5

Mystic Places
JtJXfL

MYSTERIES OF THE

UNKNOWN

Mystic Places

yy

By the Editors of Time-Life Books

TIME-LIFE BOOKS, ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

CONTENTS
Essay Paradise Lost
6

CHAPTER

Atlantis:

Essay

The Eternal Qucsl

Realm of Unfathomed Mysteries

37

CHAPTERS

Secret of (he Greal Pyramid

46

Essay

The Stone Sentinels

68

CHAPTER

The Meaning of (he Megaliths

80

Along the Leys

Essay

103

CHAPTER

Pictures

on fhe Earth
110

Essay

Glyphs for the Gods

128

CHAPTER

An

Inferior

World

138

Acknowledgments
156

Bibliography
156

Picture Credits
157

Index
157

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Paradise Losf

thousands of years

after

it

sup-

depths of the Atlantic Ocean,

posedly sank into the cold and gloomy

the island continent of Atlantis lives on as one of history's most tantalizing puzzles. If indeed such a place existed, Atlantis was a civilization unequaled before or since. Yet its chroniclers say that it vanished
in little

more than a

single day, leaving not a trace behind.

The oldest and fullest surviving account of the great island's rise
and fall was provided by the Greek philosopher Plato in the fourth
century B.C. According to Plato's description - illustrated at left and
on pages 15-17-

Atlantis was a land where skilled agriculturists cre-

ated sweet-scented orchards and where animals, including "a very

large stock of elephants," flourished. Within its chief city were innu-

merable mansions outdone in grandeur only by the royal palace and

by the nearby temple raised to honor Poseidon. But neither gold nor
glory could save the Atlanteans from themselves. Their growing materialism mightily offended the gods, wrote Plato, and the whole civilization

was condemned

to a swift

and spectacular end.

been linked with other places of mystery,

among them the pyramids of Egypt and the stone slabs of Stonehenge. Unlike those brooding monuments, however, the land that
Plato portrayed is no more tangible than memory or dreams. But
many people believe that the drowned country's wealth of silver copper, and gold still glimmers for the finding on the ocean floor. Perhaps
Atlantis has often

one day, they say, some bold salvager may even bring to light Atlantis's

fabled golden tablets, graven with the laws of earthly paradise.

Dressedfor a balmy climate and surrounded by wild

animals that have nothing tofearfrom humans, Atlanteans pursue a life of
cultivated leisure amid the gardens of a great mansion.

City of

urpassing Splendor

Ihief among the

splendors of Plato's Atlantis

was

many

the sprawl-

ing palace compound. Built on a low hill in the

center of the capital and ringed by three canals, the structures that

made up

the royal

residence opened onto a courtyard containing the temple of Poseidon.

The complex was

erected by Atlas, eldest son of Poseidon and

the

first

eigns

high king of Atlantis. But the sover-

who succeeded

Atlas on the throne

were hardly content to leave this locus of their

power as they found it. "As each king received
it from his predecessor,
Plato wrote, "he added to its adornment and did all he could to
'

'

surpass the king before him, until

finally

they

made of it an abode amazing to behold for the

magnitude and beauty of its workmanship."
Visitors to the palace

compound (right) en-

tered along a broad concourse that crossed

the three canals, passing through portals that

breached a wall of brass, a wall of tin, and an
innermost wall of copper that "sparkled like
fire."

Within the embrace of these gleaming

barriers were residences of the aristocracy

mansions of white and black and red stone

quarried from the native rock. Everywhere
stood grandeur almost beyond the power of
words to describe. "The wealth they possessed," wrote Plato of the Atlantean

mon"was so immense that the like had never been seen before in any royal house nor will
archs,

ever easily be seen again."

idom

beyond Mortal
Measure

Ihe
Atlantis

was

spiritual center of

the temple of Poseidon, a

mag-

nificent building at the heart of the palace

compound. Here, the continent's rulers met to

hand down their laws.
The temple was dazzling testimony to the
metalworking

skills

of the Atlanteans. Encir-

cled with a wall of gold, the exterior of the

building was, according to Plato, "coated with
silver,

save only the pinnacles, and these they

interior, they made

coated with gold. As to the

the ceiling all of ivory.

and

variegated with gold

and orichalcum [copper], and all

of the walls and pillars and floors

silver

the rest

they covered with orichalcum."

An immense

golden figure of Poseidon driving six winged

steeds dominated the. temple's central court;

nymphs gleamed from every

shadowed crevice.
The high king of Atlantis and his nine
statues of sea

brothers, princes of the nine other provinces,

gathered every

five or six years in this aweforum (right). After sacrificing a bull

and making it an offering to their gods, the
dark-robed rulers gathered around the fading embers and passed judgments, inscribing
them upon a golden tablet. Wisely governed,

inspiring

the people of Atlantis lived in harmony. "For

many generations," wrote Plato, "their hearts

were true and in all ways noble, and they
showed gentleness joined with wisdom."

^
m

'

**

^ ^'^SlS-*jfcl?

i imp

Day

of

***

Reckoning
f*SP*

tis's glory,

the height of Atlan-

9,200 years before Plato's birth, the

imperial island could claim dominion over

'-"

most of the Mediterranean. "Then above all,"

declared Plato, "they appeared to be superlatively fair and blessed. "Yet,

Atlanteans were
tion

he continued, the

with lawless ambi-

"filled

and power."

Limitless luxury had taken

er did the Atlanteans value

its toll.

No long-

*Zm

goodness above

material wealth. "The portion of divinity within

them was now becoming

faint

and weak

through being ofttimes blended with a large

measure of mortality," Plato said. The Atlanteans, "unable to bear the burden of their

possessions," had lost their virtue.

And now

they were massing armies to conquer Athens

and parts

east.

**a*

But Zeus, leader of the gods, delivered a

blow of his own

punishment that was un-

imaginably total. "There occurred portentous

earthquakes and floods," Plato wrote, "and
one grievous day and night befell th'em, when
.the island of Atlantis. .was swallowed up
by the sea and vanished." Plato doubted that
any sign of the lost land would ever be found.
"The ocean at that spot," he wrote, "has now
become impassable and unsearchable."
.

.r

^{&

.-

****fiF~

%$

CHAPTER

The Eternal Quest

Atlantis:

n April 12, 1939, a sixty-two-year-old

spoke of the

last

meaning was as

was

is

man sank

days of a long-lost world.

clear as

it

was

If

into a trancelike state

his thoughts

startling. "In Atlantis,"

the breaking up of the land,

what

came

now Yucatan entity was the

what was

to

and

disjointed, his

he said, "when there

called the

to cross the

first

were

water

Mayan

in the

land or

plane or

air

machine of that period."

The speaker was Edgar Cayce, known as the sleeping prophet because
he invariably experienced his visions in a seeming stupor. For two decades,

this

enigmatic, unlettered American seer would astound listeners with confidently

detailed

pronouncements about the fabled

island continent of Atlantis. Hailed

as a greatly gifted clairvoyant and healer, Cayce told of an ancient place that,

was swallowed by the ocean, had produced technological marvels not

to be seen again until the twentieth century. He spoke of living men and women

before

who,

it

in earlier incarnations,

had been citizens of

nation.

He recounted how survivors of the

various

means-some on board

knowledge and achievements

Edgar Evans Cayce, put

it

incredible picture.

is

most

the Edgar Cayce

a different-and

of the existence of Atlantis

is in

in

cataclysm had fanned out by

to nearly all the corners of the globe.

say of the Atlantis tales: "They are the

most impossible information

vanished continental

Atlantean aircraft-to bear remnants of their

To be sure, Cayce painted an

later

final

this

As one of his sons would

fantastic, the
files."

most bizarre, the

Another son, namesake

more hopeful way. "Unless proof

one day discovered," he conceded, "Edgar Cayce

On the other hand, if he proves accurate on this

famous an archeologist or historian as he was a

a very unenviable position.

score he

may become

as

medical clairvoyant."

However improbable they may appear, Cayce's chronicles of

fail to fascinate. For the lost continent remains tightly woven

cannot

fabric of the

historians

Atlantis
into the

human heritage, a land that has tantalized philosophers and poets,

and schemers,

scientists

and explorers

for

ever since the Greek philosopher Plato described

it

more than two millennia,

in his writings

355 years

before the birth of Christ. The story of Atlantis has spoken to generation after

generation about the power and

wisdom

of the ancients.

It

is

a recollection of

now in the dragon-green depths of

Human ambitions may vault beyond the earth to the

of sites and regions in the world,

Eden, of a paradise resting

has been traced to a long

the sea.

among them most of the oceans and continents,

moon and
alone

in

wondrous continent

that

still

such as the Sahara, to islands such as Malta

persist-and not

nean and Bimini

the strange revelations of Edgar Cayce.

The world

with mysterious

is filled

structures that excite the imagination

sites, regions,

and lead

about their origins and purposes. Some,

posed

only

in

Incas of the

the Great Pyramid of Cheops

been linked

Giza a monument

perhaps

far

more than

and archways of
hands as a device

to

is

an Egyptian god-king,

that.

There are the

Britain's

Stonehenge,

continents,

certainly, but

awesome columns
built by unknown

for tracking the cycle of the

for

ilizations, including

believers; others are highly visible but

inscrutable nonetheless. There

at

Caribbean, to
in

mountain

The

New

in the

Mediterra-

such as Carthage

vanished from the earth,

spawning a number of other known

civ-

those of Hellenic Greece, the Mayas and

World, and even ancient Egypt.

to the high cultures of

Mu and

first

cities

southwest Spain. The sup-

civilization of Atlantis, long

has been hailed

and

the secret innards of the earth, are unseen, perhaps existing

the minds of

in the

on the Gulf of Tunis and Cadiz

and

to speculation

such as Atlantis

to

ranges such as the Atlas Mountains of North Africa, to deserts

planets and even to the most distant stars, but

memories of

list

It

has also

two other allegedly

lost

Lemuria.

known account of Atlantis was supplied by the

who lived from about 428 to 348 B.C.

philosopher Socrates, Plato formed his own

great Greek thinker Plato,

A student

sun but possibly

of the

the coastal desert of

school of philosophy in the groves of Academe in Athens. He

and vast figures of animals and humanlike

wroteouthisphilosophy in the form ofdialogues- playlets that

creatures have been etched into the arid ground-drawings

featured his former teacher Socrates as the main character.

invested with other meanings too.

Peru, lengthy lines

that

can best be seen

do they

signify?

On

in their entirety

How,

from high above. What

for that matter, did their

Such

makers even

tes

tive to the

ways

that range

from the wholly imagina-

Syracuse in what

is

They

ophy. Then, late in

life,

mundane, from the poetic

continue to be

grist for the

to the scientific.

And

of

all

now Sicily- to adopt his political philoshe composed two more dialogues that
It

is in

Plato

these,

Timaeus

was in his sev-

enties, that the earliest surviving description of

most enigmatic and the source of

the lost continent appears.

ple - is the lost island continent of At-

Plato's

The subject of more than

Timaeus, one of the original

characters in The Republic,

was

an astronomer; most of the dia-

2,000 books and countless articles

philosophy of

their ideal

and Critias, written around 355 bc when

the mystic

many of the rest, in the view of some peolantis.

work out

picked up where TheRepublichad left off.

doubter and the true believer, the

charlatan and the honestly curious.

places, the

his interlocutors

Apparently, Plato tried but failed to persuade the ruler of

Such markings, monuments, and locales often have

in

the case in The Republic, the dialogue in which Socra-

government, a benign despotism of philosopher-kings.

perceive them whole?

been explained

is

and

and poems, Atlantis

logue

^gS^>"

15

named

for

him deals

with what

about the natural world and

if it

thus,

its

retained knowl-

still

edge of ancient cataclysms.

had occurred the day af-

With that brief mention of an

ter the

early war, Atlantis

conversation that

Seekers ofAtlantis - with motivations from

scientific curiosity to nationalism - have claimed evidence of the
island in numerous places, asshown on thismap.

makes up The Republic; before

Timaeus speaks about the natural sciences, another

where the philosophy of governance had been

just as

The Republic. The story of that privileged

locale,

of Atlantis

in

Critias explains,

had been passed down

to

him from

it

remained

dialogue

relatives

in

Cntias has given Plato's account

much of its enduring plausibility.

Critias's report is

had

mind

that

would hardly have been needed

a century and

a half earlier

was

to create a parable or

According to the Egyptians, the place that

matched the

with uncharacteristic references to the tale as "the realm of

statesman Solon,
from Egyptian

who had heard

it

if all

Plato

legend to help him

make

was none

other than Athens. But

it

had

fact"

and "genuine

history."

And

Solon,

who

supposedly

earlier

time some 9,000 years

brought the story back to Greece, was a real person

before, in fact. There, Athena, the

goddess of wisdom, had

actually visited Egypt as a statesman. All in

been an Athens of a much

established a

city that

would produce "men of

was

of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar), there

great pains to

the greatest

wisdom" and, as it turned out, courage. For beyond the

a continent equal in size to

Plato's day.

power" had

On

was

and

Atlantis,

and Egypt. The Atlanteans,

gantly" seeking control of

all

the city's leaders liberated

all

in fact,

the world.

warriors defeated the armies of Atlantis

Then

in

far

any of the

resumed

his

in

Poseidon, the

rest of the Hellenic

pantheon.

account of Atlantis, he quite

when

the gods

were dividing the earth among

themselves, Poseidon chose the

fair

and bounteous continent

and subsidiary islands that would come

and

tis.

Pillars of Hercu-

There, with a

woman named

twin sons; the firstborn child

But on the heels of this glorious victory came violent earth-

was

to

Cleito,

be known as Atlanhe sired

Atlas, for

five sets

of

whom the conti-

nent and the surrounding ocean were named.

quakes and floods that destroyed the early Athenians and

all in

Critias

he explained,

as

the Athenian

sank the entire continent of Atlantis under the sea,

when

in

naturally spoke in terms of divine origins. In the earliest times,

were "arro-

a great battle,

those east of the

But

kings had ex-

tended their influence well into the Mediterranean as

central Italy

Today, of course, few people believe

Greek sea-god, or

and marvelous

its

Plato took

make his record of Atlantis seem credible to the

challenge for more than 2,000 years.

most of the known world in

the island continent, "a great

arisen. This

all,

who had

readers of his time, and that tone of certainty has remained a

Pillars

a threatening

island larger than northern Africa and Asia Minor combined is,

in

a philo-

sophical point. Moreover, Plato laced the dialogue of Critias

priests.

ideals of The Republic

les.

for

named

with architectural, engineering, and ceremonial detail

filled

by word of mouth and a few scribbled notes by the Greek

that

for him, to describe Atlantis in detail. Indeed, the very quantity

of a

and quality of information

proposed

cal record. But

remark-

knows

became

tantalizing part of the histori-

Critias, in the

able discussant, Critias the historian, says that he

place

it

The dialogue is written

origins.

as

protected from such disasters;

was then known

Poseidon divided Atlantis into ten parts, granting Atlas

the biggest

devastating period of a day and a night.

and best portion and making him sovereign over

his brothers,

who were made rulers over the remaining prov-

Such catastrophes, the Egyptian

priest

had informed

inces. Atlantis was a land of bountiful plains, extensive stands

were certainly common enough

in the

world. But the

of timber, and a rich flora

Solon,

elephants. The ground was seamed with the ore of gold, silver,

Greeks had lost the early records of their history. Egypt, thanks
to the valve action of its regularly flooding Nile River,

and fauna, including great herds of

was

and other metals, including a mysterious one called

16

orichal-

The inner city ofAtlantis, as described by Plato and

depicted in this schematic view, was ringed: It spread outfrom a hill across
three belts ofwater and two ofland. Spanning the canals
was an avenue leadingfrom the outer city.

From

the scholars

Myfli

to Reality

wrong Stubborn and

necklaces, earrings, dishes, and

more out of the hard-packed earth He

would later place the most spectacular piece, a gold diadem, on the brow of

Like the story of Atlantis, the tale of

In the late

that the Turkish

destruction

was long held to be a myth. The epic

poems describing the city, Homer's Iliad
and Odyssey, are ancient; the great
Greek poet created them before 700
Although classical Greeks read

Homer as history,

later scholars

an age of fantasy.
It took Heinrich Schliemann, a
nineteenth-century millionaire, amateur
archeologist, and dreamer, to prove
in

860s, Schliemann decided

town of Hissarlik,
mounds,

for its fortresslike earth

matched the scene of the Iliad In

began to dig
Soon he found that a city did indeed

best

bc

signed him to the ranks of literature,

conceived

known

1871, he

con-

That day, Schliemann prized golden

man (right) became convinced that

Homer had told the truth about Troy

high-walled Troy and

its

ro-

mantic, the German-born business-

beneath Hissarlik's earthworks In

several stages of an ancient city
were buried there, one atop the other.
lie

fact,

And one of the

layers,

scorched by

fire,

much like Homer's Troy

The excavation reached its climax on
a morning in the summer of 873.
looked very

18

Greek wife, Sophia (above, far

dubbing her "my Helena."
Schliemann's discovery made him
famous Subsequent archeologists have
confirmed that the city he unearthed
is very probably Troy, albeit a Troy that
underwent drastic change through
his

right),

the centuries

And

the

German

business-

man's conversion of a myth into reality continues to give hope to the idealists

who search

for signs

of that other

place of Greek legend, Atlantis.

cum-a

copper that Plato wrote "sparkled

like fire."

At the

mag-

southern end of the continent, the kings built a city of a

Greek soldiers haul

match the great power

their treacherous gift, a

nificence to

wooden horse filled

achieved. This

with warriors, to the gates

of Troy (left) in this
eigh teen th-cen tury pain ting by G. D. Tiepolo.

tric

city,

rings of land

soon

that so rich a land

also called Atlantis, consisted of concen-

and waterways.

In the center,

on a high

hill

where Poseidon and

Cleito

had conceived Atlas and his twin brother, the Atlanteans

raised a great temple to Poseidon, with a statue of the god
riding a golden chariot through the sea in the

dolphins. In the

some

for the

city,

there

were

company

springs, both hot

and

cold,

of the kings, others for the citizens,

use

of

still

others for the beasts of burden. The outer rings held a race-

course and houses for the citizens. The inner harbors were
filled

with the vessels of war.

For generations, the ten kings ruled their respective do-

mains, abiding always by the firm laws set

down

long before

by Poseidon. At alternate intervals of five and six years, the

monarchs would meet together and perform a long and complex

ceremony

in

which a wild

bull,

captured with a noose,

was sacrificed and its blood allowed to course down over sacred bronze columns in the temple. Afterward, the kings
donned sacred dark robes and discussed among themselves
any transgressions between kingdoms that might have occurred in the interval since the last assembly. They inscribed
the results of these deliberations

on

tablets of gold.

was not long before Atlantis-gifted with wealth,

strength, and internal harmony-began to extend its power
outward. But at the same time, the divine and virtuous character of its populace had begun to weaken with the passage
It

of years.

"Human

nature," Critias reported, "got the upper

hand." The Atlanteans began to exhibit less seemly qualities:

Uncurbed ambition, greed and ugliness grew among the citizens and their rulers as well. Perceiving that an "honorable

was in a woeful plight," Critias said, Zeus summoned the

gods to determine what punishment to inflict on Atlantis.
"And when he had called them together he spoke as follows:
And this is where Critias breaks off. For unknown rea-

race

sons, Plato

ended his chronicle of Atlantis before he had given

the details-only touched

19

upon

in the earlier

dialogue of Ti-

maeus-of the war with

quake and floods

that

and the

the Athenians

seafarers probed the great ocean to the west.

terrible earth-

sank the once-blessed continent

journeys spawned legends: For example,

into

the depths of the sea.

tury, the Irish

Despite Plato's best efforts to

Even

his student Aristotle

the Atlantis story

demise as a
after,

make

Atlantis

seem

ic

claimed that Plato had fabricated

convenience. For

many

beings,

and discovered the

their various places

cen-

isles of the

and demon-

Blest-which took

on generations of maps. By the time Co-

map makers had endowed the Atlantic Ocean

with numerous other islands both real and imagined -among

and contrived the continent's catastrophic

literary

in the thirteenth

Saint Brendan sailed west in search of

paradise, purportedly encountered sea monsters

real,

account was soon the subject of controversy.

his descriptive

monk

Sometimes their

lumbus set

centuries there-

scholarship in the Western world was based on the read-

sail,

them Avalon, the fabled land where King Arthur was

said to

ing of texts by the greats of earlier times, and philosophers

have gone after receiving mortal wounds

generally aligned themselves in schools of thought that were

Camlan Close by were the Azores and the Canaries, lying only

either Aristotelian or Platonic.

Plato's

The Platonists claimed

account of Atlantis was straight

lians took the opposite point of view

lost

was pure myth.

so, it was easy enough

a few hundred miles off the coast of North Africa;

that

history, while Aristote-

and maintained

ars believe that these islands

When

mained

maps

The seas beyond the

for the location of Atlantis.

Gomara,

Strait of Gibraltar re-

largely unexplored and, in the

New World

the

burst

sciousness, the Americas quickly

to believe that a mysteri-

land might once have existed in the fastness of the

Atlantic.

may be

some schol-

mountainous rem-

the

nants of a sunken land.

that the

continent

ous
Even

at the battle of

minds and

the European con-

became prime candidates

Spaniard, Francesca Lopez de

made the suggestion in 1553, and Sir Francis

when he wrote The New Atlantis, a Utopian

first

Bacon adopted

of men, were perilously laced with reefs and

upon

it

novel. But the originsof Atlantis werealso sought elsewhere

shallows, not to mention strange and dangerous creatures.

often with the spirit of chauvinism inherent in the rise of Euro-

There were plenty of corroborative stories about other Atlantic

pean nationalism

landforms-Ogygia

used Homeric sailing directions to Ogygia and located Atlan-

in

the epics of the Greek poet Homer, for

instance -that lent credence to the Platonic account of the lost

continent.

And here and

there in old texts

was

tisin

In 1675,

Olof Rudbeck, a Swedish scholar,

Sweden The English poet William Blake believed that the

.

Atlantean King Albion led the

circumstantial

last

of his subjects to Britain,

For example, in an

where they became Druids. Ancient Egyptians, Goths, and

offhand

Scyths were

comment about the geographical distribution of seals,

second-century Roman naturalist named Claudius Aelianus

and the discovery of blue eyes and blondness among some of

evidence for those predisposed to believe

it.

had written that the royalty of Macedonia,

Atlantis,

king of

emblem

in

the real-life

During the period

known

from worldly matters

Macedonians had adopted

siacal continent

some people to place Atlantis in the

was

Morocco and Tunisia. The paradi-

also identified as part of an ancient se-

ries of land bridges that stretched

as the Dark Ages, however,

out into the-Pacific as far as

across the Atlantic and even

New Zealand.

almost exclusively

As time passed and geographical knowledge grew, such

and the business of the

notions began to look increasingly farfetched. Even students

their attention

to theology

led

Atlas Mountains of modern

emulation of equally substantial Atlanteans.

European scholars turned

soon

Africa's Berbers

had worn headbands adorned with the image of a

ram seal. Presumably,

this

like the

seen to be escapees from doomed Atlantis,

all

Church. Atlantis was, for many centuries, a matter of relatively

small concern. But with the coming of the Renaissance,

of Plato

many

had

their

French scholar

T.

doubts about the whole thing:

84

Henri Martin wrote a commentary on

thinkers returned hungrily to the classic texts of Greece and

maeus and

called Atlantis pure fiction.

Rome, and there, once again, they found Atlantis. Meanwhile,

rope, Asia,

and

20

In

Africa,

the
77-

The geography of Eu-

he pointed out, showed none of the

profound

effects that

several western states and territories, he left the city of his birth

would have followed the cataclysmic

and moved with

disappearance of an Atlantis-size landmass; neither were

there

any shallows where the continent was supposed to have

been. Martin concluded that the search for Atlantis wasa

cause; the vanished continent, he said,

which means,

literally,

no

was

Nininger

to the

ing speaker,

Irish

academic studies

for the

a shopkeeper, and then

immigrant

won

of

83

many dreams and

he was the son of

politics.

a seat in the United States Congress. After a

who had abandoned

to help put her

lost his bid for reelection.

Minnesota

in

political turmoil

For the next decade and more,

made another bid for Congress

this

politics; in 1878,

he

time as a Democrat. De-

feated in a hard-fought campaign, he contested the

his

outcome

and spent most of the following two years gathering evidence

and presenting

to study medicine. Donnelly's

mother worked as a pawnbroker

husband

close,

through medical school.

his case in

Washington. But as 880 drew to a

1

he realized that he was fighting a losing

battle.

On No-

vembers, his forty-ninth birthday, Donnelly complained in his

Unfortunately for the growing Donnelly family, the

freshly

Republican

was ultimately a failure, but

A spellbindhe stumped the state in 859 and was

Donnelly remained active

Roman Catholic priesthood, become

gone on

in local

second term, he ran afoul of post-Civil War

man

ambitions. Born in Philadelphia in

an impoverished

pro-

elected lieutenant governor. Three years later, he

eloquent champi-

at that.

was

He also dabbled

His
and

Ignatius Loyola Donnelly

in

Donnelly's political career blossomed.

realm of myth, never

new and

ades, the lost continent found a

one

wife to Minnesota. There he took

Nininger City scheme

been banished roundly

a highly unlikely

City.

place.

again to be put forward as a real place. But within a few dec-

on-and

new

moting a prospective metropolis that was grandly dubbed

futile

truly a Utopia

With Martin's authoritative broadside, Atlantis might

well have

his

up with a fellow Philadelphian named John Nininger

diary: "All

hopes are gone, and the future

upon me dark and gloomy indeed."

minted physician contracted typhus from a patient and

died just two years after starting his medical practice. Donnel-

months pregnant

my

about to take a

new and

down
future was

settles

In fact, his

different turn

at the time,

Donnelly had been a voracious reader ever since his

never remarried but devoted herself to raising her children.

days at Central High School. His diverse interests ranged from

ly's

strong-willed mother, six

She was a

strict disciplinarian

to excel; her daughters

shattered

many a

would

who encouraged

archeology and geology to linguistics and history. During his

her offspring

later joke that their

mother had

off-hours as a

Following his graduation from the prestigious and de-

after reading Jules

expectations by reading widely and developing a striking

talent for writing poetry

and prose the

sand Leagues under the Sea,

oped an abiding fascination
his previously

up

his

own

practice.

Drawn

into

Demo-

vanished

tatters,

Donnelly continued to nurse a long-standing dream of opporIn

which submarine explorers

for the lost continent.

With

that,

studies took on a distinct focus; in

seemed to find echoes of a

long-

civilization.

Now, back home in Minnesota, his political ambitions in

Despite his budding career as a Philadelphia politician,

West

random

nearly everything he read, he

he soon made his mark as an orator and drew

praise from the powerful Senator John C. Breckinridge.

tunity in the

in

come upon the remains of drowned Atlantis -Donnelly devel-

short, red-haired Ig-

Philadelphia lawyer. After three years, qualified to be a lawyer

himself, Donnelly set

Washington, he had often

Verne's wildly popular novel, Twenty Thou-

natius Donnelly hired on as a clerk for an up-and-coming

cratic politics,

in

journals in these fields. Then, sometime in the 1 870s-possibly

manding Central High School -where he lived up to his mother's

congressman

strolled to the Library of Congress to study the latest books and

pair of eyeglasses with her piercing looks.

Donnelly turned for solace to his dreams of Atlantis. By

mid-January of 88
1

856, after checking out the prospects in

ry that

21

he could note more cheerfully in his dia-

he was beavering away on a book of his own, a book

Ignatius Loyola Donnelly's

formal portrait presides over the

sun-washed study of his Minnesota home in a tum-of-thecentury photograph. Here,
Donnelly wrote Atlantis: The
Antedeluvian World.

that he called simply Atlantis.

When

he

was not

scending as well as arising

*##*

work

at

along the same fracture.

Donnelly also found cor-

comfortable, book-filled

in the

study of his Nininger City

M $m

house, Donnelly could often be

found

roboration for his developing

Atlantis theories in the world of

botany The German botanist

at D. D. Merrill's well-

stocked bookstore

in

nearby

Otto Kuntze, for example, had

There he picked up the

written that the principal do-

and

mesticated tropical plants of

bought volumeaftervolumeon

Asia and the Americas were of

St. Paul.

latest scientific journals

history,
gy,

geography, mytholo- I

and world

ing

literature.

and writing

the

intelligent and

glow of kerosene

lamps, Donnelly

This invitation to an 1883 Mardi Gras ball,

featuring Atlanteans amid a pantheon ofgods, is an example of the
craze touched off by Donnelly's theories about Atlantis.

where Plato had said it

was. He further concluded that Atlanteans were

the

ed

mythologies were

the

first

men

ed to

As Don-

historic

saw it, refugees from Atlantis had fanned out around the
world and created many civilizations-in Egypt (the world of
the pharaohs was a virtual dead ringer for Atlantean civilizaaccording to Donnelly),

in India, in

Central America,

In

and

whose

writings

seemed

day knew,

Scientists of the

for

tures,

bottom. Sir Charles

Lyell, the

teenth century, had observed

that line

some

Upon reading

that,

mere coincidence. As his research

civilizations,

led

him

to del-

American Indian

cul-

and the ancient civilizationsof the Middle East, Donnelly

such kindred stories could
for

so

had spread, changing

which the

deluge

tale of

slightly but not importantly

through

centuries of oral transmission.

Atlantic sea-

This sort of pattern

loomed wherever Donnelly looked A

.

favored symbol of the Bronze Age, he found,

And spiral images cropped up at old sites in

future time along

would acquire inestimable commercial and

'influence.

explanation for the

and America.

the lost continent of Atlantis -from

landmark Principles of Ge-

ology that a group of islands arising at

like

then transplant-

universal a concept, he concluded, had to be a single source

to bolster his

leading geologist of the nine-

in his

of Europe

totally rejected the possibility that

example, of what

and south through the

He saw a

The

cultivat-

have arisen by chance. The only possible explanation

would later be called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a volcano-dotted

fracture stretching north

life

uge legends from Asian

had Plato or any other commentator.

shortage of authorities

habitats.

in Atlantis,

clear:

been

many similarities between widely separated cultures to be ex-

poring over scientific literature, Donnelly found no

own notions.

animal

plainable as

elsewhere. Indeed, Donnelly attributed a great deal more to

Atlantis than

modern

first

More important for his thesis, Donnelly discerned far too

nelly

tion,

seedless

similarities that paleontologists were finding between the pre-

that the deities of various ancient

in fact the actual royalty of Atlantis.

its

message was

banana had

just

and

its

domestic form. For Donnelly,

had existed -and

to achieve civilization

determined cul-

tivation to achieve

became more

convinced than ever that Plato's Atlantis

which

required an extended period of

at a furious

pace, laboring long into the

night by the

same species. Kuntze cited

especially the banana,

Read-

zerland,

political

and

in

was

the spiral.

Scotland, in Swit-

the rock-face carvings of the Zuni Indians in

New Mexico. On a far larger scale, Donnelly contemplated the

Donnelly required no great leap

of the imagination to envision such influential islands de-

similarities

23

between the pyramids of Egypt and those in

Teoti-

huacan

Mexico; even the mysterious

in

mounds

throughout the Mississippi Valley were pyramidal.

In

ancient

Nineveh, each of the heavenly bodies

was represented by

color-themoonbysilver,

Donnellyferretedouta

custom
the

new moon by

for example;

his time, of greeting

"turning one's silver."

And when he made

still

in the British

mense audience. New Orleans would devote its Mardi Gras

theme of Atlantis, and so
great was the book's reception in America and abroad that its

American

site

Even

author

the world like those in the Central

all

world's languages.

And he

up example

piled

for "brick"

common

was ku;

Donnelly's marshaling of evidence from science, literature,

origin of the

after

example:

the Chaldean

word

religion, folklore,

for

But

word sik. Finding

went on

to write that a

was reasonable: "There

with which pages might be

mother-tongue
lantis, the

filled

is

in

older

titled

tion of the curious facts

St.

tists,

to publish the

book and, more important,

to

first

promote

a "very skeptical

elicited. Early

tressed by
that

it

was

reviews called

many curious and

was one

fully
it

incomplete.

spirit

work

"

knew that his argument was

What he needed to clinch the case for Atlantis was

tangible evidence

it.

prepared for the acclaim

his conclusions. Charles Dar-

Indeed, Donnelly himself

reading

Donnelly's /Want/s went on sale in early 1882. Not even

the enthusiastic author

purpose. As a result, scien-

was cited by Donnelly - read Atlantis in what he reported to be

New

one choice was Harper and Brothers, and he was overjoyed

editors at that distinguished firm agreed at

suit his

win, father of the theory of biological evolution - whose

York to make the rounds of the major publishers His number

when

all

accustomed to more rigorous research and presentation,

were not especially taken with

the finished product Atlantis:

Paul bookseller, he traveled to

with

he unearthed, and he ignored contra-

Bronze Age chronology to

book

TheAntedeluvian World. Soon afterward, armed with letters of

introduction from his

brief,

dictory information. In addition, he garbled such things as

language of the great 'aggressive empire' of Plato."

mid-March of 1881 He

a sense, a legal

He did not always seek confirma-

bolster his case.

the language of Noah, the language of At-

Writing at a feverish pace, Donnelly completed his

in

of evidence, however circumstantial, that would

wider general-

still

and mythology.

account was,

with his argument, Donnelly seized upon any scrap

abundant proof-proof

-that there was a

his

the virtues and vices of lawyerly pleading. Caught up

evidence that variants of a single mother tongue ran from

Iceland to Ceylon, he

and many people on

both sides of the Atlantic were thoroughly convinced by

murkiest area of all, Donnelly

"brick" waste. For "cloth," both used the

ization

membership in the American AssociaAdvancement of Science. Atlantis was soon availelected to

able in translation throughout Europe,

perceived analogues that suggested a

The Chinese word

was

tion for the

of Palenque.

in linguistics, the

anywhere

celebration the next year to the

an examination of illustrations of Mycenean arches, he noted

that they looked for

fate

Empire."

Donnelly's vision of the lost continent found an im-

observed during

England,

in

man whose word was

corresponding with the

scattered

single

it

"plausible, perspicuous, but-

recondite facts" and suggested

engraved

at the

end of his book: "A

dredged up from Plato's island would

be worth more to science, would more

strike the imagination

of mankind, than

all

Egypt, and

of the notable books of the century. William

As Donnelly said

tablet

all

all

the gold of Peru,

the

monuments

of

the terra-cotta fragments gathered from the

great libraries of Chaldea."

Gladstone, Great Britain's prime minister at the time, read the

book and wrote Donnelly a glowing letter. Wearing ripped

pants and a nearly buttonless coat, Donnelly sat in Nininger

crafted Atlantis,

City reading Gladstone's letter

States market had gobbled up twenty-three editions, and

and wrote

Whatever the scholarly shortcomings of Donnelly's

in his diary: "I

down at myself, and could not but smile at the appearance of the man who, in this little, snow-bound hamlet, was
looked

it

sold hugely for years. By

twenty-six had appeared in England.

widespread interest
24

in

an ancient,

carefully

890, the United

A major reason for such

was that

lost civilization

Searching for

Of the many explorers

City

X. Then, after writing to his wife

about rumors of an ancient metropolis

who have

sought traces of Atlantis, none was

more intrepid than Colonel Percy
Harrison Fawcett.

on a lake, Fawcett and his two young

companions disappeared. Their remains
were never found.

self-proclaimed

lone wolf, the determined British

Yet as legend at least, Percy Fawcett

army surveyor spent the early years of

this century mapping the jungles of
Ceylon and South America. In 908, he
led a team (above, with Fawcett seated
front and center) that surveyed the border
between Brazil and Bolivia. By 925,

lived on. For

decades afterward,

South American travelers related tales of

gaunt old men, seen along jungle
pathways, who called themselves Faw-

cett.

Some said

they had met blue-

from the army, he was ready for

an ambitious expedition of his own:
the search for a legendary ruined city in

eyed, part-Indian children fathered by

the jungles of Brazil.

refused to leave.

retired

the adventurers. Others reported that

Fawcett had found the

idol,

carved with mysterious characters,

persuaded that his enigmatic artifact

had traveled from that continent clearly Atlantis - to an Atlantean colony

that

adventure

deep within

Fawcett's interest in lost civiliza-

was spurred by a black stone

tions

writer Sir H. Rider

Haggard had given him. Haggard said

the ten-inch statue had been found in
Brazil Fawcett consulted with a psychic

reader to discover the idol's source

and was

it came from "a large

shaped continent stretch-

told that

irregularly

ing from the north coast of Africa across

to

South America." The explorer was

Brazil.

Fawcett was encouraged in

he acquired an old

belief when

this

map

But the most remarkable account of

world involved the Irish medium and

psychic Geraldine Cummins (inset),
who claimed in 1936 that she was receiving mental messages from Fawcett.

the adventurer set forth into the jun-

fell

25

he called City

X and

the explorer to reach the outside

showing a nameless city in the littleknown Mato Grosso area of southwest

Brazil. Accompanied only by his son
Jack and his son's friend Raleigh Rimell,
gle in search of the place

idyllic City

Cummins said

found
but

the Englishman had

relics of Atlantis in the jungle

was now

ill and semiconscious. Afsuch messages, "Fawcett"

silent until 948. In that year, he re-

ter four

ported his

own death.

wave

a great

of spiritualism

was under way

in

both Europe

and America Mediums regularly conducted well-attended seances at which they appeared to

summon

the spirits of the

dead and perform a variety of other supernatural

acts.

It

was

easy enough to believe that there were unseen powers at work

world, that events were frequently the results of causes

in the

science could not plumb. The occult

was

very

much a part of

Brasseur's continent. According to

rivalry

between two brothers

There, as the goddess

Isis,

she

to Yucatan,

when Donnelly sat down in his library in Nininger

write Atlantis. And some of it had involved lost conti-

le

blance to Atlantis. Like Plato's

City to

ten separate kingdoms.

nents undreamed of by
scholar and cleric

named

bourg was studying

example, a French

Charles-Etienne Brasseur de Bour-

at a library in

Madrid when he came

across a treatise that contained a key to the complex alphabet used by the vanished
ica.

Mayan

Thus armed, Brasseur

civilization of Central

set out to translate

Amer-

one of the

Mayan

records,

some

And

it

lost continent,

8,000 years

earlier, at

time that, according to Plato, Atlantis

was

its

intricate

symbols, he

discovered the story of an ancient land that had sunk into the

ocean

after a catastrophic volcanic eruption. Finding a pair of

mysterious figures that evidently corresponded to the letters

Gulf

in the

Mu

comprised
to the

about the same

destroyed.

