Authors: J. Douglas Kenyon
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Gnostic Dementia, #Fringe Science, #Alternative History, #Amazon.com, #Retail, #Archaeology, #Ancient Aliens, #History
Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilization (4 page)
WHY LIMIT THE DEBATE TO WESTERN MODELS?
The conventional debate over our origins, as we find it characterized in the major media, ignores concepts of human and cosmic origins that are shared by a large portion of the world’s population: those of the mystic East. Einstein himself entertained such ideas because they supported his belief in a universal intelligence. More recently, the physicist and Nobel laureate Brian Josephson and others have drawn parallels between Eastern mysticism and modern physics. Fritjof Capra, in
The Tao of Physics,
harmonizes Vedic, Buddhist, and Taoist philosophy with the subtleties of quantum theory.
The Vedas, in fact, present a scenario similar to the expanding and contracting universe of modern physics, the Great In breath and Out breath of creation, the projection of omnipresent consciousness, Brahman, the essence of which remains intrinsic to all things as creation evolves. Taoism, on the other hand, offers an understanding of conscious reality that closely resembles Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle,” wherein perspective, or consciousness, shapes objective reality.
To Einstein, especially in his later years, the idea of consciousness-based reality—the awareness of a universal, conscious presence inseparable from identity and creation—became naturally apparent, as it does now to others in the fields of physics, philosophy, and religion. “As I grow older,” Einstein said, “the identification with the here and now [his famous space-time] is slowly lost. One feels dissolved, merged into nature.”
The greatest minds, then, of our time and of the greatest antiquity reject Darwin’s often unstated premise, his belief in absolute materialism, which holds that all life evolved from primitive matter, accidentally, without purpose or design. At the same time, consciousness-based creation offers an alternative to strict biblical interpretations and the concept of an anthropomorphic creator separate from man and nature.
Establishment science, though, has had a hands-off approach to consciousness, never daring to explore what, by definition, cannot be explained by matter-based beliefs about the origins of life. An article by David Chalmers, in the December 1995 issue of
Scientific American,
“The Puzzle of Conscious Experience,” emphasizes the point.
“For many years,” Chalmers says, “consciousness was shunned by researchers . . .The prevailing view was that science, which depends on objectivity, could not accommodate something as subjective as consciousness.” Chalmers goes on to say that neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers are only recently beginning to reject the idea that consciousness cannot be studied. He proposes, while insisting that consciousness is materially based, that “[it] might be explained by a new kind of theory . . . [that] will probably involve new fundamental laws [with] startling consequences for our view of the universe and of ourselves.”
The eminent physicist Steven Weinberg, in his book
Dreams of a Final Theory,
puts it another way. He says the goal of physics is to develop a “theory of everything” that will tell us all there is to know about the universe—a law or principle from which the universe derives. So stating, Weinberg exposes the limitations of scientific materialism, while at the same time trying to transcend it, as he butts up against an Absolute, a Logos, if you will, that cannot exist within the context of matter-based creation. The real problem, he admits, is consciousness, because it is beyond what could have derived from material processes alone.
Darwinism, therefore, which depends upon the assumption that
all
existence is matter-based, cannot account for the most human characteristic of all, consciousness, which cannot derive from the process of natural selection in a random, mechanistic creation—the capacity of the human mind being far beyond what is necessary for mere survival. And strict creationism, when pitted against a Darwinism that ignores the origin of consciousness along with other crucial factors, appears to be merely a foil that Darwinists use to make themselves look good.
To understand human origins, then, and to develop a “theory of everything,” a true scientist must not only evaluate the tangible evidence presented in
Forbidden Archeology
and in Hancock’s
Fingerprints of the Gods,
he also must study consciousness, without which he neglects the most basic capacity of human beings—the ability to think creatively. He would have to experiment in the internal, subjective world, delving into what the scientific establishment considers a forbidden realm. He would have to devote himself, independent of any dogma, to the essence of his own conscious existence, as well as to the study of material creation. Like Einstein, he would see this pursuit as the essential goal of both science and religion, the search for knowledge in its purest sense, or
sciere
in the Latin, from which the word
science
derives. By so doing, science might arrive at a theory of everything.
