Technology of the Gods: The Incredible Sciences of the Ancients Read online

  He believed that artifacts which he had found in the Bay Islands pointed to a high civilization that was now beneath the water, and equated it with Atlantis. Mitchell-Hedges had a penchant for mystical sciences and secret societies, and championed the cause of lost civilizations and Atlantis. Eventually, he ended up in Lubaantun and the crystal was “discovered” in 1927.

  Curiously, he devotes only three paragraphs to the famous crystal skull ancient societies were primitive, yet, we know that ancient steam engines, cogwheeled clocks and crystal skulls existed. What other secrets of high technology does the past have for us?

  “The Skull of Doom is made of pure rock crystal and according to scientists it must have taken over 150 years, generation after generation working all the days of their lives, patiently rubbing down with sand an immense block of rock crystal until finally the perfect Skull emerged.

  “It is at least 3,600 years old and according to legend was used by the High Priest of the Maya when performing esoteric rites. It is said that when he willed death with the help of the skull, death invariably followed. It has been described as the embodiment of all evil. I do not wish to try and explain this phenomena.”93

  Today, the skull continues to amaze audiences around the world and is frequently on television. Quartz crystals are today used in the highest forms of technology as well, as in computers and LCD watches.

  The Crystal Skull, like other objects, is apparently a high-tech object from the past. The enigma of ancient technology is that we believe that the ancient societies were primitive, yet, we know that ancient steam engines, cogwheeled clocks and crystal skulls existed. What other secrets of high technology does the past have for us?

  Earthquake detection device from China, circa 200 AD.

  A scroll found in a secret library at Dunhuang in the Gobi Desert in the year 1900 by Sir Aurel Stein, who was working for the British Museum. It is in an unknown language. Most Ancient books were ordered destroyed in China.

  Chinese flame thrower device from circa 1040 AD. It used refined petroleum that was pumped out of a rectangular tank.

  The astronomical clock tower built at Kaifeng.

  The enigmatic Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull. A relic from Atlantis?

  2.

  The Megalith Masterminds

  Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

  —Aldous Huxley

  Truth is one, but error proliferates.

  Man tracks it down and cuts it up into

  little pieces hoping to turn it into grains of truth.

  —René Dauman, The Way of the Truth

  Megalithomania

  Legends of resplendent ancient civilizations and their cataclysmic destruction are part of nearly every culture in the world. The modern skeptic asks, “Well, if highly advanced ancient societies existed in the past then where is the evidence of their machinery and such; and shouldn’t there be the remains of these peoples’ cities?” The answer is that such evidence does exist, and hundreds of ruined cities have been found both above and below water.

  The idea that man was primitive in the past and that the present represents the highest civilization our planet has achieved is fairly well accepted in the West, while other cultures view history as cyclical and see our current society as a decline from a former golden age. Out of the past we find megalithic cities built to last for thousands of years. How primitive must we suppose these people were?

  Throughout the world, there exists a type of megalithic construction that is called “Atlantean” by those researchers who believe in advanced civilizations of the past. This is typically a type of construction which used gigantic blocks of stone, often crystalline granite. Huge blocks are fitted together without mortar in a polygonal style which tends to interlock the heavy blocks in a jigsaw fashion. These interlocked polygonal walls resist earthquake damage by moving with the shock wave of the quake. They momentarily jumble themselves and move freely but then fall back into place. These interlocked jigsaw walls will not collapse with an earthquake shock wave as with brick wall construction.

  Such “Atlantean style” construction can be found all over the world. Classical examples of such construction are at Mycenae in the Peloponnese and the temples of Malta, along with the gigantic megalithic walls of Tiahuanaco, Ollantaytambo, Monte Alban and Stonehenge, as well as the pre-Egyptian structures of the Osirion at Abydos and the Valley Temple of the Sphinx.

