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10 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 70 Subscribe or Order Books, DVDs and Much More!

EARLY RAYSEARLY RAYSEARLY RAYSEARLY RAYSEARLY RAYS

he Bible story ofthe destruction

of Sodom and Go-morrah has been un-expectedly corrobo-rated by an ancientSumerian claytablet. In fact, ac-cording to a startlingreport from twoprominent scien-tists, the tablet,which had baffledscholars for morethan a century, is avirtual eyewitness description of an ancientasteroid hit that killed thousands. The eventis said to be related to a great landslide epi-sode which scientists have previously calledthe “Köfels’s Impact Event.”

According to a story in the British news-paper, The Daily Mail, Alan Bond and MarkHempsell, both rocket scientists, say that thetablet—known as the Planisphere and discov-ered by the Victorian archaeologist HenryLayard in the ruins of the royal palace atNineveh—is a Sumerian astrologer’s descrip-tion of the night sky shortly before dawn onJune 29, 3123 B.C. The tablet say Bond andHempsell is a 700 B.C. copy of a far oldertablet. Half of the tablet shows the position ofplanets and clouds, while the other half de-scribes the movement of an object lookinglike a ‘stone bowl’ traveling rapidly across thesky. That object is said to match a kind of as-teroid known as the Aten type which orbitsthe sun close to earth. Its trajectory wouldhave put it on a collision course with the OtzValley. Hempsell told the Daily Mail, “It camein at a very low angle—around six degrees—and then clipped a mountain called Gaskogelaround 11 kilometers from Köfels’.” Hemp-sell went on to explain how the object ex-ploded as it traveled down the valley and ulti-mately produced an event of literally biblical

T

“Eyewitness” AccountDetails Destruction ofSodom and Gomorrah

The Destruction ofSodom and Gomorrah

(John Martin, 1854)

10 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 70

proportions.The Sodom andGomorrah story

from the Old Testa-ment tells how the‘wicked’ behaviour

of the natives of-fended Abrahamwho personally

chose to live else-where, but, never-

theless, pleadedwith two angelic

visitants—come towarn of the cities’

impending demise—to spare them for thesake of his nephew Lot, who, despiteAbraham’s rejection, had chosen to live inSodom. Lot and his family were ultimatelyrescued before the end, but Lot’s wife who—though warned not to—looked back at thefinal conflagration, was said to have beenturned into a pillar of salt. Some have arguedthat the turning to salt could have been anapt description of what might happen tosomeone too close to the great heat of a nu-clear blast.

Bond and Hempsell do claim that the ex-plosion would have generated a giganticmushroom cloud and filled the air for hun-dreds of miles with thick dust. The Köfels’sevent is generally thought to have occurredseveral thousand years earlier than the 3123B.C. date referenced, but Bond and Hempsellsay that is a mistake caused by contaminatedsamples used in the earlier analysis.

As might be expected, the claims of Bondand Hempsell are controversial. Detractorsfind it difficult to believe that ancient astrolo-gers were such keen observers of theheavens. Whether Bond and Hempsell areright or not, there is little doubt that when itcomes to recognizing the true advancementof the ancients, mainstream science has avery poor record indeed.

SumerianPlanisphere

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New Study Sets Out toUnearth the Secretsof Stonehenge

hile the debate over the true age ofStonehenge—that massive circle of

stone megaliths in southwest England—hasraged for centuries, scientists now say theyare determined to settle the argument onceand for all. Thus a new effort has been under-taken to find out with certainty just how oldthe mysterious site truly is. Conventionalwisdom currently has it at about 5,000 years.

Late in March archaeologists working forthe English Heritage Society initiated thefirst new dig on the spot since 1964 with theintention of making out exactly when theoriginal blue stones were erected. Unlike themassive sandstone monoliths which makeStonehenge so easily recognizable, little re-mains of the first standing stones, the blue

W ones, on the spot. Over the centuries theyhave been mostly broken up and cartedaway.

What we do know is that about 80 ofthem, weighing between one and four tonseach, were brought from a quarry in the Pre-sili Hills over 150 miles away. The mystery ofhow and why the massive effort was made toextract them and move them to Stone-henge—in a time generally believed to bequite primitive—remains, but it is hopedsome new light will be shed on such ques-tions. Any organic material that turns upwill be carefully dated and the informationyielded will, hopefully, put things in bettercontext.

