Graham Hancock Quotes

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I don't believe that consciousness is generated by the brain. I believe that the brain is more of a reciever of consciousness.
Graham Hancock
Human history has become too much a matter of dogma taught by 'professionals' in ivory towers as though it's all fact. Actually, much of human history is up for grabs. The further back you go, the more that the history that's taught in the schools and universities begins to look like some kind of faerie story.
Graham Hancock
It may be that DMT makes us able to perceive what the physicist call "dark matter" - the 95 per cent of the universe's mass that is known to exist but that at present remains invisible to our senses and instruments.
Graham Hancock
We are consciousness incarnated in stardust...
Graham Hancock
We truly are a species with amnesia. We have forgotten a very important part of our story.
Graham Hancock
I am convinced that the way forward for the human race is to recognize and protect the fundamental right of sovereignty over consciousness, to throw off the chains of our divisive religious heritage, to seek out forms of spirituality (or no spirituality at all if we so prefer) that are truly supportive of liberty and tolerance, to help the human spirit to grow rather than to wither, and to nurture our innate capacity for love and mutual respect. The old ways are broken and bankrupt and new ways are struggling to be born. Each one of us with our own talents, and by our own choices, has a part to play in that process.
Graham Hancock
Science in the twenty-first century does NOT encourage scientists to take risks in their pursuit of “the facts”—particularly when those facts call into question long-established notions
Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
Ancient Egypt, like that of the Olmecs (Bolivia), emerged all at once and fully formed. Indeed, the period of transition from primitive to advanced society appears to have been so short that it makes no kind of historical sense. Technological skills that should have taken hundreds or even thousands of years to evolve were brought into use almost overnight-- and with no apparent antecedents whatever. For example, remains from the pre-dynastic period around 3500 BC show no trace of writing. Soon after that date, quite suddenly and inexplicably, the hieroglyphs familiar from so many of the ruins of Ancient Egypt begin to appear in a complete and perfect state. Far from being mere pictures of objects or actions, this written language was complex and structured at the outset, with signs that represented sounds only and a detailed system of numerical symbols. Even the very earliest hieroglyphs were stylized and conventionalized; and it is clear that an advanced cursive script was it common usage by the dawn of the First Dynasty.
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Everything we’ve been taught about the origins of civilization may be wrong,” says Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, PhD, senior geologist with the Research Center for Geotechnology at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
The possession of such a big brain was no doubt an asset to these ‘intelligent, spiritually sensitive, resourceful creatures’8 and the fossil record suggests that they were the dominant species on the planet from about 100,000 years ago until 40,000 years ago.
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Quest Continues)
No, the problem at Göbekli Tepe is the pristine, sudden appearance, like Athena springing full-grown and fully armed from the brow of Zeus, of what appears to be an already seasoned civilization so accomplished that it “invents” both agriculture and monumental architecture at the apparent moment of its birth.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
if evidence supports established theories then that evidence will be accepted. But if evidence undermines established theories, then that evidence must be rejected.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: Evidence for an Ancient Apocalypse)
In the eyes of Muslim fundamentalists, contemporary Western geopolitics in the Middle East are a continuation of the Crusades by modern means and so must be resisted to the death.
Graham Hancock (The Master Game: Unmasking the Secret Rulers of the World)
irrefutable
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
What is remarkable is that there are no traces of evolution from simple to sophisticated, and the same is true of mathematics, medicine, astronomy and architecture and of Egypt's amazingly rich and convoluted religio-mythological system (even the central content of such refined works as the Book of the Dead existed right at the start of the dynastic period). 7 The majority of Egyptologists will not consider the implications of Egypt's early sophistication. These implications are startling, according to a number of more daring thinkers. John Anthony West, an expert on the early dynastic period, asks: How does a complex civilization spring full-blown into being? Look at a 1905 automobile and compare it to a modern one. There is no mistaking the process of `development'. But in Egypt there are no parallels. Everything is right there at the start. The answer to the mystery is of course obvious but, because it is repellent to the prevailing cast of modern thinking, it is seldom considered. Egyptian civilization was not a `development', it was a legacy.
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Shamanism is not confined to specific socio-economic settings or stages of development. It is fundamentally the ability that all of us share, some with and some without the help of hallucinogens, to enter altered states of consciousness and to travel out of body in non-physical realms - there to encounter supernatural entities and gain useful knowledge and healing powers from them.
Graham Hancock (Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind)
More than 500 deluge legends are known around the world and, in a survey of 86 of these (20 Asiatic, 3 European, 7 African, 46 American and 10 from Australia and the Pacific), the specialist researcher Dr Richard Andree concluded that 62 were entirely independent of the Mesopotamian and Hebrew accounts.
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Not for the first time I felt myself confronted by the dizzying possibility that an entire episode in the story of mankind might have been forgotten. Indeed it seemed to me then, as I overlooked the mathematical city of the gods from the summit of the Pyramid of the Moon, that our species could have been afflicted with some terrible amnesia and that the dark period so blithely and dismissively referred to as `prehistory' might turn out to conceal unimagined truths about our own past. What is prehistory, after all, if not a time forgotten--a time for which we have no records? What is prehistory if not an epoch of impenetrable obscurity through which our ancestors passed but about which we have no conscious remembrance? It was out of this epoch of obscurity, configured in mathematical code along astronomical and geodetic lines, that Teotihuacan with all its riddles was sent down to us. And out of that same epoch came the great Olmec sculptures, the inexplicably precise and accurate calendar the Mayans inherited from their predecessors, the inscrutable geoglyphs of Nazca, the mysterious Andean city of Tiahuanaco ... and so many other marvels of which we do not know the provenance. It is almost as though we have awakened into the daylight of history from a long and troubled sleep, and yet continue to be disturbed by the faint but haunting echoes of our dreams
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
The god believed by the Ancient Egyptians to have taught the principles of astronomy to their ancestors was Thoth: "He who reckons in heaven, the counter of the stars, the enumerator of the earth and of what is therein, and the measurer of the earth.
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
a team of Japanese engineers had recently tried to build a 35-feet-high replica of the Great Pyramid (rather smaller than the original, which was 481 feet 5 inches in height). The team started off by limiting itself strictly to techniques proved by archaeology to have been in use during the Fourth Dynasty. However, construction of the replica under these limitations turned out to be impossible and, in due course, modern earth-moving, quarrying and lifting machines were brought to the site. Still no worthwhile progress was made. Ultimately, with some embarrassment, the project had to be abandoned.175
Graham Hancock (The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant)
the Maya knew the time taken by the moon to orbit the earth. Their estimate of this period was 29.528395 days – extremely close to the true figure of 29.530588 days computed by the finest modern methods.11 The Mayan priests also had in their possession very accurate tables for the prediction of solar and lunar eclipses and were aware that these could occur only within plus or minus eighteen days of the node (when the moon’s path crosses the apparent path of the sun).