  Atlantean architecture is often circular, and uses the most exact rock cutting techniques to fit blocks together. Atlantean-type architecture often uses “keystone cuts”—identical shapes are cut into rock on both sides of a joint and the space is fitted with a metal clamp. These keystone cuts are typically an hourglass shape or a double-T shape. The clamps that went inside them may have been copper, bronze, silver, electrum (a mixture of silver and gold) or some other metal. In nearly every case where keystone cuts can be found, the metal clamp has already been removed—many thousands of years ago!

  Many well-known, and not-so-well-known, ruins of the world contain the remains of even earlier cities within them. Such sites as Ba‘albek in Lebanon, Cuzco in Peru, the Acropolis of Athens, Lixus in Morocco, Cadiz in Spain and even the Temple Mount of Jerusalem are built on gigantic remains of earlier ruins. Some modern cities, Cuzco is a good example, contain three or more levels of occupation, including modern occupants. Some archaeologists think the civilization that these earlier buildings are from is the “mythical” civilization of Atlantis.

  Where then is Atlantis? Atlantis is all around us, asserted British scholar John Michell in his book The View Over Atlantis.73 Michell further showed that amazing ancient ruins are a worldwide phenomenon in his Megalithomania.77 Many authors have attempted to show how the world wide distribution of megaliths points to an advanced civilization in an antediluvian sense, including such scholarly works as Megaliths & Masterminds 67by Peter Lancaster Brown.

  Their thesis was that the ancient world was remarkably advanced for its so-called Stone Age inheritance, and they argued that an advanced civilization called “Atlantis” preceded the dawn of history. The prehistoric civilization not only ranged worldwide but built impressive monuments and buildings as well.

  The idea that man has only recently invented such things as electricity, generators, steam and combustion engines, or even powered flight does not necessarily hold true for a world that rides the rollercoaster of history.

  Indeed, when we see how quickly inventions are absorbed into today’s society we can imagine how quickly a highly scientific civilization may have arisen in remote antiquity. Just as today there are still primitive tribes in New Guinea and South America who live a Stone Age existence, so could Atlantis have existed during a period where other areas of the world lived in various states of development.

  The ancient world of Atlantis may have been a lot like the modern world of today—juxtaposed between various factions in the government and military, while international discontent rises in various client colonies of an economic system set up by large business interests. According to the mythos that has built up around Atlantis, it was destroyed because of the wars that it had fought around the world. Today the world is again teetering on the brink of wholesale Armageddon because of political, religious and ethnic differences. Does modem man have something to gain by studying the past? Students of Atlantis believe so.

  The Osirian Civilization

  The Osirian Civilization, according to esoteric tradition, was an advanced civilization contemporary with Atlantis. In the world of about 15,000 years ago, there were a number of highly developed and sophisticated civilizations on our planet, each said to have a high degree of technology. Among these fabled civilizations was Atlantis, while another highly developed civilization existed in India. This civilization is often called the Rama Empire.

  What is theorized is a past quite different from that which we have learned in school. It is a past with magnificent cities, ancient roads and trade routes, busy
ports and adventurous traders and mariners. Much of the ancient world was civilized, and such areas of the world as ancient India, China, Peru, Mexico and Osiris were thriving commercial centers with many important cities. Many of these cities are permanently lost forever, but others have been or will be discovered!

  Isis, Osiris, and Horus

  It is said that at the time of Atlantis and Rama, the Mediterranean was a large and fertile valley, rather than a sea as it is today. The Nile River came out of Africa, as it does today, and was called the River Styx. However, instead of flowing into the Mediterranean Sea at the Nile Delta in northern Egypt, it continued into the valley, and then turned westward to flow into a series of lakes, to the south of Crete. The river flowed out between Malta and Sicily, south of Sardinia and then into the Atlantic at Gibraltar (the Pillars of Hercules). This huge, fertile valley, along with the Sahara (then a vast fertile plain), was known in ancient times as the Osirian civilization.

  Horus.