Most of the mainstream theorizing has to

do with the notion that Stonehenge was in-tended as some kind of healing spot. Seldommentioned are the points of John Michell andothers that the site was at the confluence of avast system of perfectly straight tracks calledley lines which overlay virtually the entireEnglish landscape. The advanced knowledgeof sciences like surveying, mathematics, as-tronomy, etc., clearly implicit in the mega-lithic engineering of pre-historic England, isusually disregarded in favor of ideas morepalatable to sneering modern science,namely that the ancient builders were notmuch more than superstitious hunter-gatherers who, like Fred Flintstone, appar-ently enjoyed hauling around big rocks.

esearcher Terry Anthony writing on theTate Publishing web site describes a 19th

century thangka (religious painting) fromTibet which he acquired some years ago. Re-markably the painting clearly depicts severalscenes from the life of Jesus, including oneshowing him visiting the Himalayas. An-thony purchased the painting from a re-spected dealer in oriental antiquities andconsiders it authentic.

Possibly the work of—or under the influ-ence of—Moravian missionaries, the thangkashows a clear awareness of the biblical storyof Jesus depicting familiar scenes includingwalking on the water, the transfiguration andthe entry into Jerusalem. Whatever the

RPainting Shows Jesus in Tibet

n April the worldwide paranormal sciencecommunity was shocked to hear that at a

conference in Santa Fe noted researcher Ru-pert Sheldrake had been stabbed. Sheldrakewas standing on a stage and the attackerstruck from beneath or else the blow mighthave done more damage. As it was, it hit himin his left leg where the wound was deep andthe blood loss was considerable. The nearfatal attack occurred at the 10th Interna-tional Conference on Science and Conscious-ness immediately following a lecture he hadgiven on “thought transference.” The at-tacker was a Japanese man from Yokohamawho appeared mentally deranged. Sheldrakereceived immediate and effective medical at-tention and within a few days had made an

I almost complete recovery.An anathema in so-called skeptical sci-

ence—read that materialistic—circles Shel-drake is best known for his theories of mor-phic resonance which he believes is the basisof memory in nature.

Sheldrake says, “I have also felt no fear,and have indeed felt calm and happy, evenblissful at times.” Nevertheless, consideringthe particular focus of his work, it is difficultto escape the notion that darker forces mayhave been at work.

Just a little over four years ago, new en-ergy pioneer, author and Atlantis Rising col-umnist Dr. Eugene Mallove was assaultedand killed by burglars in his parents’ home.While attacks like that and the one on Shel-

drake may appear entirely random, their in-tensity signals the presence of forces whichmust be guarded against, both spirituallyand otherwise.

Knife Hit on Rupert Sheldrake

source of the painting, it tends to corrobo-rate the account of Nicolas Notovitch, a rus-sian journalist who traveled to the Himalayasin the 1870s and reportedly was shown oldmanuscripts maintained by Tibetan monksdescribing visits by a Saint Issa (clearlyJesus) to Tibet. Notovitch’s book St. Issa Bestof the Sons of Men, was later translated byNicholas Roerich the famous Russian painterand spiritual teacher. The details have beencovered more than once in Atlantis Rising(most recently in Len Kasten’s article “DidJesus Visit India” in A.R. #59).

To see reproductions of several scenesfrom Anthony’s Jesus Thangka visit http://www.mondovista.com/jesus/index. html.


Scene from theJesus Thangha

Sheldrake on his way to the hospital


ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE

Continued on Page 59

• BY MICHAEL TYMN

n an early review of Dr. RaymondMoody’s 1975 best-selling book, LifeAfter Life, the late Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote, “It is research like Dr.

Moody presents in his book that will en-lighten many and will confirm what we havebeen taught for two thousand years—thatthere is life after death.” And, at Am-azon.com, the product description of thisstill-popular book, which has sold over 13-million copies, reads, “…the extraordinarystories presented here provide evidence thatthere is life after physical death…”

Moody’s groundbreaking book created anew area of science called “near-deathstudies” and a number of other scientistsadded to Moody’s research of the phenom-enon that came to be known as the “near-death experience,” or more simply as theNDE. Generally, there are six characteristicassociated with the NDE:

• Seeing things from outside the body asin observing one’s operations from above orviewing an accident scene from outside theaccident.

• A feeling that one is in a tunnel andthat he or she is proceeding through thattunnel toward a light at the end of thetunnel.

• Being greeted by deceased relative orfriends who act as a guide, by an angel, or bya Being of Light, and then receiving somekind of orientation relative to the person’ssituation.

• A life review in which the person seesevery instant or highlights of her or his lifeflash in front of her/him.

• Being told by the Being of Light, the“angel,” guide or relative that he/she mustreturn to the body, then usually protesting it.

• A complete transformation in theperson’s outlook, generally moving from amaterialistic outlook to a spiritual one.