Reports of yet another erstwhile landmass had been

in-

among

other things,

why

species of plants and

animals are located where they

are.

Noting that lemurs-

to explain,

dant on the island of Madagascar,

painstakingly deciphering

and

spired by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which sought

sixteenth-century Spanish conquistadors.

text,

their history

had perished, according

small, evolutionary predecessors of the

yan

Sphinx and founded

Plongeon located

few Mayan manuscripts that had survived destruction by

As Brasseur pored over the elaborately embellished Ma-

to sink

fled to Egypt.

of Mexico and western Caribbean, bore a striking resem-

speculation

Plato. In 1864, for

built the

where they wrote down

Mu, which Brasseur and

of such

began

Egyptian civilization. Other survivors of the catastrophe on Mu

erected great temples.

amount

hand of Mu's queen-

Queen Moo

following these dramatic events,

escaped

fair

for the

the country by the other. Just as the continent

the scholarly trappings of Donnelly's book, occultists churned

Indeed, there had already been a

Plongeon's chronicle, a

named Moo - led to the death of one brother and a takeover of

nineteenth-century culture. Taking comfort, perhaps, from

out a profusion of elaborations on the Atlantis theme.

le

off the east coast of south-

ern Africa, and also in small numbers

Africa

itself,

monkey- were abunin India

and southern

scientists suggested that there

had

once been a continent-size land bridge joining these areas.

An

English zoologist, Philip

Sclater, called this lost land Lemuria.

That

Other scholars were skeptical; their attempts with the

was supported by many prominent

scientistsof the time, among them Alfred Russel Wallace-who had developed on his

key produced nonsense translations. But French archeologist

own a theory of evolution similar to Dar-

and U

in the

modern alphabet, Brasseur determined

continent had been

Augustus

le

that the

named Mu.

Plongeon,

who had been

the

first

to

excavate

Mayan ruins, used the alphabet key and other symbols from
Mayan walls to come up with an elaborate account of

Wearing full Masonic regalia,

French archeologist Augustus le
Plongeon strikes a somber pose.
His excavations of Mayan ruins in
the 1 880s convinced him that
refugees from Mu, a lost continent
resembling Atlantis, hadfounded the Mayan civilization.

notion

win's.

A German

naturalist, Ernst

Heinrich Haeckel, went even

further,

maintaining that the

Vision oi

Eden

In 926, an elderly Anglo-American

caused a sensation with the publication
of his first book, The Lost Continent of
Mu In this remarkable treatise, Colonel
1

James Churchward claimed

to

have

found irrefutable evidence linking the

biblical

Garden of Eden

endary sunken

Pacific

Churchward wrote

to the leg-

continent of Mu
that

an old

Asian priest had taught him to translate

the primordial

Muvian language,

in-

scribed on certain tablets in India and

Mexico These tablets confirmed that

Mu had been the fountainhead of civilization, predating even Atlantis. Several races of early humans had sprung
up there, sharing the country with
fauna ranging from brilliant butterflies to
mastodons - as shown in Churchward's

own

illustration (right).

Churchward reon a foundation of gas-filled caves The gas

Unfortunately,

ported, this idyllic land rested

exploded

in a

great cataclysm 12,000

years ago, and

Mu

sank beneath the

who escaped
to Muvian colonies around the world
later inscribed the tablets that Churchward claimed to have deciphered.
No such accounts have ever been
found by others, nor have geologists
discovered any trace of a sunken Pacific
continent But this has not deterred
Churchward's readers: His first and subsequent books on Mu were still being
printed in England and the United
States in the late 1980s
waves. The lucky survivors

27

sunken Lemuria was the evolutionary cradle not only of

Later,

le-

she would claim that her journeys had included a seven -

murs but of humankind. This would explain, he said, what was

year stay in Tibet, where she studied the ancient wisdom of the

known about the early geographical distribution of

Homo sapiens and would also account for the lack of fossil

Hindus. Each time she returned to her

then

first

proposed as a

scientific speculation, the

result of scholarly

far

new continentsof Mu and

who

profanity.

more extravagant claims for

ample, a British-American researcher

In the 1870s,

tablets discovered in India, said

Mu

its

tor

site

named Henry Steel Olcott in order to form an organization

invisible

work

called The Secret Doctrine, completed in 1888 In this

that revelatory spirits

she showed a

was such a

the lost continents of Atlantis

part of a universal philosophy

drawn from

companions

that she called her

she

in

"hunch-

According to

her sleep, and

was

Just

official

who was around

union. Helena

left

Still in

travels

Madame

and they were

third eye.

mankind.

originally

hermaphrodite people

who commu-

The fourth race was the Atlanteans, who evolved

It

from the Lemurians as Lemuria sank beneath the sea millions

Blavatsky within months

of years ago; they inhabited a spur of Lemuria in the northern

three times her age.

Atlantic that itself was to sink later, finally disappearing about

style herself

9,000 years ago.

Blavatsky.

that

Blavatsky and her followers, the

third of seven "root" races of

nicated only by psychic powers conferred upon them by a

weeks before her

her teens, she embarked on a series of global

and adventures

number of West-

Their continent occupied most of the Southern Hemisphere,

said to cause

and subsequently married again. But she would

forever after as

Madame

Lemurians were the

who listened as she spun her

She was also headstrong:

ern and Eastern sources.

seventeenth birthday, she married one Nikifor Blavatsky, a

government

and Lemuria. She and her disci-

playmates that she was accompanied on

skillful storyteller that

was a short-lived

Blavatsky reported

on the Lemurian continent as

hallucinations in other children

vivid tales.

Madame

from the Orient had taught her about

ples subsequently elaborated

backs." She frequently walked and talked

she

Bla-

vatsky created for the Theosophical Society a major occult

in the

her wanderings through the labyrinthine cellars of her family

home by

and the nature

and make-believe. Among other

interest in fantasy

things, she assured

which

to look into ancient

As spiritual head of a growing movement, Madame

who

landmark, two-volume book,

life,

society,

for

of people of the distant past.

Helena Petrovna Hahn was a beautiful child with dark hair

marked

Greek words

mysteries, such as the secrets of the pyramids

destruction about 12,000 years ago (page 27).

and exceptionally bright blue eyes. Early in

craze that would

New York, she teamed up with a psychic investiga-

soon attracted numerous adherents, was

at

But Lemuria attracted the most attention, thanks to the prodi-

was born in Russia in 1831 coincidentally enough,

same year as Ignatius Donnelly.

spiritualist

"god" and "wisdom." A stated purpose of the

of the

gious writings of an irrepressible and flamboyant woman

Blavatsky visited the United

same

called the Theosophical Society, after the

from secret

had been the

Madame

the public so receptive to Ignatius Donnelly's vision of

Atlantis. In

in the mid-Pacific.

Garden of Eden and had a population of 64 million people

the time of

make

named James Church-

citing a chronicle purportedly taken

Everywhere she went, people were captivated by

States at the height of the

lifelong investigation of

Mu, which he maintained was located

Churchward,

talent for

her magnetic personality.

the allegedly lost continents. In the 1870s, for ex-

ward began what would become a

noticed that she

had a boisterous sense of humor, great energy, and a

and

Lemuria quickly caught the fancy of occultists,

proceeded to make

Russia, family

was plumper eventually she

reached about 230 pounds
and perhaps more madcap She
members

remains of the evolutionary steps between apes and humans.

Although

home in

would occupy her

that disaster

Madame

Blavatsky believed refugees from

escaped to Central Asia, where they evolved into

modern Hindus and Europeans.

for a lifetime.

28

Helena Blavatsky's transfixing gaze reveals the

charisma that brought her renown. Among her writings, supposedly inspired by
psychic messages, are accounts of Lemurians.

63?*.

concluded that there are unconventional ways of knowing

Another enthusiastic chronicler of Atlantis and Lemuria

was

and philosopher Rudolf Steiner.

Strongly influenced by the works of Madame Blavatsky and
her theosophical disciples, Steiner went on to form his own

things. For example,

the Austrian mystic

spiritual

for

man and wisdom. Among

tals,

employed as aids

tune

in to

to meditation,

a special kind of benevolent

haps, the essence of Atlantis.

movement, which he called Anthroposophy, from the

Greek words

some people say that certain quartz crys-

other things, the

as they were in the

promoted organic

Cayce, that gentle, nearly

agriculture.

voluminous writings and

ready rejoinders

for

those doubters

had

lectures, Steiner

who would

to

in the

fly

in

Born

modern

went on

to

logical thought can,

never say the

final

pliable

thousands of years ago

in

W.

Scott-Elliott.

work. Later, he

came down with

in

would be two Edgar

disabilities,
1

lost

Innew

continents

Scott-Elliott's chronicle,

bodies. Often,

when

pub-

to readings

"life

readings" as opposed

made for healing purposes -Cayce would al-

lude cryptically to a previous

life in

Atlantis, calling the spirit

from that earlier time an "entity." One subject of a

in

force that

modern

flew

power and

100-mile-an-hour airships that were

known as vhl, essentially a lifeproduced propulsion in somewhat the same way a

jet

Mu have

their discoverers call occult

entity ruled in

life

reading

pomp and

understanding of the mysteries of the applica-

termed the nightside of life, or in applying the

A relatively simple man, Cayce was deeply religious and

was not widely read. He was sometimes astounded to.leam
what he had said

been divined by what

in a

trance state, and the waking Cayce

worried fora time about hissleepingcounterpart'sideasabout

powers, the reading of psychic

somehow survive the passage of eons. Conventional scientists may scoff at such claims, but others have
memories

universal forces as understood in the period."

engine does.

further elaborations of

in

Atlantean land

tion of that often

fuel

Such fanciful details about life in Lemuria and Atlantis-

and

told: "In

in

tracking a patient's previous

lives in what were known as

was

realms

ail-

920s, the sleeping Cayce began to stress the exis-

number of technological marvels. For example, they

their

submerged

as well as prescribing cures.

society ruled by an upper class that had harnessed a great

powered by a mysterious

a loud, firm

and prescribing the remedy that

945, Cayce spent a great deal of his time

the

lished in 1893, the Atlanteans lived in a nearly totalitarian

about

a throat

tence of reincarnation, the rebirth of departed souls

were created by the theosophist writer

According to

to

deep trances, seeking the causes of people's physical

Lemurian and Atlantean

The most elaborate descriptions of the

their inhabitants

in

ments and

times than they would later become.

and

a preacher but

go

Cayces, the "sleeping" and the "waking." For years, until his

word as to what is

human bodies, along with

somehow softer and more

in

become

to

ultimately worked. Henceforth, there

death

Steiner also maintained that

who told of

877, the son of a Kentucky farmer, Edgar Cayce had

voice, diagnosing his problem

owing to

possible, or impossible."

rocks and mineral deposits, were

psychic healer

hypnotic trance; in this state, Cayce spoke out

compatible with the opinion held by

their inherent attributes,

illiterate

doctors failed to cure him, he asked a friend to put him in a

ob-

serve " We need not raise the question now as to whether such

modern science, for science and

half of the twentieth century by Edgar

ailment that reduced his voice to the merest whisper. After

is

in

hoped

sphere that he said prevailed during the heyday of Atlantis.

a condition of density

first

to leave school in the seventh grade to

much denser atmo-

Anticipating the responses of his critics, he

others maintain that the

question his

noted that Atlantean airships would be inoperable

been designed

that was, per-

the lost continent while lying in a sleeplike trance.

conclusions about the lost continents. Once, for example, he

times, having

wisdom

mysteries of Atlantis have never been plumbed so thoroughly

Anthroposophical Society founded a number of schools and

In his

Still

can enable the user to

reincarnation, fearing that they might be unchristian. In

that

the

30

Atlantean references seemed almost

fact,

incidental. But like

all

of Cayce's readings after 1932,

when an

institute

founded to support his work, they were written down.

different readings that

Cayce gave

for different

In

was

have developed a highly advanced

people over

consistent in

its

own

tieth century.

was remarkably

aircraft.

terms: The accumulated fragments do

not contradict themselves.

the Atlantic Ocean. "The position

occupied," he said

in

the other. "It

it

was,

932, "is

when

it

As Cayce intoned during a

938: "Entity was

active, questing people

life

reading given on April

what would be in the present the electri-

and what you would today call radio

for constructive or

Cayce also spoke cryptically of an Atlantean substance

called firestone.

Used

to generate energy,

it

has been likened

by some to the radioactive materials employed

in

modern

times to produce nuclear power. As Cayce explained in a read-

went through three great

ing given in 1933

catastrophic periods of breakup, the last being about 10,000

years ago,

between the

was of continental size, and people lived on it for

it

They were evidently an

destructive purposes."

hand and the Mediterranean upon

thousands of years, during which

tech-

engineer-applied those forces or influences for airplanes,

ships,

in

the continent of Atlantis

a reading given in

Gulf of Mexico on the one

9,

cal

Cayce's Atlantis was right where Plato had said

was

who could, among other things, generate electricity and build

a period of twenty-one years, a vivid picture of the ancient

world of Atlantis emerged. And the picture

civilization that

nologically on a par with the industrialized world of the twen-

650

more

than a decade before the

first

public

demonstration of atomic energy: "The preparation of

disappeared.

Before the end, however, the Atlanteans appeared to

stone

was

solely in the

Edgar Cayce snaps a self-portrait. In his youth,

Cayce was a professional photographer; his later life was devoted
readings, in which he predicted the rise ofAtlantis.

31

hands of the

to psychic

initiates at the time;

this

and

Sir Gerald's

AUanfean Opera

patch their warrior Achilles

Eternally fascinating, the story of the

lost

continent Atlantis has been told and

retold in history books, novels,

- and even

case.

an operetta. Sir Ger

aid Hargreaves, a British judge and
an amateur composer, wrote the musifilms

cal Atalanta:

World War

punished

A Story ofAtlantis during

when the tale of a country

for its

aggression must

have seemed particularly

In a libretto that

Homer with

Gilbert

and

two

factions,

fails to

convince his audience

heart of tomboyish princess

i

Atalanta

away

mongers

blends Plato and

Sullivan, Harin

one advocating war

against Athens, the other pleading for

peace. Hearing of this, the Greeks dis

soldier, fresh

but succeeds in capturing the

her

apt.

greaves shows an Atlantis divided

The burly

from assaulting the walls of Troy,

in

II,

(a

tenor) to the island to argue their

in

(a

soprano).

to

Greece

He whisks

just as the

war-

and Atlantis collapses,

harmony, into the sea.

prevail

four-part

Although Hargreaves's tuneful

the judge

the island, but liberally embellished, the

were designed for

monumental production Those shown

Atalanta stage sets

a

here depict the gilded interior of Po-

drama was never produced,

seidon's temple (above), a public square

made elaborate

in

paintings of several

scenes showing his conception of the

play. Based on Plato's description of

32

ancient Athens (above,

the grandly proportioned

Iantis's royal

palace

and
rooms at Atright),

(far right).

.....

the entity

was among

those

who

off Bimini

directed

the influences of the radiation which arose,

in

the form of rays that

were

to

be a long roadway paved with rec-

Many believed that the sleeping

come to pass, that this was an actual

tangular blocks of stone.

Cayce's prophecy had

invisible to the

eye but acted upon the stones themselves

remnant of the vanished Atlantean civilization. Indeed, radio-

as set in the motivating forces- whether the

carbon dating of the monumental blocks indicated an age of

aircraft

were

lifted

whether

od; or

by the gases of the

some

peri-

12,000 years.

But geologists were quick to point out similar rock for-

more-of-

for guiding the

pleasure vehicles that might pass along

mations

close to the earth, or crafts on the water or

itself.

under the water." These vehicles, Cayce

are not

went on, "were impelled by the concentration of rays

tered in the middle of the

power

appeared on earth

in spirit

of the end for Atlantis; the

it

man-made structures;
left

rather, they are the result of the

In this

natural process, the calcium

from the decay of sea creatures wash or

blow over sand and become embedded

station."

underneath cause the rock to fracture

lines along the shore

more fleshly its inhabitants became

effect of a

over the generations, the more troubled their civilization.

lines

when

there, forming hard

Exposure to the sun and slippage of loose sand from

rock.

seems, the beginning

Said the sleeping Cayce in 1937: "In Atlantean land

and even along the very shore of Bimini

Like the 2,000-foot Bimini road, said the scientists, these

carbonate grains

form and had only gradually

evolved into material beings. This was,

Australia

in

formation of beach rock.

from the stone which was cen-

According to Edgar Cayce's account, the Atlanteans had originally

what seemed

and then

made with

road

in relatively straight

at right angles, creating the

craftsmanly precision. As shore-

change, such formations become submerged and can

appear to be ancient thoroughfares.

were those disturbing forces - or just previous to the first

destruction of the

roadways are not the only alleged remnants

Undersea
of Atlantis that have been undermined by modern sci-

continent, through the application of spiritual things for self-

ence. Indeed, the continuing precision of twentieth-

there

disturbing forces that brought the

indulgence of material peoples."

first

Sons

century geology has been especially unkind to the

of Belial finally gained control of Atlantis, mistreating the

idea of a long-lost continent resting beneath the sea.

land's producers

and casting them

faction called the

The

into a kind of slave status.

suggested that the cataclysmic end

ability to

measure the speed of earthquake vibrations as

apart.

And Cayce

they reverberate around the earth has led geologists to the

was caused

not only by

conclusion that the material that composes the earth's crust

Society-like the land itself-began to

fall

geological upheavals but also by misuse of technology.

He

under continents

is

vastly different from that of

said in 1936: "In Atlantean land just after second breaking

basin.

And

up of the land owing

floors,

geologists have turned up

to misapplication of divine

those things of nature or of the earth;

when

laws upon

there

were the

The theory of continental

man's own development, yet becoming destructive forces

to flesh
In

when

and death of Atlantis,

And

to

In the late

drift

and

large

happened

to find in the

waters

mass of

plate tectonics has

on concepts about Atlantis.

First

it

world's continents were once joined together

960s, he

proposed in

more than

that
in

all

of the

a huge land-

mass called Pangaea. Some 200 million years ago they split off
and began the slow and continuing movement

reappear near the Caribbean island of Bimini.

then, in 1968, divers

its toll

generation-this revolutionary theory has

western region of the long-submerged continent

would begin

no sign of a

the early years of this century and scorned for

life

Cayce also made a tantalizing prediction.

said, the

also taken

misapplied."

addition to telling of the

any ocean

tracking such vibrations through the ocean

continent-type material.

eruptions from the second using of those influences that were

for

in

ried

just

33

them

to their present locations.

that

has car-

The mechanism

that

Dotted with volcanic islets, Thera's harbor shows

the outlines of an eruption. Some scientists believe the cataclysm that shattered
this Aegean island in 1 500 B.C. inspired the tale ofAtlantis.

drives the continents-which float

on hard

and

crustal plates

pottery,

was

highly sophisticated-graceful, swirling,

across the more malleable mantle of the earth - is the constant

bright with gold. But by Plato's time, thiscivilization had disap-

upsurging of molten material from the earth's interior at such

peared, leaving behind only fragments of myths, such as the

places as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where

islands

and pushes the plates

The notion of continental

geologists in the late

960s and

And while some

scientists.

it

creates volcanic

story of the

gained credence among

now accepted by virtually all

tion's

drift
is

Greek hero Theseus and

bull-like Minotaur. Plato

apart.

site of

when

remains of what

dialogues because they were once connected to Europe and

called

drift is

at its
at a

unlikely.

when
all

dinosaurs

still

roamed

may have been

Europe's

an anonymous

article elaborating this

tians of the

made

in

mud. Meanwhile, other

had

it

murk,

in the

They say

that Plato

that the

appeared

in the

Minoan civilization

scientists

have

may

Belfast, later wrote

different

an

the perspective of the Egyp-

time-the source of Plato's information.

have seemed

its

It

would

from anything the Egyptians were

miliar with in Africa or the

the strongest case for the material existence of an

Atlantis in olden times.

He

theme. The point, Frost emphasized,

evidence notwithstanding, such optimists cling to their belief

obscured

letter

Queen's University in

was to look at Minoan Crete from

glories

civilization.

turned out to be K. T. Frost, a professor of classical

history at

still

remains of Atlantis have been overlooked by all

somewhere

first

had been the basis of Plato's Atlantis. The writer, who

of the sophisticated surveys of the ocean bottoms. Geological

that the ancient continent lies

reality

Minoan, after the legendary King Minos.

Then,
London Times suggesting

the earth

the naysaying of science, there are those who

that the

its

Arthur Evans began excavations at the

in 1909,

almost immeasurably slow, and North America arrived

For

it

The process of continental

approximate current position about 65 million years ago,

time

hope

seems highly

Sir

Cnossus on Crete. There he unearthed the stunning

Americas could have been the Atlantean continent of Plato's

Africa, this

this civiliza-

accomplishments. Indeed, no one imagined

until 1900,

believers might imagine that the

adventures with the

his

had no knowledge of

fa-

Near East, a great seafaring empire

"united by the same sea which divided it from other nations.

a separate continent with a genius of its own." Further, to the

well have

close to right.

Egyptians, the center of

be

far to the

Minoan

civilization

would appear

west, even beyond the four pillars that

in

to

the

During the rule of the Fourth Dynasty in Egypt, about 2500 B.C.,

Egyptian world view held up the earth. Frost went on to ob-

a commercial empire dominated trade throughout the Medi-

serve that Plato's mention of a great harbor, lavish bathrooms,

terranean basin.

On

Crete and on other islands

in the

nearby

a stadium,

Aegean Sea, the people of this empire used their amassed

wealth to build huge multistoried temples, to create large
cities, to lay

out complex waterworks. Their

art,

and the

sacrifice of the bulls

all jibe

with actual

featuresof Minoan Crete, asdoesthecaptureof the ceremonial

bull,

which can be seen on pottery from

Crete.

But suddenly the power of the Minoans vanished. (Frost

on frescoes
34

thought this might have been the result of a Greek raid on

Crete.)

To the Egyptians, perched as they were on

edge of Africa, from which they rarely ventured

"were the curious positions of several huge stone blocks

had been torn from

the eastern

appearance of these exotic merchants at the evident height of

their

grandeur would have been a great mystery, as

whole kingdom had sunk

if

their foundations

and strewn toward the

sea." During a subsequent effort, he found in the

forth, the dis-

building brimming with

that

same area a

pumice in its basement, sure evidence

of volcanic eruption.

"the

Seeking the source of that eruption, Marinatos looked

civilization in the West, arisen to glory and abruptly gone, that

northward some seventy miles to Thera and two other Aegean

would have been in the written records of the Egyptian histori-

islands that

ans.

And

into the sea."

this is the version that

It

is

this picture of

would have reached

As plausible as this seemed, few people paid

had been active around

Plato.

tion blinked out forever.

Frost's idea

much heed. He evidently dropped the subject himself and later

War But it was not long before Frost's theory
received some powerful support.
died in World

were known

upon

the shore of Crete.

archeologists before him, he

more than

Amnisos on Crete as the harbor town

the sudden

toa, in the

land,

little

As

searching around Amnisos, then

more than a sandy strand of shoreline,

his funds ran out

on the

last

ple.

civiliza-

that

maw,

is left

that

had

in the crater is

if

the event could have been violent

once so

great a

enough

power as Crete, Marina1

feet high crashing at

883 of Kraka-

fifty

sent walls of

it

miles an hour into Java

and Sumatra; the rampaging waters charged

for his capital city of

all

Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. This titanic

water 100

site called

summer

when Minoan

upheaval was heard 2,000 miles away, and

Cnossus. With a total budget of $ 35, Marinatos had spent the

better part of the

just

tos studied records of the volcanic eruption in

culture. Ancient rec-

ords said that the great King Minos had used a

B.C.,

,000 feet.

to eliminate-all at

As had many

was puzzling over

and unexplained demise of the Minoan

500

The three islands are

exploded so violently that the water depth

Spyridon Marinatos, a young Greek ephor, or keeper

of antiquities, stood

be the remnants of a volcano that

of a large, round island-a caldera, a volcanic

I.

Wondering
In 1932,

to

sweeping away 300 villages and

,000 yards in-

killing

36,000 peo-

Marinatos concluded that the eruption of Thera-if

it

had been as violent as that of Krakatoa- could surely have

for signs of a port.

-indeed,

wiped out the Minoans.

day of his

Marinatos reasoned that

seemingly fruitless expe-

these kinds of catastro-

dition-Marinatos dug
into the sand once more

phes, over a long period of

and struck the fragments of

to the story of Atlantis that

Minoan

with

prehistory,

was

fresco decorated

lilies. It

was more than

had given

rise

related by Plato. His

colleagues in the scientific

enough to bring him back to

community remained

Amnisos to press his search

skeptical,

with

new

digs,

Marinatos unearthed

outbreak of World War

an entire harbor town,

II.

But once the war ended and

the pursuit could resume, a

villa.

"But what especially piqued

my

re-

search was cut short by the

vigor. In later

complete with a royal

and further

Greek seismologist named A.

interest," he wrote later

G. Galanopoulos picked

An embossed Minoan cup vividly depicts the

struggles of a netted bull. Relics such as this echo Plato's account of
Atlantean bull hunts, supporting the theory that Crete,
home to the Minoan culture, was Atlantis.
35

up the

thread that led to Thera.

On

that crescent-shaped island,

number greater than 00 mistakenly had the equivalent of one

Ga-

lanopoulos found the ruins of unmistakably Minoan buildings

zero added.

that had been devastated by a volcano. A Hungarian

would

league, Peter Hedervari, determined

col-

been about four times more violent than

The

ly,

And

as Egypt, about

the size of Crete and

torrential rains

in the

250

far

much

over a wide area, and locally there would have been so

pumice

floating

peared to be

with

muddy

some

reefs for

lay

would have seemed

sion
it

for all the

world

like

is

when

a flood

events which would

all

this catastrophic series of

have taken place

up with the description recorded by

vanished civilization into the

lost

Plato,

And

matter of

in a

some

later,

time.
its

Solon came

may have

difficulties. Plato

was

entific

He was also precise

it

about

had

set out to use the story in

modern decimal system. Galanopoulos reasoned

from Egyptian to Greek, the symbol

for

demise.

than scientists do and maintain

only a rationalization by people with

all,

Crete

is

not, they

suggest that perhaps the law of Occam's

human

to the

spirit.

complicated

They

will

affairs

hearken

to

of Atlanteans to Egypt to preserve the archives of

"These

reading given
is

in

opened,

94

in a

does indeed

may be
,

found," Cayce said

in

a past

"especially when the house or tomb

few years from now." Perhaps, they

lie in

some Egyptian pyramid an undis-

covered sanctum containing papyrus with ancient symbols

probably the correct one.) Both the Egyptians and the

in translation

its

flight

say, there

it,

the

that point

Greeks used ten-based number schemes that were precursors

of the

will

their dying land:

life

is

and

the

of records

facts

is

civilization

words of Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet, who spoke of

ingenious and simple, the kind of explanation that accords

fits all

instructive way.

the

with the scientists' law of Occam's Razor. (Named for the

proposed

in Atlantis

of humanity and the

Galanopoulos's reconciliation of these disparities was

first

some

Razor does not necessarily apply

the Atlantic Ocean.

who

car-

who are satisfied with this modern, sci-

account of that enigmatic

They

was some 300

of even modern

law holds that the simplest explanation that

who

from Egypt back to his homeland

point out, under water.

explicitly located Atlantis in

fourteenth-century British philosopher

that

numbers could have become so gar-

a totally materialist cast of mind. After

9,000 years

in detailing the size

miles across, far larger than any metropolis

this

ocean

not surprising that Plato, entranced by the ex-

that this latest theory

features; the capital city

times. Furthermore, Plato

is

But others see more

appeared,

specific

it

There are those

who translated the

the catastrophe had occurred, placing

own

move the lost

traordinary tale of a civilization ending in a blink of time's eye,

would

continent of Atlantis.

Plausible as this reconstruction

of Atlantis and

to

larger

Pillars of Hercules.

not unlikely that

ried the Atlantis story

surely have been recorded by the Egyptians

ubiquitous Minoans. Hearing the story much

before his

much

It

and associated with the sudden disappearance of the once-

there remained

would have had

fit

chronicle of At-

could easily have been confused by the Greek

Galanopoulos believed that

when

In his

it:

bled in ancient times. The Egyptian symbols for numbers

crashed ashore.

days-would

neighbors simply would not have

its

great philosopher

beyond the

tsunami, or tremendous sea wave, resulting from the explo-

a reason-

and small islands ten times

continent out of the sea and into the

The

time.

a series of large

Mediterranean as Plato knew

lantis, the

on the sea that the waters would have ap-

filled

9,000 years really

becomes 30 miles across,

a city 300 miles across

inundated Crete but would have reached as

would also have caused

account

able figure.

It

in Plato's

if

years, then the date of the catastrophe accords

pumice and ash from such a cataclysm would not only have

miles distant.

numbers

almost perfectly with the eruption of Thera in 500 B.C. Similar-

in fact

at Krakatoa.

In that case, all the

closely enough. For example,

means 900

on the basis of collapsed

land volume at the sites that the eruption at Thera had

fit

beyond the confines of the Mediterranean, beyond

even the confines of what science knows of the human psyche, to the place

that,

where a mystic Atlantis still

waiting to give up

every
36

its

age-old secrets.

rests in the deep,

Realm

of infafliomed Mysteries

Eiver since the

first

seamen

set sail

thousands of years ago, the vast and capricious oceans have been
sources of myth and mystery, places populated with strange creatures and possessed of inexplicable powers. Seafarers everywhere
have spun yarns of mermaids - beings that are part fish, part human.
The Greeks told of the enchantress Circe who lured unwary sailors to
their doom. Norsemen sang of kraken, 200-foot-long monsters with
"sharp scales and flaming eyes" that smashed ships and killed sail,

As late as the eighteenth century, Carolus Linnaeus, the father of

modern botany, took kraken seriously. "They say that if they were to
lay hold of the largest man of war," he wrote, kraken "would pull it to
ors.

the bottom" of the sea. Others have thought the sea itself has perilous
power. When Christopher Columbus first reached the Sargasso Sea

crew feared its thick

yellow, brown, and green seaweed would trap them forever.
Far more recent is the fear of the so-called Bermuda Triangle, an
amorphous area located somewhere east of Bermuda. One student of

midway across

the Atlantic, his superstitious

the unexplained, Ivan T. Sanderson, postulated that the Bermuda

Triangle is one of a dozen areas called vile vortices - another infa-

the so-called Devil's Sea off the coast of Japan - where

little-understood forces are said to cause ships to vanish without a

mous one

is

Even airplane pilots flying over these areas have reported malfunctioning gyros, dead radios, visual anomalies, and inexplicable
time warps. Some of the mysterious incidents that have occurred at

trace.

sea are recounted on the following pages.

37

Riddle of
(he Mary Cclcsfc

On December 4, 1872,
was sailing in the Atlantic
east of the Azores when she came upon the
brigantine Mary Celeste. Both ships had sailed
from New York a month before: the Mary Cethe bark Dei Gratia

leste

ter

with the captain's wife and baby daugh-

as passengers, the Dei Gratia with the cap-

crew of seven aboard.

was something badly amiss
aboard the Mary Celeste. Her sails were tattered and hanging awry. No one stood at the
wheel. When crewmen from the Dei Gratia
went aboard and called out greetings, the
only reply was silence. No one could be found.
The lifeboat was gone; apparently it had
been launched. The binnacle was knocked
out of place and the compass was shattered.
The bow of the derelict ship bore six-foot
gashes just above the waterline, but otherwise
the ship appeared sound and seaworthy.
Below deck was a chilling scene that suggested hurried flight. Toys lay on the captain's
bed, as if a child had been interrupted at play.
The food supply and cargo were undisturbed.
The ship's log remained intact, but its last entry, made nine days earlier, gave no hint of
impending trouble.
Why did the captain abandon ship? How
did he and his companions vanish without a
tain

and

his

Clearly there

trace? Could insanity, mutiny, faulty instru-

ments, hijacking, poisoning, tornado, or a

disturbance in the sea floor have been involved? The captain of the Dei Gratia ordered

some

of his

crewmen
where a

to Gibraltar,

court of inquiry raised

to sail the

Mary Celeste

British Vice
all

Admiralty

those questions

and found no answers. More than 100 years

later, the Mary Celeste is believed by many to
have been doomed by the inexplicable evil
that lurks in the

Bermuda

Triangle.

39

40

A Royal
Encounter wilh (he

Dutchman

Flying

lhe predawn sky was

and the sea calm as the HMS Inconstant
rounded the coast from Melbourne to Sydney,
88 Suddenly from the
Australia, on July
lookout on the forecastle came word of a vessel closing in on the port bow. Officers and
crew alike - thirteen in all - crowded the rails

clear

to see for themselves.

According to the journals of two royal midshipmen who were aboard, Prince George
(later King George V) of England and his
brother, Prince Albert Victor, the vessel ap-

peared as "a strange red light as of a phantom

ship all aglow." Her "masts, spars and sails
stood out in strong relief. " But moments later,

and there remained

"no vestige nor any sign whatever of any

the apparition vanished

material ship."

The witnesses believed

that they

had seen

the Flying Dutchman, the legendary ghost ship

that has haunted sailors for centuries. With

numerous
this:

variations, the legend

A Dutch

goes

like

captain drove his ship around

savage gale against the pleas

who begged him to put
appeared; the SaGhost
Holy
The
into port.
tanic captain fired his pistol and cursed the
Lord. For his blasphemy, the captain was condemned to sail the seas for eternity, never to

Cape Horn

in a

of his terrified crew,

put into port. Sailors say an encounter with

the Flying Dutchman bodes disaster.

So it was for the HMS Inconstant. The royal

journals record that later that morning the
unlucky lookout fell from the fore-topmast
crosstrees and was "smashed to atoms." And
upon reaching port, the admiral of the ship
It would seem
even the presence of royalty could
stave off the curse of the Flying Dutchman.

was stricken with a fatal illness.

that not

Fateful Mission
in the

Bermuda

Triangle

At 2:10p.m. onDecember

5,

roared

Avenger torpedo bombers

the runway of the Fort Lauderdale

1945, five
off

Naval Air Station. Flight instructor Lieutenant Charles G. Taylor

crewmen

was

leading thirteen

of Flight 19 on a routine naviga-

tional training exercise.

But ominously the

course lay over an area bounded approximately by Bermuda, Florida, and Puerto Rico,

what is now known as the Bermuda Trianwhere so many ships and aircraft have
met mysterious fates.
Flight 19 began smoothly enough But at
3:40 p.m., an unsettling message from Taylor
to another plane in his squadron was interin

gle,

cepted by Lieutenant Robert Cox,

who was

airborne over Fort Lauderdale on another exercise.

"What

Taylor. "Both

your trouble?" Cox asked

is

my compasses are out and am

I

trying to find Fort Lauderdale," Taylor replied.

For the next forty-five minutes, Cox tried to

ascertain Taylor's position

and

direct

him

to

land by orienting him toward the sun, but

although

unable

it

was

to find

sion faded until

a clear day, Taylor

seemed

it.

Finally, Taylor's transmis-

it

stopped. Then, inexplicably,

Cox's radio went dead, too. He returned to the

field at Fort

Lauderdale.

The ground station at Port Everglades had

meanwhile established intermittent contact
with the troubled Flight

confirming Cox's

19,

observations. Finally, at about a quarter past

ground station heard a forlorn mes19; "We'll fly west until we hit
the beach or run out of gas.
The authorities at Fort Lauderdale ordered
a search, and before long a Mariner flying boat
was in the air with another thirteen crewmen.
But the Mariner was not heard from again.
five,

the

sage from Flight

'

For the next

flew

five

days, other search planes

more than 930

sorties over the area,

but not a scrap of wreckage from either the

Avengers or the Mariner was ever recovered.

Most analysts blame this and other disappearances that have occurred in the area on the
normal hazards of the sea and air. But students of the occult blame the disaster on
the malevolent powers said to flourish in the

Bermuda

Triangle.

43

A Leap

across

Space and Time

it was the "strange,

cigar-shaped cloud," he recalled, that gave

Bruce Gemon, Jr., the first hint that his flight on

December

would be out of the ordiGernon had

just taken off in his Beechcraft Bonanza from
Andros Island in the Bahamas, bound for
Palm Beach, Florida.
Gernon remembers accelerating quickly
to avoid the thick cloud, but it seemed to rise
to meet him and then to envelop him. Spying
4,

1970,

nary. With his father as copilot,

a small tunnel through the cloud, he dived

down, hoping to exit into clear sky on the other side. But this was no ordinary cloud. "The
walls were glowing white with small white
clouds rotating clockwise around the interior," Gernon later recalled. The plane seemed
to pick up unnatural speed, and for several
seconds, Gernon and his father experienced
weightlessness. Then the airplane exited from
the tunnel and entered a greenish white
haze - not the blue sky he had seen ahead.
Trying to fix his position, Gernon was startled to observe his compass rotating counterclockwise. His navigational equipment would
no longer function and he was unable to

make

contact with radar control.

Through the haze, he spotted an island

and, calculating his flight time, thought it must
be the Bimini keys. Minutes later, Gernon recognized it as Miami Beach instead. But how
could that be? Little more than half the expected flight time had elapsed.
Landing at Palm Beach, Gemon checked
A trip that normally took him about
seventy-five minutes had taken only fortyfive, and he had burned twelve fewer gallons
his clock.

of fuel than usual

In the years that followed, Gemon considered himself among the lucky who lived to tell
of an unaccountable journey through the Bermuda Triangle, having been the victim of an

apparent time warp.

''4

45

CHAPTER 2

Pyramid

Secrets of the Great

fter

a few days of scuba diving along the

Red Sea coast of Egypt

in early 1985,

two French architects went on an excursion to see the Great Pyramid of Cheops
at Giza.

As they examined the huge

that simply did not

number of things
make sense to them. Some of the pyramid's immense stone
structure, they noted a

blocks, for example, are stacked vertically, rather than staggered in their usual
pattern.
in the

And in certain parts of the pyramid,

curious

roughhewn stones crop up

midst of polished limestone.

Like generations of pyramid visitors before them, the

Dormion and Jean-Patrice Goidin, were captivated by

Gilles

ment. And
mysteries.

like

so

many

two Frenchmen,
the great

monu-

others, they believed that they could penetrate

its

The structural anomalies, the architects deduced, were clues to hid-

den, previously

unknown rooms within the pyramid. They speculated that one

such secret chamber might even contain the remains of the Pharaoh Cheops
himself, thus resolving

body

it

one of the pyramid's eternal questions: Where

was presumably built

to

is

the

entomb'

Dormion and Goidin had considerable technological advantages over

previous pyramid detectives. After several exploratory

ways, they returned

in

visits to the

stone hall-

August of 986 with a microgravimeter, a sophisticated

1

instrument capable of registering density voids, or cavities, within the pyramid.

