TEMPORARY CIVILIZATIONS
Where Did the Lost Communities Go?
Copyright © Paul V Young 2015
“Civilizations never just happen. They are brought into existence quite consciously, with unbelievable compassion and determination, from another world”. These words from Peter Kingsley[i] appeared in our previous Article, Apollo’s Legacy, and is an appropriate way to open this discourse on the ancient cultures often referred to as ‘lost civilizations.’
Many colonies were established on Earth with the specific intention of fulfilling allotted functions in a set period of time, before departing from this dimensional plane. Quite often they appeared on the scene suddenly and later, after accomplishing what they came here to do (usually introducing new teachings and culture) they ‘disappeared’ just as abruptly, advancing to a state of higher energetic frequency. Many of these earlier cultures were more advanced than we are today and already reached a stage of ‘luminous embodiment.’ They had also mastered the use of transformational energy vortexes of the kind attached to many sacred sites. With the ability to transfigure their bodies and/or walk through an inter-dimensional portal formed by a vortex, they shifted to what are coming to be known as the fourth and fifth dimensions. Some are still be linked to the same geographical area, albeit it in a form beyond the perception of our five physical senses.
Anecdotally, the majority of the world’s population today professes a belief in an invisible plane where unseen beings dwell, beyond the perception of our five senses. This can be the result of cultural beliefs, religious convictions or the speculations of modern quantum physics regarding additional dimensions. Why should we be interested in this invisible realm? There is a connection and interaction between the two worlds and, if civilizations are to be able to reach these connecting portals as a natural consequence of their evolution, it would be beneficial to know the destination as we collectively plot our course.
We have also seen that many of the great ‘gods’ of antiquity were actually Solar entities. Ra, Apollo, Mithra, Viracocha and Surya were among those whose real home is on the Sun and who came to establish civilization on Earth. They, along with visitors from other stars, genetically engineered primitive hominids and initiated the races of humankind. While most of the Solar Ancestors returned to the Sun, a group known as the Watchers remains around Earth in higher dimensions, guiding mortal humans both individually and collectively.
In order to look at the so-called ‘lost civilizations,’ we need to establish some criteria by which we can decide whether a lost society fitted the description of ‘advanced,’ in the sense that they were aware of their place in the universe and could have planned their transformation to a higher plane, rather than having been caught unawares by an unforeseen natural disaster; and what would classify their disappearance as mysterious. These are the indicators they have in common:
· They vanished quickly, usually over the period of a century or less.
· There is no evidence of their destruction by war or disaster.
· They embraced practices such as art, writing, astronomy or numeracy.
· They settled in communities and built villages, towns or cities.
· They left a tangible legacy such as monoliths/megaliths, texts, artworks or cultural treasures which provide clues to their beliefs and level of advancement.
· They observed rituals or practices of a religious, shamanic or astrological nature.
· The territory they occupied still draws interest today, whether as a sacred site or pilgrimage destination, or known for mysterious occurrences or energy vortexes.
We can divide the vanished communities into two broad historical and geographical zones. The first, ‘The Neolithic Line,’ is centered around the known ancient world: parts of Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, from the 10th millennium to the 4th millennium BC. The second, ‘The New World Cluster’ is focused on the Americas, from the 3rd millennium BC to the 2nd millennium AD. Let’s scroll through the list of sudden terminations of these erstwhile thriving cultures.
THE NEOLITHIC LINE
Gobekli Tepe, Southern Turkey, 10,000 BC
The community that occupied the Southeastern Anatolia region of Turkey in the 10th millennium BC bequeathed us the sacred mound, or ‘tell,’ known as Gobekli Tepe. It was not so much a city as a spiritual centre that attracted worshippers from the end of the Mesolithic period. Experts have declared this to be the oldest religious site yet discovered. At the time, right after the end of the ice-age when mammoths and sabre-tooth cats were just dying out and we were supposed to be ignorant cave dwellers, this civilization of Southern Turkey erected a series of circles of huge T-shaped stelae. More than 200 of these precisely carved stone pillars, weighing up to 20 metric tons and standing up to 6 metres high, were fitted into sockets hewn out of the bedrock. Just like megalithic structures in Egypt, Lebanon, the UK and South America, these ancient builders used lost methods including anti-gravity to quarry, sculpt and maneuver large stones over challenging distances and heights. Many boast finely chiseled pictograms and animal reliefs on them. This powerful sacred place served a mystical purpose to our Solar Ancestors. When they disappeared from the site around 8,200 BC, they did so very deliberately, burying all their structures under 500 tons of landfill each, to preserve them for future posterity. There is much, much more yet to be uncovered at Gobekli Tepe but streams of modern pilgrims already pour into the area daily. There remains a sense of presence to this day and many visitors post messages on-line speaking of the palpable atmosphere, with triggered emotions that sometimes bring them to tears.
Baalbeck, Lebanon, 9400 BC
The ancient people of the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon left behind the largest masonry blocks so far found anywhere in the world. There is one wall containing the ‘Trilithon,’ three stones of 800 tons each, which were not just laid on the ground, but hoisted up higher in the wall and rested on layers of smaller stones. Although walls and platforms were built, the great mystery of Baalbeck is a large block by the name of the ‘Southern Stone’ (or the Stone of the Pregnant Woman), which lies near the quarry and weighs 1500 tons. The fact it is still partially embedded in the ground implies it was a ‘work in progress’ to be carried out over a long period. It was a message to the succeeding cultures who would occupy the land, saying, “You can see what we have been building here and how we have done it, keep this place sacred and continue its construction.” However, the next races that would build further at Baalbeck were the Greeks and Romans in the latter half of the first millennium BC, who used it as a foundation for their own temples. By that time, knowledge of the methods used by the ancients to cut and move their gigantic monoliths had been lost. Alexander the Great conquered and renamed it Heliopolis and in the last century BC the Romans erected a new temple complex on the site. The area retained an aura of religious veneration until the end of the Roman Empire, with emperors such as Nero and Trajan worshipping there and consulting the oracles. Visitors today declare the site has the feeling of a ‘power place.’ The original Solar culture of the Beqaa Valley ceased to exist late in the 9th millennium BC, about the same time as the collective at Gobekli Tepe and, like them, put tremendous effort into their project.
Çatalhöyük, South-Central Turkey, 7500 BC
Often called the world’s oldest city, Çatalhöyük was built by the civilization of Anatolia, South Central Turkey, which appeared on the scene about 7500 BC and stayed for almost 2000 years. In this pre-iron age period, they established a sophisticated society with cleverly designed buildings that had smoothly plastered walls decorated with ornate murals. The city was uniquely built like a hive and the inhabitants lived in mud-brick houses clustered in a honeycomb maze, with rooftop sidewalks and holes in the ceiling for doorways accessed by ladders and stairs. The citizens observed an unexpectedly high level of cleanliness and hygiene for their day, with middens established outside the walls for sewage and food waste. Paintings and clay figurines are found throughout the settlement, notably the ‘Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük’. The graves, murals, and figurines demonstrate that the people of Çatalhöyük had a religion rich in symbols, and large public meeting-rooms with concentrations of such items were shrines where rituals were performed, invoking invisible beings in realms of subtle energy. By the end of their time there, the population had grown to around 10,000, which makes it a very large city for that time in history. At some point between 5700 and 5600 BC, they vanished, leaving their city standing vacant. Visitors of the New-Age persuasion declare that there is still a vibrant presence there: “Something stirred deep within me at Çatalhöyük” is a typical sampling of on-line comments.