Rarely did the researchers find any oneperson who experienced all of the character-istics, but there were enough reports of eachone that they could recognize a definite pat-tern.

The NDE, per se, falls short of proving lifeafter death. What it does is offer evidencethat we do in fact, as St. Paul told us, havetwo bodies—a physical one and a spiritualone, the spiritual body separating from the

I

EvidenceAside,There

May BeDeeperForces

at WorkHere

physical body at the time of death. In effect,the NDE is an out-of-body experience (OBE).Many people have reported having OBEswithout having suffered the physical trauma,such as a serious accident, often associatedwith NDEs. And while OBEs do not usuallyproduce the tunnel effect, the life review, andthe other end-of-life characteristics asso-ciated with the NDE, those people who haveexperienced an OBE, what some call “astraltravel,” report leaving their physical bodies,“seeing” with non-physical eyes, and visitingother realms of existence. A number of exper-iencers have reported seeing a cord con-necting the two bodies. This is apparentlywhat the Bible refers to as the “silver cord”:

“Remember him—before the silver cordis severed, or the golden bowl is broken; be-fore the pitcher is shattered at the spring, orthe wheel broken at the well, and the dust re-turns to the ground it came from, and thespirit returns to God who gave it.” Eccle-siastes 12:6-7

It is believed to be the severance of thiscord, the etheric counterpart of the umbilicalcord, that results in actual physical death.Thus, the NDEr who returns to physical lifeafter being out of body has not had the cordsevered.

The early NDE research gave hope tomany people who needed more than theblind faith offered by religion that conscious-ness lives on after physical death, or, to put itanother way, that we are not all marching to-ward the abyss of nothingness or total extinc-tion. It restored the meaning to life that sci-ence had taken away. Moreover, the lessonscoming from the NDE, especially the life re-view, provided a more intelligent and justmeaning than that offered by orthodox re-ligion, suggesting that we judge ourselvesand take a station in the next life based uponthe spiritual body built here. But mainstreamscience wanted nothing to do with the resur-rection of such superstitious thinking. It re-jected, refuted, repudiated, and resisted theresearch, claiming that science had alreadycleansed the world of such infantile ideas.

Chief among the arguments advanced bythe scientific fundamentalists is the oxygendeprivation theory. In the January 29, 2007issue of Time, Steven Pinker, a Harvard psy-chology professor, proclaimed that the NDEis “not the eyewitness report of a soul partingcompany from the body but symptoms of ox-ygen starvation in the eyes and brain.” How-ever, Pinker did not explain how or why it isthat brains are programmed to have suchcommon and unusual hallucinations. Onewould think that the hallucinations broughton by oxygen starvation would be as diverseas dreams or as in hallucinations triggered bydrugs.

Somewhat related to the oxygen depriva-tion theory is the dying brain theory, whichholds that the tunnel effect is caused by in-creased levels of carbon dioxide in the bloodor by an otherwise collapsing brain.

Skeptical researchers have also suggestedthat NDE hallucinations are caused by anes-thesia, medication, or drugs, by mental insta-


See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on 4 Number 70 • ATLANTIS RISING 25

THE OTHER SIDE


“Gradually, the mists will clear and wewill chart the shadowy coast”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

t was in the year of 1919 that London’ssemi-secret Crimes Club enjoyed a talkby Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the sub-ject of “Crime and Clairvoyance.” The

twelve distinguished members of the all-maleand highly exclusive club were connoisseursof crime, a dozen Sherlocks who, over cigarsand port, shared their insights on real-lifemysteries and villainies. Sir Arthur—asagreeable as his Dr. Watson and as perspica-cious as his Holmes—cited cases in which atrance-vision, a dream, or perhaps an in-stance of traveling clairvoyance, held the keyto an unsolved murder, or to a mysteriousdisappearance. He went so far as to suggestthat “every great police centre” could andshould avail themselves of “the best mediumthat can be got,” thus demonstrating to theworld one of the many “practical benefitsgiven by psychic science to humanity.”

Although forced (by fans) to resuscitatethe fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes,from his fatal plunge into the ReichenbachFalls in the Swiss Alps (“The FinalProblem”), Conan Doyle had better things todo than tell tall tales of a reclusive and eccen-tric sleuth’s adventures in crime-solving. Thereal world, problem-ridden and hungry foranswers, was calling; and Doyle, a good-natured man, outspoken, approachable, andimmensely popular, was not unaware of hispersonal charisma. Even his detractorswould admit that “he was an influentialfigure in many fields outside literature.”