And behind

the walls of a corridor leading to the

room known as

Chamber, the device detected the voids predicted by the

aged, the two

men

the Queen's

architects.

got permission from Egyptian authorities to

drill

Encourinto the

ancient limestone walls in search of the pyramid's secrets.

For days, the architects and their colleagues worked in the cramped

passages of the pyramid,

their drills

of rock in three different places. But

crystalline sand:

ence of voids

it

seemed, could indicate the pres-

pyramid but could not pinpoint

if

their precise location.

they exist, remained hidden. The Great Pyramid had

thwarted yet another attempt

its

they uncovered were pockets of fine,

The microgravimeter,

in the

The secret chambers,

unravel

chewing through more than two yards

all

in

the long, frustrating,

and fascinating quest

to

abiding riddles.

Since the time of the classical Greeks, people have gazed at this sole

on the pyramid shape itself and

wonders and asked

questions they could not answer. Why was it built? If it was a
tomb, as conventional wisdom has generally supposed, why

centrating

were no symbols or possessions of royalty- much less a royal

corpse ever found? If it was not a tomb, what was it? And

help plants grow, keep food fresh longer, and even sharpen

how was

ematical wisdom the structure supposedly embodies by imag-

survivor of the ancient world's seven

it

day, could
struction,

built?

How, given

the building techniques of the

one explain the astonishing precision of

its

its

near-perfect alignment to the points of the

pass, the exquisite accuracy of

its

masonry 7

If

con-

com-

the pyramid's

design incorporates advanced mathematical and astronomical

knowledge, as many investigators believe,

how

did

powersbeyond

the realm of conventional science?

More than a few archeologists, astronomers,

on both

living things

alleged physical

and inanimate objects. These

searchers claimed that the pyramid shape could

dull razor blades. Still others

ining that

builders

its

have accounted

came from

stubborn silence.

It

somehow

for the

lost Atlantis, or

another planet, or from both. The pyramid

itself

re-

math-

even from

maintains a

has never been completely explored nor

completely explained.

its

builders acquire such wisdom so far in advance of other civilizations' Could the enigmatic structure even harbor some sort

of mystical

effects

its

religious

The pyramid of Cheops

rises in

its

enigmatic majesty from the

rocky Giza plateau ten miles west of Cairo. Glimpsed through

and tamarind trees

the branches of the acacia, eucalyptus,

that line the boulevard leading to the plateau,

it

vaults

up from

the structure purely as a historical artifact, other investigators

on the edge of the Libyan Desert with

dramatic suddenness, a breathtaking mountain of sandcolored stone looming above the lush palm groves of the near-

have usually fallen into three schools of thought. The first, and

by Nile. Caravan travelers approaching from the desert in ages

most common, holds

past saw

scholars, and amateur pyramid enthusiasts have argued such

questions through the centuries. While archeologists focus on

that the

system of measurement, that

pyramid represents a universal

its

very dimensions

chetypal measures of length and even time.

embody ar-

A splinter group of

a wind-scraped

it

for

flat

days before they reached it, a tiny triangle on the

horizon bulking ever larger

Close up,

grandeur

its

in its

symmetrical perfection.

overpowering. Numbers can only

is

nineteenth-century pyramid students founded the second

suggest its immensity-a ground area of

school, focusing on the structure's extraordinary properties as

itself composed

a gigantic sundial

and an astronomical observatory. These

so-called archeoastronomers

made a strong case that the

pyramid builders, whoever they were, had an awareness of astronomy and the earth's dimensions

far su-

perior to anything previously imagined.

As the fascination with the pyramid continued into the twentieth century, a third and
far

more speculative school

arose, con-

ing

two and

3.

acres, the edifice

of some 2.3 million limestone blocks averag-

a half tons each.

The structure contains enough

stone to build a wall of foot-square cubes two-thirds

of the

way around

the globe at the equator, a distance

of 16,600 miles.

The Great Pyramid and the two others that

stand near it on the plateau-attributed to
Cheops'simmediatesuccessors- were erected during the period of Egyptian history

fiijpi
known as the Fourth Dynasty, between 2613
and 2494
Cheops

stone

chisels.

Crews

consisting of hundreds of workers then

b c Egyptologists believe that

Greeks knew him; his Egyp-

(as the

hammers and copper

dragged the blocks

some

used

to the site; granite

was

down

tian

name was Khufu) ordered the immense

tomb and monument to
himself. Its outer shell was originally com-

in

building raised as a

the Nile from a site about 400 miles distant

posed of highly polished limestone blocks fit-

pull the multiton

ted together with painstaking precision, but

ing pyramid, they may have used a spiraling

these casing stones were stripped off in the

earthen ramp, although

fourteenth century and used in the construc-

they levered the stone upward on planks and

tion of Cairo. At

some

parts of the interior

ferried

river.

To

blocks up the sides of the

ris-

and hauled up a causeway from the

wooden

point in history, the

some experts believe

runners. The blocks were then

fitted

original capstone, forming the top thirty-one

together with hairline precision, displaying

was also removed.

Egyptologists have drawn on

an accuracy of engineering that impresses

feet of the

pyramid,

knowledge of Egyptian

even present-day

their

Many observers have doubted

religion to explain the

massive a structure as the Great

significance of the pyramid shape, contend-

ing that

it

backbreaking labor under the blazing sun-

worship. The angled walls, they say, resemble

could have been intended merely for the housing of

the outspread rays of the sun descending earth-

one royal

ward from a cloud, and the pyramid thus represents

ern occultist writer Manly

the pyramid provided

passage to
building

P. Hall,

was

the

mod-

historian Julius

ritual

pyramid while

lie

that they
built

three days and nights within the

naked

scenario:

The builders somehow leveled the

site

woman

when

tions of circumpolar stars to determine true directions. At

description of

masons

and a

said, as did a

who seduced

tres-

first

visitor to

gather and record information about the Great Pyramid in a

systematic way. Herodotus visited Giza

and then

aligned the sides of the building by making repeated observa-

quarries a few miles away,

with unsightly teeth

The Greek historian Herodotus was the

an age without pulleys or the wheel, the massive

pyramid was built. But archeologists have guessed at a general

to the stars

future. Superstition trailed legend:

passers and drove them mad.

More down-to-earth questions surround the isin

catastrophe, per-

Ghosts patrolled the corridors, the Arabs

and became godlike.

thought

claimed that the Great

Pyramid incorporated both a guide

the process, the candidates "achieved actual im-

sue of how,

who feared a

flood; local folktales

prophecy of the

In

'

for centuries

were repositories of ancient knowledge,

by earlier rulers

haps the

to- the soul or essence left their

bodies and entered 'the spiritual spheres of space. "

mortality"

(Another early writer

for grain.

The Arabs who ruled Egypt

Hall, the

transforming them into gods. The

for

their

The Roman

opined that the structures were extinct volcanoes.)

a secret temple where the elect under-

would

Alternate explanations have

Honorius declared that the pyramids

were storehouses

figurative

According to

mummy.

flourished since the pre-Christian era.

even maintain that

more than merely

celestial realms.

went a mystic
initiates

Some students of the an-

Book of the Dead, such as

cient Egyptian

that so

Pyramid

miracle of engineering, a prodigy of decades of

could have been connected with sun

a stairway to the heavens.

builders.

the structure
its

in

the

was already 2,000 years

fifth

old,

century bc,

and wrote a

construction based on his conversations

with local Egyptians. Unable to go inside the edifice

cut the limestone with

48

(its

en-

was

trance

hidden), he accepted his infor-

ial

vault, they said,

work

in

ad

820. Unable to find an en-

trance to the inscrutable structure, they

Khufu. The king's bur-

launched a frontal attack, heating the lime-

mants' claim that the pyramid

built to the tyrannical

set to

tomb

was

stone blocks with

lay underground.

fire

and then dousing

crews thrown onto the project every

them with cold vinegar until they cracked.

After burrowing through 100 feet of rock
this way, the explorers finally reached a

three months. They built the causeway from

narrow, four-foot-high passageway that

the river to the plateau in ten years; the pyra-

climbed steeply upward. At

One hundred thousand men labored on

the pyramid, according to Herodotus, with
fresh

mid

itself

plete.

the gigantic stones

lifted

upper end

they found the pyramid's original entrance,

took another twenty years to com-

Engineers

its

forty-nine feet

up

above the ground, blocked

the sides of the structure step by step using

and hidden by a pivoting stone door. Turning

"machines formed of short wooden planks"

around, the explorers followed the passage-

Herodotus did not elaborate on

way downward. After crawling on their hands

on each

how

step.

these machines worked.

He was also

that outer casing stones were installed

top down, after the interior core

was

and knees through the inky darkness, they

were chagrined to find only an unfinished,

told

from the

empty chamber.

in place.

ransom were

These glistening, highly polished stones were

covered with inscriptions- later

lost

when

Herodotus was interested

in the

secret writings or a king's

be found

in the

pyramid,

it

would be elsewhere.

the

blocks were carted off to Cairo.

mid primarily as an engineering

to

If

Al

Great Pyra-

Excitement was rekindled, however, when

Mamun's men returned to the passageway and

discovered what looked

project. But the

like

another corridor slopentrance was com-

next pyramid explorer known to history had a some-

ing upward. Unfortunately,

what different perspective on the structure and intro-

pletely filled by a large granite plug, obviously

duced what was to become an abiding theme of pyra-

placed there deliberately. The granite

mid

studies: the quest for the

ous

mathematical wisdom

The ninth-century Arab caliph Abdullah

and a special

mapping

interest in

secret

by the pyramid builders

series of plugs, the

level

in-

caliph

and

his

later told the

team of architects,

dramatic

builders,

tale of

until

it

intersected a

passageway. This led them to an eighteen-foot-square,

room that would later become

known as the Queen's Chamber (because of the Arab custom
of burying women in tombs with gabled roofs) No queen was
in evidence, however; this chamber, too, was empty.

was said

how

upward

twenty-foot-high gabled

be hidden somewhere within.

Arab historians

way around the

explorers emerged into a low-

ceilinged corridor that slanted

and perhaps of more

terest to the caliph's fellow explorers, great treasure

Someone had been determined to

After laboriously hacking their

when he

tables executed

In addition,

chisels, but the deter-

bar intruders from the pyramid's inner sanctum

chambers reportedly con-

maps and

impervi-

though, they found another granite obstacle and

then several more.

and charting the heavens, and

tained highly accurate

to

did,

astronomy. He dreamed of

he turned his attention to the pyramid

its

Ma

ruler with a scientific turn of mind

the world

learned that

Al

hammers and

was

mined Arabs found that they could chip through the

softer limestone blocks around it. As soon as they

possessed by the ancients.

mun was a young

to their

its

the

and stonemasons
49

50

Arab explorers probing the Great Pyramid

clamber into the limestone Grand Gallery. In the
foreground, a narrow well plunges deep into
the pyramid's core; a low corridor beyond leads
to the Queen 's Chamber. In the King's Chamber (inset}, a mystery presents itself: A polished
sarcophagus, believed to be that of Pharaoh
Cheops, lies empty and unused.

The weary Arabs returned

and found

that

it

to the

expanded abruptly

ascending passageway

into a splendid corridor,

whose walls of polished limestone, twenty-eight feet high, later earned

it

the

name

the gallery climbed

of Grand Gallery.

56 feet more before

Still
it

and nineteen

in

and

his

men

the interior, an

long, seventeen

feet high, later called the King's

Mamun

Al

feet

Occultist's

Honeymoon

gave onto an ante-

chamber; beyond that was the largest room

imposing sanctum thirty-four

An

sloping upward,

A number of overnight visitors to the Great Pyramid

have reported odd happenings within

feet wide,

its

walls, but the

strangest experience by far was related by Aleister

Chamber.

Crowley, self-styled "Great Beast" of the occult world.

Crowley was an Englishman who had founded a

stepped gingerly across the

was the fabulous

hard. And there,
worked
so
prize for
against a red granite wall, they saw it-a large, chocolatecolored stone sarcophagus, so big that the chamber must have

secret society devoted to

been built around it Thrusting their torches ahead of them, the

Crowley later reported, a pale lilac light bathed the

room, allowing him to continue without his candle.
Despite this mystic illumination, Crowley had a

what he called sexual magic.

He visited the pyramid on his honeymoon in 903,
declaring his intention to spend a night in the King's
Chamber. Once ensconced there with his bride, he lit
a candle and began to read an incantation. All at once,

threshold, doubtless convinced that this

which they had

all

explorers rushed to look inside. They found nothing. The granite

sarcophagus was empty.

rather prosaic complaint about his bridal suite.

a frenzy of disappointment, the Arabs ripped up part

In

of the floor

and hacked

of treasure. Al

at the walls,

Mamun

hoping to

that

was ever there or that looters

had long ago pillaged the room. But

made

their

way

mained unanswered:

to the

earlier

marauders had

chamber, a basic question

re-

How did they get by the stone plugs that

had stymied the caliph and

Eight

if

his

men?

hundred years passed before the next stride

in pursuit of

pyramid learning. During this time, Europe had emerged from

the Dark
tion.

Ages

into a

luminous era of expansion and explora-

Adventurers, merchants, and statesmen alike were ham-

pered, however, by their ignorance of world geography and by

the lack of a single internationally accepted unit of weight,

length,

and geographical degree.

In

response, scholars

turned -as they so often did to the ancients, hoping to find

some
cise

forgotten, fundamental unit of

measure based on pre-

knowledge of the earth's dimensions.

In

search of this knowledge, British mathematician John

Greaves visited Egypt in 638. The bookish thirty-six-year-old

1

had spent most of his life within the confines of academia,

at

Oxford and then as a professor of geometry

at

floor,

he

said,

made sleep

Mrs. Crowley's opinion

some trace

find

could only conclude that either the

empty sarcophagus was all

indeed

stone

first

Gresham
51

is

impossible.

not recorded.

The hard

The eternal allure of the pyramids

52

is

evident in this nineteenth-century painting of dawn on the Giza plate

^H
le

largest structure is the Great

Pyramid of Cheops;

its

neighbors are monuments to that pharaoh's successors.

53

College in London. But books, Greaves found, were no substitute for experience.

sured
(a

He

traveled

Roman monuments

fraction of

cluded),

first

to Italy,

to find the legendary

an inch shorter than the

and then

him

where he mea-

Roman

British foot,

to give

up a reconnaissance descent

Greaves finished

foot

he con-

his studies of the

after only sixty feet.

pyramid by measuring

the structure's height

and base,

and the second

feet per side; the latter estimate

at

693

figuring the

out to be short of the mark. He then returned

to Giza.

Greaves believed, as had the ninth-century Arab caliph

first

at 481 feet

turned

home to present

his data in a booklet eruditely entitled Pyramidographia.

AlMamun before him, that thepyramidbuildershad possessed

a geometrical wisdom now lost to the world. Hoping to discov-

sure he sought, but his booklet, containing his measurements

measurement they had employed, Greaves

and description of the pyramid, reached some of the greatest

er the unit of

mounted

Mamun's makeshift
The

minds of the day. For example, William Harvey, discoverer of

the thirty-eight-foot-high pile of debris around the

pyramid's base, instruments

Al

The mathematician had not found the basic unit of mea-

first

in

hand, and clambered through

the circulation of blood, correctly

was a blizzard of bats;

pistol. He then scrambled

that

ered by later explorers); physicist Sir Isaac

thing he encountered

these he dispersed by firing his

deduced

Greaves had

overlooked a system of ventilation within the pyramid (discov-

entrance.

Newton used

Greaves's figures to derive measurements he called sacred

Newton hoped these

around the granite plugs as the Arabs had done, meticulously

and profane

measured the King's Chamber and the sarcophagus (6.488

help him determine the circumference of the earth, a figure

which suggested to Greaves that human dimensions

essential to his theory of gravitation. Unfortunately, Greaves's

feet long,

had not changed) and marveled

main

find,

straight
Gallery.

at the precise

numbers were not accurate enough

masonry. His

however, was a narrow well, which plunged

in

and

for this purpose,

The next assault on the pyramids was a

of 1798, disciplined French troops

foul air forced

literal

commanded

Pnc mjiddqtMfifJt amifmra:Ujfram^

ifvow
'in tie

AB the entrance tkta tkeTvram

uruwine the whale Ti/rarttldw le divided

midst

-S C tie ascent

of plane extendsdjromihe
a.

Galleries,

CE thejtrsi

and Chamierj- with the

,

impcare in this-

u tkem,

into

theHrst

Galery

tfartk side to the South; tke entrance

iTePeraljasxages

and

length of a geographical degree.

place? a getaway passage for

looters' Greaves never found out; the bats

basic units would

Newton had to wait a few years until scientists established the

down into darkness from the bottom of the Grand

Was it an escape route for the builders after they

lodged the stone plugs

cubits.

G-alleru

VR the Well

md

Oil thejia/saae

manner

in the
arched Chomier

HI the arched Ckamier

FKthe second Oallerp
IQftltheJirst anlicloj-et

Q0 tkej-econd cuuidoset
JH^ OP the Chamber in which

|k

the

A cross-section from John Greaves's book

Pyramidographia depicts the passages, chambers, and galleries of
the Great Pyramid, as measured in 1638.
54

tcmie stands-

one. In July

by General

The cool darkness of the pyramids' corridors

proved an ideal habitatfor bats, much to the dismay of early explorers. The dung made the
sloping passages treacherously slick.

the base rock

where the

original cornerstones, carried

off centuries earlier,

had

rested. This

gave them

two good anchors for a measurement of the pyraNapoleon Bona-

mid's base, although their work was still hampered

parte routed scimitar-wielding Egyp

by piles of debris along the north wall.

tians at the bloody Battle of the Pyra-

mids.

And

it

First

was not very long

secrets of the Great Pyramid

or 757.5 feet.

ters,

afterward that the young Bonaparte began to attack the

Jomard measured one side of the base: 230.9 me-

Then he struggled along

on the Giza plateau

edifice, tried

with a corps of French scientists - savants, they

were

called -who

were attached

The savants were

trigued by

the

many

measured

in-

vation, 146.6 meters, or 481 feet. With

these figures Jomard calculated the angle of the

slope of the pyramid as fifty-one degrees nineteen

its

minutes, and

John Greaves more than a century and a half

unreliable, that

was

its

apothem - the line from the apex to the

midpoint of each of

among the pyramid students

was a young scientist named Edme-Francois Jomard, who
had studied the slender archive of pyramid literature, much of

its

four sides at the

measured as 184.7 meters, or 606

before. Principal

the unit of

The young

scientist

knew

was

remembered

that the builders

a basic unit of measurement

the metric system,

the ancient world,

was

abandoned

in

to be re-

figure for the

apothem was thus

number

to

conjure with. Jomard turned his attention next to the cubit,

another ancient measure of length. Herodotus had written

their at-

tempt to investigate the pyramid's interior when they encoun-

mounds of guano

was believed

lated to the circumference of the earth. His

"

0,000,000 of the quadrant of the earth's

his colleagues quickly

that

the length of a stadium,

circumference from the North Pole to the equator.)

Jomard and

sta-

dium long. He also

recently adopted by revolutionary France. (The meter

1/1

had de-

apothem as one

had accumulated over the centuries. Like

sures were derived from the dimensions

then defined as

that early writers

especially eager to establish

measurement

bottom- was

feet.

scribed the pyramid's

used and to discover whether those mea-

of the earth-as

the height of each

stone step on his descent: total ele-

of

builders that had teased

it

beyond

the base, and patiently

to his army.

tions about the

Greaves, he

unsuccessfully to

slingshot a stone

same ques-

pyramid and

to the thirty-

three-square-foot platform at the summit of the truncated

stadium contained 400 cubits, so the Frenchman divid-

that a

deposited by the resi-

ed his figure for the apothem by 400, which gave him a cubit

dent bats. The indignant animals, a chastened French colonel

measure of .4618 meters. Other Greek authorities on the

subject had declared the base of the Great Pyramid to be

tered the formidable

reported, "scratched with their claws

and stifled with the acrid

stench of their bodies." Driven back, the savants turned to the

structure's exterior. Aided by a

work

500 cubits long.

force of 150 Turks, they

the result

cleared tons of sand and debris from the northwest and northeast corners

and discovered two rectangular depressions

for the

When Jomard

was 230.9

multiplied his .4618 by 500,

meters, exactly what he had totaled up

base length.

To Jomard the message was clear.- The Egyptians had an

in

55

The Voice of foe Sphinx

idealized likeness of Pharaoh Chephren,
complete with royal headdress.
Through the centuries, sandstorms

Towering sixty-six feet above the

swirling sands of the Giza plateau, the
Great Sphinx has for millennia
proved as fascinating as it is majestic.
For many, the impassive face and
knowing smile have come to embody
the lost wisdom of the ancient world
This most inscrutable of structures
appears to have been built of stone
from the depleted quarry already used
for the Giza pyramids: In about 2700
b.c, stoneworkers cut out the best and
hardest rock for the Great Pyramid
and its neighbors, shunning the softer
bedrock.

Masons then transformed

these leavings into the Great Sphinx,

sculpting

its

massive head with an

have threatened to engulf the Sphinx,

giving rise to one of its most enduring
stories: Around 400 b c when the
Sphinx was buried up to its neck, a
prince on a hunt stopped to rest in the
shadow of the figure's head and soon fell
asleep In a dream, he heard the voice
of the Sphinx promise to make him ruler
of Egypt ahead of his older brothers if
he would clear away the sand. On
awakening, the prince vowed to
keep his part of the bargain. He completed the task shortly after ascending to
the throne as Pharaoh Thutmose IV
1

After excavating the

Sphinx, Thutmose IV commemorated
his dream with a granite tablet.

Legend claims that when the Sphinx was buried in sand,

56

visitors

would seek wisdom from its lips.

advanced knowledge of geometry. They knew the

earth, they derived their units of measure

cumference, and they built

amid. The evidence

was

this

threaten traditional religious beliefs. In response,

size of the

from the earth's cir-

knowledge

giously oriented scholars seized

upon the mysterious

The

in the stones.

made with in-

editor

first

major proponent of

this theory

cated and deeply religious man: He

could be tantalizingly inexact. The task of pyramid measuring

Scriptures as he

greatly complicated by the

that gathered in

wind-blown sand and debris

work

in

Taylor had risen by the

was

London

was

as well versed in the

mathematics, astronomy, and

litera-

an apprentice to a bookseller,

820s to the post of editor of London

Magazine; his distinguished

just to

was thus no surprise

was

ture. After starting out as

huge mounds all around the structure; investi-

gators had to engage in heavy-duty excavation

struc-

and critic named John Taylor. Taylor was a widely edu-

exact instruments amid the migrating sands of the desert

was

reli-

tures as proof of the divine hand's presence in the world.

into the Great Pyr-

Unfortunately for Jomard, measurements

some

circle of

acquaintances included

that

poets John Clare and John Keats. Nevertheless, he "frightened

Jomard's colleagues, upon remeasuring the base and height,

away half his friends," according to one of them, with what

was to become a thirty-year-long obsession with the mystery

get next to the base to

came up with

measure

it. It

slightly different results.

pointed out, no

Furthermore, they

of the Great Pyramid.

evidence of Jomard's cubit could be found in

other ancient Egyptian structures.

end, the French savants refused to

In the

belief that

it

was

abandon

who founded
home and pub-

the Greeks, not the Egyptians,

the science of geometry.

When

they returned

lished an elaborate, twenty-four-volume report

on

hieroglyphics), Jomard's stubbornly maintained

short

built a scale

tomb hypothesis, Taylor pored over the

figures gath-

ered by Jomard and others

their find-

ciples.

argument

number

scientific safari

and the subsequent accounts

is

To

Taylor, this

until the sixth century,

Museums vied

for

mummies,

statues,

aristocrats

divided

pi

(3.14159+), the
its

tantalizing discovery:

If

to the fourth

decimal point

what else did they know? For one thing,

for

another, the distance from the center of the earth to the poles.

Empire and Regency fashion designers borrowed Egyptian

and

when he

height, the result was

he concluded, they knew the circumference of the globe;

and

obelisks; artists grafted pyramids into sylvan landscapes;

motifs,

was a

have been correctly calculated

to

interest in things Egyptian. Nineteenth-century Europeans

love with Egypt:

its

were aware of pi, which was not known

of it that began appearing in Europe inspired an explosion of

in

to his surprise that

multiplied by the diameter of a circle to give

the pyramid builders

fell

search of unifying prin-

nearly identical to the value of

constant that

shrift.

circumference.

The French

He found

in

the perimeter of the pyramid by twice

ings (which included the Rosetta Stone, the key to Egyptian

was given

never visited Egypt; instead, he

Taylor
model of the pyramid to aid hisstudies. Dismissing the

their

With

had sphinxes and crocodiles carved

pi

as the connecting

link,

Taylor determined that

theratioofthepyramid'saltitudetoitsperimeterwasthesame

onto their furniture. The Scottish peer Alexander, tenth duke

as that of the polar radius of the earth to

of Hamilton, even had himself mummified. Americans suc-

Far from being a

cumbed to the craze as well: The city of Memphis, Tennessee,

took its name from an older river city in Egypt. In 1880, New

mid was a structural expression of the wisdom of the ancients.

it

in

circumference: 2 it.

burial vault, Taylor decided, the pyra-

"It was to make a record

was built," he declared.

Yorkers imported an obelisk called Cleopatra's Needle and

installed

mere

its

of the measure of the earth that

it

But Taylor doubted that Egyptian scholars of the Fourth

Central Park.

Pyramid themes became fashionable

Dynasty had themselves possessed the knowledge

just as society,

was entering a
modern science seemed to

the pyramid.

troubling time, an era in which

able," he wrote, "that to

57

to come from God. "It is probsome human beings in the earliest

Such wisdom had

particularly the society of Victorian England,

built into

ages of society, a degree of intellectual

power was given by the

Creator,

which

raised them far above the level of those

succeeding inhabitants of the earth."

God

instructed the pyramid builders just

as he had directed

Noah

according to Taylor,
that

to build the ark,

who

humanity had been

also believed

sliding downhill

CHOROCRAPKICAL POINTINGS.
IN LOWER EGYPT,

intellectually ever since.

Taylor was seventy-eight years old

SUPPLEMENTARY

TO THE EARTHS
GEOGRAPHICAL INDICATIONS
OENERAL CENTER OF ALL THE
LAND SURFACE OF THE EARTH:
ADAFTEB CHIEFLT
FROM WE MAT! or HUM HTTtBELi.CS

when his book, The Great Pyramid: Why

Was It Built? And Who Built IP, appeared
in 1859.

AS TO A

While Taylor's sweeping theo-

_ and (host of

were well received

in

some

circles,

Commusi

the Prendi

ndir

ries

Seal*

Goieril
1.3Z7.

Bonapu

(WO

m.i,(i

the Royal Society politely declined to

hear a paper he wrote on the subject. But

before his death a few years

made

at least

one

later,

influential

he had

convert-

Charles Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer-Royal of Scotland.

In late

He was the son of an admiral and the godson of

own survey and measurements. Armed with

re-

won him

later,

on optics gained him election

coveted honor for any

in

an important paper presented

at dusk.

was

Yet pyramidology, hardly a

popular subject with the Royal Society just then,

cause with an ardor

that, like Taylor's,

was

basic unit of

measurement was what he

identified as

in the

campaign by

Smyth was

called the

was

that

Smyth viewed with

pyramid

that the

thirty

that the pyramid's

even more closely than Taylor's had,

degrees north

shadow disappeared
this indi-

pi

to the fifth digit be-

in

agreement with Taylor's opinion

that the

Great Pyramid enshrined the ancients' scientific knowledge.

measures were "more admirably and learnedly

earth-commensurable," he wrote, "than anything which has

timely

Its

British scientists against the

built-in

ever entered into the mind of man to conceive

adoption of the metric system devised by the French, a proposal

minutes of latitude

yond the decimal point

/25th of a cubit and

within a thousandth part of a British inch. This

ammunition

sited within

of the external dimensions yielded figures that matched

His readingpersuaded him that the

pyramid inch, a distance he

on

cated advanced knowledge of astronomy. His measurements

in

equal parts scientific and religious, with a dash of pain.

recline

completely at the spring equinox and concluded that

Captivated by Taylor, Smyth warmed to the dying editriotism thrown

tomb where they could

Smyth spent several nights on the pyramid's summit,

Smyth also observed

came to domi-

nate his professional career.

tor's

cliffside

making astronomic observations showing

to Edinburgh's Royal Society, a

scientist.

an abandoned

campstools and watch clouds of bats billow out of the pyramid

the Scottish post at the tender age of

twenty-six; twelve years

trunks of up-to-

date instruments, including a camera, the Smyths set up camp

nowned Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, discoverer of the

first known asteroid. Smyth's own accomplishments in astronomy had

left for

Egypt with his wife to do what Taylor had not done - make his

Smyth's social and intellectual credentials equaled Taylor's:

1864, the forty-five -year-old astronomer

went beyond Taylor

nationalistic alarm.

58

to

"

Smyth even

claim that measures of time as well as

Maps of the Giza plateau suggest the role ofextraordinary

geographical knowledge in the Great Pyramid's construction.
Below, apian of the plateau shows the exact north-south
alignment of the pyramids, while, at left, an expanded view reveals
that the structure stands at the apex of the Nile Delta.

Lorujihidi

of Mtriduiru passinq ihroiufh Gt 1'yramid

Map

imuuir)

Pyramids of Jtozehs, ^

oftJiz

afltr>

Howard.

Seal*.'-

M'
-

Ji

'ijT

>

Ci

.-r.

'J

'

Uc?0

"""'

>-

j-

Z^TJZ

*-.

"^ "~

-a*;

~~** -*"

office'

"!

>,

/,

"^

Vyse,

lofioo-.

^ J^

WO

q k.V LJ

ih'l"

ast of Greenwich.

and; && hilL of*tom7>$ uv thty ^frtcaw

Desert, onsthtWe&erTt/suUofthe Valley

p^

Scundy

'

'^^^*H

Syii-LlUuU.:-?;'^^
?: Toying,,
7i
3 l.ir=S--^'<i' Tamil

-c

^5

^
>
-

--:

-.'

>*

*">"'

'affi

.%"s^
JVifl

^w3?

'

'

-3

^Ss^^^gw^

^
s

U
/4,
i

^^a'Im'''

$J8$3

are,

Cohmtl Bewari- Vyses for tbstonawsfuna ihr thru small Pyramids near
'

(At--

~-^>:

3.

final Pyramids
l

of distance were incorporated into the building of the pyramid.

said, states that in

According to the astronomer, the structure'sperimeter,

rical

in pyr-

special

of days in a solar year. The builders had worked

of this out

that the

Smyth wrote, 1500

the sun

with their breathtaking

gift for

physics,

years before "the infantine beginning of such things

among

ages past God imparted "wisdom, and met-

and unknown purpose."

In later years,

some

Smyth argued

pyramid also revealed the distance from the earth

when

its

height in inches

was

to

multiplied by ten to the

ninth power; ten to nine being the proportion of height to

width of the pyramid. In addition, the structure not only

the ancient Greeks."

In his

rfspectiv/lv

instructions for buildings" to a chosen few "for

amid inches, equaled precisely ,000 times 365.2, the number

all

'\

?
Tht numbtrs k,ii6_

'.'/ v.

proved the existence of God but also predicted the date of the

subsequent book Our Inheritance in the GreatPyra-

second coming of Christ.

Smyth concluded, as had Taylor before him, that only

God could have engineered the Great Pyramid. The Bible, he

mid,

Although Smyth's colorful writing

59

style

helped

sell his

An

Obelisk's

Perilous Voyage
Egypt's stone obelisks
raised in

homage

to the

originally

sun-gods

have

been coveted since Roman times as

symbols of conquest and mysterious
power Weighing an average of 50
1

tons, the granite pillars challenged those

who would carry them off, as Sir

James Alexander discovered in 1877.
The obelisk of the Englishman's
attentions

was Cleopatra's

sixty-eight feet

tall

It

Needle,

had been present-

ed to England half a century earlier

by the Egyptian ruler Mohammed Ali. Attempts to collect the prize
dria,

in Alexanhowever, had met only with frustra-

tion.

Bringing

it

home was a

matter of

pride for the patriotic Alexander. His solution

was

to

encase the obelisk

watertight iron cylinder and

sea on huge timber wheels

Once afloat,

the cylinder

roll

in
it

to the

(right).

was

fitted

out

with a keel, rudder, deck, and cabin.

Appropriately christened the Cleopatra,

this strange vessel

was hauled

out to sea by the steamship Olga on Sep-

tember,

1877. The journey was a

harrowing one, marked by a gale that

forced the captain temporarily to

abandon his foundering ship Reclaimed

and repaired, the monument glided
into the Thames River on January 2
878, and was installed on the river's
banks. The obelisk remains there to this
1

day,

still

invoking Egyptian sun-gods

under London's rainy

skies.

Cleopatra's Needle (left) is one

of a matching pair. Its twin stands
in

New York's Central Park.

60

LONDON
An 1 877 newspaper
(right) reports the

abandon-

ment of the Cleopatra.

The obelisk was feared lost,
but the ship's captain
brought it home in 1878.

61

NEWS.

many of his scientific colleagues.

denounced him, and a fellow member of the

books, he failed to win over

believed in the Bible's

Egyptologists

totaling

literal truth.

his followers,

up the pyramid inches, viewed the pyramid as immu-

who

table evidence of a divinity

Royal Society of Edinburgh called his ideas "strange halluci-

Smyth and

created the world

in

4004

bers could be marshaled to prove almost anything: "If a suit-

-the year computed by the seventeenth-century Irish

churchman James Usher and widely accepted by the orthodox. The human being's remotest ancestors, therefore, were

found," he said, "an exact equiv-

not forest-dwelling primates but master builders doing God's

nations which only a few weak

women believe. " A critic from

the United States drolly expressed the skeptics' view that

able unit of measurement

Timbuktu

alent to the distance to

is

num-

bidding. In the United States, a group

certain to be found ... in

of mud, or the

mean weight of adult

in

goldfish."

was

member of the

Garfield

Great Pyramid, the more hidden spiritual,

tion of pure science,

and

so, the

historical

Seiss wrote in

877 that

scientific,

its

Clearly, the

messages they uncovered. American

churchman Joseph

wishful thinking.

man

stones

And

unencumbered by preconceptions
in

name

with the ponderous

sures, weights, angles, temperatures, degrees, geometric

ments, hoping to resolve

problems and cosmic references." Seiss was particularly

dimensions and alignment.

five

was one-fifth

sides (including the base),

of one-fifth of a cubit.

he asked, that we have five senses,

and

that there are five

Was

It

had

only coincidental,

five fingers

was

gree and training for

such a

Smyth

that he

became

spending twentyyears

degrees north and thirty-one degrees east cross more

it

instru-

was

well qualified by pedi-

task. His

maternal grandfather

called,

Flinders,

was known for his

was an

His father, William Petrie,

engineer who had been so struck by the writings of Taylor and

fact:

The latitude and longitude lines that intersect at the pyramid -

Was

Flinders

an array of sophisticated

Flinders Petrie, as he

explorations of Australia

books of Moses?

dry land than any others.

Matthew

speculation about the structure's

and namesake, Captain Matthew

or toes per limb,

Pyramidologists also pointed to an extraordinary

thirty

all

of William

five cor-

and a pyramid inch

it

or

880, a twenty-six-year-old English-

Petrie set out for Egypt with

ners and

organization.

pyramid controversy required the illumina-

harbored "one great system of interrelated numbers, mea-

struck by the pyramid's unrelenting fiveness:

to ad-

opposition to the atheistic metric system; President James

work of Taylor and Smyth bred many disciples, who found that the more they investigated the

Even

banded together

vocate a system of measures based on sacred pyramid cubits,

number of street lamps in Bond Street, or the specific grav-

the
ity

is

b.c.

surveying equipment

possible that the ancient

a dedicated pyramidologist himself,

in

and fabrication of special

would measure the Great Pyramid

the design

that

structure

with unprecedented precision. Following his father's lead, the

On a smaller scale, a

young Flinders Petrie read Smyth's book at the age of thirteen.

northwest and northeast

Enchanted by the notion of varying standards of measure,

from the pyramid neatly encompasses the entire Nile Delta

Petrie took up the surveyor's trade and devoted himself to tour-

(page 58). Ancient surveyors might have found this useful in a

ing through England

Egyptians had
at the

known

and

sited their

very center of the habitable world?

quadrant extending

land

this

in straight lines

immense

whose boundaries were regularly flooded.

It was the pyramid's purported religious

and painstakingly recording the dimen-

sions of various buildings and ancient megalithic sites such as

the great stone circles of Stonehenge.

significance,
in Victorian

When he arrived at the Giza plateau with his ample store

England. The pyramidologists' contention that the structure

of provisions and the crates bearing his father's carefully craft-

was divinely inspired intensified the clash between the evolutionists, newly armed with Charles Darwin's radical ideas

ed instruments, Petrie did as so many other pyramid explorers

had done before him and took up temporary residence in an

however, that sparked the most heated debates

about the origins of

life,

and Christian fundamentalists who

empty
62

cliffside

tomb. Then he went to work, meticulously

best available until a definitive 1925 survey by the Egyptian

measuring and remeasuring every conceivable dimension of

the Great Pyramid

government ended the numerical arguments

and its two smaller neighbors. To keep curi-

It

turned out that the four sides varied in length by no more than

pants, both a shocking pink In the hot, dusty interior of the

755.9, the

pyramid, he often worked nude

sive, the sides

eight inches:

and late at night, after the

irksome tourists had departed. The work was not without

The south side was 756.1

were almost

ed the height correctly at 48

the surveyor one night.

angle of the sides, which

at

was a risk not to be forgotten."

was astounded by the precision

Petrie

feet,

but he had miscalculated the

fifty-one

degrees fifty-two minutes.

it,

the pyra-

and new discoveries con-

midologists' theory refused to die,

conscious, up a shaft of seventy feet with scanty foothold,

bottom,

is

But even after Petrie effectively dismantled

the well," wrote Petrie. "To raise a very heavy man, barely

when

perfectly aligned to the cardinal

points of the compass. The French savant Jomard had estimat-

its

when he joined
"I had a terrifying time when he fainted

any moment he might sweep me away down

feet long, the east

west 755.8, and the north 755.4. Even more impres-

hazards, as a friend, a certain Dr. Grant, found

in

tinued to surface throughout the twentieth century. British en-

to the

of the pyramid's

gineer David Davidson,

who began as a scornful agnostic and

twenty-five years later

became a

true believer,

managed

to

stonework. Using instruments that were accurate to a tenth

reconcile Petrie's findings with Smyth's through a complex set

of an inch, he reported that the errors in the edifice both in

of calculations that factored in the virtually invisible hollowing

and

length

in

of the pyramid's walls- which are in fact not completely

angles were so slight that a thumb would cover

Davidson

quarter inch of being perfectly straight for their 350-foot

length.