Nabta Playa, Egyptian Sahara, 7000 BC
The earliest Egyptian settlement we know of arose in the Nubian Desert around 7000 BC at Nabta Playa. There is evidence of human occupation in the region from the 10th millennium BC, but this site, 100 km west of Abu Simbel, was the first to have well-designed villages, permanent deep-well water supplies, stonemasonry and painted ceramics. Notably, they had an organized religion and erected stone circles based on astronomy, long before the advent of Stonehenge. There are five megalithic alignments at Nabta Playa which radiate outwards from a central base. Being on the Tropic of Cancer, the Sun’s rays strike the ground absolutely vertically on one day each year (the summer solstice) and the upright stones cast no shadows for several minutes. There is much debate about the dates they built their stone megaliths, but there are clues to guide us. Just like the pyramid formation that would follow in Egypt millennia later, the stars of Orion’s belt figured in their astronomy, represented by three stones in the middle of the Nabta Calendar Circle. Its correspondence with Orion's belt would have occurred in 6400 BC, establishing its time of construction. A century later, the people who built it were gone. They said their creators were ‘Sky People,’ a concept that we see repeated with later lost civilizations. Modern-day believers describe the site as a ‘megalithic portal.’
The Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture 5500 BC
This culture gets its hyphenated name from the villages of Cucuteni in Romania and Trypillia in the Ukraine. It flourished in an area covering what is now Moldova, Romania and parts of Ukraine, appearing about 5500 BC and staying for almost 3000 years. Its people constructed the largest Neolithic settlements in Europe, each with up to 15,000 people and 1600 separate buildings. Curiously, they burned down each one of their towns every 60 to 80 years and reconstructed a new one on the site of the old, usually preserving the shape and the orientation of the older buildings. In the centre of each town or settlement was a sacred communal sanctuary of monumental style architecture. Inside these have been found stelae, statues, shrines, and numerous ceremonial artifacts. Under the floor of a sanctuary they would place seven decorated ceramic vessels, an inverted one in the centre surrounded by the other six. The upside-down tub in the centre would contain four anthropomorphic figurines facing outward to the four cardinal directions. The Cucuteni-Trypillian people believed in two supernatural planes: the first being one of the underworld and the departed, the second being the Sky/Celestial plane. They were without doubt the most advanced and influential culture in the world right up to 2800 BC, yet their large settlements of tens of thousands of people were suddenly abandoned by 2750 BC – not burned down as usual, just vacated. The Cucuteni-Trypillians left an abundance of artifacts in copper and ceramics which hold clues about their purpose here: definitely they claimed connections with other realms. They left a strange energetic vibration which, oddly, today resonates mostly with Orthodox Christians - unfortunately the political climate deters all but the most avid pilgrims.
The Indus Valley Civilization, 3300 BC
The ancient people of the Indus Valley, also known as the Harappan Civilization, inhabited a region that encompassed parts of today’s India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, appearing in 3300 BC and staying 2000 years. Cities like Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro boasted well planned street grids with grand walkways and multi-story brick buildings that had elaborate plumbing systems and indoor toilets. They were skilled astronomers, architects, engineers, metallurgists and practiced sophisticated medicine, including dentistry. The Harappans set new standards with their uniform system of weights and measures. Their religious activities contributed to later Hinduism and they venerated a Great Sun God, mainly practicing their rituals outdoors, including purification in public baths. There has been speculation in recent years, by alternative researchers, that they were wiped out in a nuclear attack. That is largely based on the findings of skeletons at Mohenjo-Daro, which probably had a population of half a million people. But there was no known earthly civilization more advanced than them who would have launched an attack. Moreover, the population of the whole Indus Valley, generally accepted as being 5 million, was spread over an area the size of Western Europe and they all disappeared just before 1300 BC. Text found in stone engravings has been translated as implying some residents were afraid of ‘the great light that was coming’. Given their advanced knowledge, there is likelihood that they developed technology lost to us and brought about their own disappearance, fully aware of how and when they intended to leave. The Indus Valley remains a natural energy field.
Skara Brae and the People of Orkney, 3180 BC
Skara Brae was more of a village than a civilization, but its culture deserves mention because of its legacy and its bursting emergence in 3180 BC, followed by its equally abrupt disappearance less than 700 years later. Older than the pyramids and Stonehenge, it has been called the ‘Scottish Pompeii’ due to the degree of its preservation. Like its contemporaries in the Indus Valley, the town had functional drainage systems with an indoor toilet in each dwelling. The archaeologist and anthropologist Euan MacKie suggested that Skara Brae was the home of a privileged theocratic class of wise men who engaged in astronomical and magical ceremonies, at nearby sites like the Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness.[ii] Artifacts found at the site include carved stone balls but, unlike the smooth stone balls found in Bosnia and Costa Rica, these were covered in protruding nodules; their usage is unknown. Most noteworthy in the area is the chambered cairn of Maeshowe. From the outside, this monument looks like a grassy mound, but inside it is made up of a large central chamber, with three side chambers built into the walls, accessed by a long, low entrance passage. It is noted for its midwinter alignment: when the Sun slips below the horizon, its last rays shine directly through Maeshowe's entrance passage to illuminate the rear wall of the central chamber. From the nearby Standing Stones of Stenness, Maeshowe is aligned to the gap between its two ‘dolmen stones’, indicating that they formed a connecting ‘portal’ between the chambered cairn and the stone circle. Around 2500 BC the inhabitants of Skara Brae simply vanished overnight, after first filling their dwellings with sand. Again we see monuments that may have served as a megalithic gateway. These days thousands of visitors flock to the site each week, many of them pilgrims on the trail that includes Avesbury, Stonehenge and Glastonbury, who still sense the atmosphere of the ancient Neolithic priesthood.
The Minoans of Crete, 3000 BC
The last civilization of the European Neolithic age we will look at is the Minoans, who inhabited the island of Crete from 3000 BC for around 1600 years. They dominated the Aegean islands and established trade routes with their mighty fleets, while building magnificent palaces at home. These palaces were destroyed in 1700 BC by forces unknown to us, but were quickly rebuilt on the ruins to form even more spectacular structures. Known as the first real civilization of Europe as it entered the Bronze Age, their society was one of refinement, art, music, learning and commerce. They traded with Ancient Egyptians who traveled to Crete, exchanging ideas and bringing technology with them. Their spiritual practices are of great interest, as they were to influence the Greek pantheon that followed. Minoan ritual celebrations usually took place in sacred caves, on sanctuaries on mountain peaks, or in the palaces which had their own sanctuaries. During these festivities, participants used music, dance, and prayer to achieve a state of religious ecstasy that put them in touch with the supernatural (a higher dimension). Then, between 1500 and 1400 BC, the Minoans left this world. Within two centuries the baton was picked up by the Mycenaeans (who themselves later did a vanishing act), but there was a clear-cut interval in between the two races. The Aegean still hums with a special type of energy and visitors to Crete today are magnetically drawn by the Palace of Knossos, the House of the High priests and Phaistos Disk.
