain people. It's fun to manipulate people's feelings and to be manipulated."

As for critics, he said, "Every critic assumes he's a code-breaker; the writer makes a code and the critic breaks it. And it doesn't work that way at all. As a mode of working, you need to become very uncritical.

Viking Farming Village

THE CENTRAL AMERICAN MYSTERY

Artist’s conception of James O’Kon’s Mayan bridge

BY WILL HART

What Could Explain the Failure of Mainstream Science to Unravel the Origins of Meso America’s Advanced Ancient Cultures?

It has been 23 years yet I remember the morning like it was yesterday. A mist shrouded the jungle above the Temple of the Inscriptions. A series of roaring sounds suddenly split the silence as a band of Howler monkeys made their way through the trees. It startled me, I thought it might be a jaguar, but the cacophony added to the sense of mystery.

My head was exploding. By the time I had reached Palenque we had already visited dozens of archaeological sites from the northernmost down to the Yucatan Peninsula and Quintana Roo. I was steeped in questions and mysteries. Several things had become clear to me: the cultures that built the pyramids and other buildings had been advanced in the arts and sciences. I had seen many beautiful things as well as mind-tugging enigmas.

The Olmec civilization surprised me the most. I had read about the Maya and knew of the Aztecs but I was unprepared for what I found in Villahermosa: Large stone heads with Negroid features and stone Stele carved with depictions of curious ambassadors. The figures clearly were not from any Mexican culture.

These artifacts were more than just a fascinating puzzle; they represented a headache for science. They were an anomaly. Who carved the heads? Who created the Stele? Where did they get the models for these heads and figures? These were questions that arose because of the way scientists have reconstructed the human history of Mesoamerica. Africans don’t fit and neither do the cloaked Caucasian figures carved on the Stele. They shouldn’t be there; however, they are surely there.

Scientists do not claim to have solved this enigma. Anthropologists and archaeologists admit they do not know much of anything about Olmec culture. So we don’t know the ethnic group or the language and nothing of their social organization, beliefs or traditions. No one has any idea of why they carved the helmeted heads and then buried them. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. We don’t usually bury monuments if that is what they were.

The only records we have are the monuments they left behind, which are impressive. But how do we understand them? Where do they fit into the mosaic of human history? There are no direct clues in Mexico. The Olmecs didn’t leave us any written records. However, we do have a clue.

The Bible is an extremely important document. It doesn’t matter whether you are a believer or not. It contains a very ancient accounting of human history compiled from a variety of early sources. At least this is true of Genesis. But it is not always easy to decode. Do we find any reference in the Bible that might help us solve the Olmec enigma?

Turning to Genesis chapter 11 we read “Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words.” This indicates that there was a period in man’s history when there was a global human civilization. We learn that during that epoch men wanted to build a tower: “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven; and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

The fact that the Olmec civilization presents science with an anomaly indicates something quite profound: the data does not fit the current model. Scientists can’t change the observable data, it is as hard as data can get. But they could change the model to conform to the data. There is the rub. Anthropologists and archaeologists have a huge investment in that model, an intellectual edifice that has been built up over generations.

Scientists would rather ignore the tough questions and leave the Olmecs alone in the dim mists of forgotten antiquity. That is not a very scientific approach. Where is the pursuit of truth? What happened to the scientific method? It is just not acceptable. Why? Some ancient society built the huge mound; dragged the basalt heads about 60 miles from the quarry to the burial site; those heads weighed from 5 to 25 tons; and they also carved the figures into the stele. They wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble unless the people the monuments represented were important to them. It is a logical assumption to make and we can only hope that scientists in the distant future will reach the same conclusion when they study Mount Rushmore.

Since we have the artifacts we know that there has to be an explanation for who the builders were. As with any mystery you search for clues. You begin in the most likely places and work your way down the list: Mexico. The problem is that the Olmecs disappeared from the scene long before Cortez arrived. None of the cultures contemporary with the Aztecs made any references to the Olmecs; they seemed to know nothing. No other Negroid heads have been found in Mesoamerica. Another curious fact is that the developmental period that must have preceded the mound building and head carving is nowhere to be found.

The Olmecs just suddenly appeared then disappeared!

It took me years of investigation to finally realize that the most probable answer was in the Bible and that was about the last place I thought to look. Did the Olmecs come from outer space as some researchers have proposed? Not necessarily. For one thing there is no evidence to support that theory. Secondly, the Negroid heads and the people depicted on the stele are obviously human.

The idea that there was a global civilization in ancient times does not conform to the current model of science. However, it is corroborated by the reference in the Bible. The problem with the scientific model is that it can’t explain the available data and that is a serious issue that has many consequences. If the problem was limited to the Olmec civilization we might just let it go. But there are artifacts in Egypt, South America and other parts of Mexico that also don’t fit the orthodox scheme.

Scientists have often shown a willful blindness regarding artifacts and developments that they can’t explain using their belief system. Worse, they have either ignored key questions or discredited the facts. Many other hard facts, the remains of lost civilizations, and the cultural records of numerous peoples corroborate the Olmec enigma and the Bible.

References to the cataclysmic flood occur in 230 different cultures. Mayan history includes the story of how they came from a land to the east that had been destroyed. The historian Herodutus’ recounted of the tale of lost Atlantis. These accounts may sound like romantic myths spun out of early imaginations, however, when you stand at an ancient site surrounded by strange ruins…you begin to wonder if they just might have more than a grain of truth.

I climbed the steps of the Temple of Inscriptions and visited the tomb of Pacal. Then I decided to take a long trip down to the Rio Usamacinta to Bonampak and Yaxchilan. It was 100 miles of bad dirt road, heavily rutted in places. It finally became so muddy that we mired the van up to the axles. We had nearly reached the destination. Bonampak was a short walk.

I visited Bonampak. My next destination was Yaxchilan, a ruin secreted in the jungle about 8 miles from Bonampak. I decided to try and hack my way there with a machete against the advice of the natives who had warned me: “La selva is cerrado!” They were right. I gave up after a grueling four-hour stint that netted less than a quarter mile mostly on my belly trying to avoid razor-sharp thorn shrubs. The insects were ravaging my body.