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
At six thousand or more years older than the stone circles of Stonehenge, the megaliths of Göbekli Tepe, like the deeply buried megaliths of Gunung Padang, mean that the timeline of history taught in our schools and universities for the best part of the last hundred years can no longer stand. It is beginning to look as though civilization, as I argued in my controversial 1995 bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods, is indeed much older and much more mysterious than we thought.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
If ever a society could be said to meet all the mythological criteria of the next lost civilization – a society that ticks all the boxes – is it not obvious that it is our own? Our pollution and neglect of the majestic garden of the earth, our rape of its resources, our abuse of the oceans and the rainforests, our fear, hatred and suspicion of one another multiplied by a hundred bitter regional and sectarian conflicts, our consistent track record of standing by and doing nothing while millions suffer, our ignorant, narrow-minded racism, our exclusivist religions, our forgetfulness that we are all brothers and sisters, our bellicose chauvinism, the dreadful cruelties that we indulge in, in the name of nation, or faith, or simple greed, our obsessive, competitive, ego-driven production and consumption of material goods and the growing conviction of many, fuelled by the triumphs of materialist science, that matter is all there is – that there is no such thing as spirit, that we are just accidents of chemistry and biology – all these things, and many more, in mythological terms at least, do not look good for us.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: Evidence for an Ancient Apocalypse)
Olmecs had worked out the principle of the wheel,
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Egyptian Book of the Dead, it had been given to him by
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
I poured out a libation on the mountain top … I heaped up wood and cane and cedar and myrtle … When the gods smelled the sweet savour they gathered like flies over the sacrifice
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
A single high NH4 peak, traced to biomass burning across North America, begins at the [Younger Dryas] onset. It is the largest biomass-burning episode from North American sources in the entire record.
Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
Bauval found that the Pyramids/Orion’s Belt correlation was general and obvious in all epochs, but specific and exact in only one: At 10,450 BC – and at that date only – we find that the pattern of the pyramids on the ground provides a perfect reflection of the pattern of the stars in the sky. I mean it’s a perfect match – faultless – and it cannot be an accident because the entire arrangement correctly depicts two very unusual celestial events that occurred only at that time. First, and purely by chance, the Milky Way, as visible from Giza in 10,450 BC, exactly duplicated the meridional course of the Nile Valley; secondly, to the west of the Milky Way, the three stars of Orion’s Belt were at the lowest altitude in their precessional cycle, with Al Nitak, the star represented by the Great Pyramid, crossing the meridien at 11° 08ʹ.8
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
An Ojibwa tradition seems relevant. It speaks of a comet that 'burned up the earth' in the remote past and that is destined to return: 'The star with the long, wide tail is going to destroy the world some day when it comes low again. That's the comet called Long-Tailed Heavenly Climbing Star. It came down here once, thousands of years ago. Just like the sun. It had radiation and burning heat in its tail ... Indian people were here before that happened, living on the earth. But things were wrong with nature on the earth, and a lot of people had abandoned the spiritual path. The Holy Spirit warned them a long time before the comet came. Medicine men told everyone to prepare. ... The comet burnt everything to the ground. There wasn't a thing left ... There is a prophecy that the comet will destroy the earth again. But it's a restoration. The greatest blessing this island [Turtle Island/America] will ever have. People don't listen to their spiritual guidance today. There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars when the comet comes down again.
Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
Consider this account from the Ojibwa, a Native American people: The star with the long, wide tail is going to destroy the world some day when it comes low again. That’s the comet called Long-Tailed Heavenly Climbing Star. It came down here once, thousands of years ago. Just like the sun. It had radiation and burning heat in its tail. The comet burned everything to the ground. There wasn’t a thing left. Indian people were here before that happened, living on the earth. But things were wrong; a lot of people had abandoned the spiritual path. The holy spirit warned them a long time before the comet came. Medicine men told everyone to prepare. Things were wrong with nature on the earth … Then that comet went through here. It had a long, wide tail and it burned up everything. It flew so low the tail scorched the earth … The comet made a different world. After that survival was hard work. The weather was colder than before
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, [...] came to teach [the ancient inhabitants of Mexico] the benefits of settled agriculture and the skills necessary to build temples. Although this deity is frequently depicted as a serpent, he is more often shown in human form--the serpent being his symbol and his alter ego--and is usually described as "a tall bearded white man" ... "a mysterious person ... a white man with a strong formation of body, broad forehead, large eyes and a flowing beard." Indeed, [...] the attributes and life history of Quetzalcoatl are so human that it is not improbable that he may have been an actual historical character ... the memory of whose benefactions lingered after his death, and whose personality was eventually deified. The same could very well be said of Oannes--and just like Oannes at the head of the Apkallu (likewise depicted as prominently bearded) it seems that Quetzalcoatl traveled with his own brotherhood of sages and magicians. We learn that they arrived in Mexico "from across the sea in a boat that moved by itself without paddles," and that Quetzalcoatl was regarded as having been "the founder of cities, the framer of laws and the teacher of the calendar.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
I looked in depth into the ancient and 100 per cent Indian origins of Vedic civilisation in my book "Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age". There was no such thing as an "Aryan invasion of India". That whole racist idea is completely bust.
Graham Hancock
The essence of this knowledge was the ability to `see all' and to `know all'. Was this not precisely the ability Adam and Eve acquired after eating the forbidden fruit, which grew on the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'? · Finally, just as Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, so were the four First Men of the Popol Vuh deprived of their ability to `see far'. Thereafter `their eyes were covered and they could only see what was close ...' Both the Popol Vuh and Genesis therefore tell the story of mankind's fall from grace. In both cases, this state of grace was closely associated with knowledge, and the reader is left in no doubt that the knowledge in question was so remarkable that it conferred godlike powers on those who possessed it. The Bible, adopting a dark and muttering tone of voice, calls it `the knowledge of good and evil' and has nothing further to add. The Popol Vuh is much more informative. It tells us that the knowledge of the First Men consisted of the ability to see `things hidden in the distance', that they were astronomers who `examined the four corners, the four points of the arch of the sky', and that they were geographers who succeeded in measuring `the round face of the earth'. 7 Geography is about maps. In Part I we saw evidence suggesting that the cartographers of an as yet unidentified civilization might have mapped the planet with great thoroughness at an early date. Could the Popol Vuh be transmitting some garbled memory of that same civilization when it speaks nostalgically of the First Men and of the miraculous geographical knowledge they possessed? Geography is about maps, and astronomy is about stars. Very often the two disciplines go hand in hand because stars are essential for navigation on long sea-going voyages of discovery (and long sea-going voyages of discovery are essential for the production of accurate maps). Is it accidental that the First Men of the Popol Vuh were remembered not only for studying `the round face of the earth' but for their contemplation of `the arch of heaven'?