THE NEW WORLD CLUSTER
The Norte Chico at Caral, Peru, 2600 BC
The community that arose on the north central coast of Peru from about 2600 BC stayed for 700 years and established 30 major population centres, irrigated the land and grew cotton, built monumental architecture, including large earthwork mounds and sunken circular plazas. Most notable is the sacred City of Caral in the Supe Valley with its field of terraced pyramids. With a population of 3000 back in the third millennium BC, Caral is the oldest urban settlement in the Americas and covers an area of over 650 square kilometers, lined with plazas, amphitheaters, and concentrated residential areas. While Caral was the focal point of the Norte Chico civilization, platform mounds and stone circles appear throughout the region. They practiced religious rituals based on their knowledge of astronomy. The standing-stone monolith called Huanca, standing in front of the pyramid of the same name, was used for astronomical and ceremonial purposes and still draws visitors today. Sometime around 1900 BC, the entire civilization abandoned the region, foreshadowing a trend that would be repeated over several times later in Central and South America. These days it still pulses with vibrant energy and alternative researchers such as Philip Coppens and Graham Hancock are drawn by the mysteries of Caral and bring it to the world’s attention.
The Olmec, Mexico, 1400 BC
The Olmecs first appeared in the southern Gulf Coast of Mexico in the 14th century BC and were well established at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán by 1200 BC. The largest city of its time in Mesoamerica, housing thousands and using an elaborate water and drainage system, it was the main ritual and political centre until it was later replaced by their newer, model city, La Venta. The Olmecs introduced the complex religious system that the Mayans and the Aztecs would later adopt. They built temple mounds and paid homage to their Solar creators. They introduced a calendar that remained in use in Mexico for centuries and studied astronomy, which was essential to the timing of their rituals. Their stone monuments included large conical pyramids and, most famously, the Colossal Heads carved from single blocks of basalt, ranging from 1.47 to 3.4 meters high, and weighing between 25 and 55 metric tons. The facial features of these sculptures seem to be African rather than resembling Mesoamericans. Like some of the ancient peoples of the Middle East before them, they were able to quarry and move the heavy blocks over many kilometers using methods now lost to us. Some of the heads had been ritually buried. Who they represented remains as mysterious as why, between 400 and 350 BC, the entire Olmec population stepped off the face of the earth. The pervading atmosphere of the region lingered on after them, influencing later generations of Mayans and Aztecs.
The Mass Walk-Off in the 9th Century AD
What follows here is a group of six communities in our ‘New World Cluster’ that all made their exits around the same time. We may well ask what their connection was and why they bowed out at that particular time.
The Mayans, Peru
Although there are people alive today who are descendants of the Maya, the old civilization that flourished in what is known as the Classic Period disappeared abruptly 1100 years ago. Their Pre-Classic Period is defined as 2000 BC to 250 AD and the Classic period covered 250 to 900 AD. Much has been written about their knowledge of astronomy and astrology and, of course, their calendar. They accepted an array of supernatural beings that influenced them, some of whom we refer to as ‘gods,’ with shrines dedicated to them often set atop a stepped pyramid. The Maya believed in a cyclical nature of time and their rituals and ceremonies were very closely associated with the observed celestial and terrestrial cycles – so much so that some shrines and ‘temples’ are more like observatories. As with other cultures we have looked at, there is a link between stone monuments and high energy fields. Their influence is still felt keenly in today’s world and their pyramids have become draw-cards for New-Age tourism. The Maya centers of the southern lowlands were abandoned during the 9th century AD.
Nazca, Peru
The Nazca Culture emerged on the southern coast of Peru about 100 BC. Between 450 and 600 AD they created a series of geometric lines that crisscross the desert, now known as the Nazca Lines, which can only really be appreciated from the air. These ‘geoglyphs,’ mostly depict animals and plants, but some are geometrical shapes up to ten kilometres long and may be mathematical symbols. Interpretations of the figures vary, but it is accepted that they are of astronomical and spiritual significance. The collective that created these lines disappeared in the 9th century, leaving us with unanswered questions. Like other abandoned sites, Nazca attracts archaeologists, historians, alternative researchers, New-Age mystics, and Peru pilgrims on their way to Machu Picchu or Tiwanaku, the latter being where the lines and arrows seem to point. All visitors marvel at the magnetic allure of Nazca’s layout, its lines seemingly geomagnetic or perhaps even electromagnetic in nature. Many are comparing it to the more recent phenomenon of Crop Circles, inasmuch as they seem to be inter-dimensional messages we have yet to interpret.
Tiwanaku, Bolivia
The Tiwanaku culture in the Lake Titicaca Basin dominated a large area of the southern Andes, including Bolivia and portions of Chile, from 300 BC. It rose as a powerful empire, building pyramids, temples and carved stone monoliths of cultural and religious significance, with governance based on strong spiritual values. Its capital, Tiahuanaco, was a major cosmological centre that featured complex, multi-family residential compounds with water supply and sewage lines. Another of its cities, Pumapunku, is staggering: not only were the builders able to quarry and move stone blocks almost 8 metres long and weighing up to 130 metric tons each, the blocks were so perfectly cut as to suggest the possibility of prefabrication and mass production technologies, with finely-cut exact angles and joints so precise that not even a razor blade will fit between the stones. But the most enigmatic monument, just a little inland from Lake Titicaca, is Puerta De Hayu Marka, the ‘Gateway of the Gods’. Carved into a natural rock face and measuring 7 x 7 metres, it looks like a gigantic door with a smaller alcove in the centre at the base, which is 1.8 metres in height. There is a groove in the centre of the alcove into which, it is said, a golden ‘Sun disc’ was inserted to activate the inter-dimensional gateway. Amaru Meru, the first priest-king of the Incas, arrived via this portal, then later some worthy individuals are said to have traveled out through the gate to assume a ‘glorious new life of immortality’. Sometimes those people came back for a while with their ‘gods’ to inspect the lands of the kingdom. By the time the culture abandoned the region in the 9th century, they were 400,000 people strong. Today the area is a magnet for alternative researchers, writers and documentary makers. Some visitors who have lain their hands on the small door have felt energy flowing through their arms and had strange experiences such as visions of stars, columns of fire, and the sounds of unusual rhythmic music. Others have said that they have perceived tunnels on the interior of the structure.
Palenque, Mexico
Palenque, an old Mesoamerican city-state, was ruled by a dynasty from the 4th century BC, during its ‘early classic period’ and then, after invasion by Calakmul about 600 AD, installed the King Pakal. It contains some of the finest architecture, sculpture and bas-relief carvings of its region and time. Noted for its pyramids, temples and palace, Palenque is widely regarded today as the most atmospheric and impressive of Mexico's ruins. The early inhabitants had a unique belief system – the city itself was named after the Jaguar Sun, the place where the Sun descends into the underworld, the realm of the jaguar. They built puzzling structures such as the Temple of the Skull, also known as the Temple of the Dead Moon, and a secret door discovered in one of the pyramids leads to an underground temple housing the solid stone coffin of the ‘Red Queen.’ This is yet another enigmatic community that vanished in the 9th century, leaving its empty buildings to curious pilgrims.