Yaxchilan is situated on the river and it was alleged to be the center of the flourishing Mayan civilization in this region. In Feb. 1989, James O’Kon did manage to make it to the site. Archaeologists had been studying it for a century. A particular mound of rocks caught O’Kon’s trained eye. Scientists had dismissed it as a minor mystery but the amateur archaeologist was also a forensic engineer and he immediately knew what it really was: part of a bridge.

He turned to modern technology to help prove a bridge once existed at the site. O’Kon, a former chairman of the forensic council of the American Society of Civil Engineers, had used similar techniques during investigations. He compiled field information at the Mayan site and used computers to integrate archaeological studies, aerial photos and maps to develop a three-dimensional model of the site and determine the exact positioning and dimensions of the bridge.

O’Kon ended up making a startling discovery: The Mayans had constructed the longest bridge span in the ancient world. When he finished calculations and computer models, the bridge turned out to be a 600-foot span, a hemp rope suspension structure with two piers and three spans. It connected Yaxchilan in Mexico with its agricultural domain in the Peten, now Guatemala and where Tikal is situated.

What archaeologists had assumed was an insignificant rock pile turned out to be part of a crucial finding, a pier 12 feet high and 35 feet in diameter. Aerial photos located a second support pier on the opposite side of the river. Both piers were constructed of cast-in-place concrete and an exterior of stone masonry. That is exactly how the Mayan pyramids were made.

In interviews O’Kon, who has been studying the ancient Maya for 30 years, said, “the Mayas were very sophisticated mathematically and scientifically.” He claimed the design requirements of the Mayan bridge parallel 20th century bridge-design criteria.

Today we marvel at the ruins and speculate on how and why they built the ceremonial sites. We shouldn’t forget that the Maya were an advanced race. They understood astronomy. They had an accurate calendar. They invented the concept of zero at least 700 years before Europe. They built paved roads, and as we have recently learned, the longest suspension bridge in the ancient world.

What occurred to me while standing atop another pyramid at Coba in Quintana Roo surveying a trackless jungle was the fact that the Maya had achieved all this in a jungle. No other advanced civilization I could think of had emerged from a jungle environment. It deepens the mystery of this lost race.

The sacbe are a system of roads that interconnect the sites. This is another feature that has long puzzled scientists and independent investigators alike. The roads were built up with rocks, leveled and paved over with limestone cement. They vary in width from 8 feet up to 30 feet. The mystery is simple: Why would a ‘stone age’ people without wheeled vehicles or dray animals need such an elaborate and sophisticated road network?

O’Kon turned his attention to the sacbe after finishing his work on the bridge. In a long rambling interview he told the author that he had found the 60-mile road that extended from Coba to Yaxuna was as straight as an arrow with a negligible deviation. His studies have revealed the Maya were not ‘stone age;’ he refers to them as “technolithic.” They didn’t use iron because the nearest mines were 1,500 miles away. O’Kon claims, “They used jade tools and they were harder than steel.”

You almost have to stand at a site and image the scene as it was during the peak of Mayan civilization to really grasp the magnitude and appreciate what this culture achieved. Today we see ruins and jungle. Pyramids that are little more than bare stone. Crumbling buildings surrounded by wilderness. However, in that day the pyramids were coated with stucco. They were smooth and they gleamed in the sun. The walls of the structures were painted with various designs using bright colors. The courtyards were paved. The flat white roads radiated out in all directions connecting the centers together.

Despite their advanced knowledge of astronomy and mathematics and their achievements in art and architecture, scientists still consider them a ‘stone age’ culture.

Time is the essence of life. Human beings have always been immersed in it, keeping track of it in one way or another, measuring it as minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and millennia. We know of many of its dimensions and we have used them to our advantage. We know, supposedly, when the dinosaurs roamed the earth; how long it takes for various radioactive isotopes to decay; when our early hominid ancestors branched off from apes; the layout of the human genome; the exact dates of lunar and solar eclipses long into the future.

Time causes all living things to grow old and die. It seems so obvious and ubiquitous, we are like fish and time is water. We never ask the basic question: What is it? Do we understand it? Is it more than a system of measurement, whether of the present moment or of the age of the universe?

All cultures certainly have a focus on time; however, the Maya had an obsession with it.

They tracked and measured the synodic period of Venus, which is 584 earth days. The 365-day Mayan calendar year was more precisely than the Gregorian calendar. They devised three different calendrical systems: the tzolkin (sacred calendar), the haab (civil calendar), and the long count.

The tzolkin is a cycle of 260 days (13 months of 20 days each) and the haab is the solar cycle. These two calendars were combined in an interlocking fashion to produce a cycle of 18,980 days, which was known as a calendar round. That is about 52 years.

Each day had a particular glyph and meaning ascribed to it and at the end of the 52-year cycle they had a renewal ceremony. The long count period lasted for about 5000 years. This was equivalent to an age. According to the Maya, humanity is in the 5th Sun or age. That will end about 5000 years from the beginning of their calendar, which started in 3011 BC and expires on 2012.

The longest cycle in Mayan cosmology is 26,000 years, which corresponds to the precession of the equinox. Why did the Maya have such a fascination with astronomy? Why did they create such an intricate calendrical system? Would a ‘stone age’ agrarian society need all this advanced astronomical and mathematical knowledge? How did they acquire it in such a short time? How would they have any awareness of such a complex phenomena as the synodic length of Venus or the precession of the equinoxes?

They are either more ancient than science allows or they had more sophisticated technology than we know of or someone passed the knowledge down to them. Is it coincidental that the beginning of the 5th age was 3000 BC, which corresponds to the birth of the Jewish and Chinese calendars? The assertion that the “world” is only 5000 years old may have more truth to it than we know. Is it also a coincidence that so many Christians believe we are in the end times?

The Mayan obsession with time may have been based on a deep awareness of how it functions on a cosmic scale and then unfolds on earth in short and long-term cycles. That may be the message that the lost civilizations have been trying to deliver to us and we may just be starting to get it.

TROY AND THE TROJAN WAR

The War

When the Achaeans finally reached the Troad, the region around Troy, Odysseus and Menelaus went ahead as ambassadors to convince the Trojans to return Helen or face attack. Their mission failed, even though many Trojans wanted to send her back to avoid war. Failing to avert disaster, Odysseus and Menelaus returned to the fleet and sailed the rest of the way with their men to Troy, beaching their ships along the shore not far from the city itself. The Trojans flung heavy stones against the invaders to prevent their landing, but the Achaeans fought through. They leapt out upon the plain, and marched across, laying siege to the city.