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
While spinning daily on its own axis, the earth also orbits the sun (again in an anti-clockwise direction) on a path which is slightly elliptical rather than completely circular. It pursues this orbit at truly breakneck speed, travelling as far along it in an hour – 66,600 miles – as the average motorist will drive in six years. To bring the calculations down in scale, this means that we are hurtling through space much faster than any bullet, at the rate of 18.5 miles every second. In the time that it has taken you to read this paragraph, we have voyaged about 550 miles farther along earth’s path around the sun.3
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
The Julian calendar, which it replaced, computed the period of the earth’s orbit around the sun at 365.25 days. Pope Gregory XIII’s reform substituted a finer and more accurate calculation: 365.2425 days. Thanks to scientific advances since 1582 we now know that the exact length of the solar year is 365.2422 days.
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
at Heliopolis, where the Pyramid Texts were compiled, and announced ahead of time to all the other major temples up and down the Nile.53 I remembered that Sirius was referred to directly in the Pyramid Texts by ‘her name of the New Year’.54 Together with other relevant utterances (e.g., 66955), this confirmed that the Sothic calendar
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
At present there are only two land-based cranes in the world that could lift weights of this magnitude. At the very frontiers of construction technology, these are both vast, industrialized machines, with booms reaching more than 220 feet into the air, which require on-board counterweights of 160 tons to prevent them from tipping over. The preparation-time for a single lift is around six weeks and calls for the skills of specialized teams of up to 20 men.13 In other words, modern builders with all the advantages of high-tech engineering at their disposal, can barely hoist weights of 200 tons. Was it not, therefore, somewhat surprising that the builders at Giza had hoisted such weights on an almost routine basis?
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
[The Edfu Building Texts in Egypt] take us back to a very remote period called the 'Early Primeval Age of the Gods'--and these gods, it transpires, were not originally Egyptian, but lived on a sacred island, the 'Homeland of the Primeval Ones,' and in the midst of a great ocean. Then, at some unspecified time in the past, an immense cataclysm shook the earth and a flood poured over this island, where 'the earliest mansions of the gods' had been founded, destroying it utterly, submerging all its holy places, and killing most of its divine inhabitants. Some survived, however, and we are told that this remnant set sail in their ships (for the texts leave us in no doubt that these 'gods' of the early primeval age were navigators) to 'wander' the world. Their purpose in doing so was nothing less than to re-create and revive the essence of their lost homeland, to bring about, in short: 'The resurrection of the former world of the gods ... The re-creation of a destroyed world.' [...] The takeaway is that the texts invite us to consider the possibility that the survivors of a lost civilization, thought of as 'gods' but manifestly human, set about 'wandering' the world in the aftermath of an extinction-level global cataclysm. By happenstance it was primarily hunter-gatherer populations, the peoples of the mountains, jungles, and deserts--'the unlettered and the uncultured,' as Plato so eloquently put it in his account of the end of Atlantis--who had been 'spared the scourge of the deluge.' Settling among them, the wanderers entertained the desperate hope that their high civilization could be restarted, or that at least something of its knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual ideas could be passed on so that mankind in the post-cataclysmic world would not be compelled to 'begin again like children, in complete ignorance of what happened in early times.
Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
Thabit ibn Qurra (AD 836-901, and also born in Harran), would have had little patience with loaded terms like "star idolatry" which seek to place the "paganism" of the Sabians on a lower level than the deadly, and often bigoted, narrow-minded and unscientific clerical monotheism of religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Thabit was well aware that, underlying the ancient Sabian practices misunderstood by these young religions as "star idolatry," were indeed exact sciences of great benefit to mankind, and thus he wrote: 'Who else have civilized the world, and built the cities, if not the nobles and kings of Paganism? Who else have set in order the harbors and rivers? And who else have taught the hidden wisdom? To whom else has the Deity revealed itself, given oracles, and told about the future, if not the famous men among the Pagans? The Pagans have made known all this. They have discovered the art of healing the soul; they have also made known the art of healing the body. They have filled the earth with settled forms of government, and with wisdom, which is the highest good. Without Paganism the world would be empty and miserable.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
The Sanskrit texts make it clear that a cataclysm on this scale, though a relatively rare event, is expected to wash away all traces of the former world and that the slate will be wiped clean again for the new age of the earth to begin. In order to ensure that the Vedas can be repromulgated for future mankind after each pralaya the gods have therefore designed an institution to preserve them -- the institution of the Seven Sages, a brotherhood of adepts possessed of unerring memories and supernatural powers, practitioners of yoga, performers of the ancient rituals and sacrifices, ascetics, spiritual visionaries, vigilant in the battle against evil, great teachers, knowledgeable beyond all imagining, who reincarnate from age to age as the guides of civilization and the guardians of cosmic justice.
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
in order that the lower edge of each stone should hitch like a pawl into a ratchet cut into the top of the walls; hence no stone can press on the one below it, so as to cause a cumulative pressure all down the roof; and each stone is separately upheld by the side walls which it lies across.27 And this was the work of a people whose civilization had only recently emerged from neolithic hunter-gathering?
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
We might feel very sure that there is no more to reality that the material world in which we live, but we cannot prove that this is the case. Theoretically there could be other realms, other dimensions, as all religious traditions and quantum physics alike maintain. Theoretically, the brain could be as much a receiver as a generator of consciousness and thus might be fine-tuned in altered states to pick up wavelengths that are normally not accessible to us.
Graham Hancock (Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind)
We are used to things starting out small and simple and then progressing--evolving--to become ever more complex and sophisticated, so this is naturally what we expect to find on archaeological sites. It upsets our carefully structured ideas of how civilizations should behave, how they should mature and develop, when we are confronted by a case like Göbekli Tepe that starts out perfect at the beginning and then slowly devolves until it is just a pale shadow of its former self.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Indian thought has traditionally regarded history and prehistory in cyclical rather than linear terms. In the West time is an arrow -- we are born, we live, we die. But in India we die only to be reborn. Indeed, it is a deeply rooted idea in Indian spiritual traditions that the earth itself and all living creatures upon it are locked into an immense cosmic cycle of birth, growth, fruition, death, rebirth and renewal. Even temples are reborn after they grow too old to be used safely -- through the simple expedient of reconstruction on the same site. Within this pattern of spiralling cycles, where everything that goes around comes around, India conceives of four great epochs of 'world ages' of varying but enormous lengths: the Krita Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Davapara Yuga and the Kali Yuga. At the end of each yuga a cataclysm, known as pralaya, engulfs the globe in fire or flood. Then from the ruins of the former age, like the Phoenix emerging from the ashes, the new age begins.
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
The view of Professor Robert Schoch Schoch is a renowned figure, indeed notorious, for the case he’s made, based on strict geological evidence, that the Great Sphinx of Giza bears the unmistakable erosion patterns of thousands of years of heavy rainfall.6 This means it has to be much older than 2500 BC (the orthodox date, when Egypt received no more rain than it does today) and must originally have been carved around the end of the Ice Age when the Nile valley was subjected to a long period of intense precipitation.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
With a lightness of touch that is almost subliminal, this verse has encouraged us to count Valhalla’s fighters, thus momentarily obliging us to focus our attention on their total number (540 × 800 = 432,000). This total, as we shall see in Chapter Thirty-one is mathematically linked to the phenomenon of precession. It is, unlikely to have found its way into Norse mythology by accident, especially in a context that has previously specified a ‘derangement of the heavens’ severe enough to have caused the stars to come adrift from
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
The Red Hill was referred to in the most ancient surviving work of Tamil literature, the Tolkappiyam, which itself makes reference to an even earlier work now lost to history which in turn had supposedly been part of a library of archaic texts, all now also vanished, the compilation of which was said to have begun more than 10,000 years previously. This had been the library of the legendary First Sangam -- or 'Academy' -- of the lost Tamil civilization of Kumari Kandam, swallowed up, as Captain Narayan put it, 'by a major eruption of the sea'.