  The Osirian civilization could also be called “Pre-Dynastic Egypt,” the ancient Egypt that built the Sphinx and pre-Egyptian megaliths such as the Osirion at Abydos. In this outline of ancient history, it was the Osirian Empire that was invaded by Atlantis, and devastating wars raged throughout the world toward the end of the period of Atlantis’ warlike imperial expansion.

  Solon relates in Plato’s dialogues that Atlantis, just near the cataclysmic end, invaded ancient Greece. This ancient Greece was one that the “ancient” Greeks knew nothing about. This “unknown ancient Greece,” we shall see, is closely connected to the Osiris-Isis civilization.

  The story of Osiris himself, as related by the Greek historian Plutarch, is revealing in technology. According to Egyptian mythology Osiris was born of the Earth and Sky, was the first king of Egypt and the instrument of its civilization. Osiris allegedly traveled throughout the world, teaching the arts of civilization after the flood. He weaned the inhabitants of Egypt from their barbarous ways, taught agriculture, formulated laws and taught the worship of the gods. Having accomplished this, he set off to impart his knowledge to the rest of the world.

  Osiris

  During his absence, his wife Isis ruled, but Osiris’ brother and her brother-in-law, Typhon (also known as Set, and known to us as Satan) was always ready to disrupt her work. When Osiris returned from civilizing the world (or attempting to, at least), Set/Typhon/ Satan decided he would kill Osiris and take Isis for himself. He collected 72 conspirators to his plot and had a beautiful chest made to the exact measurements of Osiris. He threw a banquet and declared that he would give the chest to whomever could lie comfortably within it. When Osiris got in, the conspirators rushed to the chest and fastened the lid with nails. They then poured lead over the box and dumped it into the river where it was carried out to sea. When Isis heard of Osiris’ death, she immediately set out to find her beloved.

  The box with Osiris in it came aground at Byblos in present day Lebanon, not too far from the massive slabs at Ba‘albek. A tree grew around the box where it landed, and the king of Byblos had it cut down and used it as a pillar in his palace, Osiris still being inside. Isis eventually located Osiris and brought him back to Egypt, where Typhon (Set/Satan) broke into the box, chopped Osiris into fourteen different pieces, and scattered him about the countryside.

  A Winged Isis.

  The loving Isis went looking for the pieces of her husband, and each time she found a piece she buried it—which is why there are temples dedicated to Osiris all over Egypt, and apparently other parts of the eastern Mediterranean as well. In another version, she only pretends to bury the pieces, in an attempt to fool Set/Typhon, and puts Osiris back together, bringing him back to life. Eventually she found all the pieces, except the phallus, and Osiris, one way or another, returned from the underworld and encouraged his son Horus (the familiar hawk-headed god) to avenge his death. Scenes in Egyptian temples frequently depict the hawk-headed Horus spearing a great serpent, Typhon or Set, in a scene that is identical to that of St. George and the dragon, though depicted thousands of years earlier.

  In the happy ending, Isis and Osiris get back together, and have another child, Harpocrates. However, he is born prematurely and is lame in the lower legs as a result.147,148

  There are many important themes in the legend of Osiris, including resurrection and the vanquishing of evil by good, and perhaps a key to the ancient Osirian civilization. Were the 14 scattered pieces of Osiris an allusion to 14 sacred sites built by the Osirians throughout the Mediterranean? I have already mentioned the theory that the Mediterranean was once a fertile valley with many cities, farms and temples. Perhaps some of the 14 sites lie still undetected underwater and others are known but their full importance has not been identified. I believe that the early megalithic construction at Ba‘albek, Jerusalem, Giza and the Osirion at Abydos would count as known sites among the number.