The Achaeans had attacked many other lands on their way to Troy, including Thebes and Lyrnessus. Few could stand against them, and when they reached Troy, the captains had won many treasures. At Thebes, Agamemnon claimed the woman Chryseis as his prize, while Achilles chose the maiden Briseis at Lyrnessus.

These two women proved deadly to many of the Achaeans. Chryseis was the daughter of Chryses, a priest of Apollo, and after years of travel, he reached Troy seeking the Achaean captains. He begged them to return his daughter to him, and even offered handsome treasure as compensation. The men felt his request was reasonable and ought to be granted, since he was a priest, but Agamemnon refused, going so far as to threaten the man. Humiliated, Chryses left, praying to Apollo for revenge. The archer god, enraged at this treatment of his priest, set a plague upon the Achaeans. The contagion wreaked havoc among the Achaeans, killing many of them and jeopardizing their war effort, until finally, the seer Calchas explained the cause of the plague. He urged Agamemnon to return the girl and offer additional sacrifices as an apology to the god. Though this angered the arrogant king, Agamemnon finally agreed, but on one condition. If he had to give up the girl, he would take someone else’s prize in return. Achilles denounced the king for his greed, and in reply, Agamemnon took Briseis as compensation. The mighty warrior did not stop him, but announced he would no longer fight in the war, and he and his men refused to take part in further conflict. This weakened the Achaeans, but heartened the Trojans. Odysseus, Nestor, and several others begged Achilles to reconsider, but the young warrior stubbornly refused to yield. To make matters worse, he complained to his mother Thetis, who then complained to Zeus. Owing Thetis his life, the king of the gods offered to repay her by making the Achaeans suffer until they had no choice but to appease Achilles fully.

The Achaeans continued to fight, even without their greatest champion, not realizing the gods had turned against them. Hector, a prince of Troy and the commander of their forces, proposed a truce, suggesting a duel be fought to settle the matter. Paris agreed to fight for the Trojans, since he had ultimately caused the war, and Menelaus insisted on fighting for the Achaeans. Menelaus would have killed his former guest had Aphrodite not rescued Paris and spirited him to safety. Then Athena encouraged the archer Pandarus to shoot at Menelaus, thus breaking the truce.

Despite Zeus’ decree that the Achaeans suffer, Athena and Hera, the Achaeans’ two greatest supporters, continued to aid them. Athena encouraged Diomedes to charge into battle. The warrior would have single-handedly routed the Trojans if Apollo had not intervened. Then Ajax and Hector faced one another in single combat, but neither could defeat the other. When night fell, they agreed to call the battle a draw, and exchanged gifts to show respect. The gifts, however, proved ill for both of them. Hector gave Ajax a sword, which Ajax later used to kill himself, and Ajax gave Hector a purple belt, with which Achilles later used to drag Hector’s body behind him.

The conflict continued, and with Zeus’ aid, the Trojans swept the battlefield and stormed the Achaean camp. Many of the mightiest Achaeans suffered wounds, and the Trojan Hector and his men burned many of their ships. Poseidon stepped in to aid the Achaeans—Zeus’ attention had wandered—but the king of the gods soon noticed and helped the Trojans carry the day. Agamemnon, seeing how desperate his situation had become, finally agreed to appease Achilles, and offered not only to return the girl but to give him a great amount of treasure as well. Achilles stood fast, refusing the gifts, even though his friends Odysseus and Ajax carried the message. Still, Achilles relented enough to allow his friend Patroclus to put on his armor and lead the Myrmidons to the Achaeans’ aid, believing that by wearing Achilles’ armor, everyone would think he had returned to the battle, unnerving the Trojans and heartening the Achaeans. Achilles insisted his friend drive the Trojans back from the ships and nothing more, but Patroclus let victory distract him, and pursued the Trojans across the battlefield, almost to Troy’s walls. Again, the gods intervened. Apollo stunned the man and Euphorbus wounded him before Hector finally killed him and took Achilles’ armor from his body.

When Achilles learned of his friend’s death, anger swept through him, burning away his stubbornness. The greatest warrior swore revenge, and with new armor bestowed unto him by his mother, fashioned at the hands of the god Hephaestus, Achilles accepted Agamemnon’s apology and gifts, and rejoined the battle. Th e Achaeans crushed the Trojans, while Achilles strove to face Hector. Zeus had decreed Hector’s death, and so when the rest of the Trojans fl ed back to the city, Athena tricked Hector into remaining, so he faced Achilles alone. Though a mighty warrior himself, Hector was no match for Achilles, and soon fell to the man’s wrath. Not content with this victory, Achilles desecrated his opponent’s corpse, dragging the body behind his chariot all the way back to the boats. King Priam approached the Achaean camp alone and made a personal appeal to Achilles to take back Hector’s body for proper burial.

Achilles, always honorable, allowed the Trojan king his request, and so was Trojan’s hero buried. Achilles did not live long enough to savor his victory, though. Patroclus’ death had been the first in a series, and shortly after Hector’s corpse returned to Troy, Paris shot Achilles with an arrow, piercing his ankle, the one place where Achilles was vulnerable. Apollo had guided the shaft, and thus avenged the death of his own son.

Following Achilles’ death, the army presented his armor to the next best warrior in the camp. Ajax and Odysseus vied for the honor. When Odysseus won, Ajax went mad, and only Athena prevented him from slaughtering his own allies, turning his wrath mistakenly on the cattle, seeing them as soldiers. When he saw what he had done, shame overtook him, and he killed himself, falling upon the very sword Hector had bestowed to him. Thus, the Achaean army lost its two mightiest warriors in rapid succession.

The Achaeans then chose guile over force to win the day. They retrieved Philoctetes from his exile in Lemnos, his wound finally healed. Philoctetes shot and killed Paris, removing the war’s catalyst.

Odysseus then stole into Troy, and removed the Palladium, a wooden statue sacred to Athena that protected the city from being sacked.