Tikal, Guatemala
Tikal is the largest excavated site on the American continent today, although there is much more of it yet to be uncovered. This culture was still rebuilding, and adding to, its very tall ancient pyramids and temples up until the time it was conquered by Teotihuacan in the 4th century AD, when it was still known as Mutul, or Yax (‘first’) Mutul. Its people developed astounding systems of math, astronomy and architecture, but are mainly notable for their complex written language, which comprised the most extensive hieroglyphics in the contemporary Mayan world. For the population of 90,000 in the 9th century, life was good in Tikal and there was no disaster that would cause them to desert their city en masse… yet they did. Today its ruins possess a certain magic fascinating everyone, including film-makers. It was used as the scenario for one of the Star Wars movies and then as a model for Mel Gibson’s movies, ‘Apocalipto’.
Copan, Honduras
The final group in our list of ‘walk-offs’ is Copán, located in the west corner of Honduras, near the border with neighbouring Guatemala, and one of the richest surviving archeological sites in the Americas. The community appeared in 200 AD but didn’t really prosper until 426 AD when K'inich Yax K'uk Moh crowned himself king (his name meant ‘Shining Quetzal Macaw’) and he was the first in a great dynasty. The inhabitants excelled in the fields of architecture, sculpture, math and astronomy, developing a writing system based on hieroglyphs and producing impressive works of art. Like their contemporaries in the region, they built terraced pyramids and temples which rated among the best of them and the immense ceremonial plaza in the city was absolutely majestic, especially famous for its stelae and altars. Attention must be drawn to The Acropolis, which was divided in two big plazas: the west court and east court. The west court houses ‘temple 11’ and ‘temple 16.’ Temple 11 was built as a portal to the other world. And it would seem that, in the 9th century that is where they went. Copán today has become a primary tourist destination, noted not for excitement but for its serenity. Visitors, often finding themselves there by ‘accident’ going to and from Guatemala, remark on an unexpected experience of bliss.
The Last Wave, 14th Century
The Anasází , in the Four Corners region
The Anasází, or Ancient Puebloans, were a native American culture that inhabited the ‘four corners’ area that today marks the boundaries of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah from 1200 BC. The word Anasází is Navajo for "Ancient Ones." They are remarkable for three main reasons. Firstly, their cliff dwellings: they carved whole towns into cliff faces and under rock overhangs along canyon walls, which were accessible only by rope or through rock climbing. These were not primitive dwellings, but comfortable and well decorated – the Anasazi are known for their artistic and functional pottery wares. Secondly, their ‘Great Houses’, complexes which were often four or five stories high, averaging over 200 substantially sized rooms each, some up to 700 rooms or suites. These were used for public and ceremonial purposes, and for every 29 rooms there would be a kiva, or ceremonial room. Each complex had one oversized Great Kiva, 19 metres in diameter. Thirdly, their road system: there are at least eight main roads that all together run for more than 300 km and are more than 10 m wide, the longest and most famous being the Great North Road. The main purpose of the road system was a religious one, providing pathways for periodic pilgrimages and facilitating regional gatherings for seasonal ceremonies. They’ve been linked to astronomical observations, solstice marking, and agricultural cycles. Some of them don’t go anywhere but were supposed to represent the connection to the ‘shipapu’, the place of emergence of the ancestors or a dimensional doorway. Was that the exit route they took when they were seemingly transported away in the 14th century, not long before the European invaders came to claim their land? The Hopi Indians say that the Anasazi left because of supernatural beings they called ‘sky people’.
Cahokia, present-day Illinois
What differentiates this last society we are looking at from the others at is that they didn’t rely on stone for their monuments – they built more than 80 earthen pyramids, up to 30 metres high, around a 40 acre central plaza, and their ‘Stonehenge-like’ star-tracking circle was made of wood. At its peak during 600 to 1300 AD, Cahokia was home to 40,000 people and larger than most European cities of its day, including London and Rome. They seemed closer to the earth and nature than others, probably because of living near the intersections of three major rivers—the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Illinois. Religion was fundamental to society, which was ruled by both chiefs and priests, observing the polarities of dark and light, order and anarchy, good that was rewarded and evil that was punished. The Cahokians acknowledged the afterlife and held to cosmic principles: the Sun and Moon interacted with the lives of the citizens; the spirit world interacted with the physical world. Just like the Anasazi, they dematerialized from their homeland by the 14th century. In their day, their lifestyle magnetically drew visitors and pilgrims from afar and, as a power spot, its energy pattern continues to draw them today.
The Inter-Dimensional Shift.
We see that all these civilizations appeared on earth to construct monuments which served as portals and communication links with other dimensions and then, while our Solar Ancestors returned to the Sun, most of the populations shifted to a higher-frequency dimension. This would not necessarily imply that these were immortals, but that the ongoing community has moved from one dimension to another. We know that all the cultures we have looked at cut, sculpted and erected monuments of stone and earth that contained minerals and crystals. They all had advanced technology, practiced rituals based on beliefs in an invisible realm and, most notably, all disappeared quickly, yet not traumatically.
Brian Greene, the foremost writer on physics and science, has written in detail about the ‘Hidden World,’[iii] and String Theory predicts that there are at least ten more dimensions in addition to the one we live in.[iv] Those who struggle with believing in the ‘spirit world’ proposed by religions, might instead accept the idea of dimensions as posited by some quantum physicists. It’s all in the terminology, and the concept of multiple dimensions explains a range of phenomena such as ghosts, angels, OOBE and some UFO sightings. The Book of Enoch has had resurgence in popularity recently and Enoch 2 (Secrets of Enoch) makes more sense if read in the light of another ten dimensions, along with the movement between the visible and invisible worlds.[v]
What will be the next civilization to ascend dimensionally? Tibet seems a likely candidate. Just to conclude with food for thought, James Redfield in his allegorical work ‘The Secret of Shambhala’, has the lead character utter the words, “The Tibetans believe that there is another, more spiritual reality beyond the physical worlds we can see, and that Shambhala, while here on this Earth, lies in the spiritual realm.”[vi] Humanity has yet to learn the truth of the reality surrounding us.
FOOTNOTES:
[i] “A Story Waiting to Pierce You,” Peter Kingsley, 2010, Publisher: The Golden Sufi Center, Page 46
[ii] MacKie, Euan (1977). Science and Society in Prehistoric Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
[iii] The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene, Vintage, 2011
[iv] “One such theory is the 11-dimensional M-theory, which requires spacetime to have eleven dimensions, as opposed to the usual three spatial dimensions and the fourth dimension of time. The original string theories from the 1980s describe special cases of M-theory where the eleventh dimension is a very small circle or a line, and if these formulations are considered as fundamental, then string theory requires ten dimensions”. Reference source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory
[v] An easy-to-read translation is ‘The Complete Books of Enoch,’ by Dr A Nyland, Smith and Stirling, 2010
[vi] The Secret of Shambhala (In Search of the Eleventh Insight), by James Redfield, Bantam Books, 1999
Where Did the Lost Communities Go?
Copyright © Paul V Young 2015
“Civilizations never just happen. They are brought into existence quite consciously, with unbelievable compassion and determination, from another world”. These words from Peter Kingsley[i] appeared in our previous Article, Apollo’s Legacy, and is an appropriate way to open this discourse on the ancient cultures often referred to as ‘lost civilizations.’