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
After weaning the indigenous people's of Egypt: 'from their miserable and barbarous manners, [Osiris] taught them how to till the earth, and how to sow and reap crops, he formulated a code of laws for them, and made them worship the gods and perform service to them. He then left Egypt and traveled over the rest of the world teaching the various nations to do what his own subjects were doing. He forced no man to carry out his instructions, but by means of gentle persuasion and an appeal to their reason, he succeeded in inducing them to practice what he preached.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Archaeology is a deeply conservative discipline and I have found that archaeologists, no matter where they are working, have a horror of questioning anything their predecessors and peers have already announced to be true. They run a very real risk of jeopardizing their careers if they do. In consequence they focus--perhaps to a large extent subconsciously--on evidence and arguments that don't upset the applecart. There might be room for some tinkering around the edges, some refinement of orthodox ideas, but God forbid that anything should be discovered that might seriously undermine the established paradigm.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
to be clear that in signalling the decades around 2012 as the end of a great cycle, the Maya were not speaking of the end of the world, as such, but rather of the end of an age – ‘a time of great transformation and world rebirth’16 – that would be followed by the beginning of a new great cycle or world age. This, in the Mayan scheme of things, is the turbulent and dangerous time of transition we live in today. It is therefore strange, and indeed somewhat eerie, to find the solar and astronomical coordinates of the exact same 80-year window between 1960 and 2040 prophesied by the Maya to mark a turning point in human history, carved in high relief on a 12,000-year-old pillar in Göbekli Tepe in far-off Turkey.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: Evidence for an Ancient Apocalypse)
The same solution--that Easter Island was once part of a much larger landmass--would also explain another, very different puzzle, namely the so-called Rongo Rongo script. It is unprecedented in human history for a sophisticated fully developed writing system to be invented and put into use by a small, isolated island community. Yet Easter Island does have its own script, examples of which, mostly incised on wooden boards, copies of copies of copies of much older lost originals, were collected in the nineteenth century and have found their way into a number of museums around the world. None remain on Easter Island itself and even in the period when they were collected no native Easter Islanders were able to read them.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
It concerns the growing body of evidence that 12,800 years ago a giant comet traveling on an orbit that took it through the inner solar system broke up into multiple fragments, and that many of these fragments, some more than a mile (2.4 kilometers) in diameter, hit the earth. It is believed that North America was the epicenter of the resulting cataclysm with several of the largest impacts on the North American ice cap causing floods and tidal waves and throwing a vast cloud of dust into the upper atmosphere that enshrouded the earth, preventing the sun’s rays from reaching the surface and thus initiating the sudden, mysterious global deep freeze that geologists call the Younger Dryas. We will go into the evidence for all this, and how it relates to “Bretz’s flood
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
The fully qualified Indian marine archaeologists who had dived on the structure in 1993 had not hesitated in their official report to pronounce it to be man-made with 'courses of masonry' plainly visible -- surely a momentous finding 5 kilometers from the shore at a depth of 23 metres? But far from exciting attention, or ruffling any academic feathers, or attracting funds for an extension of the diving survey to the other apparently man-made mounds that had been spotted bear by on the sea-bed -- and very far indeed from inspiring any Tamil expert to re-evaluate the derided possibility of a factual basis to the Kumari Kandam myth -- the NIO's discovery at Poompuhur had simply been ignored by scholarship, not even reacted to or dismissed, but just widely and generally ignored.
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
This ability to zoom in at very high resolution on a time window just 21 years wide and almost 13,000 years in the past comes to us courtesy of an amazing scientific resource consisting of ice cores from Greenland. Extracted with tubular drills that can reach depths of more than 3 kilometers, these cores preserve an unbroken 100,000-year record of any environmental and climatic events anywhere around the globe that affected the Greenland ice cap. What they show, and what Allen is referring to, is a mysterious spike in the metallic element platinum--'a 21-year interval with elevated platinum,' as he puts it now--'so we know that was the length of the impact event because there's very little way, once platinum falls on the ice sheet, that it can move around. It's pretty well locked in place.
Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
What would have made [seeing Göbekli Tepe from Harran] easier, in antiquity, would have been a tall tower annexed to the temple that once stood here--a temple dedicated to Su-En (usually contracted to Sin), the Moon God of the Sabians. After telling us that there were "powerful images in this temple," the Greek Philosopher Libanius (AD 314-394), describes the tower, noting that "from its top one could overlook the entire plain of Harran." [...] A team from the Chicago Oriental Institute was about to start a major dig around the ruins of the Grand Mosque in 1986, but it seems that the Turkish authorities insisted on such restrictive practices that the project had to be abandoned. Current excavations by Harran University and the Sanliurfa Museum Directorate show little interest in recovery of substantive remains from the city's pre-Islamic period.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Descriptions of a killer global flood that inundated the inhabited lands of the world turn up everywhere amongst the myths of antiquity. In many cases these myths clearly hint that the deluge swept away an advanced civilization that had somehow angered the gods, sparing 'none but the unlettered and the uncultured' and obliging the survivors to 'begin again like children in complete ignorance of what happened ... in early times'. Such stories turn up in Vedic India, in the pre-Columbian Americas, in ancient Egypt. They were told by the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Arabs and the Jews. They were repeated in China and south-east Asia, in prehistoric northern Europe and across the Pacific. Almost universally, where truly ancient traditions have been preserved, even amongst mountain peoples and desert nomads, vivid descriptions have been passed down of global floods in which the majority of mankind perished.
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
Professor Napier and his colleague Victor Clube, formerly dean of the Astrophysics Department at Oxford University, go so far as to describe the 'unique complex of debris' within the Taurid stream as 'the greatest collision hazard facing the earth at the present time.' Coordination of their findings with those of Allen West, Jim Kennett, and Richard Firestone, as led both teams--the geophysicists and the astronomers--to conclude that it was very likely objects from the then much younger Taurid meteor stream that hit the earth around 12,800 years ago and caused the onset of the Younger Dryas. These objects, orders of magnitude larger than the one that exploded over Tunguska, contained extraterrestrial platinum, and what the evidence from the Greenland ice cores seems to indicate is an epoch of 21 years in which the earth was hit every year, with the bombardments increasing annually in intensity until the fourteenth year, when they peaked and then began to decline before ceasing in the twenty-first year.
Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
The Piri Reis map of 1513 features the western shores of Africa and the eastern shores of North and South America and is also controversially claimed to depict Ice Age Antarctica--as an extension of the southern tip of South America. The same map depicts a large island lying east of the southeast coast of what is now the United States. Also clearly depicted running along the spine of this island is a 'road' of huge megaliths. In this exact spot during the lowered sea levels of the Ice Age a large island was indeed located until approximately 12,400 years ago. A remnant survives today in the form of the islands of Andros and Bimini. Underwater off Bimini I have scuba-dived on a road of great megaliths exactly like those depicted above water on the Piri Reis map. Again, the implication, regardless of the separate controversy of whether the so-called Bimini Road is a man-made or natural feature, is that the region must have been explored and mapped before the great floods at the end of the Ice Age caused the sea level to rise and submerged the megaliths.
Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
If we impose on a map of the earth a 'world grid' with Giza (not Greenwich) as its prime meridian, then hidden relationships become immediately apparent between sites that previously seemed to be on a random, unrelated longitudes. On such a grid, as we've just seen, Tiruvannamalai stands on longitude 48 degrees east, Angkor stands on longitude 72 degrees east and Sao Pa stands out like a sore thumb on longitude 90 degrees east -- all numbers that are significant in ancient myths, significant in astronomy (through the study of precession), and closely interrelated through the base-3 system. So the 'outrageous hypothesis' which is being proposed here is that the world was mapped repeatedly over a long period at the end of the Ice Age -- to the standards of accuracy that would not again be achieved until the end of the eighteenth century. It is proposed that the same people who made the maps also established their grid materially, on the ground, by consecrating a physical network of sites around the world on longitudes that were significant to them. And it is proposed that this happened a very long time ago, before history began, but that later cultures put new monuments on top of the ancient sites which they continued to venerate as sacred, perhaps also inheriting some of the knowledge and religious ideas of the original navigators and builders.
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
Berossos compiled his History from the temple archives of Babylon (reputed to have contained "public records" that had been preserved for "over 150,000 years"). He has passed on to us a description of Oannes as a "monster," or a "creature." However, what Berossos has to say is surely more suggestive of a man wearing some sort of fish-costume--in short, some sort of disguise. The monster, Berossos tells us: "had the whole body of a fish, but underneath and attached to the head of the fish there was another head, human, and joined to the tail of the fish, feet like those of a man, and it had a human voice ... At the end of the day, this monster, Oannes, went back to the sea and spent the night. It was amphibious, able to live both on land and in the sea ... Later, other monsters similar to Oannes appeared." Bearing in mind that the curious containers carried by Oannes and the Apkallu sages are also depicted on one of the megalithic pillars at Göbekli Tepe (and [...] as far afield as ancient Mexico as well), what are we to make of all this? The mystery deepends when we follow the Mesopotamian traditions further. In summary, Oannes and the brotherhood of Apkallu sages are depicted as tutoring mankind for many thousands of years. It is during this long passage of time that the five antediluvian cities arise, the centers of a great civilization, and that kingship is "lowered from heaven." Prior to the first appearance of Oannes, Berossos says, the people of Mesopotamia 'lived in a lawless manner, like the beasts of a field.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
The entire pre-Columbian literature of Mexico, a vast library of tens of thousands of codices, was carefully and systematically destroyed by the priests and friars who followed in the wake of the conquistadors. In November 1530, for example, Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, who had shortly before been apointed 'Protector of the Indians' by the Spanish crown, proceeded to 'protect' his flock by burning at the stake a Mexican aristocrat, the lord of the city of Texcoco, whom he accused of having worshipped the rain god. In the city's marketplace Zumárraga 'had a pyramid formed of the documents of Aztec history, knowledge and literature, their paintings, manuscripts, and hieroglyphic writings, all of which he committed to the flames while the natives cried and prayed.' More than 30 years later, the holocaust of documents was still under way. In July 1562, in the main square of Mani (just south of modern Merida in the Yucatan), Bishop Diego de Landa burned thousands of Maya codices, story paintings, and hieroglyphs inscribed on rolled-up deer skins. He boasted of destroying countless 'idols' and 'altars,' all of which he described as 'works of the devil, designed by the evil one to delude the Indians and to prevent them from accepting Christianity.' Noting that the Maya 'used certain characters or letters, which they wrote in their books about the antiquities and their sciences' he informs us: 'We found a great number of books in these letters, and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil we burned them all, which they took most grievously and which gave them great pain.
Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
I will not delay the reader with lengthy quotations from the very many Taiwanese flood myths that were collected from amongst the indigenous population, primarily by Japanese scholars, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Typically they tell a story of a warning from the gods, the sound of thunder in the sky, terrifying earthquakes, the pouring down of a wall of water which engulfs mankind, and the survival of a remnant who had either fled to mountain tops or who floated to safety on some sort of improvised vessel. To provide just one example (from the Ami tribe of central Taiwan), we hear how the four gods of the sea conspired with two gods of the land, Kabitt and Aka, to destroy mankind. The gods of the sea warned Kabitt and Aka: 'In five days when the round moon appears, the sea will make a booming sound: then escape to a mountain where there are stars.' Kabitt and Aka heeded the warning immediately and fled to the mountain and 'when they reached the summit, the sea suddenly began to make the sound and rose higher and higher'. All the lowland settlements were inundated but two children, Sura and Nakao, were not drowned: 'For when the flood overtook them, they embarked in a wooden mortar, which chanced to be lying in the yard of their house, and in that frail vessel they floated safely to the Ragasan mountain.' So here, handed down since time immemorial by Taiwanese headhunters, we have the essence of the story of Noah's Ark, which is also the story of Manu and the story of Zisudra and (with astonishingly minor variations) the story of all the deluge escapees and survivors in all the world. At some point a real investigation should be mounted into why it is that furious tribes of archaeologists, ethnologists and anthropologists continue to describe the similarities amongst these myths of earth-destroying floods as coincidental, rooted in exaggeration, etc., and thus irrelevant as historical testimony. This is contrary to reason when we know that over a period of roughly 10,000 years between 17,000 and 7000 years ago more than 25 million square kilometres of the earth's surface were inundated. The flood epoch was a reality and in my opinion, since our ancestors went through it, it is not surprising that they told stories and bequeathed to us their shared memories of it. As well as continuing to unveil it through sciences like inundation mapping and palaeo-climatology, therefore, I suggest that if we want to learn what the world was really like during the meltdown we should LISTEN TO THE MYTHS.
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
Our magic,’ said Tozi’s mother, ‘comes not from the gods, or from men, but from the source of all created things.
Graham Hancock (War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent)
To work upon the world of created things and to magnify darkness or light, as we choose, to glorify good or evil, as we choose, to exalt love or hate, as we choose … The power is the gift but the choice is always ours.