Finally, Odysseus suggested a new stratagem. The Achaeans constructed a massive hollow wooden horse, and engraved upon it the inscription: “For their return home, the Achaeans dedicate this thank-offering to Athena.” Odysseus and several of the Achaeans’ best warriors climbed inside the horse. The rest took their boats and other belongings and emptied the camp. The next day, finding the camp deserted and the horse standing in its midst, the Trojans assumed the Achaeans had finally fled. They dragged the horse into the city, and set it before Priam’s palace, while they debated what to do with it. The seeress Cassandra saw the truth, but her curse was no one ever believed her visions. Laocoon, another seer, confirmed her words, but the gods sent serpents to kill him, and thus no one listened, and the Trojans spared the wooden horse.

That night, the Achaean Sinon lit a beacon lamp in the Achaean camp, guiding their ships back to shore, while Odysseus and his men crept out of the horse, overpowered the sentries, and opened the city’s gates allowing their comrades into the city. The Achaeans swept through the sleeping Trojans, killing Priam and his remaining sons, and killing or taking the king’s daughters as slaves. They even slew Hector’s son Astyanax, a little boy. Of the royal family, only Aeneas, his father Anchises, and his son Ascanius escaped, and only with Aphrodite’s aid. After killing everyone and dividing the spoils, the Achaeans set fire to the city. Victors, they gathered in their ships and set sail for their respective homes and waiting families.

Troy (Hissarlik)

Before excavation the city of Troy (later Ilion) was a tell more than 31 metres high. Excavations by Schliemann (1870–90), Dörpfeld (1893–4), and the University of Cincinnati (1932–8) revealed 46 separate strata, making up nine major layers (I– IX), each with a number of subdivisions. Occupation dates at least from the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, and the wealthy city of Troy II (Treasure of Priam) has fortifications comparable in grandeur with those of the approximately contemporary sites of Thermi on Lesbos and Poliochni on Lemnos. Troy VI, in which the horse first appears here, is the settlement which spans the Middle Bronze Age and earlier part of the Late Bronze Age: it seems to have been destroyed by an earthquake around 1300 BC. Mycenaean IIIB pottery in Troy VIIa, destroyed by fire c. 1260, has led to its identification with Homer’s Troy, the destruction of which was traditionally placed in 1184 by Eratosthenes on genealogical grounds. The city continued through various vicissitudes to be inhabited until c. AD 500.

Alexander the Great and the Iliad

Alexander and his friends did not have any comic books, television, or movies, but they did have super heroes. They read the accounts of their heroes’ brave deeds primarily in The Iliad, an epic poem written by Greek poet Homer centuries before Alexander’s birth. (The dates of Homer’s life are not known, but he lived in the ninth or eighth century B.C.E.) In that book, Homer tells the exciting story of the Greeks’ siege of Troy and the beautiful Helen, who inspired that battle, the legendary Trojan War. The battles of great warriors and princes such as Achilles, Hector, Paris, and others, many of whom were believed to be descended directly from the Greek gods, may have inspired Alexander. In fact, the young king loved The Iliad so much that he memorized most of its 16,000 lines and used these super warriors as role models for his own life and values. He even slept with a copy of The Iliad under his pillow— right next to his dagger.

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In the early spring of 334 B.C.E., borrowing enough money from the Macedonian treasury to keep his troops supplied for a month, Alexander left Macedonia with an army of about 30,000 infantry, or foot soldiers, and 5,000 cavalry, or mounted horsemen. The army was made up of Macedonians as well as troops drawn from throughout Greece and from the Balkan lands to the north. Alexander left trusted generals behind, with enough soldiers to keep the peace in Macedonia and Greece.

Traveling an average of 20 miles a day, Alexander and his troops reached the Hellespont in 20 days. Crossing this narrow strip of water between Europe and Asia, they landed in Persian territory, in what is today Turkey. Upon his arrival, Alexander visited the ruins of Troy. Through his familiarity with Homer’s The Iliad and its legendary tales of those he believed to be his ancestors (see page 7), the young monarch was well aware of Troy’s history. It was the site of the first Greek invasion of Asia, about 900 years before Alexander’s time. Now he came to conquer again.

At Troy, Alexander made a sacrifice at what local legend said was the grave of the Greek hero Achilles. He also dedicated his army to the Greek goddess Athena, who, in times of war, was worshiped as the goddess of intelligence and cunning. He was ready to take on the Persians.

ANCIENT 3D MAP FOUND IN RUSSIA

Scientists at Bashkir State University in Russia claim to have found infallible proof of the existence of a highly developed civilization in the very ancient past. Their evidence is a one-ton plus stone slab (about five feet long, by three-and-a-half feet wide, and six inches thick) which they estimate to be, perhaps, millions of years old. Located beneath the house of a local community leader in the town of Ufa, the slab’s surface is a precisely detailed 3-D relief map of the Ural Mountain region. Its discoverer has dubbed it “The Map of the Creator.”

 

The discoverer, physics and mathematics professor Alexander Chuvyrov had been researching evidence of ancient Chinese influence in the area and had heard stories by early 20th century investigators of several mysterious ancient slabs. Though interested, Chuvyrov had despaired of finding one himself, when the chairman of the local agricultural committee told him of such a stone beneath his own house.

 

After a difficult recovery operation, Chuvyrov reports being startled to discover that the map accurately reveals many presently existing natural features plus many which no longer exist, including a system of channels, weirs and dams, as well as inscriptions in an unknown language (Chinese has been ruled out).

 

First discovered in July, 1999 the slab has been subjected to numerous tests by Russian scientists. The results have been baffling, to say the least. Determinations of age have been based on radio carbon dating of shells embedded in the material, but not much can be said with certainty about the origins of the stone. The technical difficulty of creating such an accurate relief map is far beyond that of any ancient culture previously believed by orthodox scientists to have occupied the region, or, for that matter, any place on earth. Such a production would, in fact, be very difficult to replicate even now.

 

Some investigators believe the slab is a fragment of a complete map of the earth. A search for the missing pieces is under way.

 

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STEVEN ERIKSON

An archaeologist and anthropologist, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Steven Erikson recently returned to Canada after a number of years in the UK and now lives in Winnipeg. His first fantasy novel, GARDENS OF THE MOON, was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award and the second, DEADHOUSE GATES, was voted 'one of the 10 best fantasy novels of the year'.