Many colonies were established on Earth with the specific intention of fulfilling allotted functions in a set period of time, before departing from this dimensional plane. Quite often they appeared on the scene suddenly and later, after accomplishing what they came here to do (usually introducing new teachings and culture) they ‘disappeared’ just as abruptly, advancing to a state of higher energetic frequency. Many of these earlier cultures were more advanced than we are today and already reached a stage of ‘luminous embodiment.’ They had also mastered the use of transformational energy vortexes of the kind attached to many sacred sites. With the ability to transfigure their bodies and/or walk through an inter-dimensional portal formed by a vortex, they shifted to what are coming to be known as the fourth and fifth dimensions. Some are still be linked to the same geographical area, albeit it in a form beyond the perception of our five physical senses.
Anecdotally, the majority of the world’s population today professes a belief in an invisible plane where unseen beings dwell, beyond the perception of our five senses. This can be the result of cultural beliefs, religious convictions or the speculations of modern quantum physics regarding additional dimensions. Why should we be interested in this invisible realm? There is a connection and interaction between the two worlds and, if civilizations are to be able to reach these connecting portals as a natural consequence of their evolution, it would be beneficial to know the destination as we collectively plot our course.
We have also seen that many of the great ‘gods’ of antiquity were actually Solar entities. Ra, Apollo, Mithra, Viracocha and Surya were among those whose real home is on the Sun and who came to establish civilization on Earth. They, along with visitors from other stars, genetically engineered primitive hominids and initiated the races of humankind. While most of the Solar Ancestors returned to the Sun, a group known as the Watchers remains around Earth in higher dimensions, guiding mortal humans both individually and collectively.
In order to look at the so-called ‘lost civilizations,’ we need to establish some criteria by which we can decide whether a lost society fitted the description of ‘advanced,’ in the sense that they were aware of their place in the universe and could have planned their transformation to a higher plane, rather than having been caught unawares by an unforeseen natural disaster; and what would classify their disappearance as mysterious. These are the indicators they have in common:
· They vanished quickly, usually over the period of a century or less.
· There is no evidence of their destruction by war or disaster.
· They embraced practices such as art, writing, astronomy or numeracy.
· They settled in communities and built villages, towns or cities.
· They left a tangible legacy such as monoliths/megaliths, texts, artworks or cultural treasures which provide clues to their beliefs and level of advancement.
· They observed rituals or practices of a religious, shamanic or astrological nature.
· The territory they occupied still draws interest today, whether as a sacred site or pilgrimage destination, or known for mysterious occurrences or energy vortexes.
We can divide the vanished communities into two broad historical and geographical zones. The first, ‘The Neolithic Line,’ is centered around the known ancient world: parts of Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, from the 10th millennium to the 4th millennium BC. The second, ‘The New World Cluster’ is focused on the Americas, from the 3rd millennium BC to the 2nd millennium AD. Let’s scroll through the list of sudden terminations of these erstwhile thriving cultures.
THE NEOLITHIC LINE
Gobekli Tepe, Southern Turkey, 10,000 BC
The community that occupied the Southeastern Anatolia region of Turkey in the 10th millennium BC bequeathed us the sacred mound, or ‘tell,’ known as Gobekli Tepe. It was not so much a city as a spiritual centre that attracted worshippers from the end of the Mesolithic period. Experts have declared this to be the oldest religious site yet discovered. At the time, right after the end of the ice-age when mammoths and sabre-tooth cats were just dying out and we were supposed to be ignorant cave dwellers, this civilization of Southern Turkey erected a series of circles of huge T-shaped stelae. More than 200 of these precisely carved stone pillars, weighing up to 20 metric tons and standing up to 6 metres high, were fitted into sockets hewn out of the bedrock. Just like megalithic structures in Egypt, Lebanon, the UK and South America, these ancient builders used lost methods including anti-gravity to quarry, sculpt and maneuver large stones over challenging distances and heights. Many boast finely chiseled pictograms and animal reliefs on them. This powerful sacred place served a mystical purpose to our Solar Ancestors. When they disappeared from the site around 8,200 BC, they did so very deliberately, burying all their structures under 500 tons of landfill each, to preserve them for future posterity. There is much, much more yet to be uncovered at Gobekli Tepe but streams of modern pilgrims already pour into the area daily. There remains a sense of presence to this day and many visitors post messages on-line speaking of the palpable atmosphere, with triggered emotions that sometimes bring them to tears.
Baalbeck, Lebanon, 9400 BC
The ancient people of the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon left behind the largest masonry blocks so far found anywhere in the world. There is one wall containing the ‘Trilithon,’ three stones of 800 tons each, which were not just laid on the ground, but hoisted up higher in the wall and rested on layers of smaller stones. Although walls and platforms were built, the great mystery of Baalbeck is a large block by the name of the ‘Southern Stone’ (or the Stone of the Pregnant Woman), which lies near the quarry and weighs 1500 tons. The fact it is still partially embedded in the ground implies it was a ‘work in progress’ to be carried out over a long period. It was a message to the succeeding cultures who would occupy the land, saying, “You can see what we have been building here and how we have done it, keep this place sacred and continue its construction.” However, the next races that would build further at Baalbeck were the Greeks and Romans in the latter half of the first millennium BC, who used it as a foundation for their own temples. By that time, knowledge of the methods used by the ancients to cut and move their gigantic monoliths had been lost. Alexander the Great conquered and renamed it Heliopolis and in the last century BC the Romans erected a new temple complex on the site. The area retained an aura of religious veneration until the end of the Roman Empire, with emperors such as Nero and Trajan worshipping there and consulting the oracles. Visitors today declare the site has the feeling of a ‘power place.’ The original Solar culture of the Beqaa Valley ceased to exist late in the 9th millennium BC, about the same time as the collective at Gobekli Tepe and, like them, put tremendous effort into their project.
Çatalhöyük, South-Central Turkey, 7500 BC
Often called the world’s oldest city, Çatalhöyük was built by the civilization of Anatolia, South Central Turkey, which appeared on the scene about 7500 BC and stayed for almost 2000 years. In this pre-iron age period, they established a sophisticated society with cleverly designed buildings that had smoothly plastered walls decorated with ornate murals. The city was uniquely built like a hive and the inhabitants lived in mud-brick houses clustered in a honeycomb maze, with rooftop sidewalks and holes in the ceiling for doorways accessed by ladders and stairs. The citizens observed an unexpectedly high level of cleanliness and hygiene for their day, with middens established outside the walls for sewage and food waste. Paintings and clay figurines are found throughout the settlement, notably the ‘Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük’. The graves, murals, and figurines demonstrate that the people of Çatalhöyük had a religion rich in symbols, and large public meeting-rooms with concentrations of such items were shrines where rituals were performed, invoking invisible beings in realms of subtle energy. By the end of their time there, the population had grown to around 10,000, which makes it a very large city for that time in history. At some point between 5700 and 5600 BC, they vanished, leaving their city standing vacant. Visitors of the New-Age persuasion declare that there is still a vibrant presence there: “Something stirred deep within me at Çatalhöyük” is a typical sampling of on-line comments.