He compared

finest opticians'

a scale of acres."

The

quality

said, but

had not extended

original outer casing.

the joining of the casing stones to "the

work on

flat

but very slightly concave. Petrie had taken this into account,

them. The walls of the descending passageway were within a

began

vidson,

When

this

his

computations to the

was done, according

to

Da-

Smyth turned out to be right about the perimeter repre-

anteroom of the King's Cham-

senting the solaryear. In 1 924, Davidson the erstwhile doubter

ber, leading theyouthful surveyor tospeculate that the original

wound up publishing a dense, 568-page book that concluded

that the pyramid was "truth in structural form."

to deteriorate,

architect

however,

in the

had not finished the

job.

results of Petrie's labors, published in

The measurement school would continue

an 1883

The

cusations of

the pyramidologists. Petrie confirmed the pi relation-

ple,

between

the pyramid's height and perimeter.

its

length to

its

He

base was shorter than Smyth's, thus refuting the Scot's theory

number of days

Petrie also arrived at a different cubit

no evidence

to support

in

went on

little

to

an

fact

height 555 feet

feet

from the base. Gardner's so-called

this

is fifty-five feet

its

five

windows

inches,

are 500

monument foot yields

which when multiplied by the capstone

be coincidence? asks Gardner.

The pyramid's dimensions have not been the only subhowever. At the same time that Petrie and

which

ject of scrutiny,

illustrious

Davidson were counting

career in Egyptology, which eventually earned him a knight-

hood.

is its

square and

its

weight gives a number very close to the speed of light. Could

measure, and he found

Having located what he called "the ugly

base

but

a base of 56.5 feet,

a year.

Smyth's cherished pyramid inch.

killed the beautiful theory," Petrie

same criteria to America's Washington Monu-

ment. Not only, says Gardner,

periphery. But his figure for the pyramid's

that the base length reflected the

arouse ac-

has poked sly fun at the fiveness obsession of Joseph Seiss

by applying the

found that the King's Chamber also incorporated pi in the ratio

of

to

number juggling among the scientific establishment. The modern skeptical author Martin Gardner, for exam-

book entitled The Pyramids and Temples ofGizeh,

were both gratifying and mortifying for Smyth and
ship

good.

for

ous-and bothersome -British sightseers at bay, he sometimes went about his outdoor tasks clad only in vest and

And his data on the pyramid's dimensions remained the

looking to the skies.

63

cubits, other British scholars

In the late

nineteenth century,

were

Britis

The Cursed Treasures of Tui

Few treasures and no kingly remains

have been found in the pyramids But the

made by Egyptologist
Howard Carter has served as a remind-

discovery

er

and, perhaps, a warning

what could be
In

in

these

November of 922
1

of

monuments.
,

after fifteen

years of digging in the Valley of Kings

south of Cairo, Carter and his finanbacker, George

cial

Edward

Herbert,

broke through
the sealed entryway to a sunken tomb.
There they discovered a magnificent
fifth

earl of Carnarvon,

collection of vases, chariots, thrones,

and jewels.
familiarly

knew, was the

Pharaoh Tutankhamen,

This, they

resting place of

known as Tut.

Yet apprehension attended their

umph Rumor had

ics

tri-

that hieroglyph-

warned of vengeance on

cobra
ty

it

intruders.

the symbol of Egyptian royal-

- had devoured a canary belonging to

To some, the meaning was
A terrible punishment would befall

Carter.
clear:

who violated Tut's tomb.

Undaunted, the expeditioners

those

spent the next year excavating before

opening the chamber containing

Tut's sarcophagus. But Lord Carnarvon
did not live to see

it.

He had died of

blood poisoning months earlier

tim,

some

said, of a

the vie

pharaoh's curse.

As his assistants look on, archeologist

Howard Carter carefully opens a set

ofnested doors leading to the long-hidden
sarcophagus of Tutankhamen.

64

astronomer Richard Proctor pioneered the approach

mid studies

that

would come

Proctor's research findings

pleted, the Great

to

showed

that before

it

The

was com-

factor inherent in that shape,

seems

stood,

Roman

jects, plants,

known

had maintained.

British

astronomer argued that the perfect north-

twenty-six-degree angle, enabled the Egyptians to use them

mystery

ancient stargazers

Those stationed

and even people. This

idea,

on ob-

which came

to

be

manifestation occurred
itself,

the great

in

Its

1859, however, at the seat of

mountain of stone

at Giza.

phenom-

end of the passageway,

might have mapped the northern heavens.

in the

clearly under-

observations and experiments reported since the 1920s.

first

ena through the opening

something not

to exert a force that has peculiar effects

as pyramid power, derives primarily from a series of

south alignment of the interior passages, together with their

as the equivalent of a telescope. By sighting celestial

on the pyramid shape. According to some theorists, a

itself but

Pyramid might have been used as an astro-

nomical observatory, as both Arab historians and the

writer Proclus

flower in recent decades has focused not on the Great Pyramid

to pyra-

be called archeoastronomy.

Werner von Siemens, founder of the giant German

at the

electrical

company that bears his name, had stopped at Giza in that year

Pyramid's Grand Gallery he called

while shepherding a crew of engineers to the Red Sea, where

them "watchmen of the night" - could have charted the transit

they were to lay a telegraph cable. Ever curious and venture-

of the principal stars across an arc of about eighty degrees.

some, Siemens set out to scramble

When the passages were ultimately sealed off, however, these

mid; as he labored up the sides, the desert wind raised a pale

watchmen would have

mist of sand around him. Reaching the top, Siemens struck a

lost their

vantage points.

was

Egyptologists retorted that Egyptian science

victorious pose

not

that advanced, but Proctor's thesis received considerable sup-

port

when eminent

British

astronomer

Sir

J.

and jabbed a

to the

summit of the pyra-

finger into the

prickling sensation ran through his finger

Norman Lockyer

rang out. The effect

was

At that, a

similar to a mild electric shock.

who knew

published his book about pyramids and the stars, The Dawn of

air.

and a sharp noise

a thing or two about the infant

to be ignored.

Siemens,
science of electricity, decided to conduct a test. Wrap-

Discoverer of helium, a fellow of the Royal Society, and a

ping wet paper around a metal-necked wine bottle, he

Astronomy,

in 1894.

scholar knighted by

Lockyer was not a

Queen

man

Victoria for his accomplishments,

improvised a Leyden

Lockyer toured ancient Egyptian buildings and discovered

that they were oriented

toward the rising and setting of the sun

and certain major stars at particular times of theyear.

made

static electricity.

Later,

his head,

came

he

similar findings about the British megaliths at Stone-

jar,

a simple device for storing

When he held this contrivance above

Siemens was gratified

to discover that the bottle be-

when touched.
In itself, Siemens's electrical experience may not be parelectrically charged, generating sparks

henge. Livio Stecchini, an American professor of the history of

ticularly

science and an expert on ancient measurement, would later

others have noticed similar effects atop

contend that the Egyptians' meticulous astronomical obser-

But

vations enabled them to calculate the length of a degree

reported

of latitude and longitude to within a few hundred

feet,

Antoine Bovis. According to Bovis, he had been touring the

achievement that was not equaled

later, in

the eighteenth century

until

4,000 years

an

ad

pointed buildings.

more difficult to match the even stranger phenomenon

in

the early 1930s by a French ironmonger

Chamber

had died

in

about 1920

in

when he came

named

across the re-

that apparently

the pyramid. Curiously, the bodies

When he examined

twentieth century, contributing to an ever-increasing

The most intriguing-and frequently derided -notion

tall,

mains of several cats and other small animals

body of pyramid theory, pyramid speculation, and pyramid

lore.

is

King's

The quest to decode the pyramid would continue into the

late

it

noteworthy. Under certain atmospheric conditions,

had no odor.

them, Bovis found that the animals had

dehydrated and mummified despite the chamber's humidity.

Back home

to

65

in Nice, the

Frenchman determined

to learn

Viewedfrom a portal at a nearby

temple, the rays of the setting sun at
win ter solstice trace a perfect
outline of the head of the Sphinx evidence that the figure was related to
Egypt's worship of the sun.

about this oddity. After building a wooden

model of the pyramid, he oriented

less pain

result,

and quicker

G. Patrick

north and placed a recently deceased cat

inside.

The

patients' chair.

due

it

Flanagan of Glendale,
promoter of pyramid

California, a leading

The body mummified in a few days.

he said, was

healing.

Bovis repeated the experiment with other

power, claimed that a form of energy

dead animals as well as with meat and

dubbed biocosmic

eggs; in every case, he claimed, the organ-

shaped

ic

matter dried out and mummified

He described

objects.

"the very essence of the

in-

it

grandly as

force

life

itself.''

Flanagan's research subjects included

stead of decaying.

Even more mystifying was the next

falfa

al-

sprouts and his pet poodle: The

sprouts grew faster

Czech radio engineer Karl

revelation.

exists in pyramid-

Drbal, having heard of Bovis's experi-

and the dog,

ments, repeated them, using a cardboard

several weeks,

in

a model pyramid

one

after sleeping inside

became

for

a vegetarian. Like

mummify beef and flowers. He

Drbal, Flanagan decided to go into the

then placed a razor blade inside his six-

pyramid business, marketing both tents

pyramid

to

inch model, at a point a third of the

and energy

way

amazement, he
claimed that

in

said,

it

gize anything placed on them.

edge. To his

its

emerged sharper than

before.

The pyramid power idea did not

He

subsequent tests the pyramid shape regenerat-

ed blades so that they could be used as

scientists,

many as 200 times.

unknown

in the blades.

amusement

In May 1926, for examnamed Oskar jahnisch informed the Gillette

Razor Company that he had completed five years of

an

initially

skeptical

to Drbal in 1959 for the

called

(later plastic)

multiply.

to the

pyramid shape continued

In the

tailed

to

According to the pyramid power school of thought,

nia

suspended seventy-two

little

drive.

own, reporting with

out of our pyramid after 43

full

of sediment.

Toma-

brown paper

itself,

the

who and how and why that

for

more than two millennia.

mid-1980s, Egyptologists designed the

first

highly de-

map of the Giza plateau in an effort to learn more about

instruments that measure angles-and aerial photographs,

archeologist

Mark Lehner and

his

crew detected nearby quar-

and deduced a method by which the ancient builders

might have created the pyramid's amazingly level base.

calmer children,

ries

diminished menstrual cramps, sharpened mental acuity, im-

proved sleep, and an increased sex

came

the pyramid'sconstruction. Using sophisticated theodolites-

purchasing a vinyl pyramid tent and crawling

inside. Asserted therapeutic effects include

have perplexed travelers to Giza

people can enjoy the benign influences of pyramid energy

directly by

unable to sharpen razor blades."

about the Great Pyramid

pyramids he

Cheops Pyramid Razor Blade Sharpeners.

The forces attributed

Researchers continue to pursue the enduring questions

Czech patent office issued a patent

cardboard

We were

bags.

daily shaving with a single Gillette blade. But after a ten-year

delay,

"eggs

toes in pyramids fared no better than those in

a Viennese

Safety

that

days a smelly, runny yellow, and

achieved without mystic sharpening.

experiments

Cazeau and anthropologist

Stuart Scott conducted research of their

Others might

among most

Institute

Pyramid showed that food stored inside deterio-

rated normally. Geologist Charles

have observed that such single-blade marathons have been

ple,

fare well

however. Stanford Research

at the Great

Drbal speculated that this was produced by an

energy that affected the crystals

of several tiny

pyramids fused together, which he maintained would ener-

from the bottom (corresponding to the location of the King's

Chamber). Drbal expected the blade to lose

made

plates,

Trenches cut into the rock could have been

A dentist in Califor-

filled

with water;

wooden surveying stakes would then have been inserted

metal pyramids over his

66

into

Other visionaries have seen the pyramid as the missing

and marked against its naturally level surface.

Other theorists have sought to explain how the Egyp-

the water

tians could

have cut stone so precisely and hauled

French chemist Joseph Davidovits went a step

it

so

between recorded history and

link

far.

the

further, claim-

Atlantis,

Basing his conclusion on analysis of pyramid rock samples,

built the

Davidovits maintained that the huge blocks were cast, not cut.

their treasure.

Davidovits scenario, a puttylike substance

In the

on the

site

from available liquids and

was then poured

into a

mold and

under low heat

resembled granite. Davidovits produced such stones

until

those

same on

Pyramidologists

still

for

both their learning and

who were worthy would

made

tists

we

voice familiar, sweeping themes of

Hall's thesis

may be,

try to

make

presence;

of

it,

we cannot

it

us. William Fix,

ancient;

in the

the pyramid's se-

ignore the Great Fyramid's

haunts us and mocks

only the discovery of a secret room stands between twentieth-

him

it.

and the far-from-traditional pyramidologists. Whatever

Pyramid Odyssey, thinks he knows why:

lently waiting to "reclothe

certain that only

crets are elusive, despite the best efforts of traditional scien-

in his

the Giza sands.

the "Masters of the Mysteries,"

Hall

discover and understand

prophecy and revelation. Writer MaxToth has proclaimed that

century man and

an

P. Hall,

By concealing their wisdom in the pyramid,

However fanciful

it

laboratory, but he has not yet convinced archeologists that the

Egyptians did the

pyramid as a repository

suggested, the advanced Atlanteans

was formed

minerals. This mixture

fired

Manly

most gifted scientists in the highly developed civilization of

aware that disaster was imminent, fled to Egypt and

974 that they were chemists rather than stonemasons.

ing in

Atlantis.

enthusiastic student of ancient religions, has proposed that

who are si-

it

is

legendary;

great enterprise;

earth-and

vestments of truth."

it

it

is

it

is

"It is

sophisticated;

it

author of

enormous;
is

it

is

the result of

here for all to see at the crossroads of the

does not seem

to

belong to our world."

Seen from the Sphinx at the summer solstice, the

sun forms the hieroglyph for "horizon " a sun setting between two mountains
- between the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren.

y?">~

67

'"

.:'

'V

''

The Stone Sentinels

Every year on June 2

the date of

the summer solstice people come from all over the world to watch the
,

dazzling spectacle of sunrise over Stonehenge, a circular complex of

standing stones, or megaliths, on the Salisbury Plain in southwest

England. As the red disk climbs from the horizon, there comes a
moment when, to an observer at the center of the circle, the sun
seems to be suspended directly above the Heel Stone, a tall marker
positioned outside the circle. Not only is the sight a delight to the eye, it
is

an unfathomable mystery. The stones were emplaced thousands of

years ago by prehistoric builders and several serve to indicate where

on the horizon the sun and the moon will rise and set at special times
throughout the year. But why?
The mystery is intensified by the fact that Stonehenge is just
one of several hundred megalithic monuments some of which are
shown on pages 69-79 sited in Great Britain and Europe. Some
stand upright singly; others occur in groups of uprights and horizontals that

form

portals.

Still

others, like Stonehenge, stand in circles.

Archeologists agree that these structures were raised between

3500 and 1 000 B.C. Astronomers agree that many serve as accurate
celestial observatories. Psychics have testified to unearthly experiences in the presence of the stones; and so have many skeptics. Ageold local folklore has endowed the stones with mystic powers to move
of their own accord, to whisper, to impregnate the barren, to heal the
sick, and to hex the wicked. The reasons why are known only to the
spirits, good and evil, believed to reside within and around them.

The sun hangs over one of thirty-eight megaliths that

stand in a circle at Castlerigg in England. Legend says the stones are men petrified
by the gods; they also serve as astronomical markers.

f""

^"*%

'

The Druids' Altar points heavenwardfrom a stark

limestone upland in southwest Ireland. Megaliths such as this are portal
dolmens; many mark entrances to burial vaults.

JUU

Swinside Circle stands on a barren plain in northern England. The stones have sunk somewh

the centuries; legend says that

it is

the work of the devil,

who used

to visit nightly.

At Callanish

Circle in the

Outer Hebrides, a beneficent spirit is believed

to

make an appearan

,he

summer solstice. Couples used

to

come

to these stones to

make

their

marriage vows.

Ill

surround the stones; one says that a race of Irish giants carried the stones from Africa.

CHAPTER 3

The Meaning of ihe Megaliths

ounting the roof of an automobile

in the

Stonehenge parking

young

the

lot,

investigator gazed toward the circular cluster of massive upright stones that

loomed about 200 yards away. He had come

to the

famous spot

to

check

for

emanations of so-called earth energy, a mystical force venerated by many

people

who look beyond

traditional science for solutions to the mysteries that

surround the great stone monument.

The

visitor

had brought with him a wire antenna bent

into

an ankh, an

ancient Egyptian cross with a loop at the top. Grasping the two-foot-long wire

ankh by the
reported

loop, he pointed the other

later,

his arm, hurling

came

to,

regain

at the giant stones.

him

to the

its full

The

result,

he

ground and knocking him unconscious. When he

he found that his arm was paralyzed;

use. But the experience

The earth energy he had come

not to be

end

was both startling and painful: A burning jolt of power surged up

trifled

it

took

six

had proved something

to discover at

months

for

him

to

to his satisfaction:

Stonehenge was

real,

and

it

was

with.

Poised in isolated splendor on the

flat,

chalky grassland of England's

wind-swept Salisbury Plain some eighty miles west of London, Stonehenge has
intrigued investigators such as the

the research

ankh wielder for many centuries Despite all

and speculation, however, it isstill a conundrum. Even the builders

monument remain unknown:

of the

Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks,

Mayans, survivors of the

another planet, have
It

is

Efforts to

prove that they were variously

Romans, Druids, Danes, Buddhists, Hindus,

lost island

continent of Atlantis, or even visitors from

all failed.

estimated that as

many

as half of the site's original stones have

vanished, with nothing but indentations in the ground to show where they once

Many others lie toppled and broken. But asone writer observed 200 years
is as much of it undemolished as enables us sufficiently to recover
form when it was in its most perfect state. There is enough of every part to

stood.

ago, "There
its

preserve the idea of the whole."

The whole

is

monument

consisting of two concentric rings of upright

stones enclosing a pair of nested horseshoe-shaped stone forms. Completing

the

complex are several

solitary stones, including the fancifully

named

Altar

Stone, Slaughter Stone, and Hele Stone;

numerous

pits;

shallow circular boundary ditch; and a broad roadway that

breaches the ditch at its northeastern rim and connects Stone-

henge with the Avon

The feature
ette is a

that gives

about a mile and a half

Stonehenge

its

distinctive silhou-

and the outer horseshoe. The circle, about 00

1

diameter and sixteen feet

uprights capped by thirty lintels

stone overhead. Even

circle are the

five

taller

tall,

once consisted of thirty

forming an unbroken ring of

than the doorways of the outer

doorways that once made up the outer horse-

shoe. Called trilithons (from the Greek

stones"), they range
feet in height.

To

up

to nearly thirty

erect these massive

doorways, the builders somehow had

to hoist the huge slabs - weighing per-

haps as

much

as twelve tons

each-

above the pairs of uprights and then

to

distant.

group of tall stone so-called doorways, which describe

the outer circle

feet in

River,

words

for "three

hanging stones have not been

though

it

is

believed that the complex almost certainly once

served as a temple, one of many such ancient

great stones, or megaliths.

that the mortised

notches on the undersides of the capstones locked over the stone tenons

atop the uprights.

massive
gets

its

It is

lintels that

from these

Stonehenge

name, variously rendered

monuments

of

By far the greatest concentration of

megaliths some50,000inall isfoundin western Europeand

North Africa, primarily

in Britain, Ireland, Spain, Portugal,

France, Scandinavia, and Algeria.

These monuments display a wide variety of forms. The

simplest are

made of single,

solitary upright stones

known as

menhirs, Celtic for "longstones."Morecomplicatedaregroups

of menhirs, sometimes arranged in circles or semicircles, and

sometimes

in

vast enfilades stretching for

miles.

third type of megalithic

ment

is

the dolmen, a roofed, chamber-

like structure that

may be

monu-

freestanding

and above ground or enclosed within a

massive

mound

of earth.

Stonehenge

lower them into place with

enough precision

identified, so the exact pur-

poses of the place have never been firmly established al-

finds its place in the

second category of megalithic

monu-

is by no means the largmost ambitiously engineered of Britain's stoneworks and

ments. But

it

est or the

earthworks. Prehistoric Silbury

nearby Avebury, to mention

an

Hill in

just

one

Stanhengues, Stanenges, Stan-

imposing example,

heng, Stanhenge, and Stanhenges,

mound 30 feet high that is spread out

over five and a half acres. Yet among

from the Old English words for

"hanging stone."
Just as the builders of the

is

artificial

of them, none
more extensively

all

is

better

known,
more

studied, or

stones of wonderful size have been erected after the manner

subjected to flights of imagination and scientific speculation

than Stonehenge.

It

stands, as novelist Henry

"as lonely in history as

it

of doorways

James wrote,

and no one can conceive how such great

stoneshave been so raised aloft, or why they were built there."

does on the great plain."

Henry's remarks unleashed endless waves of specula-

Stonehenge isbuilt primarily ofbluestone, a typeofblue-tinted

dolerite,
ite.

Monmouth.

and sarsen, a variety of sandstone harder than gran-

The bluestones, of which there were eighty or more slabs

have been traced to a Welsh quarry about 30 miles

originally,

beginning with those of his contemporary Geoffrey of

tion,

136, Geoffrey

be.

In his History

of the Kings of Britain, written about

gave his version of how Stonehenge came to

According to

this

account, the Chorea Gigantum, or Dance

northwest of Salisbury Plain; the sarsen slabs were brought

of the Giants, as Geoffrey called the massive stone structure,

from the Marlborough Downs, about twenty miles north of the

was

Since wheeled vehicles were

site.

unknown

in Britain

of

fifty

tons-is

among

the

that has given rise to

more

Britons, led by Ambrosius,

An

owing

ish

in

evidenced

in the

site

is

Moved

that Stone-

in

monument's con-

varying choices of building

Unable

The doorways and

phase

in

in the first

four,

trilithons

about

IOObc

into decline,
ticed.

its

thereafter,

that graced a

at

lin

130,

his

just

in Ireland.

explained, "is a mystery, and

"For

in

these stones," Mer-

a healing virtue against

many

Africa.

Water

poured over the stones acquired healing properties, and the

giants treated their battle

wounds with

confections of herbs

mixed with the magical waters.

was rescued from oblivion by the

Ambrosius, eager to do as Merlin had suggested, put

who set about to tell

Uther at the head of an army of 5,000 Britons and dispatched

English clergyman Henry of Huntingdon,

countrymen

mountain

had carried the magical stones from distant

the

was extended.
Stonehenge seems to have gone

it

stonemasons capable of

ailments." According to Merlin, a vanished race of Irish giants

sacred ground untended and largely unno-

Then about ad

warriors.

to find carpenters or

emplace the Dance of the Giants, a grouping of great stones

cre,

of the

renowned for his prophetic powersand mystical

knowledge. Merlin advised him that if he wanted to mark the
graves of his paladins with an eternal monument, he should

phase of

were

and princes,

monument worthy

to raise a

Merlin, a sage

bluestones were reset and the roadway

Sometime

for his

building as fine a memorial as he desired, Ambrosius sent for

ma-

two rows of bluestones forming a crescent

phase three, and

and beheading the Saxon leader

to tears at the fate of his faithful earls

memory of such

00 b c Not one but a

monument consisted of a simple circular embankment enclosing a few wooden poles and upright slabs,
including the Heel Stone. The second phase was marked by

ated

in battle

Ambrosius determined

construction the

site.

army

Salisbury where the treacherous Hengist's victims lay buried.

Stonehenge. Archeologists believe that

the center of the

who had massacred some 460 unarmed Brit-

nobles gathered for a peace parley. After defeating Hen-

gist's

methods and also in the differing ultimate visions of

the erection of

and the Saxons under Hengist, a

crime, wrote Geoffrey, Ambrosius went to the monastery near

series of ancient peoples contributed to the

terials and

unknown,

built in at least four stages, stretching

across the centuries between 3 00 and

the

and the

from the

techniques. The best scientific guess

struction, as

is

in

archeological dating

to the scarcity of data

margin of error inherent

henge was

deeply hated foe

many conjectures.

exact chronology of the construction

ad

Geoffrey began his chronicle with a war between the

astonishing feats accomplished by Stonehenge's builders and

one

century

father of the legendary King Arthur.

moving these massive rocks some

them weighing as much as

fifth

days of Aurelius Ambrosius and his brother Uther Pendragon,

during

the time of Stonehenge's construction, the long-distance

transportation involved in

erected on Salisbury Plain in the

what an enigmatic place

it

was.

History of the English, Henry wrote of "Stanenges,

him to Ireland to fetch the miracle-working stones.

In his

When

Uther and his men reached their destination, they attacked the

where
82

Multipurpose

Complex

Of all the discarded theories advanced to explain the origins of Stonehenge, one of the most fanciful appeared in an article by one J. G. Gurdon
in the London Illustrated News of May
3, 922. Gurdon likened the site to a
combination Royal Exchange and
Epsom Downs: He thought it had served
a dual purpose as trading mart and
racetrack - all on sacred ground.
He held that the first arrivals at
1

Stonehenge, those
ring, built the

who erected

the inner

place as a temple. The

subsequent builders of the outer ring

were businessmen who viewed the
temple as a natural site for commerce.
"Prehistoric folk extended to their

temple," he wrote, "that respect which

is

now commonly paid to the law

courts.

They were as anxious

conflict

with their priests as the

ern merchant
yers."

is

to avoid

mod-

to steer clear of law-

Thus they felt obliged to barcoming to blows.

gain without

At

first

glance, Gurdon's explana-

Stonehenge seemed as sensible

as any other. It grew, however, mainly from Gurdon's imagination and
tion for

The rest of his theory, that Stonehenge had been a sports center, relied on even more fanciful reasoning. A
nearby earthwork consists of a
broad, straight track having a loop at

one end and

called the cursus

for "course."

Gurdon decided

Latin

that

it

could be nothing other than a race-

course

for chariots; the

cumbersome

loop enabled

chariots to turn around

overlooked some important facts. Although articles of gold and bronze found

and head back down the course. "Sport,

in

nearby barrows indicate that trading did take place, the objects date from

associated with religion and religious

about 200 years after the completion

of Stonehenge. Therefore the site must

True enough, but chariots did not appear

in Britain until 400 bc -and so Gur-

have had some other purpose that

don's theory goes the

antedated trade.

other into archeological limbo.

83

like trade,"

festivals

he wrote, "was intimately

among all

primitive people."

way of many an

stones with all manner ofdevices-but to no avail. Finally Merlin,

who had accompanied

powers

to

move

the

the expedition, used his magical

huge stones.

In the

words of Geoffrey of

Geoffrey's History of the Kings of Britain, Merlin

of the Giants

became

a popular subject for

lesser playwrights. In

one melodrama of the

Merlin "put together his own engines" with which

vanquishes his father, the

he easily moved the stones to the ships that subsequently

honor of his mortal mother

Monmouth,

transported them

After

Not

to England.

much

celebration and

ceremony on Salisbury

until the reign of

tigation of Stonehenge.

up the stones that had been carried away from

Ireland. Merlin did so, using the same magical

the

means to place the stones around the burial ground

the origin

in a circular configuration, just as the vanished giants had

arranged them long ago

in Ireland. In time, Geoffrey's narra-

summer

period, Merlin

and erects Stonehenge

King James

teenth century did medieval legend give

Plain, Geoffrey wrote, Ambrosius asked Merlin to

set

devil,

and the Dance

many of London's

in the early

in

seven-

way to serious inves-

James paid a visit to the great stones in

of 1620 and

was so

intrigued that he ordered a

formal architectural study to satisfy his royal curiosity about

and purpose of the mysterious

take this Stonehenge study, the

structure.

monarch chose

To under-

Inigo Jones,

the foremost architect of his day.

tive continued, the magical stone circle erected by Merlin's art

became

the burial site for both Aurelius

Jones had studied painting and architecture

and Uther.

Later chroniclers retold Geoffrey's story with variations,

and Merlin became firmly entrenched

By some
ard's
to

fly

in

Stonehenge

folklore.

accounts, the wiz-

magic caused the stones

through

the air all the

way

shows a classically symmetrical Stonehenge.

from Ireland

to Britain

In

Elizabethan times, nearly 500

years after the publication of

He believed,

wrongly, that Stonehenge had

been constructed by the Romans.

and was

royal commission, he visited the ancient monument, surveyed

the site,
This drawing by Inigo Jones, a
seven teen th -cen tury architect,

in Italy

well versed in classical principles of design. Obedient to the

and measured the individual

stones. Returning to

London, he searched his

identify

library of architectural writings to

anything with as

Stonehenge's builders. Jones dismissed out of hand

in

"much Art, order, and proportion" as existed

own conclusion: The rocks on Salisbury

were the ruins of a temple to the Roman sky-god Coelus,

Stonehenge. His

Geoffrey of Monmouth's story: "As for that ridiculous Fable,"

Plain

he wrote, "of Merlin's transporting the stones out of Ireland by

built

Magick, it'san idleconceit." He reviewed and rejected several

sometime during the periodic Roman invasion of Britain

that began about the start of the Christian era and ended in ad

other ideas about the origin of Stonehenge, including the pos-

410.

sibility that

may have had a hand in

Roman invasion, Jones averred, was

ancient Britons

Britain before the

only the

it.

all

the nations of the universe," he declared,

Romans could have

created such a marvel.

After Jones's death in 1652, his disciple

populated by "savage and barbarous people, knowing no use

knowledge

"Amongst

John

Webb

and son-in-law

edited the architect's notes on his Roman-origin

stately structures. " Like philosopher

theory into a volume entitled The Most Notable Antiquity of

Great Britain, Vulgarly Called Stone-Heng, on Salisbury Plain.

sumed

Restored. This book, the

at all of

garments

that

life

destitute of the

for prehistoric

"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish

to erect

Thomas Hobbes, he prehumans in the Isles had been

and short" -or,

in the

age) as the beasts

I

whose skins were their onlyrayment.

devoted exclusively to Stone-

henge, was a

words of

critical and popular failure. Most copies remained unsold and were destroyed in London's Great Fire

anotherseventeenth-century writer, "almost as salvage [sav-

3 degrees

first

of 1666, but

.2 or

suppose lesse salvage than the Americans."

it

did provoke dissenters to

come up

with argu-

ments of their own.

Such barbarians, Jones was sure, could not have pos-

One avid reader of Jones's book was Walter Charleton, a

sessed the esthetic and mathematical

learned scholar-physician

in the

court of King Charles

II

In the

course of extended correspondence with a Danish antiquar-

sophistication to build

ian,

Charleton had

become convinced

that

Stonehenge

repli-

cated the design of megalithic burial chambers found in Den-

mark.

In

a 1663 treatise entitled Chorea Gigantum, or the Most

Famous Antiquity o/Great-

85

Britain, Vulgarly Called

Plain,

STONE-HENG, Standing on

Salisbury

Restored to the DANES, Charleton sought to wrest credit

lous.

.vain" and Charleton's

Danes as practitioners of "Nec-

romancy, Sorcery, Perjury, Treachery, Cruelty and Tyranny:

for the stone monument from the Romans and deliver it to the

their professions Adultery, rape, rapine, robbery, piracy

Danish conquerors who had invaded England in Viking times.

sacrilege; their recreations homicide, filicide, fratricide, patri-

Stonehenge, the doctor wrote, had been "erected by the

Danes,

when

cide, matricide

they had this Nation in subjection; and princi-

These

and

and

regicide."

spirited

exchanges kept the antiquarian commuBut another more controversial -and

pally, if not wholly Design'd to be a Court Royal or place for the

nity engaged for a time

and Inauguration of their Kings." Charleton pointed

circular layout of Stonehenge as evidence
crownlike
to the
that it had been connected with coronation rituals and sug-

ultimately more durable - view was soon to emerge, shoulder-

Election

ing aside

all

previous contenders. Stonehenge, so the

theorists proposed,

was

new

a temple built by the Druids.

gested that the high stone lintels had provided lofty gathering
places for Danish electors. He even ventured the idea that Al-

had been able

fred the Great

to defeat the

Danes

in

ad 878

because the invaders had come to the battle weakened by

overindulgence

at celebrations that

were held

to

mark

the

Inaugurating what would

become

a long tradition of

bitter adversarial relationships

henge theorists, Charleton accused the late

among

Stone-

Inigo Jones of be-

ing seduced by his imagination to follow "a course highly dis-

ingenuous
Discredit.'

cation, in

'

scandalous

little

[deserving)

Shame and

Webb countered soon after with yet another publi-

which he attacked Charleton as "shallow

frivo-

made up

had swept westward from

the continent to populate Britain as long

ago as 2000 b c The

thatisknown about them-orabouttheCeltsin general-

comes

completion of Stonehenge.

sometimes

Druids were native Englishmen, or nearly so. They

the elite priestly class of Celts that

chiefly

from the writings of

their

Greek and Roman

contemporaries; the priests themselves seem to have had little

use for written language, perhaps fearing
special learning to

fall

into the

it

might allow

their

wrong hands.

What made the Druid connection to Stonehenge so controversial was the reputed bloodiness of their religious ceremonies.

How could men with such repugnant practices have

produced such a sublime work 9 Many of the

classical chron-

/ift*
Upright stones in alternating shapeslozenges and pillars - stand solemnly in the
great Avebury Circle. Scientists think the
stones are male andfemale symbols and that

Avebury was the site offertility rituals.

Cj73rj>ruul-

Sa.c.}-tft'&e

gf*&> vernal &fni>&AX

Four drawings by the eighteenth-century gentleman scholar Dr. William Stukeley depict the Druids celebrating theirfour seasonal festivals.
Stukeley believed the Druids had raised Britain 's megaliths, and his
theory was widely accepted until the twentieth century.

ing "consisting
sort of studies

more in contemplation than practice," not the

he considered "proper to inform the judgement

of an Architect. ... In a word, therefore

let

it

suffice,

Stone-

heng was no work of the Druids."

Forceful as they were, such arguments did not dissuade
a-=S

John Aubrey. A fellow of the Royal Society, Aubrey was an

\

'

author whose writings ranged across such diverse

1

fields

as

was born

in

biography, folklore, and antiquarian studies. He

1626 in the village of Easton Pierse, about

Stonehenge, and took a keen interest

cient stone

monuments

Britain. His studies of

in the

thirty

miles from

multitude of an-

bristling across the countryside of

Stonehenge

identified

an outer ring just

inside the earthen trench; the ring consisted of small, barely

man-made cavities that had previously gone unnoKnown ever since as the Aubrey Holes, these diggings

visible,

'v?

'Vf#.

ticed.

'

measure up to six feet in diameter and two to four feet in depth,

with

kC
_i_

flat

bottoms. They were

filled in

with rubble, including

charred bones that Aubrey took to be human.

His interest piqued, Aubrey examined Jones's analysis in

Stone-Heng Restored and concluded that the architect-author

iclers

present the Druids as a sinister fraternity, dedicated -as

had withheld data to frame "the monument to hisown hypoth-

Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus wrote -to "inhuman superstitions and barbarous rites. " Julius Caesar, who
the

wrote extensively on the Druids in his Gallic Wars, claimed that

made human sacrifices to their gods by constructing immense wicker cages in human form, "whose limbs, woven out
they

of twigs, they

fill

with living

men and set on fire, and

the

men

perish in a sheet of flame."

Diodorus Siculus, Caesar's contemporary, reflected a

similar view.
a

"kill

and

He wrote of Druid

man by

after his

rituals in

fall

priests

they foretell the future by the convulsions

of his limbs and the pouring of his blood."

ed further that

which the

a knife-stab in the region above his midriff,

when

Britons

were victorious

inhuman people were accustomed

to

'W.

And Tacitus reportin battle,

"This

shed the Blood of their

Prisoners on their Altars, and consult the

Gods over

the

reeking Bowels of Men."

Inigo Jones, in his cataloguing of peoples

have

built

who could not

Stonehenge, also took a swipe at the Celtic

priests:

"Concerning the Druids," he wrote, "certainly Stoneheng

could not be builded by them,

in regard,

find

no mention, they

were at any time either studious in architecture.

or skilful in

anything else conducing thereunto." Jones allowed that the

Druids
ius

may have been philosophers and astronomers, as Jul-

Caesar had mentioned, but those were branches of learn-

lllliif^^*^

Stuitlej AeUr (T*S-

'~7
l

^t>i-\ixt

J u^rlft'cSf

Once he

t/~rtu& ct.uuouia-L fitJuLneX.

stay away.

"It

laid

eyes on Stonehenge, Stukeley could not

pleases like a magical spell," he wrote. The spell

continued to work on him as he returned to the site repeatedly

during the early

On one occasion he and

720s.

a friend

brought a ladder with them, climbed one of the doorways and

strolled

about on top of the

henge from above. They

tege

enjoyed a smoke,
their jaunt

iPaii^

s
'

Not
v..

when

all

and

lintel,

surveying the rest of Stone-

later picnicked

left their

they climbed

on

their high perch,

pipes behind as

down

to return

mementos

of

home.

of Stukeley's visits to the ancient stones were

purely pleasure trips, however. He

was

also gathering

data for a Stonehenge book he planned to write. He took

exact measurements of the stones and their ground plan,

explored earthworks in the vicinity, and did

IsS^

-being

SP?

JJI

tally

some excavating

careful not to dig too near the stones lest he acciden-

cause them to topple.

Even before Stukeley began hisStonehenge research, he

and a group of friends had founded a

themselves to protecting Britain's

Ik
.

Roman archeological

heri-

tage against "time, Goths, and barbarians," and each of the

'wjj'pm"^U'.S-iu*e/i

social club they called

the Society of Roman Knights. The members grandly devoted

f ~

,'yi.^i

knights took a fanciful

ritrlj.

After casting about

name from

for a suitable

the

Roman

or Celtic past.

namesake, Stukeley

finally

picked a fabled French Druid high priest called Chyndonax.

esis,

which

is

much

differing

from the thing

itself."

Choosing that name was

Aubrey

his

first

step toward embracing the

thought no better of his friend Charleton's Danish theory,

nor of any other attribution that turned foreign invaders into

Stonehenge builders. Britain'sstone antiquities, Aubrey wrote

in a

-.

mm

counterargument entitled Monumenta Britannica, were so

widely distributed

in

Wf Just.

waves of invaders that they could only have been constructed

by native Britons Admitting that he was "gropeing into the

^H>'-

dark" to reach his conclusion, Aubrey said of Stonehenge and

other megalithic structures that there

was

in

were temples of the Druids."