3
Exposing a Scientific Cover-Up
Forbidden Archeology
Coauthor Michael Cremo Talks about the “Knowledge Filter” and Other Means for Cooking the Academic Books
J. Douglas Kenyon
I
n 1966, respected archeologist Virginia Steen-McIntyre and her associates on a U.S. Geological Survey team, working under a grant from the National Science Foundation, were called upon to date a pair of remarkable archeological sites in Mexico. Sophisticated stone tools rivaling the best work of Cro-Magnon man in Europe had been discovered at Hueyatlaco, while somewhat cruder implements had been turned up at nearby El Horno. The sites, it was conjectured, were very ancient, perhaps as old as 20,000 years, which, according to prevailing theories, would place them very close to the dawn of human habitation in the Americas.
Steen-McIntyre, knowing that if such antiquity could indeed be authenticated her career would be made, set about an exhaustive series of tests. Using four different but well-accepted dating methods, including uranium series and fission track, she determined to get it right. Nevertheless, when the results came in, the original estimates proved to be way off. Way
under,
as it turned out. The actual age of the sites was conclusively demonstrated to be more like a quarter of a million years!
As we might expect, some controversy ensued. Steen-McIntyre’s date not only challenged accepted chronologies for human presence in the region, but also contradicted established notions of how long modern humans could have been anywhere on Earth. Nevertheless, the massive reexamination of orthodox theory and the wholesale rewriting of textbooks that one might logically have expected did
not
ensue. What
did
follow was the public ridicule of Steen-McIntyre’s work and the vilification of her character. She has not been able to find work in her field since.
More than a century earlier, following the discovery of gold in California’s Table Mountain and the subsequent digging of thousands of feet of mining shafts, miners began to bring up hundreds of stone artifacts and even human fossils. Despite their origins in geological strata documented at nine to fifty-five million years in age, California state geologist J. D. Whitney was able subsequently to authenticate many of the finds and to produce an extensive report. The implications of Whitney’s evidence have never been properly answered or explained by the scientific establishment, yet the entire episode has been virtually ignored and references to it have vanished from the textbooks.
For decades, miners in South Africa have been turning up—from strata nearly three billion years in age—hundreds of small metallic spheres with encircling parallel grooves. Thus far, the scientific community has failed to take note.
Among scores of such cases cited in Richard Thompson and Michael Cremo’s
Forbidden Archeology
(and in its condensed version,
Hidden History of the Human Race
), it is clear that these three examples are by no means uncommon. Suggesting nothing less than a “massive cover-up,” Cremo and Thompson believe that when it comes to explaining the origins of the human race on Earth, academic science has cooked the books.
Though the public may believe that all the
real
evidence supports the mainstream theory of evolution—with its familiar timetable for human development (i.e.,
Homo sapiens
of the modern type go back only about 100,000 years)—Cremo and Thompson demonstrate that, to the contrary, a virtual mountain of evidence produced by reputable scientists applying standards just as exacting, if not more so, than those of the establishment has been not only ignored but, in many cases, actually suppressed. In every area of research, from paleontology to anthropology and archeology, that which is presented to the public as established and irrefutable fact is indeed nothing more, says Cremo, “than a consensus arrived at by powerful groups of people.”
Is that consensus justified by the evidence? Cremo and Thompson say no.
Carefully citing all available documentation, the authors produce case after case of contradictory research that has been conducted in the last two centuries. The authors describe astonishing discoveries made, and then go on to discuss the controversies that ensued from those discoveries and the suppression of evidence that invariably followed.
Typical is the case of George Carter, who claimed to have found, at an excavation in San Diego, California, hearths and crude stone tools at levels corresponding to the last interglacial period, some 80,000–90,000 years ago. Even though Carter’s work was endorsed by some experts such as the lithic scholar John Witthoft, the establishment scoffed. San Diego State University refused to even look at the evidence in its own backyard and Harvard University publicly defamed Carter in a course entitled “Fantastic Archeology.”
