Ancient Warnings -- Was There A Civilization Before Civilization As We Know Of?

Interdisciplinary theory. Something doesn't add up. How could certain ancient cultures have seemingly understood complicated details of geology and astronomy without knowing more basic scientific theories? In a new book, British author Graham Hancock combines elements of many sciences to pose a theory: An even older civilization planted "teaching machines" to warn us of impending cataclysm. -----------------------------------------------------------------

At the beginning of civilization, could some people already foresee its end?

And if so, did they try to warn us about it?

From the Pyramids of Egypt to Chichen Itza in Mexico to Tihuanaco in Bolivia; from ancient maps and ancient legends; from archaeology, astronomy and geology, British author Graham Hancock has compiled a fascinating list of questions that he hopes scientists will address.

His latest book, "Fingerprints of the Gods," stems from what Hancock saw as anomalies in dating the rise of Egyptian civilization while writing "The Sign and the Seal," which suggested a possible scenario for the fate of the Ark of the Covenant.

It didn't add up, Hancock reckoned, that Egyptian civilization should have sprung up suddenly at around 3000 B.C., even though scientists had not yet verified to their satisfaction any advanced civilization existing before that time. When researching ancient cultures in Central and South America, the same inconsistencies appeared.

Why did the Mayans, for example, and the Olmecs before them, have a calendar system that calculated the length of the solar year more accurately than the Gregorian Calendar we use today, centuries before the Gregorian Calendar? How did they grasp the concept of "zero" centuries before Arabian mathematicians are said to have discovered it?

And with such mathematical knowledge, how is it that neither the Mayans nor the Olmecs ever developed the wheel, even though their calendar predicts, expressing no doubt, that a major solar cycle will end on Dec. 23, 2012, with catastrophic results?

And the Pyramids. Is it a coincidence, Hancock asks, that the Great Pyramid of Giza measures at its base almost exactly 1/432,000 of the equatorial circumference of the Earth, and that its height is 1/432,000 of the polar radius of Earth, or that the number 432,000 comes up again and again in one of Earth's key planetary cycles?

That cycle is called the "precession of the equinoxes." It is, Hancock suspects, a key to insights about our past and our future that deserve a closer look.

Earth, as we know, is not exactly spherical. Instead, it "bulges" at the equator. Because of this, and because of the gravitational pull of the moon, Earth's axis is tilted slightly, perpendicular to the orbit of the moon.

The gravitational pull of the sun, far stronger, keeps Earth from straying from its orbit. But the combined effect of the sun's gravity and the moon's gravity causes Earth's axis to wobble, or rotate as the years progress, like the motion of a gyroscope or a spinning top.

The plane of Earth's orbit around the sun is called the ecliptic. Around the ecliptic lie the 12 constellations of the Zodiac. Roughly every 30 days, the sun is said to "rise in" a different constellation, which we can see directly "behind" the sun at sunrise. This is what astrologers mean when they say the sun is "in Virgo," for example. This is the way the ancients told time. Their year began at the vernal equinox, the first day of spring.

For roughly the past 2,200 years, at the vernal equinox the sun has risen in Pisces, from any point on the globe. This cycle is now coming to a close, as we approach the well-publicized "Age of Aquarius."

Precession is said to have been first mentioned by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, in the second century B.C. Hancock suspects, however, that it was known well before then, and that what he says are unmistakable references to precession pop up in mythology of all cultures all over the world, from the Nile Valley to the snowy forests of Finland.

More yet, Hancock asserts, all this mythology contains the same numbers, and the same association of cataclysm with precession: the Ice Age, the Flood, the "fall of the heavens," all occurring far too frequently, Hancock says, to have been coincidence.

And the universality of the myths, the allegories they appear to represent, and the numbers they seem to be based on, are far too sophisticated, he believes, to have been the product of the civilizations that recorded them. Hancock suspects - and he provides, step by step, a lot of circumstantial evidence that suggests - a far older civilization at work, that influenced less-developed cultures all over the world.

Survivors of a global catastrophe, they escaped to found other civilizations elsewhere, planted their knowledge, taught agriculture, built pyramids and ancient cities, and left us pointers to what had happened to them. Myths worldwide contain this thread, from Viracocha in South America to Quetzlcoatl in Mexico to Noah in the Book of Genesis. They were white men with beards, who came by sea.

So where did they come from? Outer space? Hardly. Despite the similarities in the titles, this is not "Chariots of the Gods," the 1968 book that claimed civilization had been founded on Earth by aliens.

So if these civilizers, these builders, these mythmakers, these astronomers, these mathematicians were in fact earthlings, where did they come from and why is there no more permanent record of their existence?

At this point, some might say, Hancock steps over the edge of credibility, yet he provides some tantalizing pointers to a fascinating theory.

Could the precession of the equinoxes, the rotation of Earth's axis and the gravitational pull of other planets, he asks, all working in combination, have caused a "crustal shift" that might have moved the Earth's surface relative to the axis? If so, where is the only place on Earth we haven't dug up, so that we might find evidence of this earlier race of civilizers?

Hancock suspects Antarctica. He cites and displays ancient maps that purport to show the exact outlines of the continent, drawn centuries before Antarctica was "discovered." And he suggests that 10,000 years ago, Antarctica may not have been at the South Pole but could have been moved there from the southern temperate zone by the crustal shift.

It could be, Hancock suggests, that the pyramids of Egypt and the myths of Finland all were created by these civilizers from Antarctica. They may have been "teaching machines" to warn us about the next crustal shift of Earth's surface.

Hancock is not a scientist and is the first to admit it. He is by training an investigative journalist, with an increasing passion for the "big issues" of history. While in Seattle on a recent book tour, he explained where he thinks he fits into the search for knowledge about our past:

"What I've been in this book is a compiler, to bring together a whole range of material - disparate material that hadn't been connected before, but that was crying out to be connected. And only when it is connected does it get powerful and start turning into a real case for a re-examination of the past. I think maybe that's what my role has been."

To this end, he has enlisted the aid of mathematicians and geologists, historians and archaeologists. There is too much at stake, he thinks, to surrender these questions to only one or two disciplines.

"One of the things that I feel quite strongly about," Hancock says, "is that the past of mankind should not be a monopoly of a small group of scholars. It is something which many different people from many different disciplines, including members of the public who aren't working in any academic context at all, can bring insights to. And I feel that the big issue, the key issue, is openness of mind, of being open to any possibility, until we absolutely know that it's an impossibility, rather than the other way around."

With that approach inevitably comes controversy. Scientists, as they must, demand proof, evidence and rigor in methodology. Hancock insists there is no conflict with his more inclusive approach.

"What's going on here is a kind of paradigm shift. There's a change going on in the way that we look at ourselves as a species, and the way we look at the past. And as with all such changes, it tends to be people from outside the mainstream field who are delivering the new insights."

Hence an investigation is needed, Hancock believes, into the possible connection between, say, Norse and Native-American myths, and precise astronomical math. Traditionalists will wince, but Hancock sees it as a logical next step in scientific inquiry.

"Any advance, any change, any movement in a new direction which has resulted in a big step forward has had to come about with pain and difficulty, with an overthrow of the old paradigm and of the old ideas," he says. "It's always been like that."