Nabta Playa, Egyptian Sahara, 7000 BC
The earliest Egyptian settlement we know of arose in the Nubian Desert around 7000 BC at Nabta Playa. There is evidence of human occupation in the region from the 10th millennium BC, but this site, 100 km west of Abu Simbel, was the first to have well-designed villages, permanent deep-well water supplies, stonemasonry and painted ceramics. Notably, they had an organized religion and erected stone circles based on astronomy, long before the advent of Stonehenge. There are five megalithic alignments at Nabta Playa which radiate outwards from a central base. Being on the Tropic of Cancer, the Sun’s rays strike the ground absolutely vertically on one day each year (the summer solstice) and the upright stones cast no shadows for several minutes. There is much debate about the dates they built their stone megaliths, but there are clues to guide us. Just like the pyramid formation that would follow in Egypt millennia later, the stars of Orion’s belt figured in their astronomy, represented by three stones in the middle of the Nabta Calendar Circle. Its correspondence with Orion's belt would have occurred in 6400 BC, establishing its time of construction. A century later, the people who built it were gone. They said their creators were ‘Sky People,’ a concept that we see repeated with later lost civilizations. Modern-day believers describe the site as a ‘megalithic portal.’
The Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture 5500 BC
This culture gets its hyphenated name from the villages of Cucuteni in Romania and Trypillia in the Ukraine. It flourished in an area covering what is now Moldova, Romania and parts of Ukraine, appearing about 5500 BC and staying for almost 3000 years. Its people constructed the largest Neolithic settlements in Europe, each with up to 15,000 people and 1600 separate buildings. Curiously, they burned down each one of their towns every 60 to 80 years and reconstructed a new one on the site of the old, usually preserving the shape and the orientation of the older buildings. In the centre of each town or settlement was a sacred communal sanctuary of monumental style architecture. Inside these have been found stelae, statues, shrines, and numerous ceremonial artifacts. Under the floor of a sanctuary they would place seven decorated ceramic vessels, an inverted one in the centre surrounded by the other six. The upside-down tub in the centre would contain four anthropomorphic figurines facing outward to the four cardinal directions. The Cucuteni-Trypillian people believed in two supernatural planes: the first being one of the underworld and the departed, the second being the Sky/Celestial plane. They were without doubt the most advanced and influential culture in the world right up to 2800 BC, yet their large settlements of tens of thousands of people were suddenly abandoned by 2750 BC – not burned down as usual, just vacated. The Cucuteni-Trypillians left an abundance of artifacts in copper and ceramics which hold clues about their purpose here: definitely they claimed connections with other realms. They left a strange energetic vibration which, oddly, today resonates mostly with Orthodox Christians - unfortunately the political climate deters all but the most avid pilgrims.
The Indus Valley Civilization, 3300 BC
The ancient people of the Indus Valley, also known as the Harappan Civilization, inhabited a region that encompassed parts of today’s India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, appearing in 3300 BC and staying 2000 years. Cities like Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro boasted well planned street grids with grand walkways and multi-story brick buildings that had elaborate plumbing systems and indoor toilets. They were skilled astronomers, architects, engineers, metallurgists and practiced sophisticated medicine, including dentistry. The Harappans set new standards with their uniform system of weights and measures. Their religious activities contributed to later Hinduism and they venerated a Great Sun God, mainly practicing their rituals outdoors, including purification in public baths. There has been speculation in recent years, by alternative researchers, that they were wiped out in a nuclear attack. That is largely based on the findings of skeletons at Mohenjo-Daro, which probably had a population of half a million people. But there was no known earthly civilization more advanced than them who would have launched an attack. Moreover, the population of the whole Indus Valley, generally accepted as being 5 million, was spread over an area the size of Western Europe and they all disappeared just before 1300 BC. Text found in stone engravings has been translated as implying some residents were afraid of ‘the great light that was coming’. Given their advanced knowledge, there is likelihood that they developed technology lost to us and brought about their own disappearance, fully aware of how and when they intended to leave. The Indus Valley remains a natural energy field.
Skara Brae and the People of Orkney, 3180 BC
Skara Brae was more of a village than a civilization, but its culture deserves mention because of its legacy and its bursting emergence in 3180 BC, followed by its equally abrupt disappearance less than 700 years later. Older than the pyramids and Stonehenge, it has been called the ‘Scottish Pompeii’ due to the degree of its preservation. Like its contemporaries in the Indus Valley, the town had functional drainage systems with an indoor toilet in each dwelling. The archaeologist and anthropologist Euan MacKie suggested that Skara Brae was the home of a privileged theocratic class of wise men who engaged in astronomical and magical ceremonies, at nearby sites like the Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness.[ii] Artifacts found at the site include carved stone balls but, unlike the smooth stone balls found in Bosnia and Costa Rica, these were covered in protruding nodules; their usage is unknown. Most noteworthy in the area is the chambered cairn of Maeshowe. From the outside, this monument looks like a grassy mound, but inside it is made up of a large central chamber, with three side chambers built into the walls, accessed by a long, low entrance passage. It is noted for its midwinter alignment: when the Sun slips below the horizon, its last rays shine directly through Maeshowe's entrance passage to illuminate the rear wall of the central chamber. From the nearby Standing Stones of Stenness, Maeshowe is aligned to the gap between its two ‘dolmen stones’, indicating that they formed a connecting ‘portal’ between the chambered cairn and the stone circle. Around 2500 BC the inhabitants of Skara Brae simply vanished overnight, after first filling their dwellings with sand. Again we see monuments that may have served as a megalithic gateway. These days thousands of visitors flock to the site each week, many of them pilgrims on the trail that includes Avesbury, Stonehenge and Glastonbury, who still sense the atmosphere of the ancient Neolithic priesthood.
The Minoans of Crete, 3000 BC
The last civilization of the European Neolithic age we will look at is the Minoans, who inhabited the island of Crete from 3000 BC for around 1600 years. They dominated the Aegean islands and established trade routes with their mighty fleets, while building magnificent palaces at home. These palaces were destroyed in 1700 BC by forces unknown to us, but were quickly rebuilt on the ruins to form even more spectacular structures. Known as the first real civilization of Europe as it entered the Bronze Age, their society was one of refinement, art, music, learning and commerce. They traded with Ancient Egyptians who traveled to Crete, exchanging ideas and bringing technology with them. Their spiritual practices are of great interest, as they were to influence the Greek pantheon that followed. Minoan ritual celebrations usually took place in sacred caves, on sanctuaries on mountain peaks, or in the palaces which had their own sanctuaries. During these festivities, participants used music, dance, and prayer to achieve a state of religious ecstasy that put them in touch with the supernatural (a higher dimension). Then, between 1500 and 1400 BC, the Minoans left this world. Within two centuries the baton was picked up by the Mycenaeans (who themselves later did a vanishing act), but there was a clear-cut interval in between the two races. The Aegean still hums with a special type of energy and visitors to Crete today are magnetically drawn by the Palace of Knossos, the House of the High priests and Phaistos Disk.