On friendly terms with the likes of Rud-yard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. G.Wells, Lord Kitchener, Lloyd George,Winston Churchill, Bram Stoker, as well asthe era’s finest mediums and literati, Sir Ar-thur Conan Doyle was knighted in 1902 forhis patriotism in the Boer War. Over thesame decades that the canny and controver-sial writer slowly but surely became a con-vinced spiritualist—and indeed its heartiestpropagandist in modern times—the Edin-burgh-born Irishman had been a ship’sdoctor (on voyages to the Arctic—“a jollytime”—and South Africa), a physician atSouthsea, England, as well as in the BoerWar; Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey (1902) anda nominee to Parliament; a great sportsmanand aficionado of billiards, cycling, boxing,golf, football, rugby, soccer, bowling andcricket (credited also as helping to introduceskiing into Switzerland); official historian ofthe Great War’s campaigns on the WesternFront; researcher in organic chemistry, crim-inologist (with an impressive library coveringthe crime histories of many lands); poet,journalist, social reformer, pamphleteer, andchampion of the underdog, defending boththe wrongly accused and politically op-

pressed—see, for example, his biting attackon Belgian rule in Africa, The Crime of theCongo, 1909—for which he refused to acceptpayment.

“It’s every man’s business to see justicedone”

Holmes, The Crooked Man

Born in May of 1859, Doyle became afreethinker and lapsed Catholic even in hisschooldays: “the foundations of the wholeChristian faith…were so weak that my mindcould not build upon them…” At the Jesuitschool to which he was sent, when “FatherMurphy, a great fierce Irish priest, declare[d]that there was sure damnation for everyoneoutside the Church, I looked upon him withhorror.” Early on, the future author andevangelist of the spirit world, distanced him-self from the world’s “wooden creeds and

I

• BY SUSAN MARTINEZ, Ph.D. petrified religions.” And to prove, if only tohimself, that he was no hypocrite, he wouldnot allow his influential relatives to recom-mend his medical practice to their churchconnections. (His practice did suffer, but inhis spare time he began writing adventure,gothic horror, and detective stories.) Warm-hearted and conscientious, Doyle was none-theless (according to a recent biographer)“more of a Christian, not being one, thanmany who professed to the faith.”

Organized religion would prove no lessdaunting an opponent of Doyle’s than thescience stronghold; the churches, as he sawit, were “to the last degree formal andworldly and material. They have lost all con-tact with the living facts of the spirit.”Railing at the Church of England’s “narrowand bitter” attacks against mediums, hechronicled affairs such as the “high clergy’s”

Why Was the Creator ofSherlock Holmes

so Interested inthe Invisible World?



mmense in size and enigmatic in theirmanifestation, the pyramids of Egyptare a perennial source of speculationand wonder. They have challenged the

minds of generations of engineers and scien-tists who marvel at their construction andcomplexity of design.

In my discussions with fellow engineersover the years, there has been no disagree-ment that what was created in ancient Egyptis sophisticated to a point that would se-verely stretch modern capabilities. With allour modern tools and technology, when vis-iting Egypt, why do engineers gape in awe atwhat the ancient Egyptians accomplished?Where are the answers to our questionsabout how such miracles of stonework werecreated? A prehistoric culture was empow-ered with a vision and genius to design andbuild pyramids and temples that are miraclesof precisely tooled stonework of gargantuanproportion. Surely they would not limit theirgenius to conceiving only of the finalproduct. Doesn’t it make more sense to ac-cept the idea that such genius would andcould influence the design and building oftools which, themselves, are equal in majestyand truly reflect their capability?

There are no tools in the archaeologicalrecord that cause us to gasp with the samekind of awe that we feel when faced with themiracles this civilization produced. No ma-chine tools have been found to explain theintricate and precise contours found on theGiza Plateau and the temples in UpperEgypt. No metrology instruments have beenuncovered to explain how ultra-flat surfacesthat were finished to optical precision weremaintained over hundreds of square feet of

I

China with the conclusion that they musthave used compound machines 3,000 yearsago. His research is systematic, logical andhard to refute.

Published in Science was circumstantialevidence from which Dr. Lu inferred thatcompound machines existed in China 3,000year ago. He made this groundbreaking dis-covery while studying Jade burial rings (M1:7 from Tomb 1 of the Chu minister at HenanXichuan Xiasi, 552 B.C.) that had been care-fully inscribed with what appeared to beequally spaced spiral grooves around its cir-cumference. A simple camera and computer-aided design program were the tools withwhich Lu was able to draw this inference.Replication of the spirals was performed by ascribing tool guided by precise linear and ro-tational motion.