What emerges is a picture of an arrogant and bigoted academic elite interested more in the preservation of its own prerogatives and authority than the truth.
Needless to say, the weighty (952-page) volume,
Forbidden Archeology,
has caused more than a little stir. The establishment, as one might expect, is outraged, but it is having a difficult time ignoring the book. The anthropologist Richard Leakey wrote, “Your book is pure humbug and does not deserve to be taken seriously by anyone but a fool.”
Nevertheless, many prestigious scientific publications, including
The American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Geo Archeology
, and the British
Journal for the History of Science,
have deigned to review the book. While generally critical of its arguments, they have conceded, although grudgingly, that
Forbidden Archeology
is well written and well researched, and some indeed recognize a significant challenge to the prevailing theories.
As William Howells wrote in
Physical Anthropologist,
“To have modern human beings . . . appearing a great deal earlier, in fact at a time when even simple primates did not exist as possible ancestors, would be devastating, not only to the accepted pattern, it would be devastating to the whole theory of evolution, which has been pretty robust up until now.”
Yet despite its considerable challenge to the evolutionary edifice,
Forbidden Archeology
chooses not to itself with the familiar creationist point of view, nor to attempt an alternative theory of its own. The task of presenting his own complex theory—which seeks, Cremo says, to avoid the “false choice” between evolution and creationism usually presented in the media—Cremo has undertaken in another book, entitled
Human Devolution
. On the question of human origins, he insists, “We really do have to go back to the drawing board.”
As the author told
Atlantis Rising
recently: “
Forbidden Arche
ology
suggests the real need for an alternative explanation, a new synthesis. In
Human Devolution,
I’ve gone into that in detail. It’s got elements of the Darwinian idea, and elements of the ancient astronaut theory, and elements of the creationist nature, but it’s much more complex. I think we’ve become accustomed to overly simplistic pictures of human origins, whereas the reality is a little more complicated than any advocates of the current ideas are prepared to admit.”
Both Cremo and Thompson are members of the Bhaktivedanta Institute—the Science Studies Branch of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Cremo and Thompson started their project with the goal of finding evidence to corroborate the ancient Sanskrit writings of India, which relate episodes of human history going back millions of years.
“So we thought,” says Cremo, “if there’s any truth to those ancient writings, there should be some physical evidence to back it up, but we really didn’t find it in the current textbooks.” They didn’t stop there, though. Over the next eight years, Cremo and Thompson investigated the entire history of archeology and anthropology, delving into
everything
that has been discovered, not just what has been reported in textbooks. What they found was a revelation. “I thought there might be a few little things that have been swept under the rug,” said Cremo, “but what I found was truly amazing. There’s actually a massive amount of evidence that’s been suppressed.”
Cremo and Thompson determined to produce a book of irrefutable archeological facts. “The standard used,” says Cremo, “[meant] the site had to be identifiable, there had to be good geological evidence on the age of the site, and there had to be some reporting about it, in most cases in the scientific literature.” The quality and quantity of the evidence—they hoped—would compel serious examination by professionals in the field, as well as by students and the general public.
Few would deny that they have succeeded in spectacular fashion. Much in demand in alternative science circles, the authors have also found a sympathetic audience among the self-termed sociologists of scientific knowledge, who are very aware of the failure of modern scientific method to present a truly objective picture of reality. The problem, Cremo believes, is both misfeasance and malfeasance. “You can find many cases where it’s just an automatic process. It’s just human nature that a person will tend to reject things that don’t fit in with his particular worldview,” he said.
He cites the example of a young paleontologist and expert on ancient whalebones at the Museum of Natural History in San Diego. When asked if he ever saw signs of human marks on any of the bones, the scientist remarked, “I tend to stay away from anything that has to do with humans because it’s just too controversial.”