Aubrey's cautious thesis remained unpublished

death

"clear evidence

these monuments were Pagan Temples" and a "probability

that these

at his

697. But twenty years later, the manuscript of Monu-

menta Britannica came

to the attention of William Stukeley, a

physician, an antiquarian,

Stukeley had

first

and an orthodox

Christian.

^B

become excited about megaliths when

"'

he toured several stone antiquities-but not Stonehenge-in

1710.

heathen temple of our Ancestors, perhaps in the Druids' time."

years

later,

to see Britain's

.-J

most famous megalith, nine

he had become thoroughly enchanted with Druid-

ism and with the lore of Stonehenge. He had even undertaken

to build a pair of precise replicas,
"its

*iiv

One site, he remarked cautiously, might have been "an

By the time he got

**

areas hardly touched by successive

present ruins" and

its

showing the structure in both

"pristine state."

89

fc^
.;>..

^rtj^****.

Druid identity in which he would ultimately submerge himself.

Druids as he imagined them. He produced only one further

By the time he finally published his Stonehenge book

volume on the subject, a study of the megaliths at nearby Ave-

in

740,

was just

Stukeley had given up his medical career to become a minister

bury, in

of the Church of England, and his secular interest

one part of a massive earth-and-stone sculpture laid out by the

in British

which he argued

that

its

great ring of stones

megaliths had been replaced by a sense of religious mission.

Druids across miles of countryside. By connecting megaliths

His book, entitled Stonehenge, a Temple Restored to the British

on a map the way one might connect

Druids, attempted to

fit

ry of the origin and progress

the sinuous shape of a serGold studs, beads, and other jewelry found in
a barrow by Sir Richard Colt Hoare look Mycenaean, which led Sir
Richard to believe that Greeks had erected Stonehenge.

of true religion, and of idola-

ley's theory, there

>

was an

and

the Church of England.

The

symbolism

to this

serpent sculpture a

lithic

"noble

monument

to

our

ancestors' piety."

Testament

linking the Old

cir-

He imputed profound

cle.

image, calling the mega-

unbroken religious tradition

patriarchs, the Druids,

pent passing through a

religious

According to Stuke-

try."

form constella-

tions, Stukeley discovered

the

author'sversionofDruidism
into "a chronological histo-

stars to

Apart from his Druid

speculations,

Druids, Stukeley proclaimed in his book, were

ley's

one of Stuke-

most enduring

contri-

ancestors of whom

butions to the study of

Stonehenge was his obser-

modern Anglicans could be

vation that the axis of the

proud. They were wise mys-

complex

spiritual

tics

and natural philos-

ophers

their inquires ... to

heights as should

and
It

human

to

"northeast, where abouts

the sun rises,

wink

when the days

are longest." Subsequent

observers have noted that

the megalith called the Heel

true that these an-

had practiced

Stone, which stands just

but Stuke-

outside the circles' en-

to explain

trance, aligns with the cen-

sacrifice,

was able

away

religion."
is

cient sages

ley

tures, pointed directly

such

sunshine of learn-

in the

by the physical orien-

tation of several key fea-

make our

moderns ashamed,
ing

fined

who had "advanced

structure, as de-

ter of

the embarrassing ex-

Stonehenge

to

mark

cess as "a most extraordi-

almost the exact spot on the

nary act of superstition,"

horizon where the sun rises

perhaps attributable

on the day of the summer

solstice. But Stukeley was

to a

misunderstanding of the

Old Testament story

in

which the Lord commands Abraham

henge,

in

the

alignments

Stukeley's reconstruction of Britain's religious past,

was nothing

less than "the metropolitan

first

to suggest that pre-

historic Britonsbuilt their megaliths withprecise astronomical

to sacrifice Isaac. Stone-

in

mind.

Church of the Chief

Monmouth's Merlin

neo-

Druid of Britain ... the locus consecratus where they met at

Like Geoffrey of

some

Druidism was absorbed into the body of Stonehenge mytholo-

great festivals of the year, as well as to perform the ex-

gy and repeated with embellishments by many other enthusi-

traordinary sacrifices and religious rites."

After finishing Stonehenge Restored to the Druids, Stuke-

asts of megalith lore. Architect John

ing other megaliths

and planning a multivolume

treatise

Wood, renowned as

principal designer of the eighteenth-century reconstruction of

ley continued to develop his theoriesofancient religion, study-

what he

story, Stukeley's

the city of Bath, studied Stonehenge at length, declaring it "the

on

great sanctuary of the archprophet of Britain. "

called the patriarchal Christianity practiced by the

90

Wood

con-

responded

to lunar cycles

and

that the stone encirclement

into the act

took the revivalist

founding
This

in

was

to

movement

Lockyer was as

to its logical extreme,

first

of

many neo-Druid

that

J.

the scientists

much an

and the romantics.

insider in the world of science

as the Druid revivalists of the

700s had been outsiders.

Along with hismany other accomplishments- which included

78 1 what he called the Ancient Order of Druids.

be only the

and demonstrated

common ground between

was none other than the temple to the moon-goddess Diana

Wood was succeeded by a Druidophile named Henry Hurle,

who

Norman Lockyer got

there was, in fact, much

the respected British astronomer Sir

eluded that the numbers and arrangements of the stones cor-

the founding of the prestigious scientific journal

sects that

Nature-

would choose Stonehenge as the site of initiation ceremonies

he had determined in the 1890s that the orientations of

and other

the Great Pyramid of Giza

religious observances.

The close of the eighteenth century saw no end

fascination with

A number of nineteenth-century investigators had

interests somewhat different from those of their predecessors,

Some
sites

them

in the

immediate

of the artifacts that

vicinity of

were unearthed

in

In

his

seven years after publishing these findings,

own country. Working with a friend, astronomer and

archeologist

F. C.

Penrose, Lockyer went

first

to Stone-

henge, then on to other megalithic sites to make the same

Stonehenge.

kinds of astronomical observations and calculations he had

made

these old burial

book

convinced Colt Hoare and his associates that the bar-

rows as well as Stonehenge had been raised before the

Roman

in Egypt. In 1906,

he published his conclusions

in

Stonehenge and Other British Stone Monuments

entitled

Astronomically Considered.

The volume could have been called, with a nod to Jones,

invasion of Britain.

Even Charles Darwin, the great

something of the

activity of

Charleton, and Stukeley, Stonehenge Restored to the Astrono-

theorist of biological

evolution, traveled to Stonehenge in his old age. His

to learn

mounds,

cavation of hundreds of ancient barrows, or earth

of

90

Lockyer turned his attention to the ancient megaliths of

prosperous baronet Sir Richard Colt Hoare, for

example, devoted himself to overseeing and financing the ex-

many

and

several important stars.

in

the area

however. The

struc-

tures correspond with the periodic positions of the sun

to the

Stonehenge and other ancient structures

and other ancient Egyptian

aim was

mers. In

earthworms by gauging

it,

Lockyer

made

the controversial claim that prehis-

"astronomer-priests" of the second and third

toric Britons,

millennia b c had been the architects of Britain's mysterious

how far the monument's fallen stones had settled into the soil.

his findings in

stone monuments. He further asserted that these ancients

The Formation of Vegetable Mould,

through the Action of Worms.

were easily the astronomical equals of their Egyptian contemporaries and that they had planned Stonehenge as a kind of

In

88

the year of his death,

a curious

book

Darwin published

entitled

astronomical calendar, with

While megalith scholars bristled at the destructive diggings of Colt Hoare and other diligent excavators, they saved
the bulk of their ire for

cial

the romantic enthusiasms of neo-

points in the cyclical

stars.

its

stones arranged to mark cru-

movements of the

The implications were

clear:

sun,

moon, and

Not only had ancient

Brit-

Druidism. Such links with magic and the occult inevitably led

ons mastered some astonishingly complex

to a scholarly backlash, particularly among the newly emerging breed of professional archeologists who sought to dissoci-

observation, calculation, and scientific record keeping, but

ate themselves from the

the past.

Druids

the Druids, inheritors of their science

legitimate occupants of

amateur gentlemen antiquarians of

By the end of the nineteenth century, support

among the scientific establishment had been

Lockyer was too

for the

replaced

to

Stonehenge

much

feats of long-term

and philosophy, were

after

all.

a giant in the field of astroi

be ignored altogether. But the majority of archeolo

with contempt; suggestions that the Celtic priests might be

attacked his conclusions and Druidism as well. His

connected with Stonehenge were dismissed out of hand. Then

ing theories found

91

pi<

no adherents, and decades would pass be-

This megalith in Cornwall was considered a healing stone;

were passed through the hole to be cured. The upright stone in the
distance is thought to have servedfor astronomical observations.

sick children

^.w*-<*iaf<3

smS?
:-^->..^-C

-.vv-r>'

'

tf&'

"*,

.-artiP"-

asswi. c

a*

.--

'

fcr-^fe*

fv

?'

Round barrows in

Wiltshire,

England, march in a line toward a

notch in the trees in the distance. Some ley students believe
that such alignments stand
above channels offorce that emit a
mysterious geophysical energy.

lith

ly

investigator continued to gather data that would eventual-

win over some of archeoastronomy's most stubborn

had

to recant his previous statements. "It

nonarchaeologists should understand

foes.

important that

is

how

disturbing to ar-

chaeologists are the implications of Thorn's work," Atkinson

wrote, "because [his opinions] do not fit the conceptual model

Scottish engineer Alexander Thorn, a professor at Oxford University until his retirement in 1961,

had been surveying an-

of the prehistory of Europe which has been current during the

cient stone structures since before

World War

whole of the present century." But

1973, however, did he

that time,

ain
to

make

his

first visit

11.

Not

until

he had published two books-MegalithicSites in Brit-

prevailing vision of prehistory; there

and Megalithic Lunar Observatories -in which he claimed

have

identified

nomical

an

intricate

the case Thorn

said,

than mere

moon, and

structures,

the front

stars.

He had also discovered many

sometimes miles

and rear

sights of a

rifle

to

up

make important

finally

this

The nearest of these Thorn

Probably the best

most famous of all

And

its

accep-

If

one previously scorned

nessman named

identified as a burial

the

was

from

Saxon word for "meadow" or "cleared strip of land" -that

Ihese
ways

western Europe constructed their separate monuments ac-

among

leys,

knew so well.
were man-made track-

crisscrossed the Welsh border countryside he

Thorn's theory held that megalith builders throughout

standards. Chief

Alfred Watkins. Watkins claimed to have

discovered a grid of straight lines he called them

an earthwork on a knoll nine miles to the northwest.

common

known of these alternative archeology

theories originated in the 1920s with a Herefordshire busi-

six different

mile southeast of Stonehenge; the farthest

cording to certain

at last, arrived.

theory could be vindicated with a virtual stroke of the pen, who

astro-

brought his surveying equipment to

astronomers could take bearings on

mound just a

abilities of the

many nonscientists who had developed their own ideas about

megaliths had been erected as a central rear sight from which

front sights.

that

could say that others could not be similarly redeemed'

Stonehenge, Thorn concluded that

prehistoric

astronomical

Stonehenge and other megaliths.

like

nomical observations.

When he

abandon

tance by the scientific establishment lent aid and comfort to

pairs of

apart, that could be lined

for the

Archeoastronomy had,

alignments between individual megaliths and the cycles of the

sun,

had made

to

was simply no denying

supposedly backward primeval Britons.

network of prehistoric astro-

He had found more, Thorn

sites.

face of Thorn's over-

whelming evidence, Atkinson was prepared

Stonehenge. By

to

in the

leys,

Watkins asserted,

that linked megaliths, burial

significant sites,

mounds, and other

some of which are positioned on hill-

tops as so-called initial points. Altogether the leys and

these

standards was a unit of measurement Thorn called the

points formed, in his poetic phrase, "a fairy chain,

mea-

stretched from mountain peak to mountain peak as far as the

"megalithic yard," a 2.72-foot length he calculated by

suring and comparing the diameters of
cles.

He also found these

numerous stone

early builders to be

eye could reach." He deduced that leys marked ancient trad-

cir-

knowledgeable

about geometry as well as astronomy: They had

laid

ers' tracks initially laid

many

an

early Christian churches

had been

understanding of Pythagorean geometric principles centuries

sumably because they were constructed

before the birth of the great Greek mathematician Pythagoras.

pagan

Scholars such as Atkinson,

who had lashed out at Lock-

ly British

when the Journal/or the History ofAstronomy pub-

lished Thorn's

Stonehenge findings

in 1975,

Trackways

( 1

leys, pre-

to replace previous

and The Old Straight Track

( 1

925)

interest in his ley theories, but

Watkins found his share of followers.

the engineer's carefully compiled data and confessed that he

on

his ideas in three books, including Ear-

922)

Mainstream science had no

Atkinson studied

built

sites of sanctity.

Watkins set forth

yer and Hawkins, might have been expected to savage Thorn

as well. But

but

subsequently abandoned and forgotten. And he found that

out their

structures in six regularly proportioned shapes, displaying

down between 4000 and 2000 b.c.

In the late 1920s,

these hardy believers banded together to form the Old Straight

94

/-:

Sri*

**'.
ssiiwatf*;

m*

Tracking the Earth's Energies

"It's

easy to

find literature

today dra-

matically claiming that megaliths pos-

sess energies and weird forces," says

Paul Devereux, a longtime student of the
prehistoric stone structures. "But

such speculation comes cheap and easy.

The real front-line research involves
more sweat than glory, more grind than
results What findings there are have
"
been hard won
of
no-nonsense
deterThat kind
mination has characterized Devereux's
attempts to unravel the secrets of the

hundreds of megaliths dotting the British

He and his co-workers
believe that standing stones such as
those at Stonehenge may act as conductors of an inexplicable force known
as earth energy, channeling it in
invisible streams that coincide with

countryside.

leys,

or alignments.

To study

this so-called earth energy,

Devereux in 1978 launched a twopronged assault involving both physical

and psychic research methods. The
project's physical program stressed the
utilization of the latest scientific tech-

nology, such as electronic

scanners that are designed
to detect minute traces
of all kinds of energy;
plans for the less ortho-

dox psychic probing included such techniques

as the use of dowsers to
locate streams of energy. Devereux called his
undertaking the Drag-

on

Project,

drawing the

name from an ancient

Chinese symbol
trial

currents.

for terres

As a

first

96

own initial visit to the stones,

he sur-

nonmegalithic sites

of a ritual Dragon Project volun-

project

teers - many of them recruited by

States

an advertisement in a journal called The

Ley Hunter- freely gave their time and
energy to the research project, undeterred by limited funds and even the
theft of some of their equipment "We
were," one of the project members noted
ruefully,

"a typically British, shoe-

England.

members

and

that in the United

Australia,

where Indians and

aborigines are involved with

landrights issues with their govern-

ments, uranium deposits had been

discovered under their sacred

A French writer added

sites.

that in France

the areas with the highest density of

megaliths very often correspond with

uranium-rich zones.

string affair."

From these

Nonetheless, their efforts produced

facts,

results almost immediately. Strange

have been able

energy readings were detected and recorded. Eerily, these readings usually

ic

began from eight to twenty minutes before sunrise and ended abruptly from
one to two hours after. Some of the energies were identified as ultrasound, a
tone beyond the normal range of human
hearing, as in a dog whistle
Geiger counters were used by Devereux and his co-workers to measure
radiation. Tests taken inside the circle of

stones showed that Rollright had

slightly higher

in

These findings reminded one of the

prised a group of occultists in the midst

counts of radiation than

some researchers

to infer that prehistor-

megalith builders may well have been

attracted-perhaps without knowing
it

to sites that are naturally radioactive.

But the most interesting of the

may be the one that involved

geomagnetism. A device known as a
magnetometer, which monitors the
earth's magnetic field, was used by
the Dragon Project. Devereux reported a
studies

showed a high magand rapid fluctuations of the

magnetic energy, seeming to confirm
the belief of several dowsers that megaparticular stone
netic field

liths

are often associated with geo-

magnetic

Paul Devereux, director of the Dragon

peculiarities.

Project, readies his

This discovery suggested to Dev-

Maen

ereux and his colleagues that at least

one folk belief long associated with
all

megaliths-that they have healing

properties -may be rooted in fact.

known,

ect researchers,

It

example, that throughout

the centuries, locals have come to the
stones in the hopes of mending broken
is

for

tals

appeared without a

speed up the healing process of

A
entire

trace.

Devereux

may have induced

Another of the Dragon Project

findings-one that engaged both the
physical and the psychic branches of

tected at the site

the research took place when, accord-

his co-workers, the various findings of

dowser found himcause marked fluctuations

a sensitive voltmeter simply by plac-

port the belief that the builders of the

self able to

ing his

mild hallucinations.
In

hand on

judgment of Devereux and

Dragon Project sup-

megaliths could sense changes

Perhaps strangest of all, Devereux

maintains that several Dragon Proj-

97

to

places of power.
to

"The stones have begun

some of their secrets," he

repeat the effect

in the

them

earth's energy fields that led

particularly energy-

Nondowsers, however, proved unable

the

the still-active
in

sensitive areas of one of the stones.

claim to have detected corkscrews of

energy around some megaliths (above).

and an

speculates that increased radiation de-

fractures.

ing to Devereux, a

Dowser Frank Connors uses angle rods

to testfor energy currents (left). Dowsers

the environs of Rollright Stones:

car, a large furry animal,

on

commonly use electromagnetism

bone

each acting indepen-

dently, reported inexplicable sightings in

gypsy caravan seemed to materialize

a road near the stones and then dis-

bones. Oddly enough, modern hospito

magnetometer at the

stone in Wales. Folklore says

that the stone regularly travels to a nearby
stream for a drink of water.
ilia

we are

still

in a

to reveal

says, "but

megalithic kindergarten.

We have much yet

to learn."

Track Club and to publish a magazine called The Ley Hunter.

For

all

his

apparent

originality,

Watkins was not alone

across Britain, and elsewhere on spaceship Earth, understood

and marked

in

had reported the alignment of ancient

the 1850s, William Pidgeon

mounds (page

man

sites: In

America

was

erected. Stonehenge,

studying in his

country the alignments of ancient churches with "holy

intersect, figures in

investigators

Later

was aware

leys.

German countryside. None of these

of the work of his contemporaries.

Andes

hills

and through

the rod.

in

the

in

Such an apparatus first was used

These alignments can extend

underground streams occurred along

up to twenty miles, although

Project

under certain an-

America, and parts of

to the puzzle is the fact that

early Spanish colonial churches stand

tion

many

effort,

local

groups of mega-

perhaps,

is

the

headed by journalist Paul Devereux (pages

Some

woman who told Morrison that the lines

Adding

in Britain,

The most notable such

ment and found them to be amazingly straight. But the original

purpose of such precision remains a mystery: The only clue
Indian

for investigating leys

leys

around standing stones and between

976, British writer-explorer Tony Morrison surveyed

"spirit paths. "

to a

under megaliths. Over recent decades,

number of master dowsers

liths.

were

downward

Europe have concentrated on dowsing energy manifestations

shorter.

these Bolivian lines with special infrared measuring equip-

came from an

believed to dip

is

930s by French dowsers, who claimed that crossings of

cient sites, particularly

In

water wells. The rod, held before

to site

known as taki'is, a word understood by local

Aymaran Indians to mean "straight lines of holy places."
for

the

is

branch

water source; the greater the volume, the stronger the pull on

western Bolivia

most are considerably

fundamental tool

which diviners traditionally use to sense under-

dowser as he walks,

the

lines in

concept are the lines

ley researchers, a

ground streams and

a valley for up to six miles.

to the ley

leys

grid.

rod, a forked rod usually fashioned from the

of a living tree,

on the desert that pass without deviation

Even more closely linked

where two of the most prominent

such theories as a focal point of energies,

mysterious power

many

For

dowsing

that also are similar to Watkins's

The most famous of these are the Nazca

Peru, tracks

over

tied into a

researchers would discover systems of straight

lines in the

of wisdom and cos-

as a sort of storage battery or sending-and-receiving station

hills,"

and Wilhelm Teudt was investigating what he called "holy

lines" knifing across the

men

it

Simultaneous with Watkins's work, Ger-

122).

times by

terious earth energy that was known to the megalith builders,

who somehow stored or harnessed in the great stones they

in

had noted alignments of Indian

regional planner Dr. Josef Heinsch

in prehistoric

mic consciousness. " According to this view, leys carry a mys-

his discovery of leylike tracks. Various earlier antiquarians

ley hunters

Dragon

96-97).

have been struck by the high correla-

between megalithic sites and reported UFO sightings, ar-

guing that places such as Stonehenge

may have been built as

a siting

earth markers and landing places for extraterrestrial visitors.

coincidence matching that reported by Watkins in Britain. The

John Michell, one of the more extravagant proponents of this

following year, Morrison used infrared photography to find

theory, has

straight lines, or ceques, radiating out

the

Sun

in

on these

lines,

gone so

far

as to propose that Stonehenge

was

intended to represent the shape of an ancient extraterrestrial

from the Inca Temple of

Cuzco, Peru.

vehicle

whose highly advanced occupants seemed godlike to

Age Britons. The monument, he contends, is "a pat-

the Stone

Although Watkins's Old Straight Trackers Club had faded

tern of the sacred disc, built to attract this object for which

from view around the time of World War

felt

II,

interest in the leys

man

such a yearning. " Developing his theory in a book entitled

when seen from

revived markedly in the 1960s, spurred by Thorn's findings

The Flying Saucer

and the resulting upswing in the fortunes of archeoastronomy.

above, Stonehenge's form "exactly reflects the conventional

One

image of the

ley enthusiast

went beyond Watkins's

original theory to

Vision, Michell

flying saucer.

says that

There

is

the well defined outer

rim consisting of a low bank and ditch. Inside this are the

declare that leys are "a striking network of lines of subtle force

98

Aubrey holes

flying saucers.

just like the portholes so often reported in

In the

center is the perfect stone circle of the

raised cabin, enclosing the horseshoe-shaped trilithon con-

which appears above the surrounding rim

struction

like

dome or cockpit. The smaller bluestones stand inside the cirthrough its openings.

cle and are visible

.It

seems likely that

these stones which were brought from Wales were originally

set

up elsewhere

to

mark places of contact between men and

gods and that they were taken

gods themselves inside

UFO

Stonehenge

to represent the

commonly

reported in the

February 1 954, a photographer

vi-

at the site

who had been

taking

on developing his film

every shot showed "a column of light" -alleged to be

sort of mysterious aircraft - mounting

UFO

sky. In 1968, a

that

some

from the stones into the

investigator reported seeing at Stone-

henge a flying object that at some point "blacked out entirely,

'

then turned into a ring of fire that seemed to shoot from the
stones; as observers tried to approach
into the skies. In

ported moving
henge, with

their vehicle."

sightings have been

Stonehenge; several have been claimed

cinity of
itself. In

to

pictures of Stonehenge discovered

it,

the craft soared away

October 1977, a squadron of UFOs was

in rapidly

re-

changing formation over Stone-

some of the supposed spacecraft dematerializing

as observers watched. This strange heavenly activity was said

to

have interfered with the operation of magnetic compasses

and a portable

television set,

and a searchlight turned on the

Spiral carvings adorn a stone outside a tomb in

Some archeologists believe Newgrange was a temple to the sun
the spirals represent its rebirth at the winter solstice.

Newgrange, Ireland.

and

'

*%r<i'

^mmfi

ms&:.

**M

f^mr*

&%&
.,_

%m***
.,*?-'-:-

'jfK^miStlt!

T&&

*&[

Modem

Druids celebrate the

100

summer solstice

at Stonehenge.

No

evidence links the original Druid

'

e,

but their self-styled descendants

still

gather ritually to mark the changing of the seasons.

101

UFOs was rendered useless by some

caused

it

to fade out before

inexplicable force that

could illuminate the

it

Still

Stonehenge has been argued imaginatively and

ob-

flying

jects. Observers did, however, succeed in capturing this multi-

ple

UFO sighting with a movie camera, and a

was

broadcast later that year

on

film

the

of the event

to

visitors

be found

in the

Cyr. Cyr maintains that the

patterns of atmospheric halos, which, he

sound change

cient Salisbury Plain

into "a

were somehow capped by a canopy of ice

crystals that refract the sun's rays to

many

including

of twenty-two degrees and of forty-six de-

when Stonehenge was designed.

woman

cise

an ancient Egyptian head-

left

what they had heard near

the visitors with the sense that they had wit-

nessed "some sort of struggle between good and

daily basis

A semicircle with a pre-

22 degree radius (dictated by the behavior of ice-crystal

refraction at this angle)

would

stones and their

Cyr links these halos with the posi-

tion, height,

evil."

form atmospheric halos,

Such halos, Cyr contends, were "seen on a

wards." Shortly thereafter they saw a vision of a yellow-clad

the stones,

prehistoric

why." According to his complex analysis, the skies over an-

grees.

dress. This apparition, together with

minds of our

ancestors and deduce what they were thinking about and

if a giant Catherine wheel [pinwheel] had gone spinning up-

like

by

activity is

strange whirring noise" that "shot heavenwards as

wearing what looked

at length

answers are

who told of hearing a

"strange clicking sound from the stones." As they

fled in fear, they heard the

American Donald

says, allow us to " 'X-ray' the very

British television.

even stranger than reports of UFO

Perhaps
the story of a group of

another means of discovering the essential truths of

lintels."

just

fit

over the four Sarcen

notching, and curvatures of each of the stones in

relation to the yearly progression of the sun.

This incident might be seen as a manifestation of yet

another phenomenon claimed to occur at megalithic sites: the

presence of psychic emissions, or so-called

number of people who claim

that

make

to

be

Such things as atmospheric halos may sound outlandish-but

memory fields. A

gifted with psychic

powers

so, once, did

events of ancient times and

who practice an arcane art called

psychometry have investigated the

sites to see

pick up visions of the original inhabitants.

if

have seen

priests with yellow robes

'
'

And
will

ceeded by others

in

itself in

power

metrists,

itself

has not been

ground

for the

cameras already

But

it

is

public.

and mystics

alike

have

for centuries to

unlock the
to the

to explain Stonein to

sup-

in use.

possible that Stonehenge's mysteries will never

entirely yield to

human inquiry, that some questions about the

and purposes are destined to remain unanswered. Perhaps, after all, the definitive word on Stone-

monument's

mother-of-pearl, opales-

fertile

just as certain that scientists

interest, striving as they

frared

cent and tinged with an inner colouring of rose." Apparently,

Stonehenge

is

same

the

plement the laser beams, Geiger counters, computers, and in-

the center of a stone circle

fiery

it

henge, and advanced technologies will be brought

"horrible things."

Cumbria, England. The energy appeared vividly as "a veri-

table pillar of living

someday win

however, that Stonehenge will

many extraordinary ones already proposed

Another psychometrist has reported seeing cosmic energy earthing or grounding

certain,

monument's many secrets. New theories will be added

power to under-

on the place and were suc-

who carried out

is

continue to study the megaliths on Salisbury Plain with

keen

the

stand the sun and the moon. The psychic also sensed that the
priests eventually lost their hold

It

go on capturing the imagination of the general

Ire-

moving

among the stones. "They draw power from these stones,

psychic explained, adding that they used the

scientific approval.

psychic,

after experiencing the "thoughtforms" of a stone circle in

land, reported to

theories about Stonehenge will not

they could

One such

archeoastronomy. And no one can predict with

absolute certainty that leys or other alternative archeology

them able to discern the afterimages of certain

origin

henge was given by the seventeenth-century naval

psycho-

though they will no doubt continue to probe for mem-

and

diarist

and noted

ory fields in the area.

102

Samuel Pepys.
in his diary:

In

official

668, Pepys visited the stones

"God knows what

their

use was!"

Along

flu:

Leys

surprisingly high

number

of super-

on or near leys - those remarkable alignments of prehistoric barrows, dolmens, stone circles, pagan altars, and medieval churches. Some visitors to these sites have
visions of historic figures reenacting the deeds they performed in life.
natural experiences are said to occur

Others say they feel the physical presence of a strange force that they
cannot see or identify but that lifts them from the ground, strikes
them, shoves them about, or suffuses them with inexplicable moods.
No one seems to be able to explain the reasons for these things but
statisticians, engineers, dowsers, UFO enthusiasts, psychics, and astroarcheologists have

all

had a hand

in trying.

researchers believe that leys are located along channels of

geophysical power. They suspect that ancient people sensed a pul-

Some

sating energy coursing through the earth

at sites

where the energy was

strongest.

and

built their

Some

monuments

investigators believe

that the intersections of leys form so-called nodes, which they say are
the points where the energy is particularly strong and able to set

phenomena.
Explanations remain elusive, but many psychic episodes have
been reported to have occurred on the leys. Some of them are recounted on the following pages.
off psychic

A Phantom
Army al Loe Bar

Late one afternoon

in

August 1936, a sixteen-year-old named Stephen Jenkins was exploring on Loe Bar, a
stretch of the Cornish coast near where King
Arthur is said to have met his death. As Jenkins gazed about, he

was astonished

to see

a host of medieval warriors in chain mail ap-

Some wore

pear before him.

cloaks of red,

others white, and others black; their horses

were caparisoned to match. One soldier in

the center stood, hands on his sword, staring
at the spot where Jenkins stood. Eager to
have a closer look, Jenkins stepped forward,
but as he did, the army vanished as suddenly
as it had appeared.
That single experience was incredible
enough. But when Jenkins returned to the

same

spot thirty-eight years

with a

map

side, the
it

in his

hands and

later, this

time

his wife at his

same vision reappeared exactly as

had before

and vanished

just as

then. Equally incredibly, his wife

same vision,

just

it

saw

had
the

as clearly.

Jenkins's explanation

is

that the ghostly

warriors may haunt the Cornish countryside

and be made visible by psychic energy emanating from the nodes, or intersections, of
the leys nearby. Loe Bar
that runs from

is

located in a line

Landewednack Church up

through Breage Church and to a junction

with two other leys at

Townshend (below).

m HNS

,*

nji

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1'

J's**

>

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,

:*

-i

V.

,'

^.i-jf

Leviiaflonaf

fliiincionbun Ring
'Aft

It

'

Chanctonbury Ring,
an ancient earthwork circle crowned by a
ring of beech trees, stands on a hilltop on
the south coast of England. Once it was
an Anglo-Saxon fort-thus, presumably, the
scene of fierce battles.

%.

S -J

:<

**.

*f

stands at a nodal

one going west past

earthworks at Rackham

intersection of five leys,

several tumuli to

Banks, another going north to Nun's Well,

and three going east to Poynings Church,

Devil's Dyke, and Kingston Church (below).

On the night of August 25, 1974, a man

named William

Lincoln went to the site with

of them drawn by tales of

any number of eerie occurrences there.
At about
p.m., as they entered the
three friends,

all

shadows of the ring of trees, Lincoln got

more than he bargained for. Without warning, his companions later reported, he was
snatched by an unseen force and

'

lifted five

he was suspended horizontally for thirty seconds or more before dropping back to the ground. Neither he nor his
friends saw anything that could account for
feet into the air;

- but they got a memento of

One of Lincoln's companions,

his levitation

the occasion

who had the presence of mind to take a tape

recorder with him,

came away with

a tape

on which Lincoln can be heard to shriek:

"No more! No more!" in a plea to let him go.

Nun's Well
"Scdgewick
Castle

jvj

Knepp Castle

Buncton Church

##
e

'-

|
ft

L,

?
ft

^Poynings Church

<?

J;

|
S3

^m,

m*

"i

#%
S*

'

var

,v

^^^

l'

:&-:-

^^%:&

Sm

J /
!

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>

W
'

An Encounter
on ihe Road to
Chilcomb

Joyce Bowles, an
employeeofthe Winchester Railway Station,
was driving with her neighbor Ted Pratt to
the nearby village of Chilcomb on a Sunday
night in November 976 to fetch her son Stephen. Suddenly, her car shook violently and
careened onto the grass by the roadside. The
headlights went out and the engine stopped.
She and her passenger looked out the win1

dow, and both saw a cigar-shaped craft of

glowing orange hovering above the road.
Through its windows, they could see three
heads lined up like passengers in a bus.
Presently, one of the figures emerged from
the craft and approached the car. He had
piercing pink eyes without pupils or irises

and was dressed in a silver jumpsuit. "He

peered through the window at the dashboard controls," Joyce Bowles recalled. At
that, the dead engine flared into life and the
headlights went back on. "Then he and the
cigar simply vanished," she said.

Some ley fanciers maintain that the lines

hum with special terrestrial energies that attract unidentified aliens

from space. What-

ever the case, two alignments of ancient

burial

mounds that begin

at

Old Winchester

do indeed converge on Chilcomb Road

(below), near the spot where Joyce Bowles
and Ted Pratt said they experienced their
Hill

peculiar encounter.

Danebury Long Barrow

"*

.,

tumulus
**C

Woodbury Ring

Chilcomb Road ufo Landing

tumulus

Site

# &

Old Winchester

Hill

SMsSsSgv

"''.
.

CHAPTER 4

on (he Earth

Pictures

tanding on the Nazca plateau

southern Peru one blazing afternoon

in

two Americans surveyed what seemed

to

94

be an immense, mystifying scratch

pad of miles-long markings Across the desert, hundreds of pale

every direction, crisscrossing each other in a chaotic tapestry.

known

in

lines ran in

Some of the lines,

to the locals as Inca roa'ds, radiated from a central point like

wheel

spokes or star bursts Others connected with elongated triangles and trapezoids that looked startlingly like airport runways (page 129).

Kosok and

Historian Paul

had come

his wife, Rose,

cient irrigation systems. But the bizarre

markings

in

the

to Peru to study an-

Nazca desert (some-

times spelled Nasca), had inexorably drawn their attention. They decided to
follow one of the wider lines in their truck;

plateau and stopped

in

it

them up the steep

led

the midst of a widespread

web

side of a

of markings radiating

from a central point on the plateau.

"We found

not only

many more

huge rectangles or trapezoids.

one of the rectangles and close

huge, peculiar pebble and
"Finally, with

dirt

lines,"

wrote Kosok

later,

"but also two

Most amazing of all, we found adjacent

to the original center, the faint

drawing over 150

to

remains of a

feet long.

our minds whirling with endless questions about these

we returned to the center of radiation to view an

impressive sunset. Just as we were watching the sun go down behind the horizon, we suddenly noticed that was setting almost exactly over the end of one
of the long single lines! A moment later we recalled that was June 22, the day
strange and fantastic remains,

it

it

of the winter solstice in the Southern

and the day when the sun sets

realized at

once

that

we had

Or had they? Kosok,

called

Nazca

lines

farthest north of due west. With a great

in this flash of inspiration,

J.

Norman

earlier in the century (page 9 1

thrill

we

apparently found the key to the riddle."

formed a giant guide

notion derived from Sir

place as only one

Hemisphere- the shortest day in the year

).

to the

concluded that the so-

movement

of the

heavens-a

Lockyer's studies of Britain's Stonehenge

Yet Kosok's theory was soon disputed, taking

among many

its

hotly debated ideas about the origins of the

enigmatic Peruvian drawings. As word spread of the puzzle

at

Nazca, visiting

archeologists found the riddle to be further complicated by the discovery of

enormous animal

figures carved

owl-man presiding over

turing

on the desert

floor

and on adjoining

of figures, including eighteen birds, rang-

hill

wasp-waisted spider, a stylized hummingbird, a curiously pas

sides: a

The giant drawings seemed

ing from twenty-seven to

the landscape.

to carry a

between the western slope of the Andes and the

Peruvian coast, where a fortuitous mix of geology and climate conspired

Although the symbols on the Nazca

lection of

most spectacular

to create

col-

them

in

mystery are similar

gies-of snakes,

birds, or

an

ideal

medium

for

Nazca's earth

blackboard are

formed by the enigmatic sculptings of the ancient

And

in the

in

mound

southwestern region of Eng-

knowledge of the
By

far the

effigies' original

little

or

is

that

many

at

tion,

why

they were built and

who was

in-

tended to view them has confounded archeologists

and other investigators

ground

level; this

thermal buffer

is

expose the paler

them within months. But

one of the

driest regions

on

two

years.

Wind erosion

Nazca's ageless tableau

it

is

still

is

layer of air

formed by the dark-colored

which absorb solar energy and radiate

have compared

riddle

is

of rain every

ground: Only from above do they begin

on recognizable form. The

to

also minimal, thanks to a hot,

rocks,

of

Nazca

purpose.

of them

made by scraping away a

earth, averaging only about a half inch

no

cannot be seen in their entirety from the

to take

obliterate

most puzzling aspect of these

giant earthworks

more than scratches

anotherclimate, erosion would

soil. In

which were carefully tended and maintained well into the mod-

who had

the surface,

little

few inches of rocks

builders of the

land, there are hillside silhouettes of humans and horses, their origins lost in

ern era by local villagers

a thin layer of

sphere. The lines on this so-called natural

effi-

on the mesas of the American Southwest and

prehistory,

is

volcanic rocks and pebbles blackened from long exposure to the atmo-

humans-found

middle and southern United States.

artists.

Overlying the desert's base of yellow sand and clay

geoglyphics or earth draw-

ingsin the world, they are not unique.

Joining

They are scattered over approxi-

feet long.

mately 500 square miles of an arid plateau

mes-

sage whose meaning had been lost in time.

desert form the

more than 450

it

as heat. Devoid of vegeta-

so stark and otherworldly that observers

to the surface of Mars.