Employing the same methodology as Dr.Lu, I am able to present evidence from asawn piece of granite that indicates it was cutwith a circular saw that is 35.9 feet (10.942meters) in diameter. The marks left in thegranite indicate that such a saw was used tocut the rock for building the 4th dynasty pyr-amid of Abu Rawash in Egypt. Because sawsof this magnitude have not been found any-

surface area. We areshown ‘not-so-square’ woodensquares of dubiousefficacy in a museumcase and expected tobuy the academicline, which flies inthe face of decades ofexperience andtraining, whichteaches that thesewere the tools theancient Egyptians used to create squarecorners.

Any craftsperson of substantial skill,wielding only the tools that remain in the ar-chaeological record, would be incapable ofrecreating this stonework. This presents anobstacle to understanding our past. The ac-cepted conventional theory that all the re-markable finely crafted stonework in the pyr-amids and temples in Egypt was produced byhand, using copper tools, stone pounders,wooden hammers, wooden squares andpieces of string is absurd. The theories havebeen tested, with limited results, and theyhave never replicated the more difficult as-pects of Egypt’s accomplishments. Attemptsat shaping stone using dolerite hammers anddrilling holes using quartz sand-chargedcopper have met with limited success. Thosewho have engaged in these enterprises haveprovided a service to our understanding.This understanding is not about how the an-cient Egyptians performed mechanical work,but, rather, how they did not.

Nothing on this planet compares to theEgyptian stonework. Studies need to bemade along the lines of Dr. Peter Lu of YaleUniversity who raises the prestige of ancient

• BY CHRISTOPHER DUNN

ANCIENT MYSTERIES

Startling New Evidence ShowsHow the Ancient Egyptians

Sliced Up Their Stones

“Boat pit” east ofthe Great Pyramid

at Giza

The Mega SawsThe Mega Saws of the of thePyramid BuildersPyramid BuildersThe Mega SawsThe Mega Saws of the of thePyramid BuildersPyramid BuildersThe Mega SawsThe Mega Saws of the of thePyramid BuildersPyramid BuildersThe Mega SawsThe Mega Saws of the of thePyramid BuildersPyramid Builders



ANCIENT MYSTERIES

• BY MARK AMARU PINKHAMhroughout the ages the image of theblack madonna has elicited profoundveneration, but also intense trepida-tion and even abhorrence from its

observers. While Catholics have sought todenigrate and even to shun the numerousBlack Madonnas scattered throughout theirown European churches—the followers ofthe older, nature-centered and alternativefaiths have traditionally praised its beautyand uplifting power. In 1952 during a con-vention of the American Association for theAdvancement of Science, representatives ofthe church made their feelings clear when apaper on the Black Madonna was presented.Abruptly the attendant priests and nuns roseand walked out in protest. The shocking dis-dain for the Black Madonna left reportersscrambling for clues to this “skeleton in the(church) closet” which the mere mention ofthe Black Madonna had invoked. It has sincebeen speculated that paganistic origins forthe Black Madonna could have sparked suchsurprising behavior, and more recently, withthe controversy stirred up by The Da VinciCode, it has been conjectured that it wassomehow connected to the forbidden secretsof Mary Magdalene.

Members of the modern Knight templarorganization are free to speak and researchboth the Black Madonna and Mary Magda-lene, who is venerated as one of the organi-zation’s patrons. Wisdom regarding bothforms of the Goddess or female principle hasbeen passed down among templars for cen-turies. According to the archives of the In-ternational Order of Gnostic Templars(www.GnosticTemplars.org), a division ofthe Scottish Knight Templars, Templar his-tory related to Mary and the Black Madonnabegan with templar origins, when thefounder of the Rule, St. Bernard of Clair-vaux, composed literally hundreds of songsand sermons in honor of Mary Magdalene,

T


and even mobilized the second crusade fromMary’s headquarters at Vezelay. But besideMary Magdalene, St. Bernard has also beenacknowledged to be a worshipper of the God-dess in her other forms, including that of theGnostic Sophia.