The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting and bloody confrontations with the formidable Anomander Rake, lord of Moon's Spawn, and his Tiste Andii. Even the imperial legions, long inured to the bloodshed, yearn for some respite. Yet Empress Laseen's rule remains absolute, enforced by her dread Claw assassins. For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his squad of Bridgeburners, and for Tattersail, surviving sorceress of the Second Legion, the aftermath of the siege of Pale should have been a time to mourn the many dead. But Darujhistan, last of the Free Cities of Genabackis, yet holds out and it is to this ancient citadel that Laseen turns her predatory gaze. However, it would appear that the Empire is not alone in this great game. Sinister, shadowbound forces are gathering as the gods themselves prepare to play their hand... Conceived and written on a panoramic scale, Gardens of the Moon is epic fantasy of the highest order - an enthralling adventure by an outstanding new voice.

CHINESE WORLD MAPS

Chinese Globe, 1623

Maps provide an excellent illustration of the way different cultures conceive of and represent the world around them. Whether maps depict street names and shops in small local spaces or the entire cosmos, maps reflect the cultural values of both their producers and their intended audience. Naturally then, Chinese maps of “the world” tell us a great deal about the way the Chinese have viewed themselves and others through time and across political boundaries.

Since at least the tenth century Chinese scholars have produced what we might call “world maps.” However, until the late nineteenth century, people contemplating any given “world map” often had difficulty determining exactly where “China” ended and where the rest of “the world” began.This difficulty arose because large-scale cartographic representations of space during late imperial times in China involved a number of overlapping political, cultural, and geographical images, identified either by dynastic names (Song,Yuan, Ming, and Qing) or by designations such as the Central (Cultural) Florescence (a state or period of flourishing, Zhonghua), the Spiritual Region (Shenzhou), the Nine Regions (Jiuzhou), the Central Kingdom (Zhongguo), the Central Land (Zhongtu), and All under Heaven (Tianxia). The relationship between these conceptions is by no means always evident in traditional Chinese maps.

Many, if not most, premodern Chinese world maps show an abiding concern with the so-called tributary system, which endured as a prominent feature of China’s foreign policy down to the late nineteenth century. This system, which underwent many changes through time, was designed to confirm the long-standing theory that all of the people living beyond China’s constantly shifting borders, like all those people within them, were in some sense Chinese subjects.

The bringing of tribute to the Chinese emperor by foreign “representatives” testified to this conceit. As loyal subjects they dated their communications by the Chinese calendar, came to court, presented their “local products,” and performed all appropriate rituals of submission, including the standard three kneelings and nine prostrations (kowtow). In turn they received a patent of appointment as well as an official seal for correspondence with the Chinese “Son of Heaven.” They were given lavish presents, offered protection, and often granted privileges of trade at the frontier and at the capital. This assumption of universal overlordship blurred the distinction between maps of “China” and Chinese maps of “the world.”

Earliest World Maps

The earliest existing world maps in China date from the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE). One of the most famous examples is the amorphous (having no definite form) Huayi tu (Map of China and the Barbarians, 1136), a 3- meter-square work, carved in stone, that boasts about five hundred place names and identifies a dozen or so rivers. The map shows a few foreign lands visually—notably, Korea and India—but it represents more than a hundred different groups of “barbarian” peoples only by written notes in the margins. Several of these notes refer specifically to tributary relationships, past and present.

However, not all Song dynasty renderings of space followed this amorphous model. Indeed, inscribed on the reverse side of the Huayi tu is an astonishingly “modern”- looking work entitled the Yuji tu (Map of the Tracks of Yu, 1136). It is the earliest existing example of the so-called latticework cartographic grid in China.The outstanding feature of this map, in addition to the near total absence of written commentary, is its extremely “accurate” depiction of major landforms, including the Shandong Peninsula, as well as China’s two major waterways, the Huang (Yellow) River and the Chang (Yangzi) River.

Throughout the remainder of the imperial era, down to 1911, Chinese cartographers continued to produce both kinds of world maps. However, tributary-oriented “cultural” representations of the Huayi tu variety vastly outnumbered mathematically accurate ones. Although Jesuit missionaries brought sophisticated surveying techniques to China in the seventeenth century, enabling the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) to create extraordinarily “accurate” maps of the empire for certain political and strategic purposes, they did not inspire a more general cartographic revolution in China, much less provoke a change in the way the Chinese viewed the world.

To be sure, Chinese scholars were not averse to using Western cartographic knowledge selectively. Consider, for example, Cao Junyi’s Tianxia jiubian fenye renji lucheng quantu (A Complete Map of Allotted Fields, Human Events and Travel Routes [within and without] the Nine Border Areas under Heaven, 1644).This expansive work acknowledges the existence of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India and gestures toward mathematical accuracy by providing longitudinal lines and degrees (which do not, however, correlate well with specific locations). However, the Middle East and India are represented primarily by cartouches (ornate or ornamental frames), and Africa—which appears only about one-tenth the size of China—hangs down on the western side of Cao’s map as if it were little more than a protective flank. Europe, tiny and even more marginal, is barely recognizable in the upper northwest portion of the map. Significantly, in his treatment of “barbarians” Cao does not differentiate clearly between actual foreign countries and the lands and peoples described in ancient mythical works such as the Shanhai jing (Classic of Mountains and Seas).

Cartographic Traditions

We can see another effort to integrate radically different cartographic traditions into a single production in the work of Ma Junliang (flourished c. 1780). Although his Jingban tianwen quantu (Capital Edition of a Complete Map [Based on] Astronomy, c. 1790) is dominated by a rectangular Huayi tu-style rendering of “the world,” with inscriptions that emphasize the process by which “barbarian” envoys come to China and offer themselves as vassals of the Qing dynasty, it also boasts a seventeenth century Chinese version of a Jesuit map of the Western Hemisphere and a similarly structured, but more detailed, Chinese map of the Eastern Hemisphere that was first published by Chen Lunjiong in his Haiguo wenjian lu (Record of Things Heard and Seen in the Maritime Countries) in 1730.

The rise of Western imperialism during the nineteenth century brought a new level of global awareness to China. Intelligence-gathering efforts during the Anglo- Chinese War of 1839–1842 began the process, and by the end of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) the traditional Chinese worldview had been completely undermined. From this time onward in elite journals and even popular almanacs and encyclopedias, Chinese readers sought ever more accurate knowledge about other parts of the world, including Japan.