Paul Kosok, in his brief tour around the area, be-

came convinced

that the lines

might be part of

an observatory for keeping track of celestial

for years.

events. This would have allowed the ancient

Of all the world's geoglyphics, none has attracted more attention or stirred more controversy

-than those at Nazca. Since Kosok's day, archeologists have

lines,

some

mapped thousands

stretching for five miles,

of the

and dozens

desert dwellers to calculate

ers

when

the riv-

would flow again, replenish'n

them to plant

aquifers and enabling

crops. But

Kosok had

tigations short

to cut his

and return

Nazca

to his teachi

she was a witch. Once, after walking

Long Island University in New York. Before leaving, though,

he passed the mantle of chief detective on to a German-born

in circles for days,

acquaintance, Maria Reiche.

suddenly realized that she

local inhabitants feared

at

Kosok could not have chosen

cated disciple. Born

in

more

himself a

for

gantic

dedi-

stylized

tellectual

and her

excelling at

athletic abilities.

mathematics and swimming

at

Hamburg

was

ologists

Univer-

artifacts

determined young woman.

homeland

In

932, she

that

seem

she had

saw an advertisement in a

pire

translating scientific papers in the capital city of Lima.

ical

strange geoglyphics Reiche,

would spend the

lines. "I just slid into it,"

tion "I

who was

rest of her

thirty-six

life

she once said

in

near Nazca

in

1945 to devote

to

when

was

It

known

of these early, coastal Peruvians,

and

that they built

c.

to

most from the Nazca culture-approxia d 540 litter the Nazca plateau. These

fragments-and the mysterious lines-are

virtually the only

legacy of the inhabitants of that desert.

a mathematician, Reiche was intrigued by the pos-

years old at

As

on the mystery of the

sibility that

explaining her voca-

ric

the

Nazcas may have

principles in the design

relied

markings. She found that the straightness of the

to a

town

lines,

and

of her time to the lines,

gullies

many

of which run for

many

miles over

wooden posts and using

as a guide; keeping three posts always in a line of sight

it

assured that the overall line remained straight.

and

While straight lines would have been relatively simple to

milk. At the time of the solstices,

rise

before

hills

without ever veering from true, was probably

achieved by stringing a cord between

A vegetarian and an ascetic, she lived in the desert

weeks on end, sleeping on a camp cot and subsisting

woman would

on geomet-

and construction of their

for

fruit,

who

pyramids and cre-

detail.

the wiry, bespectacled

Nazca

appears that they lived by farming, employing a sophis-

mately 300 b

which she set about photographing and charting in exhaustive

on bread, cheese,

the

have had a complex society long before the Inca Em-

colorful ceramics,

to study the

moved from Lima

all

confirmed her suspicions;

found near the lines date to the era

have'always been very, very curious."

Giving up her job, Reiche

their similarity to the fig-

ated brilliant pottery and textiles. Thousands of shards of

met Kosok, who, impressed by her mathemat-

and astronomical knowledge, challenged her

the time,

It

to visit the site

ticated irrigation system,

Hamburg newspaper for a job as governess for a wealthy German family living in Peru, and she jumped at the chance. By
the end of the decade, she was working as a teacher and
there that she

who began

Little is

The rise of the Nazi party convinced Reiche

to leave her

Uncovering more of the huge,

Indian culture dominated the desert.

and she had become an exceptionally independent and

sity,

later.

animal symbols, she noted

ures on the pottery and textiles of the Nazca Indians. Arche-

raised in a strict household that encouraged both her in-

By the 1920s, Reiche

was standing on the tail of a gidown on the pampa and

figure. "I just sat

laughed," she recalled

903 in the picturesque city of Dresden,

Maria Reiche was the daughter of a judge. Myopic and shy, she

was

monkey

sweeping clear a spiraling path, Reiche

execute, the curved lines characteristic of the animal figures

dawn and
rise

were much more complicated. Reiche decided that the curves

over the markings. Her observations supported those of Ko-

and

were actually a series of linked arcs, each representing a small

section of the circumference of a different circle. Each arc

equinoxes,

could have been created by securing one end of a cord and

walk into the solitude of the plateau

sok:

A number of

sunset at the

to

watch the sun

lines pointed to the place of sunrise

summer

solstice

and spring and

fall

as well as to spots on the horizon marking the seasonal ap-

sweeping the other end across the ground

pearance of major

Reiche claimed to have found the centers of

stars.

Reiche took a broom to the desert and methodically

circles in the

cleared the lines of debris Indeed, she wore out such a quantity of

brooms, purchased from a nearby town,

that at

first

disturbed.
cles

the

112

like a

compass.

some

of these

form of small areas where the rocks had been

She proposed,

too, that the radii of the various cir-

were part of a mathematical code

that, if

deciphered,

Steadied by two assistants,

Maria Reiche surveys the vast
Nazca designs traced in the
Peruvian desert. The teacher
spent more than four decades mapping and analyzing
the ancient figures.

would reveal a key

to the

movement of the stars and planets.

Reiche's investigations also revealed that the Nazcas

worked out their designs in advance on smaller plots about six

She found evidence of these

feet square.

side several of the larger figures.

Once

tablished the proper relationship

among

sketch pads be-

dirt

the designers had esarcs, center points,

and radii for a figure on the small preliminary drawing, they

could then plot them on the larger scale.
Finally

by carefully comparing proportions between fig-

ures and their components, Reiche determined that the designers used several units of measure.

divided evenly into

The drawings could be

Nazcan "feet" of about

"yards" measuring about four and a half

that

ten inches

feet.

and

Another unit

appears with some regularity includes one just under six

When she measured a giant trident-shaped

known as the Candelabra, located on a hillside at

feet (5.95 feet).

geoglyphic
Pisco Bay

some 130 miles north

of Nazca, she found

it

to be,

suggestively, 595 feet long. Scholars continue to debate the

origins of this spectacular drawing.

Reiche's
its

life

revolved around the changeless desert and

people. Over time, the wispy figure in the simple cotton

and rubber thong sandals became a Peruvian hero: The town of Nazca celebrates her birthday and
has named a school and a street in her honor. She has also
dress, alpaca socks,

gained international recognition for her single-minded study

The "very, very curious" woman was still at it well

o( las tineas.
into the

1980s-a

frail,

half-blind octogenarian obsessed with

the secrets of the ancient Nazcas.

Despite her exhaustive work, Maria Reiche did not win universal

acceptance

for her theories

struction of the lines.

about the purpose and con-

Some observers,

feeling that there

must

be more to the mysterious drawings than astronomy, pro-

posed more exotic solutions. One such theorist was a former

Swiss hotelier and fledgling author named Erich von Daniken.

Born

was an

in

inveterate individualist

stern father
raised.

113

Zofingen, Switzerland,

in

1935,

von Danik

who revolted early age

and the Roman Catholic Church

in

which

Astronomy, archeology, and the study oft

The Candelabra of the Andes is

etched in toamoun tainside
overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Not much is known of the

595-foot-long figure; various
have called it a symbol
of the Trinity, a depiction of
the tree of life, and a signpost
for ancient astronauts.

theorists

flying objects

appealed to him

more than

far

earthly mission

did the subjects

taught in school.

and returning home, von Daniken would ex-

Gods from Outer Space, a sequel

plain in

to Chariots of the

who had observed these beings at

showed itself in other ways as well.

At the age of nineteen, von Daniken was convicted of stealing

work and been tremendously impressed by them, longed pas-

from a camp where he worked as ayouth leader. Shortly after-

sionately for the return of these 'gods.'

ward, he became apprenticed to an innkeeper but soon

and when

Gods

His rebellious nature

workaday existence

this

his restless,
his

romantic spirit.

involvement

with him; he
to a

for Egypt, a

finally

The animal

caught up

in

figures

came

Von Daniken had hoped

von Daniken took a job as

it

his

life

was. After rejection by a

Gods 7 was

a hotel in Davos, Switzerland, where he

soon worked his way up to manager. With

for

years

'

as the Nazcas gradually forgot

later,

freedom after the humdrum

After his release, the energetic

a cook and waiter

They waited

wish was not fulfilled, they began to make new

the true purpose of the markings.

term.

jail

their

on the plain, just as they had seen the gods' make them

was convicted for embezzlement and sentenced

nine-month

order, he

lines

When he returned to Switzerland,

an alleged jewelry scam

in

fled

country better suited to

"the pre-lnca tribes,

seemingly in

finally

bestseller as

life

of hotel

dozen

accepted, and

soon as

it

hit

book would be a

his

management -and so

publishers, Chariots of the

it

became an

international

the stores in 1968. That year

have been the best and worst of von Daniken's

began traveling around the world to gather evidence

ticket to

life.

may

The newly

developing theories about the origins of enigmas such

celebrated author became - for the second time - a convicted

as the Great Pyramid of Cheops and the geoglyphics at Nazca.

embezzler, sentenced to a year in prison for cheating his hotel

for his

Back

out of $130,000 to finance his research junkets.

Switzerland, he tended to his guests during the day,

in

Not surprisingly, most scientists dismissed von Dani-

then toiled long into the night on the manuscript that would

become

his

In this

first

ken's dramatic thesis out of hand. In the view of his detractors,

book, Chariots of the Gods?

von Daniken's notion

extraordinary and controversial work, von Dani-

ken proposed that the Nazca

lines

were intended as runways

for alien spaceships. Extraterrestrial astronauts, the

that the lines resulted

extraterrestrials simply failed to jibe with

hard to believe," wrote scholar

author

E. C.

from a

visit

by

common sense. "It is

Krupp, "that visiting

ancient world. Visiting

over thousands of years,

spacemen who must have the technological capacity to travel

hundreds of light-years to earth, would require either landing

they profoundly

destiny by interbreeding

strips or gigantic navigational

declared, landed at

Nazca as well as

many times
influenced human

at other locations in the

markers once they arrived."

sandy

with our remote ancestors, imparting to them the genes for

And

superior intelligence. Furthermore, the extraterrestrials

unsuitable for the landing of heavy aircraft. "I'm afraid the

their calling cards in

carvings

in

Mayan

ous metal column

toric cultures in

claims,

such diverse forms as the Nazca

left

spacemen would have gotten

lines,

and the cave drawings of prehis-

Russia and China. As further evidence for his

von Daniken

cited visitation

myths from ancient

Daniken proposed,

Von Daniken's scenario

pair of

runways

truth,

for

Nazca

in print.
rial

called for

for their spacecraft. After

stuck," she said.

critics

and some of the most illogical reasoning ever to appear

'

von

flying saucers.

intelligences" landing there in the distant past

soil is

stream of false and misleading information, a sprinkling of

reli-

gions as well as various references from the Bible, including

the prophet Ezekiel's vision of "wheels offire" -in reality,

soft,

were no gentler with von Daniken himself,

describing him as an intellectual con man whose work was
characterized by "a dearth of supporting data, an endless
The

temples, the pyramids of Egypt, a mysteriin India,

as Maria Reiche pointed out, Nazca's

"unknown

'

The author, who has admitted that some of the mate-

was mistaken

or not

meant

critics.

Other writers

sit

making the miracles!"

completing their
114

at

be taken seriously, replied

who has really frightened the

home and wait for miracles. 'I'm

cheerfully, "I'm the only author

and building a

to

Author Erich von Ddniken claims that this

Mexican sarcophagus lid commemorates an alien visitor. Experts
say the relief depicts a Mayan nobleman 's death.

meant

Regardless of whether he
is

guilty or innocent, or

what-

be seen from the

air

and could thus have been

di-

to

ever his degree of integrity as a

rected only to ancient astro-

writer, there is no question that

nauts-was

von Daniken was able

to reach a vast audience of people

enthusiastically believe

yond the

human

limits of conventional

ence. His books

who

when an American

archeology or traditional

drew praise from a

large

and

boyish, tousle-haired

sci-

Florida

fanatically loyal

at lines

approaching 34 million copies. Von Daniken's

central thesis-that the lines

Woodman,

of 1973. At the age of

forty, the

businessman had already founded

Air

and become a member of the Miami-based Interna-

tional Explorers Society

of the Gods ? von Daniken 's works boasted international

total sales

fall

when he decided to take a closer look

trips. Woodman was flabbergasted by the "colossal puzzle" he saw below him when he

readership: Less than a decade after the publication of Chariots

reader, airline executive Jim

visited the area in the

history contains secrets be-

put to the test

on the Nazca desert were

he had glimpsed on earlier

flew in a small airplane over the

116

Nazca

desert. Later, as

he

turned the riddle of the lines over in his mind, the conclusion

the Nazcas' as possible. For the balloon's envelope, or air bag,

grew on him -just as it had on von Daniken - that the creators

he chose a modern cotton fabric whose weave and weight

of this

panorama must have intended

Woodman

However,

air

were intended
cided, they

for the

The

be viewed from the

were nearly identical

to

tions of

be seen by the Nazcas

that built

into place

fledgling balloonist Bill Spohrer, offhandedly

perhaps the Nazcas flew

when a friend,

who

could

count of a Brazilian
1

in

Lisbon.

Bartolomeu de Gusmao,

important part of Gusmao's story

was born and

raised in Brazil

was

his

to let in

Peru-Bolivia border.
the

Nazcas

who

feet high

By

maiden

and blazoned with designs based on

flight.

which included

in

Woodman and

his

British ballooning

team of

for its
thirty,

champion Julian

Nott as copilot and seventy-two-year-old Maria Reiche as an

observer, assembled on the Nazca desert and

perspective, the

background: He

and could well have been

end of November 975, Co/ido/7-eighty-eight

scenes from the Nazca desert -was ready

also discovered the suggestive ac-

From Woodman's

bottom

firm

tetra-

reeds harvested along the shores of Lake Titicaca, high on the

709 supposedly flew a model hot-air balloon before the Por-

tuguese court

at the

form of a

Woodman

had several legends about characters

priest,

in the

smoke. The banana-shaped gondola was woven from totora

in lighter-than-air craft.

Woodman

fly.

The South Dakota

pottery.

suggested that

lighted him. For instance, the Incas, successors to the

hills,

and

Condor I stitched the envelope

evidence. The information he uncovered surprised and de-

Peruvian

textiles

his interpretation of flight

hedron -an inverted pyramid open

seized this improbable notion and began to collect supporting

in the

samples from Nazca burial

Gusmao's balloon and on

images on Nazca

how'
fell

to cloth

shrouds. For the shape of the envelope, he relied on descrip-

eyes of extraterrestrials. Instead, he de-

piece of the puzzle

first

to

dismissed any idea that the lines

were probably meant

themselves. But

it

First,

the balloonists built a burn

pit to

went

to work.

generate the hot

smoke needed for lift-off. The pit included a fire hole filled with

in-

wood and connected by

spired by accounts of Indian balloons brought back by explor-

a twenty-five-foot covered trench

South American frontier. Furthermore, Woodman

to a

smoke

claimed that images of flight-including symbols resembling

was

secured. Next, the envelope had to be "cured'' to ren-

ers from the

balloons or kites and soaring, birdlike

men decorate many

The more he thought about

that the

and regularly floated

it,

its weave airtight. To accomplish this, Woodman's crew

pumped smoke into the envelope over several days until the
tiny gaps in the weave were plugged with soot
The balloon fully cured, Woodman was ready at last to

more convinced

the

Nazcas knew the secret of flight

aloft in balloons.

He came

over which the mouth of Condor I's envelope

der

pieces of Nazca pottery and textiles.

Woodman became

pit,

to believe that

fulfill

his

dream.

In their

decidedly non-Nazca

flight

uniforms

the Indians staged religious ceremonies associated with their

of crash helmets

and Navy coveralls, he and copilot Nott

balloon flights on the so-called runways and launched the

boarded Condor I

at 5:30 in the

balloons with

smoke created

in

nearby burn

pits,

remnants of

were

which survive as groupings of charred-looking rocks within

the lines. Filled with excitement,

slipped,

climbed

Woodman set out toprove his

morning. The mooring lines

and with astonishing speed the two aeronauts

silently into the

dawn sky.

Within seconds they

float-

ed to nearly 400 feet above the desert

daring thesis through a kind of experimental archeology: He

"The sun had just cleared the mountains," wrote Wood-

decided to build his own Nazca-style hot-air balloon and actu-

man later, "and now flooded the fantastic scene below

As we hung there drifting slightly to the northwest was as-

ally

fly

in

it.

Only one name

for the

balloon would do - it would

be called Condor 1, after the giant soaring bird of the Andes.

tonished to see a long Nasca runway perhaps 300 yards

Woodman knew that for the sake of credibility he would

have

to build

Condor I with materials and methods as close

our starboard side

The great plains ran

to the

off

horizon and

several ancient lines stood out clearly in the morning sun

to

117

The hot-air balloon Condor I drops its

ballast and soars over the Nazca lines. Busi-

nessman Jim Woodman, inspired by images on Nazcan pottery, built the craft with
reproductions of ancient Peruvian materials to show that Nazcans could haveflown
above their markings.

Surely,

men who created these lines had to have

control theory, scholar William Isbell asserted that the act of

this- with the shadows of dawn etching their

constructing the lines, by employing a large labor force,

thought, the

seen them

like

served as a check on the Nazca population and prevented

magnificent art."
After three minutes, the balloon

began descending as

When

the craft reached the

the air in the envelope cooled.

from outgrowing

And

ground and the two crewmen hopped from the gondola, the

has

suddenly lightened Condor I shot into the

ued

tude of

,200 feet

and

sinking to the desert for the second and

for a total

air

again to an

final time.

It

livia,

prove his point that the Nazcas could

to

indeed have taken to the sky

in

want of evidence, none of these proposals

Nazca

religious

populations

Wood-

still

it

resource-poor environment.

detectives.

to surface in the 1970s

known

the

had flown

of fourteen minutes- long enough, as far as

man was concerned,

alti-

sailed several miles before gradually

yet, for

satisfied the

its

New explanations contin-

and 1980s. Several were based on

customs of both the Incas and the Indian

populating the Andean altiplano

in Peru,

Bo-

and Chile. For instance, U.S. scholar Johan Reinhard sug-

gested in

985 that the

lines

and

figures

were linked

to a

form

of mountain worship. According to this theory, the Nazcas

a hot-air balloon.

associated the distant Andes with rain and fertility-a reason-

The theories of Woodman, von Daniken, and Reiche notwith-

able assumption, since the intermittent rivers that flowed onto

standing, Nazca remains an enigma. Each solution to the

came from the mountains. A number of the drawNazca including a cormorant, a frog, a duck, and a
killer whale-are of water animals and are associated with
rain or fertility in Andean culture today.
the desert

mystery seemed to raise more questions. Woodman's experi-

ment with Condor I demonstrated

that the

ings at

Nazcas had the

materials for building hot-air balloons: But in the absence of

hard evidence, his theory that they actually flew

in

them was

Several investigators, including British explorer and

writer Tony Morrison, University of Illinois anthropologist

fascinating speculation at best.

Tom

Kosok's theory that Nazca was a giant observatory also

Zuidema, and Colgate University anthropologists Anthony

Hawkins vis-

Aveni and Gary Urton, see an intriguing parallel between the

plotted the lines in order to analyze,

spokelike lines emanating from "ray centers" and similar mo-

has been

criticized. In

ited the desert,

968, astronomer Gerald

where he

Andean Indians today

by computer, their relationship with various heavenly bodies.

tifs

Hawkins had applied the same technique

follow the Inca tradition of walking along lines, or ceques,

in

1963 to deduce

to Stonehenge (page 92). The astronomer picked out ninety-three linear features and ran a program

an astronomical key

to

and the

match between the

ing,"

lines

surprisingly,

no

and

is

for

races, or for laying out threads for weaving.

In

each Nazca kinship

its

more extensive

own

ray center

sets accorded to

other theories, the ceques proposal stops

in their

seem almost to resist

some

of them in places

hardly less obscure than the Peruvian desert.

for foot

some 3,000 miles to the north of Nazca, Co!<

Army Air Service wa:
open-cockpit World War biplane 5,000 feet over

sculptor pro-

In

what might be thought of as a

923,

Phillips

birth

of the United States

1

119

final

mystery are the myriad oth-

er such figures that pepper the globe,

posed that the animal figures might be prescient examples of

modern minimalist art.

many

answers. Equally stubborn

choreography, or as tracks

authorities,

short of proof; the Nazca drawings

random."

The Nazca desert's inscrutability did nothing to stem the

were used

set of lines, with the

Like so

flow of imaginative theories. Researchers have suggested that

the lines

some

groups higher up on the social scale.

significant overall

and the sky: "Astronomically speak-

he wrote, "the system

for various spiritual as well as practical

group or extended family might have had

forty-five brightest stars in the sky. After

Hawkins found,

other areas of the Andes.

purposes. According to

tracking the correlations for each century from 5000 b.c to the
present,

in

such as those at Nazca

match them with positions of the sun, moon, the Pleiades

star cluster,

found

Desert. Near the small

to

glance

what
from

down

town of Blythe, California, he happened

at the arid landscape. "I

saw," he said

later.

far

man and

figures of a

mountain

lion

ve's creator god;

could hardly believe

Sprawled across the desert,

were the gigantic

civilization,

to be a

spirit.

it

imbued with great power from the Moja-

was placed

weaken

there to

the giant's

A less dramatic theory suggests that the giant is a kind of

graphic "no trespassing" sign placed by Hopi Indians to keep

intruders out of their territory

long-tailed animal.

decades to come, prompting scientists and other investigators

Many of the animal figures seem to have retained a spiritual significance to the desert dwellers. A 80-foot-long rattle-

to take a closer look at the little-known southwestern desert.

snake with basalt eyes, according

There, along the arid lower valley of the Colorado River, they

has powers of good or evil that can be passed on to humans A

have discovered some 275 geoglyphics, obscure symbols, and

figure

Reports of the so-called Blythe Giant continued

bizarre, childlike

in the

near Yuma, Arizona,

unknown

drawings of humans and animals. The Moja-

to the

is

to

Mojave medicine men,

clearly that of a horse,

an animal

southwestern Indians before the coming of

covered with

Europeans. Archeologists believe that the Indians created the

rocks varnished to a dark sheen by the sun; apparently the

image sometime after Spanish explorers rode through the area

in 540 and that they subsequently used the desert drawing as

ve's surface, like that of the

Nazca

desert,

is

used the same rock-removal technique as the

Mojave

artists

Nazcas

to create their enigmatic

a ceremonial meeting place Another figure, not discovered

messages.

Most of these desert markings have been discovered

since the

until July 1984, is a startlingly

pilot

970s, thanks to the tireless efforts of California ar-

named

Harry Casey. By plane and

foot,

pieces of glittering quartz and

they have

bestow magic powers on

reconnoitered thousands of square miles of the blistering

ground that early Spanish explorers called

"land of the dead. " The collaborators' goal

tierra del

to

is

lutely addictive,"

learn, the

muerto,

"It's

to

some

abso-

markers.

know."
created for mystic

They date the oldest of the

most recent of them

known

may have been

astronomical

A rock alignment along the Gila River in Ari-

summer solstice. Another, known as the Black Point Dance

Circle, may have been designed as a map of the sun, moon,

figures to

purposes by

and Milky Way. Knowledge of the heavens could have given

Indians a calendar with which to plan their farming and irriga-

more than 5,000

3000

b c

and the

to the late eighteenth century a d

primitive configurations,

of the drawings

zona, for example, points precisely to the sunrise at

the Indians who have inhabited the desert for

years.

Nazca, the Mojave figures ap-

parently served a variety of purposes, and at least

Von Werlhof and his fellow archeologists believe the figures found on the Mojave were

to

Like

Casey has said of his quest. "The more you

more you want

may have been designed

real fishermen.

their counterparts at

catalogue and

describe every desert marking in this vast region.

fisher-

man who appears to be dancing on water while aiming a

spear at two fish. The tip of the spear is made of hundreds of

cheologist Jay von Werlhof and his collaborator, a local farmer

and

animated rendering of a

More

tion-vital information in a

difficult

environment

as rock alignments-twist-

ing lines of boulders set side by side in abstract patterns- may

Whatever the purpose of their elaborately drawn geoglyphics,

be as much as 0,000 years

the Indians of the

The investigators

old.

offer several interpretations of the

weird tableau at Blythe, whose age

between 200 and

is

Nazca and Mojave deserts were blessed with

ideal natural blackboards upon which to scratch out their de-

signs The natives of the temperate forests of the Ameri

variously estimated at

Midwest and South were not so fortunate, but they

,000 years. According to legends passed

aged

down by the Mojave Indians, the manlike form represents an

evil giant who terrorized their ancestors. The animal figure,
which seems to float upside down over the man's head, is said

to

mark

still

the landscape with impressive animal

Like their desert counterparts, these images can best be ap-

preciated from the

121

air;

unlike the others, however, they are

also easily visible from the ground, rising from the earth in

America, and he claimed to have a detailed knowledge of

great sculptured masses.

Indian cultures on both continents. In the

Pioneers entering the Ohio valley in the

780s were per-

plexed by the presence of large and obviously

man-made

830s, he settled at a

place called Fort Ancient, overlooking Ohio's

er

The

fort

was

actually a large

Little

Miami

Riv-

mound-another of what

Pidgeon regarded as the "stupendous and wonderful" rem-

mounds. They were even more amazed to discover that some

were in the shape of animals-the most spectacular example

nants of a lost civilization.

In a

quest to learn more about

being a sinuous, quarter-mile-long serpent writhing along the

these remarkable earthworks, the trader built a small boat

top of a ridge near the modern-day town of Peebles, Ohio

and

mounds were also found throughout the Mississippi valley and in other regions of the eastern United States. A further

west of the Great Lakes.

Effigy

surprise

was in store along the shores of the Mississippi

where explorers found, near the present-day

site

1840 along the network of streams and lakes

was astonished by what he

He

found. The

woods

were populated with menageries of animal

River,

of East

set out in

gies -earth

St.

mounds

in the

shape of panthers,

on a ridge

effiliz-

Iowa, what

Louis, Illinois, a huge, truncated pile of earth resembling the

ards, turtles, falcons, and,

base of an Egyptian pyramid.

appeared to be an entire family of bears marching in

Awed by
effort

it

the size of the earthworks

must have taken

to construct

speculated about their builders.

tors of the simple

It

and mindful of the

single

a medicine

seemed unlikely that ancesthe region

mounds were products of some vanished,

man

old

him

no-

theme, the mounds must have been constructed by descen-

clared,

tures.

the Old Testament.

ments erected by shepherds from

Or

else they

India,

lost

river,

vowing never again

point, sticking with the prevalent notion that the

by a race of giants, or

could only have been built by

Pidgeon

the North

may have been

some

many amateurs in the

budding science of American archeology. One of the most
colorful of these enthusiasts was William Pidgeon, an itinerant

De-coo-dah's explanation that serpent

trader

and

gigantic snake at Peebles, Ohio,

ter.

in fact

his Indian

in

some

of

effigies

such as the

were astronomical in charac-

mentor explained, when "the worshippers

of reptiles were reduced by the fortunes of war, and compelled

collector of Indian artifacts. Thin, bespectacled,

and severe-looking, Pidgeon was

As

mark

however. For example, he accepted

his other calculations,

effigies attracted

mounds

"superior" race.

closer to the

American continent.

The mysterious

to des-

ecrate the places of his red brethren. But he ignored the main

were monu-

somehow wandered onto

and afforded them the leisure to build the earth sculp"The face of the earth is the red man's book," he de-

throwing his trowel into the

by Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Phoenicians, or Danes who in

the distant past had

On one point he was abundantly clear: When

was inhabited by his early ancestors, game was

"and those mounds and embankments are some of his

letters." Pidgeon said he impressed the medicine man by

continent of Atlantis, or by the lost tribes of Israel that were

in

this eccentric

took Pidgeon under his wing and began instructing

the country
plentiful

mentioned

immediately warmed to

in tribal lore

whose civilization had been destroyed by invading

tribes in the same way that Rome was laid waste by barbarians. Therefore, according to the numerous variations on this

ble race

dants of the survivors of the Flood, or by migrants from the

man who

met De-coo-dah,

paleface with his insatiable curiosity about Indian ways. The

could have built such imposing structures. Instead, observers

agreed that the

At the trading settlement of Prairie La Crosse on the

upper Mississippi, Pidgeon later reported, he

them, the white settlers

woodland Indians who inhabited

file.

in

a classic nineteenth-

to

recognize the sun, moon, and heavenly bodies as the

century romantic, devoted to discovering the lost secretsof the

only objects worthy of adoration, they secretly entombed

noble races he believed had once inhabited the Americas. His

their

passion for archeology took him throughout North and South

the heavenly bodies."

122

gods

in the

earth-work symbols which represented

Not

concede

until the late

that the

nineteenth century did people

mound

builders

and the

mounds, but we do not know why. Some 50 years

finally

living Indians

were

coo-dah

same race. In the 1880s, a government ethnologist

named Cyrus Thomas surveyed more than 2,000 Indian sites
across the eastern and midwestem United States. His thorough fieldwork, backed by exhaustive archival research,

and constellations,

of the

produced the

first

and physical examination of more than 4,000

ers could

no longer be

sity

mound

after a

mound

site in

Ohio, the

Adena

Named

was centered

culture,

events.

Cowan of Kansas UniverMound may follow a

The traditional image of a lunar eclipse in Asia,

The evidence

The turns

intriguing:

is

snake's body correspond to the stars

in the

snake's tail spirals in the same clockwise direction as the

in

Cowan links other effigies of birds and bears to the Big Dipper
But such theories are guesswork. Time and change have

mound

silenced the

builders forever. However, their spirits

incident took place at Ohio's Great Serpent

effigies

and

built

fortlike structures that

so

still

Sociologist
state

ed,

achievements were best represented by Cahokia, a major pre-

the

home

of the strange pyramid that had

plorers. Mississippian society

was by

St.

amazed

far the

Louis and

crossed what

is

left

most elaborate

felt

and his

left

behind more

driving through the

mound he had first visited as

the serpent's head that

felt

wondering why the

hill

for their sculpture.

an overwhelming sense of dread - "the

most abject, hopeless terror have ever experienced.

1

the hair rising

I

knew that although was completely alone, was

I

watch as the leaves below him,

of death and

one by one and then

first

destruction in their wake; within a generation of their pas-

small groups, gathered themselves up and began to

sage, the region's Indian population had been decimated by

ward him up the

smallpox and other diseases. Their culture then faded away.

crept unnaturally toward him, rising

central mystery remains:

on the nape of my neck; could neither move

not really alone." Frozen with fear, Harner said he could only

the southeastern
trail

to see the

He stood alone on

Then, suddenly, he

nor speak.

who

on a whim,

builders had chosen that inconvenient

early ex-

the arrival of whites in the person of Hernando de Soto

United States in 1539. The Spaniards

was

Robert W. Harner

windless day, he recalled later,

coldest,

conquistadors,

that these cultures

Mound, which

one warm November afternoon when he decid-

a child.

and structured of the three cultures and its edifices the largest.
The Mississippians were unfortunate enough to witness

now

some people

literally hair-raising

than their massive monuments.

last

Columbian metropolis at the present site of East

remain. In 1975, a curious and

suggests to

other early archeologists.

and greatest of the mound-building cultures

was the Mississippian, which began about a d 600 and dominated aboriginal society for the next thousand years. Its
The

criteria,

and the Northern Cross.

may

most of the great earth

Little

best

traders, the Hopewells and

amazed Pidgeon and

same

Dipper's rotation around Polaris. Using the

and a d 550

immediate successors

in the

handle, while the

about the same period as the Nazcas. Skilled artisans and

their

for

200.

which overlapped and eventually

replaced the Adena, flourished between 200 b

In-

has noted that Ohio's Great Serpent

the North Star.

builders into three

culture

have no better explanation.

example, is a snake swallowing an egg the very act depicted

by the Ohio effigy. Cowan proposed that the snake represents
the Little Dipper, a constellation whose handle ends at Polaris,

build-

the upper Midwest and existed between 1000bc and ad

Its people built burial mounds and animal effigies; the
known is the awesome Great Serpent Mound of Ohio.

The Hopewell

tial

artifacts,

broad cultures: Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian.

De-

worldwide cultural tradition in which snakes symbolize celes-

disputed.

Archeologists divide these

scientists

instance, psychologist Thaddeus M.

comprehensive study of North American

Thomas's assertion of Indian descent from the mound

after

Pidgeon about the link between mounds

direct evidence, at least, supports the old Indian's story. For

Indians Based on tribal legends, the accounts of early explorers,

told William

We may know who built the

When
123

ridge. Still there

they were fifteen or twenty

was no wind;
and

feet

yei

falling

away, they

fi<

mo

in

wr

'HftiTfTlifl'llliriH^liilTn

MSg^^^^^H^^K
The most famous of America's earthen mounds, Ohio's Great Serpent, uncoils across a thousand feet

124

to gra

Hn^m
here in

its

mouth. According

to

one legend, Indians fashioned the snake

to

commemorate a lunar eclipse.

125

er,

swirling around

him

centuries; historical accounts and old

macabre dance

in a

camera, but at that

toward his car

for a

stant the spell

was broken.

some

coins found nearby have led

Harner forced himself to break away, turning

tists to

in-

believe that at least

scien-

two of the

fig-

that al-

uresthe White Horse of Uffington and the

ready the leaves were walking back down

the hillside and knew never could get

Cerne Giant may well date from the begin-

back

in

saw

"I

ning of the Christian Era,

ruled by

time to photograph them."

Named

As a shaken Harner contemplated

the incident, he was certain he had
world

for

when Britain was

Celtic tribes.

a Berkshire village and located

about sixty-five miles west of London, the

Uffington Horse gallops sleekly along the

glimpsed some "small portion of that

did not believe existed," a

pagan

ridge of a 500-foot

spirit

hill

(page 136). As long as a

world the builders of the Great Serpent

football field, this stylized steed flows across

may

the landscape it

have known, too. "Perhaps," he

concluded, "they built their

that particular

things

happen

If

there

is

hill

mound on

because very special

inhabitants are

world, and

drawn

to these great

symbols on the earth, these

may also
hills

feel at

home

if its

in

spirits

the emerald

of southwest England. For there,

as well as

in. other

parts of Britain,

huge figures of humans and beasts

loom on the green

hillsides,

Old

World counterparts of the enig-

mas

at

Nazca and Ohio. Cre-

ated by removing sod from the

hills to

expose the bright lime-

stone bedrock a few feet below,

the British figures

show

a wonderfully

lies

effigies,

close to an ancient hilltop

tribal

emblem

its

association with Dragon

Hill,

it,

grass will

grow on

the spot

on's blood spilled.)

In

sum-

a flattened

where the drag-

the view of

archeologists,

when

some

the west-

country Celts converted to

Christianity, they

may

have substituted Saint

George
er

for

an

earli-

pagan demigod

associated with
horses.

It

is

even

possible that the

horse itself was

originally meant to

earth effigies,

most of which were long

Several of them, howev-

A more

suggested by

England's patron saint, George, slew a drag-

prehistoric Britain boasted

have been preserved over the

is

on. (The legend also states that, to this day, no

Archeologists believe that

tion.

some

mit immediately to the north. There, legend has

symbols: horses and humans.

er,

fort;

enemies.

for frightening

intriguing possibility, however,

a single-

ago reclaimed by vegeta-

the Uffington

scholars speculate that the image served as a

minded concentration on two

many such

dynamic

art.

Like several other British

Horse

there."
spirit

piece of early

is

be a dragon; scholars
point to

its

beaklike jaw, re-

calling an earlier reptilian

form. Seventy miles away, across a hillside in Dorsetshire, lies

the

Cerne Giant (page

80-foot-tall

ing a

huge

club,

was known

137).

scything

Rude Man of

is

a mystery.

Some

emperor Commodus
believe the

behemoth

killed

the giant

CerneGiant, no mystery surrounds theiroriginsorpurpose.

a rendering of the Celtic god Nodens.

and were created by local gentry for the purpose of decorating

there. Yet

center of a pagan

huge Dane

who

the landscape. In

fertility cult,

one

was

Whatever

ures loomed large

the Cerne Giant

in the lives

and other

thousands of years

Britain's ancient hill figures,

old, a

America's earth

amateurs to plumb

them

their secrets. Despite

the gulf of time and culture

some plausible theo-

ries,

back to the seventeenth century record that every seven years

has said of the Nazca desert's llneas, "we

on Whitsunday, the seventh Sunday

the answers." In the face of phenomena so strange

would gather

effigies,

challenging professional scholars and enthusiastic

with the land and a long spiritual tradition. Accounts dating

villagers

deep-

Nazca's inscrutable chaos of lines-all speak across the centuries,

hillside fig-

of the local people, linking

tradition

rooted compulsion to leave their mark.

that con-

Christianized in the seventh century.

its role,

drawing on the earth, however, landowners

were following a

another theory holds that

tinued - in the watered-down form of a Maypole dance - long

after Britain

All

but a few derive from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

and beheaded

was the

Other depictions of huge horses and giants stride across

around the Roman

Folklore claims that the figure represents a

was

with

second century ad while others

in the
is

festival

the chalky hills of England; unlike the Uffington Horse or the

scholars associate the

giant with a Hercules cult that flourished

The

Cerne because of his conspicuous nudity. Like the Uffington

Horse, the figure

the accumulated vegetation.

much drinking and merrymaking followed long into the night.

last of these pastimes, as they were called, was in 857.

This figure, brandish-

for centuries as the

away

after Easter, Uffington

to restore the great white horse

by

plex, the

so great that, as Maria Reiche

will

never

most dedicated students remain humble.

Artifactsfrom Indian mounds add to the mystery of

America's early peoples. The sandstone disk below, unearthed in Alabama,
may have been used in warfare rituals. Even less is known
of the six-inch catfound in Florida (opposite).

127

is

know all

and com-

Glyphs for

Gods

flic

'hen the Wright brothers lofted

over the sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in

1 903, they opened up not only the heavens but the earth as well. Early
aviators found to their delight that flight transformed a familiar world,
their tiny biplane

giving

mysterious

it

new shapes and

textures.

gressed through the 1920s and 1930s, pilots

And

who

as aviation pro-

patrolled the air-

American Southwest or England's rolling hills

began to see wonders. Giant works of art huge geometric figures,
owl-eyed humans, enormous galloping horses - sprang out of the

ways of Peru or

the

anonymous landscape with

surprising vividness.

stare almost imploringly at the sky, as

And

whom

therein lies their mystery.

if

Some seemed

to

seeking the eyes of gods.

We may never know why or for

the ground dwellers of the Nazca plateau or Britain's

hills cre-

modern magic of aerial

images as perhaps they were meant to

ated these earth drawings. But through the

photography,

we can see

the

from the air.

American photographer Marilyn Bridges is a master of this art.
Captivated by the experience of photographing Nazca lines of Peru in
the late 970s, she went on to shoot many of the world's most famous
earth drawings from the sky. Her methods are hair-raising: Hugging
the land at what a friend calls "a witch's distance" of 200 feet, their
wings banked at a fifty-degree angle to gain the best perspective, her
be seen

airplanes often cruise so slowly as to risk stalling. Bridges prefers to

work

in the early

morning or

late

afternoon

light,

with

its

long, dra-

matic shadows; similarly, she uses black-and-white film to best bring

out the contrasting forms of nature and art. The following pages contain a

sampling of her images.

The arrowlike half-mile-long Great Triangle is

sometimes called a runwayfor alien spaceships. But most believe that it
was an astronomical marker or a ritual gathering place.

128

129

A stylized hummingbird is one of eighteen bird

figures carved on the Nazca plateau. Such drawings may have symbolized seasonal
changes: This creature's 120-foot beak ends at a line that
marks sunrise at the win ter solstice.