When Templars arrived in the MiddleEast their “Goddess” education was fur-thered by the Goddess-worshipping Sufis, Is-lamic adepts who originally created Mecca asa goddess shrine and later inspired the Mos-lems’ “Goddess” flag with its goddess-relatedsymbology of eight- or five-pointed stars andcrescent moons. These adepts were the guar-dians of a tradition that had been faithfullypreserved for thousands of years in theMiddle East. From them Templars learnedthat beginning as far back as 4,000 BCE inancient Anatolia and Sumeria, the goddesshad been worshipped as Cybele, Inanna,Ishtar, Astarte, and Artemis—to name but afew of her manifold personifications. But al-though Sufi indoctrination opened newvistas for Templars, this wisdom was not en-tirely foreign to them. Templars had alreadybecome familiar with some of the Goddess’sMiddle Eastern manifestations back inFrance. The image of Cybele had returnedfrom Asia many years previously with theRoman legions and she had been enthusiasti-cally adopted by the ancestors of Lyons as apatroness. Artemis had similarly found ahome as patroness of Marseilles, and theEgyptian Isis had been crowned Queen ofParis. But even though her black images hadbeen part of French culture for many years,it was not until their arrival in the MiddleEast that Templars truly began to under-stand the essence of the Goddess.

The Sufis taught that the Goddess was ac-tually the third “person” of the Catholictrinity, the Holy Spirit, which was the powerthat descended upon the apostles on the dayof pentecost. Templars also learned that asthe Holy Spirit the goddess could not onlybless us, but could also manifest all our

desires. She was the universal energy thatemanated from God and possessed the abilityto create, preserve, or destroy whenevercalled upon. Her three powers were personi-fied by her diverse images, some of which re-flected her role as the beneficent Mother Na-ture, while others, especially in her moregrotesque forms, revealed her power to de-stroy. The Black Madonna was a reflection ofthe Goddess’s destructive power, but the Sufipractitioners of yoga and alchemy also in-formed the templars that this power was be-nevolent since it could alchemically trans-form a seeker of wisdom into an enlightenedadept. It accomplished this evolution by de-stroying all the distorted concepts and ego-tistical predispositions that keep such aperson from knowing the intuitive secrets ofthe universe that exist within his or her ownheart. Such intuitive wisdom, it was learned,is known as gnosis.

The Sufis revealed that the worship of thedestructive/transformative power embodiedwithin the black image of the Goddess had,over thousands of years, become common-place in the Middle East. And they had beenspecifically made by craftsmen to amplifythis force. The venerated Black Madonnas ofthe East had been made of a dark or blackconductive and amplifying material—such asa hard wood, stone or meteorite—in order tobetter transmit their power to their worship-pers. A huge black meteorite had been theoriginal image of Cybele, just as it had beenfor Aphrodite or Venus. Meteorites foundalong the coast of Asia Minor had been

What Is the Secret of Her Enduring AppealDespite Rejection by Orthodoxy?

The Black Madonna of Chartres Cathedral


Mystery of theBlack Madonna






ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE

• BY SUSAN MARTINEZ, Ph.D.

e are on a remote, dusty plain inMontana. The Discovery Channeltakes us breathlessly to view theexcavation of the grave of a 65-

million-year-old Mama T-Rex. The intact,huge and heavy thigh bone of the weightymom must be broken in half to enable a heli-copter to pick it up, and by this serendipitousevent, a researcher later discovers that theinside of the bone yet contains organictissue! “Currently,” a commentator opines,“the biochemical community estimates thatprotein structures can at best last 100,000years. We will now have to start revising ourmodel of the longevity of protein.”

We can doubt this. This would be like thebiologists revising the mutation rate of mi-tochrondial DNA simply at the behest of pale-ontologists who insist that skeleton of the Af-rican Eve will certainly be found in the 1.8-million-year-old early Pleistocene strata ofthe earth. The mutation rate dictates thatthere is a 200,000-year limit on the age ofthis African Mother-Eve of our race, what-ever geological layer her skeleton is discov-ered in. Likewise, there is a theoretical limitto the longevity of protein, and it is not 65million years (see Nature Reviews: Genetics,May, 2001).

The Shaky Parameters of Age

The strange arrogance of the archaeolog-ical community in this Discovery epic is atvariance with the harsh truth underlying thereigning scheme of dating the ages of theearth the very scheme that supports theubiquitous statement that the dinosaurs died65 million years ago. It is the scheme thatencourages the Arizona park rangers to painta picture daily for rapt crowds, envisioningthe Colorado river eating for ages at the rockof the Grand Canyon,creating a mile-deepwonder which ex-poses wonderfullythe myriad sedi-mentary layersthat displaythe geologichistory of theearth. This isthe somewhatmythical “geolog-ical column,” thoughthe hundreds of stratathat actually make upthis theoreticalcolumn are found no-where at any one placeon the planet. The simple fact is that thedating of these strata has its origins in a cir-cular logic. At the time of Darwin’s Origin ofSpecies, the earth was believed to be 100 mil-lion years old, but geologists had no tech-niques for dating the various strata they ob-served. Key “index fossils” served the

W

The TROUBLE with “Scientific” Dating

• BY STEPHEN E. ROBBINS, Ph.D

The Grand Canyon at Torroweap

42 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 70

How Old Isthe Earth,

Really?