Graham Hancock (War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent)
The Great Pyramid of Giza served as a temporal anchor onto the Vernal Equinox day and hence it was given the name Khufu (aka, Chnoubos) which literally refers to the word 'beetle' for whatever symbolic reasons the ancient Egyptians found fit. Kheper, is however the direct reference which had been attached with the 'beetle' and yet has per se the literal linguistic meaning of 'tidings'. Therefore I cannot help but validly assert that the Vernal Equinox event was so important to celebrate for the ancient Egyptians -as obviously it was for many other cultures- for the fact that it brings good news along with it. It is important to also identify the Sphinx for what it had been called as Re-horakhty, which literally means 'The Watcher/Guardian of the Movement/Motion'. Although the Sphinx by its location refers to a Parallel Mark on the Giza Plateau, yet it serves exactly that task of administration (i.e., guardianship) -which it had been named after- that transfers the heavenly perpendicular cycle of authority (i.e., mechanics) that is acquired by the Great Pyramid (As I have demonstrated) spatially onto the local Solar System anchoring it thereby (As Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval have demonstrated). This adds up as another proof that the Sphinx had been inherited from an earlier civilization since the Sun itself cannot be looked at as 'Horakhty' after I have just revealed the meaning of this word; most evidence even points to the fact that Heliocentrism was not known in ancient Egypt and therefore ascribing movement to the Sun was a later on introduced heresy.
Ibrahim Ibrahim (Quotable: My Worldview)
Iboga is intimately associated with death; the plant is frequently anthropomorphised as a supernatural being, a ‘generic ancestor’ who can so highly value or despise an individual that it can carry him away to the land of the dead.5
Graham Hancock (Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind)
What he doesn't consider, in other words, is the possibility that consciousness comes first while physical realms and beings are manifestations or projections of that primordial consciousness—as above, so below, as many ancient wisdom traditions state.
Graham Hancock (The Divine Spark: A Graham Hancock Reader: Psychedelics, Consciousness, and the Birth of Civilization)
a team of Japanese engineers had recently tried to build a 35-feet-high replica of the Great Pyramid (rather smaller than the original, which was 481 feet 5 inches in height). The team started off by limiting itself strictly to techniques proved by archaeology to have been in use during the Fourth Dynasty. However, construction of the replica under these limitations turned out to be impossible and, in due course, modern earth-moving, quarrying and lifting machines were brought to the site. Still no worthwhile progress was made. Ultimately, with some embarrassment, the project had to be abandoned.
Graham Hancock (The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant)
failure of logic in which absence of evidence, which was one thing, was in fact being treated as evidence of absence – which was quite another.
Graham Hancock (The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant)
As to a night visit, and my plan to see the stars with the megaliths around me … What a joke! The roof has cut Göbekli Tepe off entirely from the cosmos. It feels almost like a deliberate, calculated act of disempowerment – as though someone amongst the powers that be suddenly woke up and realised how dangerous this ancient place has become to the established order of things and how subversive it potentially is to the system of mind control, very much including control of the past, that keeps modern society in order.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: Evidence for an Ancient Apocalypse)
Look at its power,’ he continued. ‘Five thousand years on it still gets you. It involves you whether you like it or not … It forces you into a process of thinking … forces you to learn. The minute you ask a question about it you’ve asked a question about engineering, you’ve asked a question about geometry, you’ve asked a question about astronomy. So it forces you to learn about engineering and geometry and astronomy, and gradually you begin to realize how sophisticated it is, how incredibly clever and skilful and knowledgeable its builders must have been, which forces you to ask questions about mankind, about human history, eventually about yourself too. You want to find out. This is the power of the thing.
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Quest Continues)
...as so often in science, statements touted as facts turn out to be opinions contradicted by other opinions that are also touted as facts.
Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
terra
Graham Hancock (The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant)
How can the lord of goblins, the delighter in graveyards, the naked devotee covered with ashes, haggard in appearance, wearing twisted locks ornamented with snakes, be the supreme being?
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
but he intentionally courted dishonour, he rejoiced in contempt and disregard, for ‘he who is despised lies happy, freed of all attachment’.
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
Our pollution and neglect of the majestic garden of the earth, our rape of its resources, our abuse of the oceans and the rainforests, our fear, hatred and suspicion of one another multiplied by a hundred bitter regional and sectarian conflicts, our consistent track record of standing by and doing nothing while millions suffer, our ignorant, narrow-minded racism, our exclusivist religions, our forgetfulness that we are all brothers and sisters, our bellicose chauvinism, the dreadful cruelties that we indulge in, in the name of nation, or faith, or simple greed, our obsessive, competitive, ego-driven production and consumption of material goods and the growing conviction of many, fuelled by the triumphs of materialist science, that matter
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: Evidence for an Ancient Apocalypse)
On Carvajal’s account, therefore, not only did the Amazon have cities but its cities were comparable in size to those of Europe at the same time. He also reports that the chieftain Machiparo ruled over “many settlements and very large ones which together contribute for fighting purposes fifty thousand men of the age of from thirty years up to seventy, because the young men do not go to war.” Aside from the interesting anthropological observation about the age at which men in sixteenth-century Amazonian society went to war, this statement has important implications for our understanding of the population of the region. Machiparo’s domain was just one among many through which the Orellana expedition passed, yet if Carvajal reported correctly it could muster an army 50,000 strong. This is a greater number than Denmark and Norway combined, or Sweden and Finland combined, or Brandenburg-Prussia, or even the Tsardom of Russia, could field in the same period.
Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
A view of the Amazon as an “uncivilized” and “savage” place—indeed as the very epitome of savagery—has been deeply ingrained in the European psyche for centuries. It is therefore not surprising the Carvajal was disbelieved when his journal finally surfaced in 1895.
Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
The basic transformation brought about by the Rishi in his performance of tapas is the production of heat in the body. The fire of his tapas becomes such that it is transformed into Fire itself, burning the worlds with his heat and illuminating them with the light that radiates from his body … Powers of becoming invisible, walking on water and flying through the air are among those most frequently said to be obtained by performing tapas-, while in the Yoga-sutras, a large number of such powers are listed as being attained through the practice of yoga – including, in addition to such ‘physical’ powers, various types of mental knowledge such as of previous existences and of the thoughts of others …11
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
The Saiva mythology shows him as the divinity of life, the guardian of the earth, who wanders naked through rich forests, lustful and strong. He teaches the highest and most secret knowledge to the most humble.37
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
There is even a tradition in the Bhagvata Purana that the greatest sages ‘range over the world in the guise of mad persons’ whilst imparting wisdom.