As in many other aspects of Chinese life after 1895, the rise of Chinese nationalism—generated by China’s humiliating defeat by the Japanese—brought a revolution in Chinese cartography. One revealing example is a map taken from a popular almanac of 1912—the year the Qing dynasty fell. Although not particularly sophisticated in terms of mathematical cartography, it is instructive because its commentaries identify all the places taken from China by foreign imperialism—including the province of Taiwan and the former tributary states of Korea, the Liuqiu Islands, and Vietnam. Chinese cartography had suddenly become irrevocably “global” in a radically new and highly nationalistic way.

Further Reading

Harley, J. B.,& Woodward,D. (Eds.). (1994). The history of cartography: Vol. 2, Book 2. Cartography in the traditional east and southeast Asian societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hostetler, L. (2001). Qing colonial enterprise: Ethnography and cartography in early modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Howland, D. R. (1996). Borders of Chinese civilization: Geography and history at empire’s end. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Leonard, J. K. (1984).Wei Yuan and China’s rediscovery of the maritime world. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Smith, R. J. (1996). Chinese maps: Images of all under heaven. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Smith,R. J. (1998). Mapping China’s world: Cultural cartography in late imperial times. In Y.Wen-hsin (Ed.), Landscape, culture and power in Chinese society (pp. 52–109). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, Center for East Asian Studies.

Yamashita, K. (1996). Japanese maps of the Edo period. Tokyo: Kashiwashobo.

Yee, C. D. K. (1996). Space and place: Mapmaking east and west. Annapolis, MD: St. John’s College.

MALDEN ISLAND

The desolate Malden Island contains an assortment of megalithic monuments.

On the barren Pacific islet of Malden, completely uninhabited by native islanders since first discovered by European explorers in the early 1800s, lie the remains of a mysterious megalithic culture. From several temple complexes near the center of the island radiates an ancient highway system that spans across the island like a giant spider web. An ancient high­way system composed of large basalt slabs fitted tightly together runs across the island, crosses the beach and disappears under the waves of the Pacific. The ancient highways on Malden Island, better described as “paved ways,” are very similar to the Ara Metua, a paved road on Rarotonga Island, 1,000 miles (1,610 km) to the south of Malden. The Ara Metua road on Rarotonga is essentially an island circuit road that goes around the island. Rarotonga, like Malden Island and many others in the Pacific, has a number of pyramid-platforms connected by the megalithic roads.

Malden Island is a deserted location a thousand miles from anywhere. Why it contains temples, pyramid-platforms and ancient paved paths leading directly into the ocean is still a mystery.

Several step-pyramids, platforms, megaliths, and strange stacks of stones are scattered across Malden Island. Stepped and truncated pyramids measure in the range of 30 feet (9 m) in height, 20 to 60 feet (6-18 m) in width, and 90 to 200 feet (27-60 m) in length. The pyramids are approached by paved ways from the sea and are capped with dolmens or “compass stones.” These 40 stone temples on Malden Island are described as similar in design to the buildings of Nan Madol on Pohnpei, some 3,400 miles (5,475 km) away.

What was the purpose of all these platforms? Were they part of an ancient sun-worshipping cult, altars for Polynesian chiefs, or a “crossroad” meeting place for a seafaring nation? And what of the paved ways leading into the sea? Evidence for the lost Pacific continent of Mu, or Lemuria? Speculation also suggests that Malden Island is positioned on a spe­cial power point upon the Earth Grid, acknowledged and venerated by the ancients. This island may have been an important stopover place on trans-Pacific voyages, but the reality is that no one really knows. One thing is for certain; some mysterious group put a large amount of effort into building megalithic monuments on an island that could hardly support even a small population.

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PC-ONLY RPG/STRATEGY GAME KING ARTHUR. Update

“And then on the following day they came to Arthur’s court. They seemed like giants, wearing black steel and strange weapons. They were powerful and invincible warriors and people called them the Knights. No one knows who they are. No one knows where they came from.

But they might be Arthur’s only hope to stand against the coming tide of wonders, mayhem and awe.”

NeocoreGames, a fresh and talented game developer team from Hungary would like to announce their new PC-only RPG/Strategy game King Arthur.

Three years in the making, this grandiose storytelling game by NeocoreGames is an innovative mixture of the best gameplay elements from the RPG and strategy games, with a unique and beautiful visual representation.

Players will guide the legendary King Arthur in the game and conquer the warring provinces of Britannia until they unite the realm. Meanwhile, they will recruit the fabled knights of the Round Table and send them to adventures, personally improving them to become the most powerful he­roes of the realm. They will build the majestic Camelot and govern a growing realm, while commandeering spectacular battles where many thousands clash on the field. Every deci­sion they make will determine Arthur’s Morality as a king, creating their own legend – Arthur could a rightful ruler or ruthless monarch; either a Christian or a pagan king.

King Arthur is based on the rich mythology of the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon legends that inspired many artists in the past, from J.R.R. Tolkien to the modern masters of fan­tasy, but at the same time it has a unique and innovative approach to its chosen background.

King Arthur will be released in the first half of 2009 and offers more than 100 hours of gameplay and multiplayer gaming modes for all fans of fantasy and hardcore gamers.

NeocoreGames now offers concept artwork.

BA’ALBEK

Snuggled deep within the scenic Beqa’a Valley is an age-old acropolis devoted to, at different times, a wide variety of gods and goddesses. It was originally dedicated to Semitic divinities: El; Ba’al; and his goddess partner Astarte, whose cult involved prostitution and sacred orgies. Next came the Greek temples of Zeus, Aphrodite, and Hermes. The Romans built right on top of the Greek locations but changed the deity names to Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury. Biblical sources attribute the founding of Ba’albek to Cain after his banishment by Jehovah. The three Roman temples are the only to survive largely intact, and the Venus monument is regarded the most complete Roman temple in the world.

In times of antiquity, large numbers of pilgrims came from Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley to visit the legendary Ba’al–Astarte complex and its oracle. The Bible mentions Ba’albek in the Book of Kings. Underneath the temple complex is a vast network of underground tunnels, which were likely intended to provide shelter for the multitudes of pilgrims. Ancient Arab writings tell that the Temples of Ba’al–Astarte were constructed a short time after the Great Flood. According to legend, the structures were built at the order of the renowned King Nimrod and a “tribe of giants.”

