Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries (2 page)

In response to popular dissatisfaction with mainstream scholars' often
inadequate explanations of the world
we live in, publishers are fielding a
growing number of books posing alternative considerations to prevailing
orthodoxy. In confronting official paradigms, their unconventional authors
are typically provocative, but usually
more imaginative than credible. Brian
Haughton differs from his colleagues,
because he strives for an accord
between evidence accumulated by
university-trained scientists and fresh
theories postulated by avocational
investigators. The result is Hidden
History: Lost Civilizations, Secret
Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries. It
is a balance of fact and theory written
with the old integrity of Roman writers, such as Livy and Cicero, who
clearly set out the facts and provided
leading interpretations, but invited us
to come to our own conclusions.
Haughton's readers will find themselves engaged in the same kind of
participation that challenges their
imagination by expanding it. The cause
is self-evident: His is a truly encyclopedic work, dealing with 49 historical
enigmas from around the globe. His
work spans the deep antiquity of
Britain's Stonehenge and Egypt's
Great Pyramid to current discoveries

about the Shroud of Turin and the
Dead Sea Scrolls. As such, Hidden
History is at once a superb introduction to these mysteries for anyone unacquainted with them, as well as a
sourcebook eclectic investigators will
find indispensable.

Haughton begins with Atlantis,
widely considered the greatest enigma
of all (and among the most controversial). Merely presenting thumbnail
sketches of all the theories used to
describe it would require a full-length
book in itself. But Haughton deftly
sorts out the leading arguments for
and against the existence and location
of Plato's "lost continent," leaving us
less bewildered by the plethora of contending opinions than intrigued by the
possibilities for a 21st century discovery. Hidden History does not neglect
Atlantis's Pacific counterpart, especially in view of recent discoveries
made around the Japanese islands.
Under the clear waters of Yonaguni,
scuba divers recently found a pyramidal structure sitting nearly a hundred feet below the surface. Could this
artificial-looking formation of massive
stone be the result of a natural process? Or is it the remains of the lost
civilization of Lemuria, also known as
Mu, mentioned in the Hindu monastery records of Burma and India?

The inhabitants of both Atlantis and
Lemuria were said to have possessed
a technology far ahead of the times in
which they lived, and Haughton presents physical evidence suggesting
the former existence of scientific advances at odds with the period of their
invention and use. A foremost specimen includes the so-called Baghdad
Battery powered by citrus juices to
electro-plate statuettes with gold. Although a simple device, it nonetheless
suggests that at least the fundamentals of electricity were understood and
applied more than 2,000 years before
Thomas Edison switched on the first
electric light bulb. Haughton's comparison of the Mayan Calendar with
Germany's Nebra Disc and the
Antikythera Mechanism (dredged up
from the bottom of the Aegean Sea),
proves that the ancients were computer literate. The Mayan Calendar is
well-known for its ominous prediction
of global change (scheduled to occur
on the winter solstice of 2012), and
Haughton explains in clear language
the incredibly high-level mathematics
that went into the creation of this unquestionably great scientific achievement. While such sophisticated
devices have been known in the West
since the Spanish Conquest, 500 years
ago, another pre-Industrial Age computer was found just two years ago in
northern Germany. Dated to the Late
Bronze Age (circa 1500 B.C.), the Nebra
Disc is an astronomical clock of sophisticated capabilities and workmanship,
far in advance of anything from the
same time and place. Its mere existence implies that a higher level of
material society flourished in a region
far beyond the cultural orbit of the

Greco-Roman World than previously
imagined. It predates-by more than
14 centuries-a comparable instrument hauled up in a fisherman's net
around the turn of the 20th century off
the Greek island of Antikythera. The
device is a complex intermeshing of
intricate gears that historians formerly believed would not have been
possible until the European Renaissance. Apparently, the Classical World
had its own Leonardo da Vinci, who
fashioned an efficient astronomical
computer small enough to be carried
aboard ships for purposes of celestial
navigation.

Earlier still, another disc has been
found in the Cretan city of Phaestos,
and is 200 years older than the Nebra
device. While not as complicated as
the German, Greek, or Mayan versions,
the Minoan plate of baked clay was
impressed with tiny images made by
movable type, almost 30 centuries before Johannes Gutenberg's press was
up and running. Haughton shows that
our ancestors' technology was far
more elevated that mainstream scholars would have us believe. Hidden
History's description of these anomalous finds is succinct and lucid, and
readers will search in vain for another
book in which these examples of unexpectedly high technology are
brought together in the same volume.
Its inquiry ranges far beyond typical
scientific accomplishments to visit
"Mysterious Places"-including Easter
Island, with its gaunt colossi; a preColumbian city in the Grand Canyon;
and the oldest building on Earth, the
enormous, quartz-fronted burial
mound of Ireland's Newgrange, 30
miles north of Dublin.

The "Mysterious People" visited
are King Arthur, keeper of the Holy
Grail; the Amazons, who carried
women's liberation on the edge of their
swords; Indonesia's race of extinct,
quick-witted dwarves; and the historical facts behind the fabled figures of
Robin Hood, the Queen of Sheba, and
Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The fate of
ancient Egypt's most famous monarch
is particularly up-to-date, as Brian
Haughton cites the latest CAT scan of
the royal mummy. Did King Tut die of
an accident that allowed his aged
successor, a commoner, to usurp the

throne? Or was covert assassination
the cause? Nowhere else has such a
broad collection of diverse information about ancient wonders been
assembled. Haughton's obvious preference for credibility over theory
combines with his powers of clear,
concise presentation to make Hidden
History not merely a rehash of already
familiar material, but a freshly comprehensive encyclopedia of the
strange and the intriguing, which will
be sought out by anyone fascinated
with the remote past for many years
to come.

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IntroducIion

One of the numerous legacies of our
ancient past is a bewildering variety
of mysteries. Some are genuinely puzzling, while others are more easily
solved with a little research. Mysterious places, such as Stonehenge and the
Great Pyramid, may be famous
throughout the world, but how much
do we really know about their construction, purpose, and the people who built
them? Strange artifacts, sometimes of
unknown origin and purpose, or of inexplicably advanced manufacture can
provide us with a fascinating glimpse
into the often amazingly sophisticated
cultures of the ancient world. And then
there are the people themselves. Modern techniques such as DNA studies
and Oxygen Isotope Analysis (performed on tooth enamel to locate a
person's origins) are shedding fascinating new light on the enigmatic peoples
of ancient history. Intriguingly, while
solving one puzzle, modern scientific
techniques have sometimes created
others. For example, chemical analysis of the aristocrat buried close to
Stonehenge 4,200 years ago shows
that he was probably born in Switzerland. Which poses the question: What
was he doing so far from home?

A person's interpretation of the past
often depends on what he or she wants
from history. If the study of ancient

mysteries is approached with an
agenda in mind, or a belief to be proved,
the odds are that some kind of evidence
to fit the theory will be found. On rare
occasions, such as the 19th century excavations by Heinrich Schliemann at
the supposed site of Troy, this approach can yield spectacular-if not
entirely accurate-results.

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