Really?


Really?


Really?


Really?T-RexFossil


Really?


Really?


Basalt in the Grand Canyon is measured bythree different methods at .7 billion years,1.1. billion years, and 1.7 billion years—a“minor” discrepancy of 1 billion years. A re-cent lava flow layer on top of the canyon, atbest thousands of years old, is also dated at1.1 billion. The radiometric dating methodsresponsible for these dates rest on a decayprocess and assumptions now becoming evermore complex. When the atoms of the nu-cleus are excited, decay is much quicker,making things look vastly older. Cataclysmson a vast scale involve high energies thatcould easily alter “radiometric” clocks. Themost heavily used method, potassium-argon(K-Ar), rests on the assumption that thedaughter of potassium decay, namely argon,is dissipated away from the rocks of a lavaflow at the time of their formation, beforethe decay process being measured begins.This argon “reset to zero” assumption has be-come increasingly questionable. Anomaliessuch as dating a 1801 Hawaiian lava flow at1.2 million years, or 1972 Mt. Etna basalt at150,000 years, or the new lava dome ofMount St. Helens at 350,000 years, occurregularly.

Meanwhile, hanging over the head of thepark rangers of the canyon and their pictu-resque story, is the new consensus on the or-igins of the Scablands of Eastern Wash-ington. The Scablands look suspiciously likea mini-version of the canyon in areas. Thereare gorges with “layers” just like the canyon.Its formation too was once vigorously held(against the cataclysmic view of J. HarlenBretz) to require many millions of years. Butthe Scablands, the newly reached consensussays, were created at the end of the last IceAge, perhaps 12,000 years ago. They werecreated when a gigantic ice dam, over a milehigh, holding back the waters of the Ice AgeLake Missoula in Canada, burst, sending amassive volume of 500 cubic miles of water,rushing south. The Scablands were createdin a virtual instant of geologic time, in sev-eral repetitions over, at best, two thousandyears. The Scablands were created by gi-gantic water flows.

Water flow. The physics of massive waterflow, where the water is carrying huge vol-umes of silt, gravel and debris, demonstratesthat the material is laid down in layers! Thelayers are based on different densities of ma-terial. And as the materials dry, they formthe distinctive layers that look exactly likethe layers of the geologic column. And theanimal life tend to be deposited in the layersthat befit their ability to escape. The trilo-bites, bottom dwellers and slow, tend to beon the bottom. But fish, more agile beings,tend to be on higher layers such as the Silu-rian (425 million years), except for some-times when caught by underwater ava-lanches and trapped in lower layers, such asthe agnathan fish found in the lower Cam-brian layer recently in China. Since evolu-tion is now a vast presupposition, such find-ings cause only infinitesimal consternationin the evolutionary mindset, even though

fixed at 4.6 billion years. The time span of ev-olution from one species to another has thusapparently been expanding as well. But dueto weaknesses in the dating methodologies,and the simple difficulty of identifying someparticular “strata” (of the possible hundredsin the column) under some lonely plain inMontana, the use of index fossils to deter-mine the kind of the layer (Cambrian, Silu-

rian, etc.) has notchanged. The trilo-bite is found in the

Cambrian layer, andthis layer is (cur-

rently) 545 millionyears old. And if we

ask, how do we knowit is the Cambrian

layer, the answer is:By the fact that we

find trilobites in thislayer. This circu-

larity does not bodewell for the sound-

ness of the system. Our carbon

dating technology ispowerless to reach

back 65 millionyears. Carbon datingis limited to organic

material, and due to the intrinsic half-life ofcarbon at 5730 years, after ten half-livesthere will so little carbon as to be undetect-able, limiting the effective range to about50,000 years. (We now have organic materialfor Mama T-Rex. It will be curious to see ifevolutionists really want to know her age viacarbon dating.) The method itself is besetwith difficulties in practice. Any object thatwas subject to immersion in water is datedas older than it actually is, for water leachesout carbon, and the dating method relies forits very logic on a predicted rate of carbondecay, therefore a predicted amount re-maining in a given chunk of carbon-bearingmatter after a certain time. Water leachingdestroys the predictability derived from thislogic. And water is a big part of cataclysms.