  A key to the megalithic society of Osiris can be found in the curious buried ruins of the Osirion (the megalithic, pre-dynastic ruins at Abydos in southern Egypt). The British archaeologist Naville noted in a London Illustrated News article in 1914 that “here and there on the huge granite blocks was a thick knob... which was used for moving the stones. The blocks are very large—a length of fifteen feet is by no means rare; and the whole structure has decidedly the character of the primitive construction which in Greece is called cyclopean. An Egyptian example of which is at Ghizeh, the so-called temple of the Sphinx.”58

  Naville is directly relating the Osirion to the gigantic and prehistoric construction in Greece and also to the temple of the Sphinx. Other such sites around the former Osirian Empire are on the island of Malta, in Leba non, in Israel, the Balearic Islands, and other areas of the Mediterranean. (In fact, virtually every Mediterranean island of any size has prehistoric megaliths on it.) Furthermore, the knobs, which may or may not be for moving the stones, are the same sort of knobs that occur on the gigantic stones that are used on the massive walls to be found in the vicinity of Cuzco, Peru.

  The lack of inscriptions indicates that the Osirion, like the valley temple of the Sphinx, was built before the use of hieroglyphics in Egypt! We know this because the Egyptians always engraved hierglyphics and decorations into any of their architecture. The only exceptions are those buildings, such as Great Pyramid, the Osirion, and the Valley Temple of the Sphinx, that are thought by many archeologists now to be older than other structures. The Osirion is evidently a relic from the civilization of Osiris itself.

  Various possible methods for moving large stones.

  The present and the past are perhaps both present in the future and the future is contained in the past.

  —T.S. Eliot

  Ba‘albek and Osiris

  One of the most astonishing ancient ruins in the world is the megalithic base of Ba‘albek, the pre-Roman ruins upon which a Roman-era temple sits.

  The archaeological site of Ba‘albek is 44 miles east of Beirut and consists of a number of ruins and catacombs. 2,500 feet long on each side, it is one of the largest stone structures in the world. A portion of it consists of gigantic cut stone blocks from some ancient time, forming a platform with a Roman temple built on top of it. The Roman temple to Jupiter and Venus was built on top of the earlier temples dedicated to the corresponding ancient deities—Ba’al and his partner, the goddess Astarte.94

  The temples to Ba‘al and Astarte may initially have been built as part of a prehistoric Sun Temple, and even then on the ruins of the more ancient structure, its purpose unknown. According to an article by Jim Theisen in the INFO Journal,63the Greeks called the temple “Heliopolis” which means “Sun Temple” or “Sun City.” Even so, the original purpose of the gigantic platform may have been something else entirely.

  Ba‘albek is a good example of what happens to large, well-made ancient walls—they are used again and again by other builders who erect a new city or temple on top of the older one, using the handy stones that are already to be found at the site. Often, th
e original stones are so colossal that they could not be moved and placed elsewhere anyway. This is exactly what has been going on at many sites, in the Old World and in the Americas. Examples of very ancient stonework (3,000 to 6,000 years old) mixed with more recent ancient stonework (500 to 2,500 years ago) can be seen at Monte Alban in Mexico and at such Andean sites as Chavin, Cuzco and Ollantaytambo.

  At Ba‘albek, the Roman architecture (largely destroyed by an earthquake in 1759) does not pose any archaeological problems, but the massive cut stone blocks beneath it certainly do. One part of the enclosure wall, called the Trilithon, is composed of three blocks of hewn stone that are the largest stone blocks ever used in construction on this planet, so far as is known (underwater ruins may reveal larger constructions). This is an engineering feat that has never been equaled in history.

  Ba‘albek

  The weight and even size of the stones is open to controversy. According to the author Rene Noorbergen in his fascinating book Secrets of the Lost Races,32 the individual stones are 82 feet long and 15 feet thick and are estimated to weigh between 1,200 and 1,500 tons each (a ton is 2,000 pounds, which would make the blocks weigh an estimated 2,400,000 to 3,000,000 pounds each). While Noorbergen’s size may be incorrect, his weight is probably closer to the truth. Even conservative estimates say that the stones weigh at least 750 tons each, which would be one and a half million pounds.32