130

Scarred by automobile tracks, an anatomically

accurate Nazcan spider spans 1 50feet of desert. Like most of the Peruvian drawings,
it isformed by one continuous line, which some believe may
have served as a ceremonial pathway.

131

132

A trapezoid blots out part ofa 300-foot bird and a

nearby flower (opposite). Geometric shapes often overprint animal figures
on the Nazca plain, perhaps with some symbolic purpose.

The owl-man (below) overlooks other Nazca figures.

It

could bear a message:

One arm points skyward, theotherto theground.

it may predate the animal drawings.

Primitive in style,

133

younger than Nazca's figures, the 500-year-old Fort

Mojave twins may have been warnings to trespassers. More than 200 such
figures dot the California-Arizona desert.

134

The Blythe Giant and its animal companion yield

scant clues to their origins. Indian legends hint that thefigure depicts a
child-eating giant; the animal might be an avenging puma.

135

The 365-foot Uffington Horse gallops across a

chalky hillside near Swindon in southwest England. Possibly dating to
this effigy is the oldest ofmore than fifty in Britain.

136

00 b. C,

A modem fence protects the Ceme Giant and its

enclosure. For centuries, May Day rites were held within the enclosure;
similar old structures arefound near other such drawings.

137

CHAPTER 5

An

Inferior

World

many more generations than

they have lived in houses. Haunting cave drawings from the dawn of time stand
as mute testimony that early humans probed and speculated about the deepest
ur ancestors sheltered themselves in caves for

recessesof the earth. Small wonder that the idea of life underground has tugged

so long at the back of the mind.

for

It

has never been an entirely comfortable thought. Cave dwellers some-

times had to wrest their

was yet one more

homes from

ferocious animals, and the fear that there

creature in the dark at the back of the cave, or just beyond,

must have been widespread. Perhaps that is why the netherworld came to be so
closely associated with death

and dragons, with Satan and the supernatural.

As the human mind developed and took up

its

endless speculations

much allure as the

some myths populated the heavens and the remote mountaintops
others saw a hollow earth below, a realm of similarly potent-al-

about the universe, the underground beckoned with as

While

stars.

with gods,

though frequently lessbenevolent -deities. When the globe wasslowlyyielding

its

to

secrets to far-flung explorations, travelers

underground worlds had no

spoke of

made
evil

new worlds beyond

for a

who

reported finding portals

less claim to credibility than did those

the seas. In time, astonishing claims

who

would be

mysterious inner earth peopled with benign giants or Eskimos,

dwarfs or prehistoric

reptiles.

Even today, with the world explored, photo-

graphed, and plumbed by sophisticated electronic instruments, an element

of uncertainty remains The darkness at the back of the cave has not yet

been

entirely dispelled.

Hidden worlds beneath the surface of the earth figured prominently

up of a worldwide labyrinth of subterranean passages. A haven

tions of vanished continents, Agartha

enlightenment.

Its

for the

in

made

ancient beliefs. Central Asian Buddhists told of the kingdom of Agartha,

popula-

was a center of intellectual progress and

holy leader became the King of the World, who, according to

one devotee, "knows

all

the forces of the world and reads

humankind and the great book of their destiny

all

the souls of

"

The legendary Assyro-Babylonian King Gilgamesh was reported

to

have

had a long conversation about the underworld with the ghost of a dead

companion. The Greeks

and took

were constantly specu-

But the real enigma

lating

tells

emerged when Halley

about the depths

of the earth;

examined readings

one myth

how the musician Or-

pheus tried

had been recorded

3*. s .

vain to rescue

in

his wife Eurydice

times:
variation

from Hades.

The poet Homer imagined an

tion that

underworld waiting to be ex
plored, and the philosopher Plato
and

in the interior"

'

the earth

'

their hell.

later,

672, while

terested in the earth's

still

a schoolboy, Halley

shift in the

was

tal,

Like

had

latitude.

And

slight dif-

that could not

to

when

be accounted

added two more, each nestled

for

Halley

by one

inside the oth-

in 1692,

"approximately the size of

."

other trailblazers of science, Halley

square his ingenious theory with his religious

that since

God had stocked every

felt

he

beliefs.

part of the

earth'ssurface with living things, he would have donelikewis

to deviate. For an-

with the inner world. But this raised another probler

downward, away from horizon-

degree that corresponded to

own axis,

Chinese boxes. "They are," Halley told the

many

He speculated

For one, local conditions such as magnetic mineral

to a

its

each other. That, along with a

Mars, Venus and Mercury

not always in the

others over most of the world, he discerned several patterns of

deposits-might cause a compass needle

shell with a separate, inner

position of magnetic north. Later,

er like a set of

in-

magnetism

other, needles were deflected

to

interior earth, he

same place Studying compass readings taken by himself and

error.

twin-an outer

came across readings

English as-

became

Royal Society of London

Halley found that magnetic north

this

needles to seek one or another of the poles-hence the slow

tronomer Edmond Halley, discoverer of the comet that bears

In

to

the velocity of rotation, could cause magnetized

ference in

And when science took the place of legend in explaining

world, the underground was not forgotten. One pioneer

name.

is

what inclined

tunnels that remain secret.

his

lateral deflec-

with north and south magnetic poles, and the axes are some-

According to certain tales, the Incas eluded maraud-

whose deductions led him below was the brilliant

-the

changed according

nucleus. Each of these globes, he proposed, has

Christians had

ing Spanish conquistadors and carried their treasure into deep

the

past

that

phenomenon was to posit the existence of

more than one magnetic field. He suggested that

god who sits "on the navel of the earth. Egyptians believed in
an infernal underground kingdom, and

in

They showed

The only way Halley could explain

center a

in the

that

longitude-was slowly changing.

* <2f

wrote that there were "tunnels both broad

and narrow

into account.

seemed

at various

compass readings varied laterally from actual

magnetic north, in predictable ways that navigators charted

self-evident that

that the interior

longitudes,

atmosphere

aurora borealis, or northern

139

requires

life

itself is

lights, is

light.

Halley

luminou:

caused by

tl

Battling at the portal to hell, angelic hosts subdue Satan 'sforces in Pieter Breughel's

140

The Fatti

be/ Angels.

Legends usually claim that the hollow earth holds either paradise orperdition.

141

this

Symmes

glowing essence through

left

the

army

in

the thin crust at the North Pole.

1816 and established a trading

Louis. There, with

During the eighteenth century,

post at

as other investigators pushed

little

back the frontiers of knowl-

indulged

edge, Halley's ideas were

for

modified but not refuted. The

sciences.

Swiss mathematician Leon-

cially fascinated

earth,

mined

interior suns,

which he

chris-

el.

tened Pluto and Proserpine.

But

it

would not be

European

scientist

who

man

or

6 degrees;

an uncle who had served

in the

American Revolu-

was hardly the cloistered life of a scholar, although he

enjoyed a solid early education and was intensely interested
in the natural sciences. In 1802, at the

From

case

Army as an ensign.
life was nomadic and

807, he insisted

on

tics,

age of twenty-two, he

then on, Symmes's

lent. In

international lev-

World" and sent

pledge

In a letter

ad-

to politicians, publica-

and heads of state throughout Europe

"I

declare the earth

number

my life,"

it

is

hollow, and

of solid concentrick

isopen at the poles

he continued, "in support of

and

in greater detail

with a subsequent publication For skep.

he included a character reference and a testimonial

sanity signed by local physicians

Symmes asked

for

"one hundred brave companions, well

equipped, to start from Siberia in the

turbu-

and

fighting a duel with a fel-

sleighs,

on the

to his

and businessmen. Then

fall

season, with Reindeer

ice of the frozen sea;

engage we

find

low officer who had suggested that Symmes was not a

warm and

gentleman Both men were shot Symmes in the wrist

mals if not men, on reaching one degree northward of latitude

and
their

him

support and aid

780 and

tion. His

entered the United States

to

am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will

me in the undertaking."
Symmes assured his readers that he would prove his

this truth,
in

All the

spheres, one within the other, and that

of action from

The son of a judge, John Cleves Symmes was born

for

may first have occurred

habitable within; containing a

the state of New Jersey.

named

growing enthusiasm

most spectacular manner.

and America, he wrote:

That distinction would go instead to a hot-

tempered American, a career soldier and

in a

tions, learned societies,

first

brought international attention to the idea of a world within the earth.

He did so

dressed "To

to elabo-

and conviction on a theory that

Symmes was ready to share his ideas on an

Scots mathematician Sir John Leslie deter-

two

espe-

by specula-

years before. By the year 1818,

civiliza-

that there are really

passion

Symmes was

and he began

rate with
Seventeenth-century astronomer Edmond
Halley holds a diagram ofhis world theory - a "hypothesis which
after Ages may examine, amend or refute.

sun-which he thought provided warmth and light to an

tion. Later, the

in his lifelong

about the formation of the

tion

multiple planets within, re-

advanced inner-earth

on his hands to do, he

reading about the natural

hard Euler rejected the idea of

placing them with a single

St.

else

his

wounds

became good

opponent

in the thigh

Symmes

War of

own

82;

which they

we

stocked with

will return in the

thrifty

ed, the public

his theory,

and spiking an enemy can-

and his audacity were ridiculed

Undeterred,
142

Symmes had request-

responded with hoots of derisive laughter. He,

scientific journals the

hands.

vegetables and ani-

succeeding spring."

But instead of the support and aid

fought courageously against

8 1 2 once leading his troops in storm-

ing a British artillery battery

his

suffered from

for the rest of their lives, during

friends.

the British in the

non with

and

rich land,

in

newspapers and

world over.

Symmes launched

a vigorous

campaign of

newspaper articles, more open

letters,

and countless

lectures

around the country. Over and over he argued that a mass of

unformed matter-such as the earth once

spinning,

could not have organized

itself into

force throws rotating matter

gravity pulls
result

is

it

inward.

the axis of rotation;

the forces balance, he said, the

of the earth

In this

way,

Symmes claimed, the materials

were organized as concentric, hollow spheres

Symmes marshaled all kinds of evidence, from the astronomical to the commonplace,

to

support his scheme. Look at

the concentric rings of Saturn, the polar caps of Mars, he said;

look at

how a cup of sand, rotated, will sort itself into concen-

tric circles

according to

Nature, he pointed out,

ing opted

its

density.

He appealed

for

hollow construe

quills,

and

hairs

Furthermore, he said, God would not

have created a vast inner world only to
it

to religion:

was a great economist of matter, hav-

wherever feasible

tion hollow bones, stalks,

leave

mile-thick crust at a gentle angle.

find within

barren and empty.

Some

how Symmes reasoned from

the

general to the particular and

developed specific dimensions for the multiple earths

into these

Anyone who

did so

warmed by

a gentle, sheltered land

would

the indirect

rays of the sun shining in at the polar portholes.

Symmes spoke

relentlessly to

all

who would

listen to

him, pouring out great, disorganized jumbles of his thought.

His fervent speeches drew large
the

at the poles.

and another, 6,000

One could walk

openings, for they are inclined into the earth's thousand-

a belt of material with the densest matter outermost

and the axis open.

open

away from

When

was

a solid sphere. Centrifugal

ing 4,000 miles across at the North Pole

miles in diameter, at the South.

crowds of the curious but,

for

most part, elicited only amusement or mild interest instead

He did make a few converts,

however-among whom the most significant were an Ohio
newspaper editor named Jeremiah N. Reynolds, who began
giving his own lectures in support of Symmes's theories, and a
wealthy Ohioan named James McBride.
It may well have been McBride who requested Kentucky Senaof cash for his arctic expedition.

tor Richard

Johnson who later served as vice

president in the administration of Martin

Van Buren to introduce

in

Con-

gress a petition for funding the pro-

posed expedition.

It

was

tabled.

McBride then compiled a book

summarizing,
cise

and

in a

more con-

logical fashion

than Symmes ever did, the

known

theory of concentric

world, the outermost of five,

spheres (which was

more popularly and

he envisioned. The

he

said,

has an open-

John Cleves Symmes's handmade wooda

dramatizes his contention that !he earth
accessible through vast openings at th

The U.S.S. Vincennes, flagship of the wideranging Wilkes expedition, penetrates antarctic waters in a painting attributed to the voyage's commander, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes. Thefour-year
expedition got under way in 1 838, sparked by
the lobbying of converts tojohn Cleves Symmes's
theory ofpolar portals to the inner earth.

rudely referred to as the Theory of Symmes's Hole) But

.

all

for nothing.

was

The strain of tenyears of vigorous proselytizing

broke Symmes's health, and he died

his theory

it

in

1829 without seeing

accepted or his expedition mounted.

Symmes had

hoped

clearly

that his quest

would bring

him monumental renown. Indeed, using the pen name of Captain

Adam Seaborn

he published

in

820 a

account

fictional

ofa voyage to the earth's interior, entitled Symzonia; Voyageof

Discovery, in

which he spelled out the class of glory he hoped

would be his. As Captain Seaborn prepares to land at a subterranean Utopia peopled with gentle, fair-skinned beings, he
muses:

"I

was about to secure to my name a conspicuous and

imperishable place on the tablets of History, and a niche of the

first

order

temple of Fame.

in the

.The voyage of Columbus

was but an excursion on a fish pond, and his discoveries, compared with mine, were but

trifles."

was not the way the world saw

his death Symmes's vision ofa hollow earth was
That, of course,

after

forgotten
ever,

it,

and

nearly

The polar expedition he had so long espoused, how-

was another matter

In fact,

Congress authorized such a voyage

Symmes died.

year before

This

was

in part the result

ous lobbying by Jeremiah Reynolds,

828, the

of vigor-

who instead of appealing

to scientific curiosity stressed the trade to be

tory to

in

opened and terri-

be claimed. The idea gained the support of President

John Quincy

Adams

Andrew

but not of

Jackson,

who

suc-

ceeded Adams as president in 829. The expedition would not

1

sail for

another decade.

Meanwhile, the impatient Reynolds joined a sealing and

exploring expedition to the South Seas aboard the Aimawan.

magazine story

or,

The White Whale of the Pacific-may have been an inspira-

tion for

Herman

twelve years

later.)

calls to sealers
for

Melville's masterpiece
his return,

and whalers

an expedition,
In

On

now

to

an 836 speech given

1

add

proposed
in

Moby Dick,

axis of the earth

published

that point,

Reynolds kept

the whalers

clamor

he
it

still

believed

left

in

to

wave on

the

Symmes's Hole at

to himself

patriotic fervor,

and other commercial

and by the appeals of

interests,

Congress

finally

approved the expedition and provided $300,000 for it. Howev-

for Antarctica.

the U.S. Capitol's Hall of Rep-

er,

where

two years dragged by before

time, the impassioned Reynolds

resentatives, Reynolds conjured a stirring vision of American

ships casting anchor at the South Pole- "that point

itself! " If

Swayed by such

Reynolds renewed earlier

their voices to the

where our eagle and star-spangled

banner may be unfurled and planted, and

he wrote on his return -Mocha Dick,

(A

that

the meridians terminate,

the Secretary of the

all

144

Navy

for

it

actually departed. By that

had so roundly denounced

dawdling that Reynolds's name

was

ultimately struck from the expedition roster

when

Like

the

ships finally sailed in 1838.

Named

for its

ble

Wilkes, the four-year Wilkes expedition

for.

new genus of ivy in Samoa on the southward journey named Reynoldsia in honor of Reynolds's "un-

-the first to team civil-

Symmes had

flagging zeal."

so fondly hoped

able influence

Found

maps of thousands of miles of antarctic coastline, having

proved that

this little-known

landmass is in

fact big

enough

And Reynolds apparently wielded considerover the fevered mind of one of Amer

greatest authors, Edgar Allan Poe. In the short s

Instead of charting a polar opening, the voyagers returned

with

discovered a

it

crews-did indeed make important

discoveries, but not those that

rewards for his devotion were slim. An expedition botanist

who

commander, Navy Lieutenant Charles

ian scientists with naval

Symmes before him, Reynolds found that the tangi-

in a Bottle"

and

his novel

The Narrativ

Gordon Pym ofNantucket, Poe describes doomed voyages

to

end with ships being sucked into a water)' abyss at

qualify as the earth's seventh continent.

145

tr

In Poe's

"MS. Found in a

Bottle, " a whirlpool drags a ship into

the earth through the South Pole.

Pole-ideas founded on the

ocean had flowed down from the

hollow-earth writings of Reyn-

surface through a fissure,

Although the two probably

olds.

closed,

never met, Poe was calling Reynolds's

name when he

Baltimore hospital

and that some of the water

had evaporated
and storms.

died in a

to

cause clouds

nephew:

Reflects the

"This theory about the

in 1849.

now

phenom-

ena we had witnessed struck

by

scientific speculations

was

the

wonders of Nature may

be,

they can always be explained by

hallmark of the nineteenth cen-

and many

me

as satisfactory, for however great

Such stimulation of fiction writers

novelistic excur-

physical laws." Eventually, they

sions were so plausibly presented

are lofted by a volcanic eruption

tury,

thatreadersweresometimeshard

to the island of Stromboli, off the

pressed to separate the real from

coast of Italy-having traveled

the imaginary.

Nowhere

under the whole of Europe -and return

seem so

did flights of literary fancy

credible or foretell the future more accurately- than

to a hero's welcome in

the

Hamburg. As a touch of verisimilitude, Verne'sstory includes a

writings of Jules Verne. With remarkable prescience, he envi-

reference to Sir John Leslie, the eighteenth-century mathema-

sioned submarines prowling the ocean depths, aeronauts

tician

in

cir-

first

ventures into his special world, where

fact

and fantasy were nearly indistinguishable, was

ney

to the

wonders aloud about

in

in

The

Hamburg, Germany, where

to

be directions

for

It

death
peer

turns out

reaching the center of the earth. Liden-

make

their

down, a vast

sea.

way through hazardous

What amazes them

like

an aurora

filling

borealis, a continuous

a cavern big

enough

They construct a

to contain

raft

and

sail

was

cosmic phenomenon,

across this mysterious

Throughout, the professor remains the model of a

tional nineteenth-century scientist.

He speculates

was

873.
first

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, as this English

known, was the author of a celebrated
The Last Days ofPompeii, and a mem-

social conflict have been abolished

an ocean."

nial chores;

ocean, discovering a lost world of giant plants and prehistoric

reptiles.

like Jules Verne's,

is far

more ominous than Verne's imaginings.

He enters a mine shaft, penetrates a fissure on a lamp-lit
road, and finds himself amid a race of supermen. He learns
that in the world of the Vril-ya, as these handsome giants call
themselves, all human dreams have been realized. War and

the most,

"It

Coming

ground world. But what Lytton's narrator finds there

after their long ordeal in a series of labyrinthine tunnels, is the

brightness of the underground world. Declares Axel:

often asked of The

begins with the chance discovery of an opening into an under-

passages and survive the tortures of thirst to discover, eightyeight miles

"Could he have been

ber of several mystical societies. His story,

and descend the chimney of an extinct volcano into the

depths of the earth. They

in

historical novel,

brock and his nephew Axel immediately go to Iceland, hire a

guide,

by

Race, a novel by Lord Lytton, published following his

Otto Lidenbrock, an eccentric professor of mineralogy, has

deciphered a coded, runic document from Iceland.

lit

And at one point, young Axel

Leslie's theory:

same question was

1863

is

telling the truth'"

his Jour-

Centre of the Earth.

The story begins

the theory of a hollow earth that

twin suns, Pluto and Proserpina.

cumnavigating the globe, and astronauts traveling to the

moon. One of his

who proposed

keeper

is

Machines perform the me-

people are free to do what they prefer and a store-

as highly regarded as the chief magistrate. Crime,

drunkenness, and other vices are unknown, and everyone

ra-

lives past a

that the

146

hundred years of age

in

vigorous health

Explorersfollow a tunnel
underground in Ms engravingfrom
Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

All of

from

idea of a hollow earth. This mys-

these blessings derive

"vril,"

a versatile

terious realm

fluid that

below

gives these people absolute mastery over

all

lows them

forms of matter.

on artificial
wings, to heal and preserve, to
light their cities, and to blast

the globe, but in

away rocks for the creation of

new settlements. Its destructive
power is so awesome that war

the Union

has been outlawed.

and found

to fly

In this interior

world

ideal society that lives

its

"No happiness without

Born on a
1

universe were a threat and an af-

no

front to his devout sensibilities.

order,

is

Teed dreamed instead of a more compact and comprehensi-

not well. "Ifyou were to

ble

and most philosophical human

in less

He begins dreaming of a glass of whisky and

ligious

Cellular

Cyrus.
is

solve to

kill

inferior races that

Lytton's narrator, but he

woman who

now
is

live there.

They

light,

frankly told by

which, though

it

book

entitled

is

The

which he

name

for

on the concave, inner surface of a

is

only a void At

gives an illusion of rising

and

setting.

and

The moon

and planets

half
is

reflect

is filled

with a dense atmosphere that makes

impossible to see across the globe to the lands and peo-

ples

on other

Odd as

little

his notions in a

the Earth a Concave Sphere,

or,

The known world

internal cavity

my physician that am afflicted by a complaint

gives

Cosmogony,

from metallic planes on the earth's concave surface. The vast

rescued by the Vril-ya

account with a chilling message: "Being

it

scientific revelation but a re-

reflection of the earth's surface; the stars

re-

loves him, and he ascends into the mine shaft

his

theory, he

the center of the sphere, the rotating sun, half dark

supported on her wings.

He ends

be not only a

own

well.

sphere, he explained, outside of which there

a dis-

to leave; the Vril-ya

intend to return to the upper world, where they originated,

and supplant the

conceived of his

wrote under the pseudonym of Koresh, the Hebrew

a juicy steak,

with a cigar to follow.

must not be allowed

to

it

one as

finally

Teed expounded on

than a year

revolution."

Vril-ya realize that this imperfect earthling

When he

cosmos.

considered

he muses, "and place them as citizens

they would either die of boredom or attempt some

The

that the scientifically

an

is

community, believe that

ruptive force. But he

in

motto:

take a thousand of the best

in this beautified

New York farm

839, Teed served as a corporal in

accepted theories of an infinite

soon realizes that all

beings you could find,"

we are not on

it.

Army during the Civil

War before setting up his practice
of herbal cures. He read widely

order without authority, no authority without unity. " But Lytton's narrator

not to be found

Teed, but above us;

al-

It

is

proposed Cyrus Read

us,

sides.
this vision

was,

it

turned out that

it

could not be

disproved mathematically. Indeed, Teed - who took Koresh as

pain and no perceptible notice of its

my duty to my fellow-men to place on record these forewarn-

permanent name-offered a $10,000 reward to anyone

who could confute his theory, but he found no takers. Wh<

ingSOfTHE COMING RACE."

scientist would

encroachments,

may at any moment be

fatal,

have thought

his

it

out and
At about the

same time

that Lytton

was

map

use geometric inversion to turn a sphert

external points in their corresponding

position, the result

writing his curious

would be a universe that looks lif

described by Teed, or Koresh. But Teed did not ne

book which would later become entrenched as a part of occultist lore-an American herbalist was upending the whole

dation of mathematics: "Toknowoftheearth':

147

wrote, "is to know God, while to believe in the earth's convexity is

to

deny Him and

all

tic

His works."

that

Captivated by his vision, Teed abandoned medicine and

new

proclaimed himself the messiah of a

reshanity.

To help spread

his gospel,

until

949. With the disciples

plagues of mosquitoes-encountered

in

tract

to join the

south, and

It

was meant

to

be a

An even more
1

zen

however, and when Teed died

served

vigil,

908, his followers

mounted

waiting for him to rise again and carry them with him to

come

to form,

last

was anything but conan immense mauso-

laid to rest in

in

In his

voted a

it

might have seemed that the

would become more and more

all,

face at an ever-faster

But the

new

When

difficult

Indeed,

information that they

two new proponents- William Reed and Marshall

The two

in

with major contributions to the

theorists

in ice,

fir

branches

enormous animal could have

after death.

sudden
the Earth

's

Interior, or,

Have

the

mammoth mystery. The explanaMammoths had not become extinct

chapter to the

he ventures too near the polar

floe

orifice

he becomes

and carried over from the

outer regions or perhaps

which afterwards begins

to

move

in

falls in

some

inte-

a crevasse

great glacial

movement. In these ways the bodies are carried over to Siberia

B.

and

field.

were stimulated by some anomalous

accounts, water and air temperatures grew

full

rior regions, to the

left

where we have seen them discovered."

Reed, in his book The Phantom ofthe Poles, had an expla-

discoveries by polar explorers. For one thing, according to

many

that

stranded on a breaking ice

brought back did not put an end to hollow-earth speculations.

Gardner-weighed

pre-

contained identi-

but are "wandering today in the interior of the earth

at all

were combing the world's sur-

to sustain Explorers, after

clip.

the

book A journey to

he said, was simple:

tion,

As the twentieth century began,

still

Poles Really Been Discovered, published in 1913, Gardner de-

1982.

idea of a hollow earth

stomach

meal of pine cones and

wondered how

change could have been

and Koresh's disciples offered guided tours until the

one died

its last

its

Some theowhen
the clirized that the mammoth had lived near the pole
mate was much warmer and had succumbed to a sudden
freeze. Marshall Gardner, among others, claimed no climate

leum with a twenty-four-hour guard -until his tomb

was washed away by a hurricane in 1921 Forty years
later, his tract was turned into the Koreshan State Historic Site,

of

mammoth fro-

So well had the creature been

cold that

which normally would continue even

Teed's interment

He was

fed.

been frozen quickly enough to arrest its digestive processes-

to pass; after four days, the local health officer or-

ventional.

in the arctic

Scientists

dered a conventional burial

True

what

arresting mystery had been created in

in the ice of Siberia

fiable traces

heaven, as he had prophesied. The hoped-for ascension did

not

in

who saw multicolored

846 by the discovery of a long-extinct woolly

but only 250 actually settled there. They were fiercely loyal,
in

be returning from sojourns

snow-red, green, yellow, and black

converts

for 10 million

to

There were accounts, too, of travelers

Ko-

near Fort Meyers, Florida,

home

were seen

should have been barren regions looking sleek and well

irate

1894 and founded a community he called the Koreshan

Unity, Inc.

at

of these creatures appeared to be migrating north, rather than

and donations attracted

husbands whose wives had abandoned them

reshans-he bought a 300-acre

mammals, and
high latitudes. Many

scribed seeing abundant wildlife-birds,

and began

by his impassioned lectures-and spurred by threats from

it.

Other travelers reported similar warming trends and de-

religion called Ko-

he formed a church, es-

tablished the World's College of Life in Chicago,

it

whereas south winds lowered

publishing The Flaming Sword a magazine that continued to

appear

was almost too warm to sleep. He observed

winds from the north seemed to raise the temperature,

Circle that

nation for the colored

warmer

green, and yellow

snow

must be

reported by travelers. The red,

pollen, he said; the black

soot from volcanoes.

gian explorer and statesman, reported from far inside the Arc-

interior, the closest possible source.

148

would be

And all must have come from the earth's

with proximity to the North Pole. Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwe-

Accounting

for the polar

A bisected globe demonstrates the theories of Cyrus

Teed (bottom), whose calculations were intended to prove that humanity
lives inside the earth, warmed by a central sun.

^<t
l\U

RESTk

Tiir

jV m^H
,

according to Gardner, creates the startling

warming was more complex, but Gardner and Reed both attributed it to Symmes-like openings into the inner earth. Reed

interior sun,

described the earth's crust as 800 miles thick, with gravity

australis at the

acting toward the deepest part of the shell In other words, the

On

same

gravity that pulled objects

on the outside

liance of the aurora borealis at the North Pole

lar

one world

left

South Pole.

this subject,

sun shining

Gardner parted company with Reed,

in at the poles.

As

for the auroras,

Reed had an

ingenious explanation. The northern

edge of the po-

openings without being aware that

they had

and the aurora

who maintained that the inner world got its light from the outer

of the sphere

inward would thrust objects inside the globe outward. Voyagers could thus sail over the

bril-

lights,

he said, are the reflected images of

interior prairie fires or volcanoes.

for another. In-

They ob-

all,

viously are not caused by electricity, as

of their

orthodox scientists had proposed. This

time past the turning-point, and have had

theory Reed disposed of with a scornful,

a look at the interior of the earth."

rhetorical question:

deed, Reed insisted that

"all,

of the explorers have spent

or nearly

much

Gardner believed that the

diameter,

left

driven

some unseen agency 7

over from the spinning

To explain why

the aurora

Mars had been formed

its

if

slowly along by

nebula from which the earth

he wrote, and

the heavens as

possibly 600 miles

was lit by a central sun,

in

move through

interior

"Does electricity ever

in

interior

was formed.

bril-

ed out that the sun shines directly into

the south polar opening at that time of

sun could someits

most

during the arctic winter, Reed point-

liant

similar fashion,

times be seen glinting through

is

'

year.

polar

and

openings. Reflected light from the earth's

149

The

ice

and snow

at the

intensify the light that

rim reflect

emerges from

his father to Franz Joseph Land, a

the North Pole to create the aurora. Presumably, the situation

is

reversed

in

summer.

Reed was eager

the Arctic Circle, in

and

to see the inner earth, with its "vast

fair

weather, they resolved to explore

the north.

And by his reckoning, the interior "can be

made accessible to mankind with one-fourth the outlay of
treasure, time, and life that it cost to build the subway in New

snow, nearly capsizing

life,"

York

put to use.

The number of people

City.

homes

that

be not already occupied)

(if it

can

will

interior

barrier of fog

and

and delivered them

in fine

to

weather and

spied a smoky, furnace-colored sun, which turned out to be a

so-called

Smoky God

that

was worshipped

as a deity by the

inhabitants of the inner world they had entered.

be billions."

some

their frail sloop,

a cloudless calm beyond. They sailed on

find comfortable

For his part, Gardner thought that at least

unknown waters to

A storm drove them through a

continents, oceans, mountains and rivers, vegetable and ani-

mal

group of islands high above

search of ivory tusks. Finding open seas

There the Jansens met with a race of good-humored

of the

was already peopled by Eskimos, who must have

ants, ten to twelve feet

tall.

gi-

They visited a seaport city that was

Eskimo myths about a

surrounded by vineyards and richly ornamented with gold;

warm homeland to the north of the arctic. He reasoned that the

ice-bound region where

saw a forest of trees that would make the California redwoods seem like underbrush, and they ate grapes as large as

and seals

oranges. They were whisked by monorail to the city of Eden,

originated there.

As evidence, he

Eskimos must have migrated

they

now

live

there than

was

it

What

because
in

it

was

cited

to the

easier to hunt whales

they

where they met the great high

open water.

really fired Gardner's imagination

was

After

lodes of gold, platinum, and diamonds. "Our country has the

men, the aeroplanes, the

enterprise,

and the

capital,"

father

he de-

rather,

it

and son were allowed

may be native
move quickly.

the

In

sion

new world

all

the old evils of colonial oppres-

the inner earth, Olaf Jansen claimed actually to have

Siberia.

"are

been

he

few

an incredible

friends,

1908 under the

told writer Willis

title

story,

of
in

Jansen called on

He mentioned magnetic irregularities at

mammoth bones in

And he

believed that a party of Swedish polar

All of

Jansen was locked up, Reed and Gardner were

beliefs.

iculed. But Gardner, for one,

or,

a Voyage

to the

897,

these inner-earth visionaries suffered for their

George Emerson, one of his

to reveal the truth,

now in the 'within' world, and doubtless are being entermy father and myself were entertained, by the kind-

which Emerson published

The Smoky God,

World. Jansen had waited

some

tale,

hearted giant race inhabiting the inner Atlantic Continent."

900s. Just before he died, at the age of

ninety-five,

el-

tained, as

Jansen was a Norwegian sailor who retired to Glendale,

1

that

explorers, lost in a balloon after leaving Spitsbergen in

While Reed and Gardner were content to theorize about

California, in the early

The

the poles, wind-blown pollen, and

and exploitation?" he asked.

there.

same evidence

their theorizing.

"Do we want one of the autocratic countries of Europe to perpetuate in this

bags of gold

Reed and Gardner had used

support of his fantastic

'

population to deal with-her generosity," to

to leave. Carrying

homesick

but Olaf was rescued by a Scottish whaler.

was the

duty of America, Gardner believed, 'with her high civilization,

her free institutions, her humanity- for there

half years in this paradise, the

der Jansen was drowned when an iceberg crushed their sloop,

done out of greed;

two and a

nuggets, they sailed through the south polar opening.

clared to appropriate these treasures. But he was not suggesting that the exploration be

paved with

gold and jewels.

the pros-

where he expected to find bountiful

pect of mining the interior,

priest in a palace

rid-

was equally intolerant of fellow

enthusiasts. He dismissed Symmes's theory asmerely "suppo-

in

Inner

he explained,

sition"

and declared: "Of course

it

is

very easy for anyone

and get up some purely private

because when he first tried to tell his story, he was locked in an

to

asylum

explanation of the formation of the earth. The

for twenty-eight years.

As a teen-age boy in 829, Jansen related, he sailed with

deny all the

that

150

is

facts of science

a crank. Unfortunately the

man

man who does

in the street

does

not always discriminate between a crank and a scientist."

ers

sometimes translated

their beliefs into concrete actions.

some scientists
own work to the

Heinz Fischer, an expert on infrared radiation, purportedly led

crank category. For example, the director of the Lick Ob-

a group of technicians on a secret expedition to the Baltic

Gardner was enraged

had the same

difficulty

to discover that

and relegated

his

In April

"It may be a
we are placing your book
in the class which contains pamphlets which we perennially
is surreceive on such subjects as The Earth is Flat,' etc.
there
are
which
igprising how many of these contributions

942, for example, at the height of the war, Dr.

servatory of Santa Cruz, California, wrote to him:

island of Rugen.

disappointment to you to learn that

with infrared
left

scientific

was

The

goal,

which proved

to take a picture of the British fleet across the

hollow interior of the concave earth.

body of modern

beliefs

Other
among

knowledge."

"Sheer misrepresentation," fulminated Gardner,

sky at a forty-five-degree angle and

in this position for several days.

elusive,

It

nore, with apparent deliberation, the great

it

The men aimed a powerful camera loaded

film into the

who

about inner worlds gained currency

Nazi enthusiasts. There was, for example, a

Vril Society, also

known

as the Luminous Lodge,

preferred to quote more favorableopinions from a Professor A.

which held that Lord Lytton's book The Coming Race

Schmidt of Stuttgart ("a very weighty physical hypothesis")

was true and that it offered a blueprint for the future.

Members of this occultist body no doubt thrilled to the Vril-ya
slogan-"No happiness without order, no order without au-

and Professor H. Sjogren of Stockholm ("originality and audacity").

Gardner remained unshaken in hisbeliefs despite the

increasing

number of explorers -such as Cook,

and Amundsen -who said they had been

no authority without unity." But developing a race of

supermen was difficult and took time. The Luminous Lodge

Peary, Scott,

to the poles

thority,

and had

wanted

observed no openings into the earth. These naysayers were,

said Gardner, mistaken.

The

future

would prove him

contact with any existing race of superior

beings, in the hope of establishing peaceful relations and

correct:

"We shall see all when we explore the Arctic in earnest, as we

shall easily

make

to

learning their secrets.

Other organizations followed similar urges. The anti-

be able to do with the aid of airships."

Semitic Thule Society of Bavaria,

much

Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg and deputy fuhrer Rudolf

on the polar regions, a kind of dark age intervened, dur-

Hess, sometimes claimed to represent survivors of Atlantis

Before full-scale aerial surveys of the poles could shed

light

ing

whose adherents included

which exploration and

scientific

owed by war and tyranny

who

progress were overshad-

In 1933,

Adolf Hitler proclaimed

lived in the

Some

Tibet.

Himalayas- the legendary

of the society's

more

secret chiefs of

enthusiastic

members

be-

himself the leader of a Thousand Year Reich, a civilization of

lieved that they could contact their master, the King of Fear, by

supermen that would rule the world. The Nazi philosophy was

useof tarot cards.

based on a belief

in

strenuous efforts were

dence dredged from

According to some accounts,

the supremacy of the Aryan race, and

made

to buttress this claim

history, folklore,

and science.

mosphere of myth, hollow-earth theories

Hitler

may even have

be-

had seen a member of a superrace from the inner

He reportedly told Hermann Rauschning, the Nazi governor of Danzig: "The new man is living amongst us now! He
lieved that he

with evi-

earth.

In this at-

thrived.

German aviator who was seriously

attracted favorable attention in
World War

Peter Bender, a

wounded in
Germany during the 1930s with his elaborations on Koreshanity. Top Nazi leaders, including Hitler, reportedly took
seriously the concept of a concave world that was first proposed by Cyrus "Koresh" Teed. And it appears that these leadI,

is

here!

is

intrepid

will tell

and

you a

cruel.

secret.

have seen the new man. He

was afraid of him." The

fuhrer

was also

rumored to have dispatched expeditions to TibetandM

in

search of underground wisdom.

In further purs*

knowledge, special units are said to have scoured

and caverns of occupied Europe

151

for

passages

lee

subterranean world. And then there

is

the recurring legend

where ice-covered rocks

brick red,

reflected the

sun "in an

that senior Nazis took refuge in the bowels of the earth as

indescribable complex of colors, blends of blues, purples, and

Germany collapsed

greens such as

in ruins.

pressed by

By then, the airborne explorations of the poles envisioned by Gardner were well under way.
States

Navy aviator Richard

E.

In 1926,

Byrd had become the

over the North Pole; three years

later,

he made the

"At the bottom of this planet

United

first

to

sky. Sinister

fly

in

to bring

around the South

Pole,

stimulated to

"Although

wrote, "there

beyond the

it

is

somewhat disappointing

to report,"

deo Giannini

was no observable feature of any significance

There was only the rolling white desert from

Poles, that

little

new

to

end speculations about

heights of endeavor- and confusion over

book

insisted, in a

Byrd had

in fact

."

In 1959,

named

entitled Worlds

F.

two

Ama-

beyond the

flown into the inner earth- ,700

miles beyond the North Pole

in

1947 and 2,300 miles beyond

the South Pole in 1956.

Elsewhere on the continent, the landscape appeared

more

her frozen slumber, her

years after the polar explorer's death, a writer

he

Pole.

horizon to horizon

an enchanted continent in the

lies in

dates and places-to discredit Byrd's reports.

"surveyed nearly 10,000

square miles of the country beyond the Pole," and found nothing.

lyrical:

hollow earth, open at the poles; on thecontrary, believers were

cheer to die-

hard hollow-earthers. Byrd reported that he flew an enormous

triangle

lies

and beautiful she

Byrd's discoveries did

were hardly calculated

Byrd became almost

and emeralds of ice."