THE NEW WORLD CLUSTER
The Norte Chico at Caral, Peru, 2600 BC
The community that arose on the north central coast of Peru from about 2600 BC stayed for 700 years and established 30 major population centres, irrigated the land and grew cotton, built monumental architecture, including large earthwork mounds and sunken circular plazas. Most notable is the sacred City of Caral in the Supe Valley with its field of terraced pyramids. With a population of 3000 back in the third millennium BC, Caral is the oldest urban settlement in the Americas and covers an area of over 650 square kilometers, lined with plazas, amphitheaters, and concentrated residential areas. While Caral was the focal point of the Norte Chico civilization, platform mounds and stone circles appear throughout the region. They practiced religious rituals based on their knowledge of astronomy. The standing-stone monolith called Huanca, standing in front of the pyramid of the same name, was used for astronomical and ceremonial purposes and still draws visitors today. Sometime around 1900 BC, the entire civilization abandoned the region, foreshadowing a trend that would be repeated over several times later in Central and South America. These days it still pulses with vibrant energy and alternative researchers such as Philip Coppens and Graham Hancock are drawn by the mysteries of Caral and bring it to the world’s attention.
The Olmec, Mexico, 1400 BC
The Olmecs first appeared in the southern Gulf Coast of Mexico in the 14th century BC and were well established at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán by 1200 BC. The largest city of its time in Mesoamerica, housing thousands and using an elaborate water and drainage system, it was the main ritual and political centre until it was later replaced by their newer, model city, La Venta. The Olmecs introduced the complex religious system that the Mayans and the Aztecs would later adopt. They built temple mounds and paid homage to their Solar creators. They introduced a calendar that remained in use in Mexico for centuries and studied astronomy, which was essential to the timing of their rituals. Their stone monuments included large conical pyramids and, most famously, the Colossal Heads carved from single blocks of basalt, ranging from 1.47 to 3.4 meters high, and weighing between 25 and 55 metric tons. The facial features of these sculptures seem to be African rather than resembling Mesoamericans. Like some of the ancient peoples of the Middle East before them, they were able to quarry and move the heavy blocks over many kilometers using methods now lost to us. Some of the heads had been ritually buried. Who they represented remains as mysterious as why, between 400 and 350 BC, the entire Olmec population stepped off the face of the earth. The pervading atmosphere of the region lingered on after them, influencing later generations of Mayans and Aztecs.
The Mass Walk-Off in the 9th Century AD
What follows here is a group of six communities in our ‘New World Cluster’ that all made their exits around the same time. We may well ask what their connection was and why they bowed out at that particular time.
The Mayans, Peru
Although there are people alive today who are descendants of the Maya, the old civilization that flourished in what is known as the Classic Period disappeared abruptly 1100 years ago. Their Pre-Classic Period is defined as 2000 BC to 250 AD and the Classic period covered 250 to 900 AD. Much has been written about their knowledge of astronomy and astrology and, of course, their calendar. They accepted an array of supernatural beings that influenced them, some of whom we refer to as ‘gods,’ with shrines dedicated to them often set atop a stepped pyramid. The Maya believed in a cyclical nature of time and their rituals and ceremonies were very closely associated with the observed celestial and terrestrial cycles – so much so that some shrines and ‘temples’ are more like observatories. As with other cultures we have looked at, there is a link between stone monuments and high energy fields. Their influence is still felt keenly in today’s world and their pyramids have become draw-cards for New-Age tourism. The Maya centers of the southern lowlands were abandoned during the 9th century AD.
Nazca, Peru
The Nazca Culture emerged on the southern coast of Peru about 100 BC. Between 450 and 600 AD they created a series of geometric lines that crisscross the desert, now known as the Nazca Lines, which can only really be appreciated from the air. These ‘geoglyphs,’ mostly depict animals and plants, but some are geometrical shapes up to ten kilometres long and may be mathematical symbols. Interpretations of the figures vary, but it is accepted that they are of astronomical and spiritual significance. The collective that created these lines disappeared in the 9th century, leaving us with unanswered questions. Like other abandoned sites, Nazca attracts archaeologists, historians, alternative researchers, New-Age mystics, and Peru pilgrims on their way to Machu Picchu or Tiwanaku, the latter being where the lines and arrows seem to point. All visitors marvel at the magnetic allure of Nazca’s layout, its lines seemingly geomagnetic or perhaps even electromagnetic in nature. Many are comparing it to the more recent phenomenon of Crop Circles, inasmuch as they seem to be inter-dimensional messages we have yet to interpret.
Tiwanaku, Bolivia
The Tiwanaku culture in the Lake Titicaca Basin dominated a large area of the southern Andes, including Bolivia and portions of Chile, from 300 BC. It rose as a powerful empire, building pyramids, temples and carved stone monoliths of cultural and religious significance, with governance based on strong spiritual values. Its capital, Tiahuanaco, was a major cosmological centre that featured complex, multi-family residential compounds with water supply and sewage lines. Another of its cities, Pumapunku, is staggering: not only were the builders able to quarry and move stone blocks almost 8 metres long and weighing up to 130 metric tons each, the blocks were so perfectly cut as to suggest the possibility of prefabrication and mass production technologies, with finely-cut exact angles and joints so precise that not even a razor blade will fit between the stones. But the most enigmatic monument, just a little inland from Lake Titicaca, is Puerta De Hayu Marka, the ‘Gateway of the Gods’. Carved into a natural rock face and measuring 7 x 7 metres, it looks like a gigantic door with a smaller alcove in the centre at the base, which is 1.8 metres in height. There is a groove in the centre of the alcove into which, it is said, a golden ‘Sun disc’ was inserted to activate the inter-dimensional gateway. Amaru Meru, the first priest-king of the Incas, arrived via this portal, then later some worthy individuals are said to have traveled out through the gate to assume a ‘glorious new life of immortality’. Sometimes those people came back for a while with their ‘gods’ to inspect the lands of the kingdom. By the time the culture abandoned the region in the 9th century, they were 400,000 people strong. Today the area is a magnet for alternative researchers, writers and documentary makers. Some visitors who have lain their hands on the small door have felt energy flowing through their arms and had strange experiences such as visions of stars, columns of fire, and the sounds of unusual rhythmic music. Others have said that they have perceived tunnels on the interior of the structure.
Palenque, Mexico
Palenque, an old Mesoamerican city-state, was ruled by a dynasty from the 4th century BC, during its ‘early classic period’ and then, after invasion by Calakmul about 600 AD, installed the King Pakal. It contains some of the finest architecture, sculpture and bas-relief carvings of its region and time. Noted for its pyramids, temples and palace, Palenque is widely regarded today as the most atmospheric and impressive of Mexico's ruins. The early inhabitants had a unique belief system – the city itself was named after the Jaguar Sun, the place where the Sun descends into the underworld, the realm of the jaguar. They built puzzling structures such as the Temple of the Skull, also known as the Temple of the Dead Moon, and a secret door discovered in one of the pyramids leads to an underground temple housing the solid stone coffin of the ‘Red Queen.’ This is yet another enigmatic community that vanished in the 9th century, leaving its empty buildings to curious pilgrims.
Tikal, Guatemala
Tikal is the largest excavated site on the American continent today, although there is much more of it yet to be uncovered. This culture was still rebuilding, and adding to, its very tall ancient pyramids and temples up until the time it was conquered by Teotihuacan in the 4th century AD, when it was still known as Mutul, or Yax (‘first’) Mutul. Its people developed astounding systems of math, astronomy and architecture, but are mainly notable for their complex written language, which comprised the most extensive hieroglyphics in the contemporary Mayan world. For the population of 90,000 in the 9th century, life was good in Tikal and there was no disaster that would cause them to desert their city en masse… yet they did. Today its ruins possess a certain magic fascinating everyone, including film-makers. It was used as the scenario for one of the Star Wars movies and then as a model for Mel Gibson’s movies, ‘Apocalipto’.