The acropolis of Ba’albek, with its massive temples and imposing ruins, is one of the most enigmatic sites in the world. The Roman sanctuaries were located upon earlier Greek temples, and those were built upon much older Semitic ruins. While the Roman and Greek architectural wonders do not pose archaeological problems, the earlier Semitic ruins certainly do. Most confounding is the enclosure wall called the Trilithon, composed of three hewn blocks of stone each weighing more than 750 tons (680,000 kg)!

The Trilithon wall is an amazing feat of construction. The colossal blocks of stone were raised 22 feet (6.6 m) above slightly smaller blocks. There is no crane in the modern world that can lift even half the weight of these Trilithon stones. Furthermore, not even a knife blade can be inserted between these gigantic blocks because they are so expertly fitted together. Another stone called Hadjar el Gouble, Arabic for “Stone of the South,” is in a nearby quarry and is even larger than the Trilithon stones. The Stone of the South is 13 by 13 feet (4 m) and nearly 70 feet (21 m) long, and is estimated to weigh at least 1,000 tons (907,000 kg)! It is the largest hewn stone in the world.

Although Ba’albek contains a large amount of Roman ruins, it is very unlikely the Romans or the Greeks constructed the Trilithon, but merely ‘piggybacked’ on an already sacred site as is common worldwide. The Greeks called the site “Heliopolis,” which means “Sun Temple” or “Sun City,” yet this prehistoric Sun Temple was built on the ruins of a much older Semitic structure. The massive platform was constructed by an ancient race of highly sophisticated builders, who, it has been suggested, employed a sort of sound harmonics to render the stones weightless in order to set them into place

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REACHING A NEW WORLD

Leif Eriksson sailed to and explored North America. In this 1996 photograph, a man dressed in traditional Viking clothing and armor poses at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada.

With their mastery of the North Atlantic nearly complete and their expeditionary zeal still strong, it was perhaps inevitable that the Vikings would eventually reach North America. Historians now agree that Erik’s son Leif Eriksson explored the North American coast in about 1000. The story of the Norse exploration of Greenland and North America is told in two Icelandic sagas recorded in the 12th and 13th centuries, Eiríks saga (Saga of Erik the Red) and the Groenlendinga saga (Saga of the Greenlanders).

The Eiríks saga insists that Leif found “lands which he did not even know existed,” and many scholars believe that Leif reached North America by accident after being blown far off course on a summer voyage from Norway to Iceland. Leif, however, was not necessarily the first European to sight the New World. The Groenlendinga saga reports that the Icelandic merchant Bjarni Herjulfsson had been blown off course on a voyage from Iceland to Greenland in 986 and had told Leif Eriksson of finding an unknown land far to the west. According to this version, Leif acquired Bjarni’s ship and set out in the summer of 1001 specifically to find and explore that country.

In either case, Leif sailed westward and reached North America. The Greenlanders’ saga goes on to describe how he first sighted a frozen waste he called Helluland (“Flat-stoneland,” generally agreed to be Baffin Island, in Canada, lying southwest of Greenland and north of Hudson Bay). Sailing southward along the coast, he came to a wooded region with grasslands and an enormous stretch of sandy beach. He named this place Markland (“Forest-land,” tentatively identified as Labrador). Sailing farther south, he came to a temperate forested land where wild wheat and grapevines grew. This place he named Vinland (“Wine-land”); modern scholars identify the likeliest locale as Newfoundland and suggest that the so-called grapes, which do not grow at this latitude, were in fact some kind of cranberry or red currant. The Norse built themselves shelters and explored during the winter and spring. They returned to Greenland in the summer to tell of the plentiful “grapes,” salmon, timber, and grassland they had discovered.

Of several subsequent Norse voyages to North America, none resulted in permanent settlement. Leif’s brother Thorvald led one group of colonists to Vinland in 1003, but after only two winters, hostilities with Native Americans caused them to leave. Another serious attempt to colonize Vinland came a year or so later when Eriksson relative Thorfinn Karlsefni organized a fleet of three ships carrying more than 100 settlers and their livestock. They are believed to have spent their first winter on the shore of the St. Lawrence River estuary, where Snorri was born to Thorfinn and his wife, Gudrid, becoming the first European child to be born in North America.

The Vikings referred to the Native Americans as skroelings (“barbarians” or “weaklings”) but were nevertheless willing to trade with them, the Norse taking animal skins in exchange for red cloth. Workable business relations turned hostile, however, and Thorfinn’s group abandoned their settlement after a few years. Yet another expedition to Vinland led by Erik the Red’s daughter Freydis failed after she murdered her partner. The Vikings finally gave up on North America sometime between 1010 and 1025. They may have continued to harvest much-needed timber in Markland, but it evidently proved unsound economically to maintain settlements there. In their own terms—the desire to colonize—the Viking adventure in North America must be judged a failure.

SOLVING THE RIDDLE OF THE DESERT GLASS

Vincenzo de Michele visited the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and noticed that one of King Tutankhamun’s jeweled breastplates contained a carved scarab that looked suspiciously like a piece of the glass. A simple optical measurement confirmed the match in 1998.

The mysterious glass “yellowgreen jewels that have smooth surfaces sculpted by the incessant wind.”

Red Storm simulated the airburst and impact of a 120-meter diameter stony asteroid, shown in this sequence. Meteoric vapor mixes with the atmosphere to form an opaque fireball with a temperature of thousands of degrees. The hot vapor cloud expands to a diameter of 10 km within seconds, still in contact with the surface.

It was in 1932 that British explorers in Model-A Fords first visited this area of western Egypt, where they discovered a mysterious yellow-green glass scattered across the surface. Ever since, Libyan Desert Glass has fascinated scientists, who have dreamed up all sorts of ideas about how it could have formed. It’s too silicarich to be volcanic. In some ways it resembles the tektites generated by the high pressures associated with asteroid impacts. That observation is the starting point of a scientific debate that became the subject of the documentary filmed for National Geographic and BBC.