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
cyclical,
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Like the legends of Kon-Tiki Viracocha [...], the South American civilizing hero, white-skinned and bearded like Quetzalcoatl and the Apkallu sages [...], who was said to have come to the Andes during a terrifying period, thousands of years in the past, "when the earth had been inundated by a great flood and plunged into darkness by the disappearance of the sun." (Exactly like Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, and the Apkallu sages in Mesopotamia, Viracocha's civilizing mission in the Andes had been to bring laws and a moral code to the survivors of the disaster, and to teach them the skills of agriculture, architecture and engineering.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
It is a curious mystery [...] that the exact same notions of the Seven Sages as the bringers of civilization in the remotest antiquity, and of the preservation and repromulgation of “writings on stones from before the flood,” turn up in the supposedly completely distinct and unrelated culture of Ancient Egypt. Of the greatest interest, at any rate, is the [Temple of Horus]’s idea of itself expressed in the acres of enigmatic inscriptions that cover its walls. These inscriptions, the so-called Edfu Building Texts, take us back to a very remote period called the “Early Primeval Age of the Gods”--and these gods, it transpired, were not originally Egyptian, but lived on a sacred island, the “Homeland of the Primeval Ones,” in the midst of a great ocean. Then, at some unspecified time in the past, a terrible disaster--a true cataclysm of flood and fire [...]-- overtook this island, where “the earliest mansions of the gods” had been founded, destroying it utterly, inundating all its holy places and killing most of its divine inhabitants. Some survived, however, and we are told that this remnant set sail in their ships (for the texts leave us in no doubt that these gods of the early primeval age were navigators) to “wander” the world. [...] Of particular interest is a passage at Edfu in which we read of a circular, water-filled “channel” surrounding the original sacred domain that lay at the heart of the island of the Primeval Ones--a ring of water that was intended to fortify and protect that domain. In this there is, of course, a direct parallel to Atlantis, where the sacred domain on which stood the temple and palace of the god, whom Plato names as “Poseidon,” was likewise surrounded by a ring of water, itself placed in the midst of further such concentric rings separated by rings of land, again with the purpose of fortification and protection. Intriguingly, Plato also hints at the immediate cause of the earthquakes and floods that destroyed Atlantis. In the Timaeus, as a prelude to his account of the lost civilization and its demise, he reports that the Egyptian priests from whom Solon received the story began by speaking of a celestial cataclysm: “There have been and will be many different calamities to destroy mankind, the greatest of them being by fire and water, lesser ones by countless other means. Your own [i.e. the Greeks’] story of how Phaeton, child of the sun, harnessed his father’s chariot, but was unable to guide it along his father’s course and so burned up things on earth and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt, is a mythical version of the truth that there is at long intervals a variation in the course of the heavenly bodies and a consequent widespread destruction by fire of things on earth.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
The "Garcilaso" mentioned by Markham is the chronicler Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess, a heritage that gave him unique access to genuine Inca traditions, particularly since he was born and brought up in Cuzco and spoke Quechua, the language of the Incas, as his mother tongue. Had the megalithic elements of Sacsayhuaman been recent work, done in the century before Garcilaso's birth, there should have been fresh and clear memories, even eye-witness accounts, of so magnificent an achievement. But Garcilaso reports nothing of the sort and instead can only offer magic as an explanation for what he describes as 'an ever greater enigma than the seven wonders of the world.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
At Göbekli Tepe there is a creature, sculted in high-relief, identified by Klaus Schmidt as a beast of prey with splayed claws and powerful shoulders, its tail bent to its left over its body. A very similar animal is seen at Cutimbo [in Peru] with the same splayed claws and the same powerful shoulders, while the tail instead of being bent to its left is bent to its right. At both Göbekli Tepe and Cutimbo, reliefs of salamanders and of serpents are found. The style of execution in all cases is very similar. At about the level of the genitals of the so-called "Totem Pole" of Göbekli Tepe, a small head and two arms protrude. The head has a determined look, with prominent brows. The long fingers of the hands almost meet. The posture is that of a man leaning down through the stone and playing a drum. This is also the posture of two figures at Cutimbo, who emerge from a large convex block on one of the circular towers. They have the same determined features and prominent brow ridges as the figure on the "Totem Pole." The two serpents on the side of the "Totem Pole" have peculiarly large heads, making them look almost like sperm. So, too, does the serpent that emerges from the dark narrow entrance of the Temple of the Moon above Cuzco. Lions feature in the reliefs at Göbekli Tepe, pumas feature in the reliefs at Cutimbo and again the manner of representation is similar.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Then there's the pillar statue in the semi-subterranean temple at Tiahuanaco [Bolivia]. Like the Totem Pole of Göbekli Tepe, it is anthropomorphic. Like the Totem Pole at Göbekli Tepe, it has serpents writhing up its side. Like the Totem Pole at Göbekli Tepe, the long fingers of its hands almost meet in front of its body. The face is human not animal, however, and it's heavily bearded. Nonetheless, the figure of an animal is carved on the side of its head and this animal resembles no known species more closely than it does Toxodon, a sort of New World rhino that went extinct during the cataclysms at the end of the Ice Age around 12,000 years ago. This isn't pareidolia--the figure is definitely there. So there's only one question--and it's difficult to answer: is this a depiction of Toxodon, or is it some creature of the artist's imagination?
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Another point of interest about the Tiahuanaco [in Bolivia] monoliths is that their garments from the waist down are patterned in the form of fish scales. Here, too, is a parallel to the Apkallus--the bearded, "fish-garbed figures" who brought high civilization to Mesopotamia [...]. Nor is it as though bearded figures are missing from the repertoire of Tiahuanaco. Two have survived, and one on the pillar in the semi-subterranean temple has been identified since time immemorial with the great civilizing deity Kon-Tiki Viracocha, [...] who is described in multiple myths and traditions as being white skinned and bearded.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Legends speak of a primeval Pacific homeland called "Hiva" from which the first inhabitants of Easter Island came--a homeland that also fell victim to the "mischief of Uoke's lever" and was "submerged under the sea." What is particularly intriguing about all this, because of its resonance with the Seven Sages--the Apkallu--spoken of in Mesopotamian antediluvian traditions, and with the Seven Sages of the Edfu Building Texts, who sought out new lands in which to recreate the drowned and devastated world of the gods, is that the Seven Sages--"king's sons, all initiated men"--are also said to have been instrumental in the original settlement of Easter Island. Exactly as was the case with the Apkallu, who laid the foundations of all the future temples of Mesopotamia, and with the Edfu Sages who traveled the length and breath of Egypt establishing the sacred mounds on which all future pyramids and temples were to be built, the first task of the Seven Sages from Hiva after their arrival on Easter Island was 'the construction of stone mounds.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Regardless of the fact that the express purpose of God's Deluge is to kill off most of mankind--apart, of course, from Noah and his descendants--there is talk of the need to: 'heal the earth which the angels have corrupted ... that all the children of men may not perish through all the secret things which the Watchers have disclosed and have taught their sons.' [...] From such admonishments we may reasonably deduce a number of things about the Watchers, most particularly that they must be about the right size and shape, and equipped, moreover, with the necessary organs and impulses to want, to have and to enjoy sex with human women. To me, the obvious conclusion from this is that the Watchers are in fact human, or at any rate extremely closely related at the genetic level to anatomically modern human beings--close enough, indeed, to make human women pregnant and to have "children of fornication" with them. These offspring are not sickly as one might expect from an even slightly mismatched genetic makeup. On the contrary, they thrive so vigorously that Enoch, or the "good" angels speaking through him, want not only to destroy the Watchers but also to 'destroy the children of the Watchers.' [...] So now further clarity begins to emerge. A group of bad angels, "Watchers of the heaven," have come to earth--"descended," specifically, on Mount Hermon in Lebanon--transferred some technology, mated with human females, and produced offspring who are in some way gigantic and are called Nephilim.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Cainan (sometimes the name is spelled Kainam) was the son of Arpachsad: "And the son grew, and his father taught him writing, and he went to seek for himself a place where he might seize for himself a city. And he found a writing, which former generations had carved on the rock, and he read what was thereon, and he transcribed it and sinned owing to it, for it contained the teaching of the Watchers in accordance with which they used to observe the omens of the sun, moon and stars in all the signs of heaven." Here, then, is the origin of the star worship of the Sabians traced all the way back to the mysterious Watchers--whoever they were, whatever they are--who settled in the Near East in antediluvian times, taught our ancestors forbidden knowledge, broke some fundamental commandment by mating with human women and, as a result, were remembered as being responsbile for the great global cataclysm of the Deluge.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
One could imagine that a group of anthropologists and scientists sent off to study a previously uncontacted Amazon tribe today might be bound by similar strictures [not to reproduce with natives]. But suppose some of them disagreed? Suppose some of them "went native"--as used to be said of colonialists in the days of the British Empire who allowed themselves to get too close to indigenous populations they interacted with. Is that perhaps what happened to the troop of two hundred "Watchers" on Mount Hermon? Somewhere around 10,900 BC, did they break the commandments of their own culture and "go native" among the hunter-gatherers of the Near East? And were the first chance encounters with the fragments of a giant comet a century later in 10,800 BC--encounters that devastated the world--somehow blamed upon their moral lapse?