Copan, Honduras
The final group in our list of ‘walk-offs’ is Copán, located in the west corner of Honduras, near the border with neighbouring Guatemala, and one of the richest surviving archeological sites in the Americas. The community appeared in 200 AD but didn’t really prosper until 426 AD when K'inich Yax K'uk Moh crowned himself king (his name meant ‘Shining Quetzal Macaw’) and he was the first in a great dynasty. The inhabitants excelled in the fields of architecture, sculpture, math and astronomy, developing a writing system based on hieroglyphs and producing impressive works of art. Like their contemporaries in the region, they built terraced pyramids and temples which rated among the best of them and the immense ceremonial plaza in the city was absolutely majestic, especially famous for its stelae and altars. Attention must be drawn to The Acropolis, which was divided in two big plazas: the west court and east court. The west court houses ‘temple 11’ and ‘temple 16.’ Temple 11 was built as a portal to the other world. And it would seem that, in the 9th century that is where they went. Copán today has become a primary tourist destination, noted not for excitement but for its serenity. Visitors, often finding themselves there by ‘accident’ going to and from Guatemala, remark on an unexpected experience of bliss.
The Last Wave, 14th Century
The Anasází , in the Four Corners region
The Anasází, or Ancient Puebloans, were a native American culture that inhabited the ‘four corners’ area that today marks the boundaries of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah from 1200 BC. The word Anasází is Navajo for "Ancient Ones." They are remarkable for three main reasons. Firstly, their cliff dwellings: they carved whole towns into cliff faces and under rock overhangs along canyon walls, which were accessible only by rope or through rock climbing. These were not primitive dwellings, but comfortable and well decorated – the Anasazi are known for their artistic and functional pottery wares. Secondly, their ‘Great Houses’, complexes which were often four or five stories high, averaging over 200 substantially sized rooms each, some up to 700 rooms or suites. These were used for public and ceremonial purposes, and for every 29 rooms there would be a kiva, or ceremonial room. Each complex had one oversized Great Kiva, 19 metres in diameter. Thirdly, their road system: there are at least eight main roads that all together run for more than 300 km and are more than 10 m wide, the longest and most famous being the Great North Road. The main purpose of the road system was a religious one, providing pathways for periodic pilgrimages and facilitating regional gatherings for seasonal ceremonies. They’ve been linked to astronomical observations, solstice marking, and agricultural cycles. Some of them don’t go anywhere but were supposed to represent the connection to the ‘shipapu’, the place of emergence of the ancestors or a dimensional doorway. Was that the exit route they took when they were seemingly transported away in the 14th century, not long before the European invaders came to claim their land? The Hopi Indians say that the Anasazi left because of supernatural beings they called ‘sky people’.
Cahokia, present-day Illinois
What differentiates this last society we are looking at from the others at is that they didn’t rely on stone for their monuments – they built more than 80 earthen pyramids, up to 30 metres high, around a 40 acre central plaza, and their ‘Stonehenge-like’ star-tracking circle was made of wood. At its peak during 600 to 1300 AD, Cahokia was home to 40,000 people and larger than most European cities of its day, including London and Rome. They seemed closer to the earth and nature than others, probably because of living near the intersections of three major rivers—the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Illinois. Religion was fundamental to society, which was ruled by both chiefs and priests, observing the polarities of dark and light, order and anarchy, good that was rewarded and evil that was punished. The Cahokians acknowledged the afterlife and held to cosmic principles: the Sun and Moon interacted with the lives of the citizens; the spirit world interacted with the physical world. Just like the Anasazi, they dematerialized from their homeland by the 14th century. In their day, their lifestyle magnetically drew visitors and pilgrims from afar and, as a power spot, its energy pattern continues to draw them today.
The Inter-Dimensional Shift.
We see that all these civilizations appeared on earth to construct monuments which served as portals and communication links with other dimensions and then, while our Solar Ancestors returned to the Sun, most of the populations shifted to a higher-frequency dimension. This would not necessarily imply that these were immortals, but that the ongoing community has moved from one dimension to another. We know that all the cultures we have looked at cut, sculpted and erected monuments of stone and earth that contained minerals and crystals. They all had advanced technology, practiced rituals based on beliefs in an invisible realm and, most notably, all disappeared quickly, yet not traumatically.
Brian Greene, the foremost writer on physics and science, has written in detail about the ‘Hidden World,’[iii] and String Theory predicts that there are at least ten more dimensions in addition to the one we live in.[iv] Those who struggle with believing in the ‘spirit world’ proposed by religions, might instead accept the idea of dimensions as posited by some quantum physicists. It’s all in the terminology, and the concept of multiple dimensions explains a range of phenomena such as ghosts, angels, OOBE and some UFO sightings. The Book of Enoch has had resurgence in popularity recently and Enoch 2 (Secrets of Enoch) makes more sense if read in the light of another ten dimensions, along with the movement between the visible and invisible worlds.[v]
What will be the next civilization to ascend dimensionally? Tibet seems a likely candidate. Just to conclude with food for thought, James Redfield in his allegorical work ‘The Secret of Shambhala’, has the lead character utter the words, “The Tibetans believe that there is another, more spiritual reality beyond the physical worlds we can see, and that Shambhala, while here on this Earth, lies in the spiritual realm.”[vi] Humanity has yet to learn the truth of the reality surrounding us.
FOOTNOTES:
[i] “A Story Waiting to Pierce You,” Peter Kingsley, 2010, Publisher: The Golden Sufi Center, Page 46
[ii] MacKie, Euan (1977). Science and Society in Prehistoric Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
[iii] The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene, Vintage, 2011
[iv] “One such theory is the 11-dimensional M-theory, which requires spacetime to have eleven dimensions, as opposed to the usual three spatial dimensions and the fourth dimension of time. The original string theories from the 1980s describe special cases of M-theory where the eleventh dimension is a very small circle or a line, and if these formulations are considered as fundamental, then string theory requires ten dimensions”. Reference source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory
[v] An easy-to-read translation is ‘The Complete Books of Enoch,’ by Dr A Nyland, Smith and Stirling, 2010
[vi] The Secret of Shambhala (In Search of the Eleventh Insight), by James Redfield, Bantam Books, 1999
Image sources: (L) Baalbeck: http://www.mountainsoftravelphotos.com/Lebanon/Baalbek%20Anjar%20Wine%20Tour/slides/Bekaa%20Valley%2011%20Baalbek%20Stone%20of%20the%20Pregnant%20Woman%20Roman%20Monolith%20At%20the%20South%20Entrance.jpg
(R) Olmec head: http://c3e308.medialib.glogster.com/media/3d/3d6b231c547aaf916c68d9cac5fa88abfc45f9d652ea9a364c19739ea858ca8d/olmec-head.jpg
(R) Olmec head: http://c3e308.medialib.glogster.com/media/3d/3d6b231c547aaf916c68d9cac5fa88abfc45f9d652ea9a364c19739ea858ca8d/olmec-head.jpg