Other methods have proven equally atrisk. A very deep layer called the Cardenas


Missoula Flood Scablands

purpose. Trilobites were considered veryearly life forms. The rock strata (Cambrian)in which they are found was given a certainage, allowing a guess for the previous timespan needed to evolve trilobites. Since then,various dating techniques have arisen, ad-vancing earth’s age with scientific certaintyto 1.6 billion years in 1934, a certainty of 3.4billion in 1947, and is now with certainty

Puu Oo Cone, KilaueaVolcano, Hawaii(U.S.G.S. photo GeorgeUlrich)

Elrathia kingiitrilobite fossil

Number 70 • ATLANTIS RISING 43


he great H. P. Lovecraft, successor toEdgar Allan Poe, achieved early famewith his 1921 story, The NamelessCity. It tells of Abdul Alhazarad, an

Arab scholar whose quest for the secrets ofblack magic led him into a remote, forbid-ding area of the Sahara Desert. There, hestumbled upon an ancient city unknown tothe outside world, a center for sorcery andwitchcraft, inhabited by djinni and afreets,the ghouls and demons of Semitic folklore.

Passing through the dark streets andamong the lofty columns of Iram, as thegloomy city was known to its residents, heentered the temple of their patron deity,Cthulhu, a satanic figure. The high priest inattendance entrusted him with a thauma-turgic tome, the Al Azif. But translating itshorrific text into Latin as the Necronomiconproved too much for Abdul, and he wentraving mad before completing his task.

While most readers assume The NamelessCity was an entirely original creation ofLovecraft’s fertile imagination, he actuallybased it on ancient Arab oral accounts. Bed-ouin myth described “Iram of the Pillars”(Iramu dat al-`imad) as a large, deeply prehis-toric metropolis built after the great flood bya race of giants, the Ahd-al-Jann, in an unin-habitable area of the Arabian Peninsula

T• BY FRANK JOSEPH known as the Rub-el-Khali, or “Empty

Quarter.” The city was said to have been aheadquarters for the muqarribun, “GhostPriests” of a profane, pre-Islamic cult. Theyworshiped Khadhulu (Lovecraft’s Cthulhu),mentioned as a devilish conception in thefragmentary Al-Khaddif manuscript, whichbecame the short story author’s Al Azif.

Iram was also uncommonly rich, thanksin large measure to its trade in al-luban—“the milk”—an aromatic resin taken fromthe bark of bosellia trees for the productionof costly perfumes sought after by wealthyclients, and used in sacred rituals. Prized bythe ancient Romans as olibanum for templeceremonies, the substance, no longer avail-able in Europe after the collapse of classicalcivilization cut trading ties with the outsideworld, was reintroduced sometime thereafterby the Franks, from which its modern name,frankincense, derived. From early medievaltimes, it was an integral part of Christianchurch services in large measure because al-luban had always been associated with thebanishment of evil influences.

But its alleged purgative powers were in-adequate to rid Iram of its muqarribun,djinni and afreets, even after Hud, a virtuousprophet, had been sent by God to convert theresidents from their wicked ways. As punish-ment, Allah afflicted them with a horribledrought, then caused a disastrous sandstorm

to engulf the entire city. When the catas-trophic whirlwind passed, the formerlysplendid urban center had vanished withouta trace beneath the sands of the emptyquarter. “Seest thou not how thy Lord dealtwith the Ahd-al-Jann of the city of Iram, pos-sessors of lofty buildings,” asked the authorof the Holy Qu’ran (Surah Al-Fajir 89 1-89:14),“the like of which were not producedin all the land? Therefore your Lord let downupon them a portion of his chastisement.”The sinful city was supposed to have beenswallowed whole by the desert.

Until the time Lovecraft wrote The Name-less City and for most of the remaining dec-ades of the 20th century thereafter, Iram wasregarded as an entirely legendary place. Butits mythical status did not prevent other au-thors from writing about it. Lovecraft’s lit-erary predecessor, Washington Irving, de-scribed Iram in The Legend of the ArabAstrologer, part of his Tales of Alhambra, asa dream metropolis accessible only tosleepers, but disappears as soon as they exitthrough its gates. Frank Herbert’s version ofthe city surfaces in his Children of Dune asthe “accursed sietch of Jacurutu,” and an an-tagonist in Weaverworld, by Clive Barker,discovers Iram, which magically rises fromthe ruins into its former glory. Even KahlilGibran, the third best-selling poet in historyafter Shakespeare and Lao Tse, wrote a play

Atlantis ofthe Sands?Atlantis ofthe Sands?Atlantis ofthe Sands?Atlantis ofthe Sands?Atlantis ofthe Sands?

Could a Mysterious LostCity in the Arabian Desert

Answer Some HardQuestions about the

Origins of Civilization?

The ruins of Ubar

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ANCIENT MYSTERIES


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