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
The Sabians were allowed to build a new Temple of the Moon God, and to continue their religious rites, after the Arab General Ibn Ghanam conquered Harran in the seventh century AD. This in itself is a sign of most unusual favor, since Islamic armies normally offered "pagans" the choice of either conversion or death. Even more interesting, however, is the Sabians' encounter with the Abbasid Caliph Abu Jafar Abdullah al-Ma'mun, who passed through their city in AD 830 and reportedly quizzed them intensively on their religion. Remembering the Sabian pilgrimages to Giza, it is reasonable to wonder whether there is any connection with the fact that in AD 820, a decade before he visited Harran, it was Ma'mun who tunnelled into the Great Pyramid and opened its previously hidden passageways and chambers. Indeed, it is through "Ma'mun's Hole" that visitors still enter the monument today. Described by Gibbon as "a prince of rare learning," it seems Ma'mun's investigation was prompted by information he'd received about the Great Pyramid, specifically that it contained: 'a secret chamber with maps and tables of the celestial and terrestrial spheres. Although they were said to have been made in the remote past, they were suppposed to be of great accuracy.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Figurines of Apkallus were buried in boxes in the foundation deposits in Mesopotamian buildings in order to avert evil ... The term massare, Watchers, is used of these sets. Likewise the Apkallus were said to have taught antediluvian sciences to humanity and so, too, were the Watchers. As one scholar concludes, however: 'The Jewish authors often inverted the Mesopotamian intellectual traditions with the intention of showing the superiority of their own cultural foundations. [Thus] ... the antediluvian sages, the Mesopotamian Apkallus, were demonised as the 'sons of God' and ... appear as the Watchers ... illegitimate teachers of humankind before the flood.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
The fullest account we have of Oannes is found in surviving fragments of the works of a Babylonian priest called Berossos who wrote in the third century BC. [...] Oannes did not do his work alone but was supposedly the leader of a group of beings known as the Seven Apkallu--the "Seven Sages"--who were said to have lived "before the flood" (a cataclysmic global deluge features prominently in many Mesopotamian traditions, including those of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylon). Alongside Oannes, these sages are portrayed as bringers of civilization who, in the most ancient past, gave humanity a moral code, arts, crafts and agriculture and taught them architectural, building and engineering skills.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
[At Gunung Padang] First, the drill cores contained evidence--fragments of worked columnar basalt--that more man-made megalithic structures lay far beneath the surface. Secondly, the organic materials brought up in the drill cores began to yield older and older dates--3000 BC to 5000 BC, then 9600 BC as the drills bit deeper, then around 11,000 BC, then 15,000 BC and finally, at depths of 27.5 meters (90 feet) and more, an astonishing sequence of dates of 20,000 BC to 22,000 BC and earlier.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
[At Gunung Padang] First, the drill cores contained evidence--fragments of worked columnar basalt--that more man-made megalithic structures lay far beneath the surface. Secondly, the organic materials brought up in the drill cores began to yield older and older dates--3000 BC to 5000 BC, then 9600 BC as the drills bit deeper, then around 11,000 BC, then 15,000 BC and finally, at depths of 27.5 meters (90 feet) and more, an astonishing sequence of dates of 20,000 BC to 22,000 BC and earlier. [...] The problem is that those dates going back before 9600 BC take us deep into the last Ice Age, when Indonesia was not a series of islands as it is today but was part of a vast antediluvian Southeast Asian continent dubbed "Sundaland" by geologists. Sea level was 122 meters (400 feet) lower then. Huge ice caps 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) deep covered most of Europe and North America until the ice caps began to melt. Then all the water stored in them returned to the oceans and sea-level rose, submerging many parts of the world where humans had previously lived.
Graham Hancock (Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization)
Amun was the “Hidden One” or the “Invisible One,” best described today as the Western concept of God, omnipotent and omnipresent, or, from a scientific viewpoint, the energy field that pervades all that exists.
Glenn Kreisberg (Lost Knowledge of the Ancients: A Graham Hancock Reader)
Afortunadamente, se trata de una vía con poco tráfico, de modo que aunque tienes que cruzar la autopista dos veces al año por lo general no te tropiezas con nada. No obstante, lo que hace que algunos cruces sean más peligrosos que otros es el hecho de que los grandes camiones y otro tráfico pesado tienen tendencia a reunirse en ciertos lugares. En efecto, lo que Clube y Napier han hecho con sus cálculos, trazando hacia atrás las órbitas de objetos conocidos de la «autopista» de las Táuridas, es lanzar un aviso de que ahora, y durante las décadas siguientes, nuestros cruces conllevan un riesgo muy superior de una serie de colisiones con algún «trafico pesado» muy amenazador. Las evidencias de que una serie de colisiones semejantes tuvieron lugar hace entre 12.800 y 11.600 años y de que la causa fue la fragmentación del meteorito gigante que dio lugar a todos los objetos de las Táuridas deben, cuando menos, hacer que nos concentremos en el problema. Ya no
Graham Hancock (Los magos de los dioses (Historia) (Spanish Edition))
More than 500 deluge legends are known around the world and, in a survey of 86 of these (20 Asiatic, 3 European, 7 African, 46 American and 10 from Australia and the Pacific), the specialist researcher Dr Richard Andree concluded that 62 were entirely independent of the Mesopotamian and Hebrew accounts.25
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)