1947 and 1955.

His findings

has seen before." Greatly im-

billowy white robes of snow weirdly luminous with amethysts

first flight

over the South Pole. He would cross the South Pole by air twice

more,

man seldom

this natural beauty,

varied. Byrd found jagged

Others, including pulp

mountains of coal black and

magazine

the highly imaginative author

Adolf Hitler is rumored to have dispatched several expeditions

152

to search for proof of a

editor

Ray Palmer and

Raymond Bernard, shared a be-

hollow earth

lief

that

secret.

someone was conspiring

to

keep Byrd's

They found confirming evidence

in

Others also shared with Palmer and Bernard the belief

real findings

Byrd's phrases

about "the country beyond" and "the enchanted continent

that there

A woman wrote

in

And they claimed to have discovered other radio

messages that told of iceless land and lakes, mountains
bling the

trees,

mammoth

claimed

Palmer, for one, had a considerable professional interest

As editor of the magazine Amazing

Stories,

S.

Shaver, a Pennsylvania welder

who

1929

White

in

warm-water lake

sur-

Byrd's detailed accounts of

in

Bernard suggested darkly that they

may have been suppressed by secret forces. The truth of Admi-

he started

ral

claimed to

Byrd's discoveries, he declared, remains "a leading inter-

national top secret."

the diehards

But

deros. According to Shaver's sensational account, the deros

deal with. In

were survivors of the lost land of Lemuria and used mysterious

soon had more

evidence to

difficult

March of 959, the U.S. nuclear subma1

rine Skate, having sailed

under the

surfaced at the North Pole.

the earth's surface.

As Shaver had it, deros were to blame

no place

his antarctic expedition.

have stumbled upon a race of underground creatures called

rays to influence events on

that, in

No such newsreel was ever found, and the reported

radio broadcasts found

publishing in the mid- 1940s a long-running series of articles

by Richard

wonder as he approached

in

the trees."

keeping alive the notion of habitable regions beneath the

earth.

Palmer claiming

York, she had been able to see a newsreel of

rounded by conifers, with a large animal moving about among

moving through allegedly

polar underbrush.

in

to

revealed.

Byrd's 1926 flight over the North Pole, in which Byrd "ex-

and even a monstrous animal resemof antiquity

New

Plains,

the sky."

covered with

was more to the Byrd story than had been

arctic ice pack,

The crew used

inertia!

navigation equipment to calculate the speed of the

for all the evils that

plague humankind. Every mishap, from airplane crashes to

earth's rotation

and thus

to

confirm arrival at the pole, where

sprained ankles, could be traced to machinations of the

the rotation settles to a single point.

The skipper, Commander

deros. Once, after Shaver had visited with Palmer, the editor

James

"We

took exhaustively careful

experienced an amazing infestation of

soundings, gravity measurements, and navigation readings

the

fleas.

Queried about

sudden appearance of the vermin, Shaver

he had never been troubled with

was the work of the deros.

Palmer cheerfully

NEW in

billed the

insisted that

fleas. Surely,

Shaver

tales as

he said,

to

F.

Calvert,

"something

we had attained the precise navigational Pole,

much data as possible from the famous spot."

Palmer had

science fiction." But as sales of his magazine soared

later:

ensure that

and had as

it

wrote

little

to say

about the Skate expedition, but he

on the strength of disclosures about the deros, he was deluged

Have a Photo

who reported that they, too,

subterranean beings. Some told of har-

"

he proclaimed

in Flying

re-

NowWe

turned triumphantly to the fray in 1970. "The Hole'

Saucers magazine,

And indeed he

have

with earnest letters from readers

which he had launched

had encountered the

picture, courtesy of the Environmental Science Service Ad-

in 1957.

did

was one

rowing adventures One correspondent warned that Palmer

ministration of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

was

of a series of about 40,000 satellite photos of the earth

"playing with dynamite"

in

exposing the deros. He and a

companion, he wrote, had once fought

with submachine guns, and

still

way out of a cave

scars of wounds in-

flictedbyviciouscreatures. "Don'tprintournames/'heplead-

quire to establish a fact 7 "

"We are not cowards, but we are not crazy." Contemplating Shaver's revelation -which would forever after be known

supposed opening was concealed by clouds on

ed.

in occultist circles

conclude:

"If

it

is

satellite

many people have

demanded Palmer, claiming that the

all

photographs

Sadly for Palmer the photograph turned out

as the Shaver Mystery- Palmer could only

a delusion,

and

showed what looked to be a gaping, circular black spot or void

around the North Pole. "How many more photos will we re-

their

bore the

It

quite

it."

153

what

it

appeared.

In fact

it

was not a conventio

the other

The aurora borealls emblazons the

Reed
maintained that these northern lights

arctic sky. Hollow-earther William

are reflections of interiorfires or volcanic

eruptions; scientists explain them as
electromagnetic phenomena.

Richard Byrd uses a nonmagnetic sun compass to find his position

over Antarctica. Byrd's reports/torn the pole convinced some hollowearth enthusiasts that he had located a hidden world.

computer-generated image of the earth's

interior.

It

has long been generally

agreed that the earth has three principal

and basalt

layers: a solid crust of granite

that averages twenty-five miles in thick-

ness; a 2,000-mile-thick mantle of vis-

cous rock; and a central core of molten

iron

and

nickel, 4,000 miles in diameter.

Scientists

core

is

amined

have assumed

that the inner

smooth sphere, but images exin the

mid-1980s show instead

a lumpy blob, with mountains several

miles high and canyons six times deeper

than the Grand Canyon. Researchers

speculate that the mountains were

caused by ponderous currents

in the

molten mantle, where

dense

areas

BHHHHHHaaiBHBaiHBHMMa
at all,

but a mosaic of television images transmitted by an

orbiting satellite.

hour period from

The images, taken during

if

is

far too

are always contradictions in the data or obscure areas in the

North Pole. During this time, regions near the Pole were

images, always

doubt and cling to a contrary notion.

persist despite

contrary.

in

that

no one has penetrated very

a deep-seated need to

ent theories about

what

is

there

is

dedicated believer to

wedge

in

know

for sure

what

is

there -not by

Beyond

the compulsion to envision better worlds,

that,

where

in-

human problems have been solved, where the future

under benevolent control. There

is

an almost

instinctive

human eagerness to follow the path of any dim trail of anomalous clues when there is a possibility that it will lead to a shin-

to be found there.

pected. Soundings of the planet's depths, taken with instruthat analyze

is

tractable

modern scientists hold differ-

Indeed, earth scientists continue to encounter the unex-

ments

for a

abstract calculation or inference, but for certain.

far

beneath the earth's crust, and they take heart from the fact that
despite technological advances,

room

Thus the dark at the back of the cave persists, along with

picture

the existence of a world within

daunting accumulations of evidence to the

They point out

durable to yield even to

reams of computer printouts oracresofsatellite images. There

shrouded by the continuous darkness of the northern winter.

But the hardy believers

hot air from

toward the core. Such movements could well push

the world within the earth

seen from a single point directly over the

Hence an unlighted area occupies the center of the

like

up some areas of the core and depress others. But the belief in

a twenty-four-

many points along the satellite's orbit, were

view of Earth as

hotter, less

from the core

a radiator; cooler regions closer to the

crust sink

processed by a computer and reassembled to form a composite

rise

ing or secret place,

shock waves from earthquakes and man-

Atlantis

made explosions, have turned up considerable surprises. The

whether

it

be Agartha under the earth,

beneath the sea, or a ring of stones pulsing with

pri-

meval energies. Proving that such places or things do not exist

technique, called seismic tomography, uses the analyses of

is

thousands of earthquakes over a multiyear period

as long as there are those to ponder them.

to create a

154

not enough.

It

is

hardly relevant. The mysteries will remain

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The index was prepared by LynneR Hobbs The editors wish
to thank the following individuals and institutions for their
valuable assistance in the preparation of this volume
American Society of Dowsers, Danville, VI .Association for
Research and Enlightenment, Virginia Beach, fo Bigelow,
president, The Koreshan Unity, Inc Estero, Fla Christopher
,

Molokai, Hawaii, John Bromley, Ethos Consultants Ltd

Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, Cahokia Mounds Museum,
Bird.

StuarlW Conner, Billings, Mont

Collinsvillelll
tor, Lije

.BillCox. edi-

Understanding Newsletter, Santa Barbara. Calif Paul

.

Devereux, Brecon. Powys, Wales, Dianne Dubler.

New York,

London, Bruce Gernon, Jr Islamorada, Fla

Bob Girard, Scotia, N Y Dr Gerald Hawkins, Washington,
D C Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, Robert
Humphns, Deparlmentof Mechanical Engineering. University of Virginia. Charlottesville, Lt Col A S lenkins. T D
Hilary Evans,

New HaLowe, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England, lohn Michell, London, Minnesota Historical Society, St
Paul, National Spiritual Science Center, Washington, DC,
Naval Aviation History, Washington. DC Toyne Newton,
Worthing, Sussex, England, Peruvian Embassy, Washington.
D C Roslyn Strong, North Edgecomb, Maine, Charles WalkWisbech, Cambridgeshire, England. Mark Lehner,

ven, Conn

Ian

er,

Worthing, Sussex, England, )im

Woodman

Miami, Fla

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Hawkins, Gerald S Stonehenge Decoded New York Dell,
1965
Herbert, GlendonM ,andl SK Reeves, Koreshan Unity Settlement, 1894-1977 Orlando. Fla Deparlmentof Natural Resources, Division of Recreation and Parks, 1977
Higgins, Godfrey, The Celtic Druids Los Angeles Philosophical Research Society, 1977
(ones, Inigo, The Most Notable Antiquity of Great Britain Vulgarly Called Stonehenge 1 655 Berkeley, Calif Scolar Press,
1973
Kosok, Paul, Life Land and Water in Ancient Peru New York:

New

York Thames and

Traveller's History of Britain and Ireland London Michael

Joseph Ltd 1983.
Plato. Timaeus and Cntias Translated by Desmond Lee New
York Penguin, 1971
,

Long

Island University Press, 1965.

Kusche, Larry:

Barbara. 1985

Trail,"

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Pathways

Image Publications, 1986

Aveni, Anthony F

"Nazca The End of the

E P Dutton, 1975

Graves, Tom, Needles of Stone Somerset, England Gothic

The Bermuda Triangle Solved Buffalo Prometheus, 1986

The Disappearance of Flight 19. New York Harper & Row,
1980
Lytton, Edward, The Coming Race Quakertown, Pa Philosophical Publishing

Co

1973.

McBnde, James, Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres Demonstrating That the Earth is Hollow, Habitable Within and
Widely Open About the Poles Cincinnati Morgan, Lodge,
and Fisher, 826.
Marshall. Gen George C, "Giant Effigies of the Southwest."
National Geographic. September 1952.
Mendelssohn, Kurt, The Riddle of the Pyramids London
'

Thames

&

Hudson, 1974

Spirit Its

RockeyandCo,

1906.

Reiche, Maria, Mystery on the Desert Stuttgart, 1976.

Reinhart. Johan. The

Nazca Lines Lima. Peru

Editorial

Los

Pinos, 1985.

Reynolds, leremiah N Remarks of Symmes' Theory Which Ap,

peared in theAmencan Quarterly Review Washington, D C

Gales and Seaton, 1827
Ridge, Martin, Ignatius Donnelly The Portrait of a Politican
Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1962.
Silverberg, Robert, Moundbuilders ofAncient America Greenwich, Conn New York Graphic Society. 1968
Smyth, Charles Piazzi, The Great Pyramid Its Secrets and Mvsteries Revealed NewYork Bell, 1978
Stuart, George, "Who Were the Mound Builders 7 " National
Geographic. December 1972
Symmes, John Cleves. Symzonia NewYork Amo, 1975
Teed, Cyrus Read:
Cellular Cosmogony Philadelphia Porcupine Press, 1975.
Fundamentals of Koreshan Universology Estero. Fla Guiding Star Publishing House, 1927
Tolstoy, Nikolai, The Quest for Merlin Boston: Little. Brown
and Co 1985
Tompkins, Peter, Secrets of tlie Great Pyramid NewYork Har,

Michell, John

The Earth

and Gray Poole, One Passion, Two Loves New

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Reed. William. The Phantom of the Poles New York: Walter S
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Ways, Shnnes and Mysteries

New York

per* Row,

1971.

Crossroad. 1975

Toth. Max, Pyramid Prophecies

The Flying Saucer Vision The Holy Grail Restored London

Sidgwick & lackson, 1967
Megalithomania Ithaca, NY Cornell University Press,

Viola.

1982,

1985
Von Daniken, Erich

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and Carolyn Margolis,

1979

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1842 Washington,

DC

Smithsonian Institution Press.

New

York

GP

22 London, 1982

Chariots oftlie Gods?

Secrets of the Stone: The Story of Astroarchaeology Harmondsworth. Middlesex, England Penguin, 1977

Gods from Outer Space New York G P Putnam's Sons,

The View over Atlantis

New

York: Ballantine, 1977

Morrison, Tony

"Aeronauts NotAstronauts/rhet/nexptonec/, no. 18 Lon-

1970
Waisbard, Simone The World's Last Mystenes Pleasantville,
N Y Readers Digest Association. 1978

Woodman,

Jim

Nazca The

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u Lon-

Flight

of the Condor

156

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1980

Nazca loumey to the Sun

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Putnam'sSons. 1970.

New

York Pocket Books,

^77

PICTURE CREDITS
The sources for the pictures in this book are listed below Credits
from left to right are separated by semicolons; creditsfrom top to
bottom are separated by dashes.

Voyages and

Map by William Hezlep

Townsend

New

The Granger Collection,

Berlin (West)

15 Art by Fred Holz 16

ArlbyLloydK Townsend

17:

A and Churchill, 1732, London, courLondon 55 from Description de

History Society, Devizes 92 Geralds

is,

Commission des Sciences et Arts, Impnmerie Impe809- 828, Pans, courtesy Bibliotheque Nationale, Par-

London 97 right Charla Devereux, Brecon,

Powys 99 Adam Woolfitt/Woodfin Camp 100, 101 Patrick
Ward, London 103 Art by lohn Thompson 104-109: Maps

Challifour,

York, Ullstein Bilderdienst,

courtesy The American School of Classical

Minnesota Historical Society 23

The Historical New Orleans Collection, Museum/Research
Center, Ace No 1960 14 76 25 BPCC/Aldus Archive, London - Mary Evans Picture Library, London 26 (romAtlantis.
Mother of Empires by Robert B Slacy-ludd. DeVorss & Co
1973, Los Angeles 27 Mary Evans Picture Library, London
29 The Bettmann Archive 31 Courtesy Edgar Cayce Foundation 32, 33, Fred Maura/The Counsellors Ltd Nassau,
Studies at Athens 22

Lady Hargreaves, London, courtesy Sandra Buckner, Nassau 34 Dr Harold Edgerlon/MIT 35 National Archeological
Museum, TAP Service, Athens 37-45 Art by Richard
Schlecht 47 Artby Fred Holz, 48,49 from Atlantis, Mother of
Empires by Robert B Stacy-Iudd, Devorss & Co., 1973, Los
Angeles 50,51 Mary Evans Picture Library, London 52-53
of the Sun by lean-Leon Gerome, ACR Edition, private collection, Courbevoie. Pans 54 from A Collection of
First Kiss

Camp - The Questioner of the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 58,

56 Robert Azzi/Woodfin

Sphinx, Elihu Vedder, 1863,

18, 19

by lohn

59 from Pamphlet of Extracts from the 13th Volume of the

Astronomical Observations Made at the Royal Observatory. Edinburgh, Neill&Co 1872, Edinburgh, courtesy The Library of
Congress 60, 61 Patrick Ward, London, National Maritime

Museum, London, The Illustrated London News Picture LiLondon 64 BBC Hulton Picture Library, London. 66,
67 MarkLehner 69 John Glover, Witley, Surrey 70,71 Jim

Adam

Woolfitt/Woodfin

79 lames Sugar/Black Star 81

Illustrated London

News

Camp

Art by Fred Holz 83

Picture Library,

London

84,

by lohn Thompson 111 Art by Fred

Alabama Museum of Natural

History

129-137 Marilyn Bridges 139 Art by Fred Holz. 140, 141:

The Fall of Rebel Angeles by Brueghel, courtesy

detail of

78,

Mauro Pucciarelli, Rome 142 The Royal Society of London 143 William A. Rasdell, courtesy Academy of Natural
Sciences of Philadelphia 144, 145 Courtesy Peabody
Museum of Salem 146 from The Illustrated Edgar Allen
Poe by Wilfned Satty, Clarkson N Potter, 1976, New York
147 from Jules Verne et le Roman Imtiatique by Simone
Vierne, Editions du Sirac, 1973, Paris 149 courtesy The
Koreshan Unity 152, 154 Popperfoto, London 155 Carl
McCunn/LIFE

The

85 from

The Most Notable Antiquity of Great Britain Vulgarly Called

Stone-Heng on Salisbury Plain, Restored by Imgo Jones, Esquire, Architect

art

13 Maria ReicheCollection/South

Bakker. University of

74,75

Mayer/Magnum

brary,

Brandenburg 72,73

Drummond,

American Pictures,
Woodbridge, Suffolk
15 Larry Dale Gordon/The Image
Bank 116 Mary Evans Picture Library, London - Armando
Sales Portugal 118-119 Larry Dale Gordon 120 ' National
Geographic Society by Thomas Hooper 124. 125 Tony
Linck/Shostal Associates 126 Aldo Tutino 127:
Dirk
Holz

lohn Glover, Witley, Surrey 76,77 Fred

Hawkins 93 C M
Graham

Dixon, Canterbury, Kent 95: Marilyn Bridges 96

lEgypte,
rial,

Cover- 13 Art by Lloyd K

Travels,

tesy the British Library,

General to the Late King, by Inigolones, printed

forD Browne, etal, 1725, London 86,87 Fay Godwin, London. 88, 89: Bodleian Library, Ms Top gen b53 f36v, f37r,
Oxford 90 from Philip Crocker's sketchbook of Upton Gold
Barrow, 803, courtesy Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural
1

INDEX
Numerals

in italics indicate

an

illustration

of the subject mentioned

Adena

culture, earthen

mounds of, 23

of,

and hollow earth

Alexander, lames, and Cleopatra's

Needle, 60-6J

Mamun,

Abdullah, and Great Pyra-

mid, exploration

49-51

of,

Ambrosius, Aurehus, and Stonehenge,

construction of, 82, 84
American Indian artifacts, 126-127
Anthroposophy, 30
Apothem, and Great Pyramid, 55
Arabs, and pyramids, 48
Archeoastronomy, 94, 98, and Great
Pyramid, 47, 63-65

and Plato's Atlantis, 20

Astronomical alignments at Great Pyramid, 9 at Medicine Wheel, 120, at
1

megalithic

monuments,

lines of Peru,

0.

2-

91 -92, at
1

3, at

Nazca

Stone-

henge. 90, 9 1,92. 94, 19

Atkinson, R.J C tStonehengel, quoted,

and Stonehenge. construction

of, 92,

Atlantean colonies, possible locations

of,

23

6-7, 8-9, destruction of, 12-13, legend of,

14-36,/rwp

17,

popular interest

in,

Cowan. ThaddeusM and Great Serpent

,

(Ohio). 123

Crete and legend of Atlantis, 36, and

Caesar, Julius (Gallic Wars), quoted, 88

sum-

76-77

Calvert,

Candelabra of the Andes, 113, //5

Carter, Howard, and Tutankhamen's tomb,
64
Casey, Harry, and geoglvphics of North
America, 121
Castlengg (England), legend of, 69
Cayce, Edgar, and Atlantis, legend of,
14,30-33,3/. 36
Cazeau, Charles, and pyramid power,
66
Ceques, and Nazca lines of Peru. 98,

Atlantis,

20

19-121, 135

Antome, and pyramid power,

UFO sighting,

Pole, 153

108-

Britain,

Vulgarly Called STONt-HENG, Stand-

ing on Salisbury Plain, Restored to the

23, pyramids, relationship to, 67, rul-

ers of, al temple of Poseidon, 10-11, 16-

Breughel Pieter ( The Fall of the Rebel

dancs),
of,

and Stonehenge as Danish con-

struction, 85-86

26

Cheops See Great Pyramid

Chephren, 56

Angels), 140 141

157

Minoan civilization, 34
Crowley, Aleister, and Great Pyramid, mystery of, 51

Cubit,

and Great Pyramid,

54, 55, 58,

63

Cummins, Geraldine, psychic messages

of, 25
and atmospheric halos at
Stonehenge, 102

Cyr, Donald,

Danes, as constructors of Stonehenge,

85-86
Darwin, Charles, 62; and Atlantis. 24;
and Stonehenge, 9 theory of evolution,
1

26

Cerne Giant (England), 126, 127, 137

Chanctonbury Ring (England), and ley theory, 106-107
Charlelon, Walter (Chorea Gigantum or the
Most Famous Antiquity of Great-

and

65-66
Bowles, Joyce, and
109

James F, and North

119

Theosophical Society, 28, 29

Blythe Giant (California),

of,

60-6/

33-34

152-153, 154

mer solstice.

Brasseur de Bourbourg. CharlesEtienne, and Mu, lost continent

23, 24, possible location of, IS, 16, 20-21,

19

Byrd, Richard, pole explorations of,

Callanish Circle (Outer Hebrides), and

and

Churchward, lames (The Lost Continent of

Mu), and Mu, 27. 28

Concave earth theory, 147-148

Condon. 117-119
Continental drift, and Atlantis, theory of,

and hollow

earth theory, 146

Bacon, Sir Francis (The New Atlantis), Atlantis, possible location of, 20
Barrows excavation of, 91 and ley theory,
95
Bats, and Great Pyramid, 54, 55
Bender, Peter, and Koreshanity, 151
Bermuda Triangle episodes in, 37, 42-43,
44-45, and Mary Celeste, 38-39
Bernard, Raymond, and hollow earth theory, 152-153
Bimini Road, and Atlantis, location of, 33

Bovis,

Atlantis colonies of, 15, description of,

of,

Cleopatra's Needle, 57, transporation

Last Days of Pompeii),

Blavatsky, Helena (The Secret Doctrine),

94

and

128-137

19

Blake, William,

lines

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward (Lord Lytton) (The

Aristotle,

and Nazca

other earth drawings, photography

Aurora borealis and hollow earth theory, 146, 149, 1 55, and twin earth theory,
139-140
Avebury Circle, as site of fertility rituals, 8687
Aveni, Anthony, and Nazca lines of Peru,

theory, 138

Al

Bridges. Marilyn,

ory, 149

Aelianus, Claudius, and Atlantis, 20

Agartha, kingdom

Atmospheric halos, at Stonehenge, 102

Aubrey, lohn (Monumenta Britannical.
and Stonehenge, construction of, 88-89
Aurora austrahs, and hollow earth the-

Davidovits, Joseph, and pyramids, construction of, 67

Davidson. David. Great Pyramid, measurements of. quoted, 63
De-coo-dah, and earthen mounds of North

America. 122, 123

De Gomara, Francesca Lopez, and

possible location

Cheops

Atlantis,

20

and Mary Celeste. 38-39

Devereux, Paul and dowsing rods, 9697, 98, and Dragon Project, 96-97

Dei Gratia,
ol

of,

Dolmen,

tedeluwan World), and Atlantis, legend of, 2 1-26

Poles),

Gilles,

map

Sphinx, 56,

58-59; pyramids

52-

of,

53

and Druids' influence on

Stonehenge, 91

Hurle, Henry,

Incas SeeCeques

and the Flying Dutchman,

Grand Gallery,
54,65

in

Great Pyramid, 50, 5

Isbell,

William, and Nazca lines of Peru.

65, 91

construction

tion of, 49-51,

Earth drawings, 126-127, 128, 129-137.

of,

48, explora-

55-57, 58-62 religious significance

,

lansen, Olaf, and hollow earth theory,

150

of, 48, 62
Great Serpent (Ohio), 122, 123; legend
of, 124-125, psychic episode at, 123-126

Jenkins, Stephen,

125. builders of, 122

Egypt and Atlantis, legend

Great Sphinx mystery of. 56. summer

solstice at, 67. and sun worship, 66, win-

lomard, Edme-Francois, and Great Pyramid, 55-57,63

and Minoan

34, 36;

of,

civilization, 35,

popular interest

in. 57.

and Mu, 26.

God.

or.

George (The Smoky

a Voyage to the Inner World), and

Willis

hollow earth theory, 150

Equinoxes, and Nazca lines of Peru,
Euler, Leonhard,

12

and hollow earth the-

ory, 142
Evans, Sir Arthur, and Minoan civiliza-

34

tion,

66

Jones, Inigo

Great Pyramid, 5 1,54

Gurdon,
of, 83

C and Stonehenge,
,

54,63
Koresh. See Teed. Cyrus Read
Koreshanity, religion of, 148,
151

Halley,

Atlantis,

Firestone,

search

and

for,

Hamson, and

Kosok. Paul, and Nazca lines of Peru,

110-112

Atlantis, legend of, 3

Sir

ry ofAtlantis),

Gerald (Atalanta

and opera about

Krupp, E C, and Nazca lines of Peru,

A Sto-

114

Kuntz,Otto,23

Atlantis.

and hollow earth theory,

151

William (Pyramid Odyssey), and

Great Pyramid, quoted, 67

Flanagan,

Patrick,

and pyramid

and Bermuda Triangle, 42-43

Matthew (The Pyramids and Temples ofCizeh). Great
Pyramid, measurements of, 62-63
Flying Dutchman, mystery of. 40-41
Fort Moiave Twins (Arizona), 134
Frost, K T quoted, and Minoan civi1

9.

Flinders Peine, William

lization,

Harner, Robert

34-35

of, 92, 94
Hedervan, Peter, and Minoan

tion,

and Minoan

civil-

Been Discovered), and hollow earth

theory, 148-151

Gardner, Martin, and Great Pyramid, 63

Geoffrey of Monmouth (History of the Kings

ofBritain), and Stonehenge, 82, 84

Geoglyphics, definition of,
at Nazca,
111; in North Amenca. Ill, 121-122,
1

in Peru,

1-113. See also

vidual geoglyphics

names of indi-

land

of,

26-28,

Nazca
Nazca

culture,

18-1
1

12

lines of Peru, 15,

0-

Leys and dowsing, 98. and earth ener-

and Nazca

lines of Peru, 98,

psychic episodes at, 103, 104-105,

106-107. /08-/09, and taki'is of Bolivia,

03,

08 See also UFO sightings

Linnaeus, Carolus, and kraken legend.

3,

construction

37
Lockyer, Sir

excavation of, 9 and Stonehenge, 90

Hobbes, Thomas, quoted, 85
Hollow earth theory, 38- 55
Homer (Iliad, Odyssey), and hollow
earth theory, 139, and legend of Troy, 18,

Newton,

13, 115,

of,

111,
1

19,

and

ley

129-

winter sol-

12,

10 See also Earth drawings

sun temple, 99
and Great Pyramid,

(Ireland), as

Sir Isaac,

54
North Pole, 148

Occam's Razor, law of, 36

Orpheus, and hollow earth

theory,

139

Peru, 117, 118 119

158

theory

drift,

of,

Phillips, Jerry,

Charles (Pnnciples of Geology).

Lytlon, Lord (The

lines of

153
Pangaea, and continental

astronomical alignments of, 91 -92,

and pyramids and archeoastronomy, 65,

23

of,

Palmer, Ray, and hollow earth theory, 152-

Stone Monuments Astronomically

Considered) and megalithic monuments,

Lyell, Sir

123

and Nazca

Obelisks, of Egypt, 57, 60-6/

33
Pendragon, Uther, and Stonehenge, 82, 84
Pepys, Samuel, quoted, and Stone-

and pyramids, 48

Hot-air ballooning,

Norman (The Dawn ofAs-

and Stonehenge, 65.

Loe Bar, visional, 104-105

19

Hopewell culture, earthen mounds

txonomy, Stonehenge and Other British

Richard Colt and barrows,

Julius,

of,

summer solstice at,

stice at,

151-/52

10-1 19,

98; theory of, 94-95, 98, 102, 103,

Adolph, and hollow earth theory,

astronomical alignments

19,

142,146

Henry of Huntington (History of the English).

and Stonehenge, 82
Herodotus, and Great Pyramid, 48-49, 55
Hissarlik (Turkey), and legend of Troy,

Honorius,

Nansen, Fndtjof. and North Pole,

148

Levitation.atleysite, 106-107

civiliza-

36

Sir

Newgrange

30

gy, 96,

Hoare,

Gardner, Marshall B (A Journey to the

Earth 's Interior, or. Have the Poles Really

lost

Le Plongeon, Augustus, and Mu, lost continent of, 26

Leslie, Sir John, and hollow earth theory,

18-19

Galanopoulos, A G
ization, 35-36

133,

Lemuria,

Hengist, and Stonehenge. legend ol. 82

Hitler,

I9;and taki'is ofBohvia. 98

Mu, lost continent of, 26-27, 28

of,

and Great Serpent, 123-

126
Harvey, William, and Great Pyramid, 54
Hawkins. Geralds (Stonehenge Decoded), and Nazca lines of Peru, 19, and
Stonehenge, astronomical alignment

mounds of,

123

theory, 98, purpose

power, 66

and UFO
98 See also Stonehenge
Megalithic yard, 94
Merlin, and Stonehenge, 82, 84, 85
Mermaids, legends of, 37
Michell, lohn (The Flying Saucer Vision).
and Stonehenge as UFO representation.
98-99
Minoan civilization, and Atlantis legend,
34-35, 36
sightings,

32-33

Fischer, Heinz,

Flight

Edmond and magnetic fields,

and twin earth theory, 139. 142

Hargreaves,

25

32

Fix,

139;

psychic emissions. 102, radiation

Morrison, Tony, and Nazca lines of Peru,

Cheops

28
Manly P Atlantis and pyramids,

93, fertility

Mississippian culture, earthen

King's Chamber, in Great Pyramid, 50, 51,

relationship of, 67

Fawcett, Colonel Percy

and

Khufu,48 See also Great Pyramid of

Haeckel, Ernst Heinnch, and Lemuria,

Hall,

88,

origin

H
26,

and Druids,

Stonehenge, 84-85, 86, 88, 92

Greaves, lohn (Pyramidographia). and

plateau, Pyramids

Emerson,

ter solstice at,

and vision of medi-

eval warriors, 104-105

Great Triangle (Peru), 129

Seealso Giza

91 -92, as astro-

levels at, 96-97, types of, 81,

henge, 84

See also Geoglyphics. Nazca lines of

Peru
Earthen mounds (North America) 124,

of,

nomical observatories, 68,

geomagnetism at, 97. as

healing stones, 73. 93, and ley theory, 94, 96, 97, powers of, 68. 73. 93. and

lames (King of England), and Stone-

measurements of, 51,54,

Martin, T Henri, and Atlantis, 20-21

Mary Celeste, mystery of, 38-39
Mayan civilization, and Mu, 26
Medicine Wheel (Wyoming), 120
Megalithic monuments, 69-79. 81, as-

rituals at. 86-87.

119

Great Pyramid of Cheops, 15,50, 46-67,

52-53, astronomical alignment of, 59, 63-

88,89-90,91. 100-101
Druids' Altar (Irelandl, 72

civi-

lization, 35

tronomical alignment

40-41

and Great Pyramid, 46

M
Marmatos, Spyndon. and Minoan

92

Inconstant,

Goidin, lean-Patnce,

Druids, 20, 88-89, at Stonehenge, 86.

Hoyle. Fred, quoted, and Stonehenge,

139
Giza plateau, 62; construction on, 66-67,
and Great Pyramid, 47, and Great

and Great Pyramid,

construction of, 46
Dowsing, and ley theory, 96-97, 98
Dragon Hill (England), 126-127
Dragon Project, 96-97
Drbal, Karl, and pyamid power, 66
Dormion,

Amadeo ( Worlds beyond the

and hollow earth theory. 52
Gilgamesh. and hollow earth theory, 138Giannini, F

definition of, 81

Donnelly. Ignatius Loyola {AUantis TheAn-

henge, 102

Pidgeon, William and earthen

9,

mounds

of North America, 122, 123. and ley theory,

Coming Race), and

and Blythe Giant.

121

Pillars

98
of Hercules See Strait of Gibraltar

hollow earth theory, 146,151 See also

Plate tectonics, theory of. 33

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward

Plato (The Republic, Timaeus, Critias) and

Atlanlis, destruction of, 12- 3,

and

and

fears of, 37

of, 81

83, as

Roman

Atlantis,

Sarsen, and Stonehenge, 82

Slaughter Stone

26, 3

Schhemann, Heinnch, and legend of

at, 68,

legend of, 7,8, 10-11, 15-17, 23,

36; and hollow earth theory,

Troy, 18-/9

quoted, 139
Poe, Edgar Allan
tle,"

("MS Found

in a

Bot-

The Narrative ofArthur Cordon Pym of

Nantucket), and hollow earth theory,

45-/46
Portal dolmens. 72
Poseidon, temple of,

in Atlantis, 7, 8-9, lo-

and Great Pyramid, astro-

nomical alignment

of, 63,

65

Psychic emissions, at megalithic

monu-

in

and hollow earth

Symmes's

Taki'is of Bolivia,

Reiche, Maria, quoted, 127,

and Nazca

lines

ofPeru, I11-//3, 114, 117

Reinhard, lohan, and Nazca lines of Peru.

119
Reynolds, leremiah, and hollow earth theory, 144-145, 146

Ring of Brodgar (Scotland), and earth energy, 70-71

Rock alignments (North America) 2

Rollnght Stones (England), psychic episodes at, 96-97
Roselta Stone, 57
Rudbeck, Olof, and Atlantis, 20
RudeManofCerne See Cerne Giant
,

and Bermuda Triangle

mystery, 37

Sargasso Sea, Christopher Columbus's crew

at Callanish Circle, 76-77,

Medicine

Wheel, 120, at Nazca lines of Peru, 12, at

Stonehenge, 68, 90, 100-101
Solstice, winter, 99, at Egyptian pyramids,
1

67, at

Great Sphinx. 66, at Nazca

linesofPeru, 110. 130

Sons of Belial, 33
Sphinx See Great Sphinx
Stecchini, Livic, pyramids, archeoas-

tronomy of, 65
and anthroposophy, 30
Stonehenge, 5, 80- 02, 84-85, Altar Stone
at,

Thutmose

80, astronomical alignment of, 90,

at,

98
Taylor, John (The Great Pyramid), and Great
[pyramid, 57-58
Teed, Cyrus Read (pseud KoreshuTTieCe/lular Cosmogony, or, the Earth a ConcaveSpherei, and concave earth theory,
147-148, 149
Teudt, Wilhelm, and ley theory, 98
Thera, and legend of Atlantis, 34. and
Minoan civilization, 35
Thorn, Alexander (Megalithic Sites in
Britain, Megalithic Lunar Observatories).
and megalithic monuments, astronomical alignment of, 94, and Stonehenge, astronomical alignment of,
ley theory,

North America, 123

atmospheric halos

VonDaniken, Erich (Chariots of the Gods 7

Gods from Outer Space) and Great
Pyramid of Cheops, 13, and Nazca lines
1

lay,

and geoglyphics of North

w
tion,

26

Watkins, Alfred (Early British Trackways.

The Old Straight Track), and ley the98

Webb, John (The Most Notable Antiquity
ory, 94,

of Great Bnlain. Vulgarly Called SloneHeng. on Salisbury Plain Restored),

and Stonehenge,

85,

86

Wilkes. Charles, painting by, /44-

145

Wood.

lohn, quoted,

and Stonehenge,

90-91

Woodman, Urn. and Nazca lines of

Peru, 116-119, 118-119

94

91,92, 94, 119; as astronomical observatory, 68;

earth theory, 146, 147

Wallace, Alfred Russel, and theory of evolu-

and

Thomas, Cyrus, and earthen mounds of

Sterner, Rudolf,
1

and

Druids, 88

nificance of, 62

at

Centre of the

America, 121

SilburyHill (England), 81

summer

to the

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under theSea) and Atlantis, 2 and hollow

Earth,

Von Werlhof,

Hole, theory of, 143-144.

and Druids,
Tacitus, Publius Cornelius, quoted,

Great Sphinx, 67,

Verne, Jules (tourney

ofPeru, 113-116

88
Siemens, Werner von, and pyramid
power, 65

at

98; at Stone-

theory, 142-144

Smyth, Charles Piazzi (Our Inheritance in the

Great Pyramid) and Great Pyramid,
58-62, and Great Pyramid, religious sig-

155

of,

Seaborn) (Symzoma), and hollow earth

Solstice,

monuments,

henge, 99, 102

Symmes, John Cleves (pseud Adam

62,

63
,

UfSngton Horse (England), 126, 127, 136

UFO sightings and ley theory, 108-109;
at megalithic

Swinside Circle (England), legend

74-75

dwellers, 153

Reed, William /The Phantom of the

Poles), and hollow earth theory, 148-150,

98-99

of Gibraltar, 16,20,36

and
Stonehenge as Druid construction, 88-89,
90
Sun worship, in Egypt, 66-67

or, 154

Siculus. Diodorus, quoted,

Great Pyramid,

summer solstice
as UFO represen-

stored to the British Druids),

30
Seaborn, Adam See Symmes, John
Cleves
Seismic tomography, and earth's interi-

and Great Pyramid,

90, 100- 101,

temple, 85,

80,

Stukeley, William (Stonehenge, a Temple Re-

Shaver, Richard S

Pyramid power, 47, 65-66

Pyramids, 46, 47, 48-67 Seealso Giza
plateau. Great Pyramid of Cheops

Sanderson, Ivan T

Seiss, Joseph,

ments, 102

Queen's Chamber,
46, 49, 50

Strait

of,

19

Proctor, Richard,

Scott, Stuart,
Scott-Elliott,

ll. 16,

tation,

and Lemuria, 26, 28

and pyramid power, 66
and Atlantis, legend

Sclater, Philip,

at,

Tiepolo,

IV,

G D

and Great Sphinx, 57

.painting by. 18

Time warp flight, and Bermuda Triangle, 44-45

Toth, Max, quoted, and pyramids, 67

102,

Aubrey Holes at, 88; chronology of, 82; as

Danish construction, 85-86; and
Druids, 86, 88-89, 90,91, 100-101, and
earth energy, 80, and leys, theory of,
102, origin of, 78-79, 80,82, 102, purpose

TroianHorse, 18
Troy, legend of, 18-19

Tutankhamen, tomb of, 64

159

Zeus, and Atlantis, destruction

13,

19

of, 12-

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