I was chosen to participate in the role of a dissenter from the preferred explanation that the glass was formed by direct shock-melting by a crater-forming asteroid impact. I had stumbled into the debate by accident in 1996, when I attended a conference on the subject of the 1908 explosion of an asteroid or comet that knocked down nearly a thousand square miles of trees in Siberia. I stayed an extra day to attend a meeting about the desert glass, where I argued that similar — but larger — atmospheric explosions could create fireballs that would be large and hot enough to fuse surface materials to glass, much like the first atomic explosion generated green glass at the Trinity site in 1945.

King Tut connection

Shortly after that workshop, one of the Italian organizers made a discovery that raised public interest in the subject. Vincenzo de Michele visited the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and noticed that one of King Tutankhamun’s jeweled breastplates contained a carved scarab that looked suspiciously like a piece of the glass. A simple optical measurement confirmed the match in 1998. The connection of a catastrophic explosion with the treasures of ancient Egypt became a sure-fire formula for a documentary.

Last December, when I was first asked by the producer to be interviewed, I was a little skeptical. After all, television is known more for sensationalism than for scientific accuracy, and the King Tut connection had fueled pseudoscientific speculation on the web. One website even presents fanciful “Evidence for Ancient Atomic War,” making the case that Egyptians had detonated nuclear weapons (but ignoring the fact that the glass is 29 million years old). Did I want to be part of this?

Fortunately, I was assured by other scientists that this would be a legitimate documentary that would focus on natural explanations for this enigmatic glass. In February, I found myself in Cairo with Dr. de Michele, getting a firsthand look at King Tut’s glass scarab and preparing for nine days in the desert.

Great Sand Sea

Our jumping-off point was the Bahariya Oasis, a large valley of villages and adobe houses. After the 300-kilometer drive on a two-lane highway through the lifeless desert, the irrigated fields were startlingly green — the last green we would see for some time.

Leaving the road, we embark on a 1,000-km voyage across the Great Sand Sea. Despite the lack of water, that name is apt. Like mariners, we don’t follow a specified route. We are guided by the sun, compasses, dead-reckoning, and (like modern sailors) GPS. If the dunes are the swells of the open ocean, our first day’s trip is an excursion though a field of icebergs. Towering monuments, hoodoos, and mesas of stark white limestone provide a maze through which we meander, opening up to a featureless flat sand plain.

Our Egyptian outfitter, his French partner, and the local drivers and crew make this trip several times every year. They plot their GPS tracks on satellite images downloaded from the web. They never repeat the same route, but offset their trips by enough distance that they explore parts of the desert that have never been crossed before.

Bedouin-style tea

February in the Sahara is cool, and the wind blows so hard on the Great Sand Sea that it can be hazy like a marine fog. Our meals here are accompanied with sugar saturated tea brewed Bedouin-style over an open flame of apricot wood carried from the orchards of Bahariya.

To the southwest, the rolling sand builds to great dunes and the sea rises. Vehicles frequently get stuck and have to be rescued by digging and driving them up special aluminum ramps. It takes a special sailor’s eye to distinguish between a safe hard surface and the treacherous soft sand, especially at 100 kilometers/hour. Arabic, French, and English conversations crackle over the radio, and throbbing Egyptian music plays on the driver’s iPod.

He approached the assignment with some healthy skepticism, but now believes the effort bore some scientific fruit. Just before we reach the site of the glass, the dunes become linear — unbroken parallel ranges running north-south for hundreds of kilometers. Here we must carefully pick our crossings, and then we run at high speed southward in the corridors between the dunes, the “freeways” that have been used by nomads for centuries (as evidenced by 100-year-old camel skeletons).

On our third day after leaving the last road, our maps tell us we are within the area where glass has been found. We stop to look. There are pieces of sandstone everywhere, and no plants in sight. It looks strikingly like the surface of Mars, and sand sifts underfoot. The first bits of glass we find are yellow-green jewels that have smooth surfaces sculpted by the incessant wind. We hold them up to the sun to see how the light refracts and scatters. This is probably what the Pharaohs did with their piece, and the Neolithic people before them.

Nine days of geologic exploration and discussion bore fruit. You get to know your colleagues well during long days driving and long nights in camp. Everyone figures out the strengths and weaknesses in one another’s ideas. It would be premature to claim that we solved the mystery, but new friendships and collaborations have emerged, and renewed interest in this scientific mystery has energized debate over this unique glass.

Applying high-performance computing to a scientific mystery

While most natural glasses are volcanic in origin, rare exceptions are tektites, formed by shock melting associated with hypervelocity impacts of comets or asteroids. The Libyan Desert Glass falls into neither of these categories and has baffled scientists since its 1932 discovery.

Sandia physicist Mark Boslough’s study of the 1994 collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter provided an opportunity to model a hypervelocity atmospheric impact. Along with observation of the actual event, the model provided insights that provided a likely scenario for the formation of the Libyan Desert Glass.

Using Sandia’s Red Storm supercomputer, Boslough and his team ran a three-dimensional simulation, using huge amounts of memory and processing power. The simulation supports the hypothesis that the glass was formed by radiative heating and ablation of sandstone and alluvium near the “ground zero” of a 100- megaton or larger explosion caused by the breakup of a comet or asteroid.

Expedition camp was set up in “corridor B” in the southern part of the Great Sand Sea, within the area of Libyan Desert Glass. The corridors — made up of relatively recent gravels and separated by linear dunes — have long provided travel routes in this remote area.

The shock-physics simulations show a 120-meter-diameter asteroid entering the atmosphere at a speed of 20 kilometers/second and breaking apart just before hitting the ground. The fireball generated by the explosion remains in contact with the Earth’s surface at temperatures exceeding the melting temperature of quartz for more than 20 seconds. The fireball and the air speed behind the blast wave (hundreds of meters per second during the 20 seconds) are consistent with melting and rapid quenching to form the Libyan Desert Glass.

Although the risk to humans for such an impact is remote, it is not negligible, Boslough notes. The precise probability of such an event and its consequences are difficult to calculate, but research on large aerial bursts is forcing risk assessment to recognize and account for these large natural processes. Expedition camp was set up in “corridor B” in the southern part of the Great Sand Sea, within the area of Libyan Desert Glass. The corridors — made up of relatively recent gravels and separated by linear dunes — have long provided travel routes in this remote area.

By Mark Boslough