The Genesis Code (17 page)

The Field Museum of Natural History
Chicago, Illinois

The African bull elephant, its trunk raised in alert, stood proudly in the center of the Stanley Field Hall in the Field Museum of Natural History. Enormous ivory tusks jutted from its upper jaw, each the length of a man. A leathery gray hide stretched taut over sinewy muscle. With coal-black eyes, it silently surveyed the small knots of tourists meandering across the marble floor toward the museum’s exhibit halls.

In the distance, at the south end of the hall, a pack of wide-eyed schoolchildren craned their necks upward to gaze in fear and awe at the bottomless eye sockets and razor-sharp teeth of an enormous
Tyrannosaurus rex
skeleton.

“There,” said Grace, pointing toward the east end of the Stanley Field Hall.

Red silk banners, draped across iron grillwork, rippled and flowed from the second-floor balcony to the marble floor of the rotunda. The facade of an ancient Mayan temple, partially obscured by snaking vines and deep green foliage, framed a set of double doors leading to the special exhibit area directly across from the museum’s main entrance.

Hand-sculpted from Styrofoam and meticulously painted, the ancient ruin appeared completely authentic. Illuminated by theatrical lighting, a massive sign above the faux temple announced the exhibit’s title:

MYSTERIES OF THE ANCIENTS

Barring entry to the exhibit, a red velvet rope drooped between two metal stanchions in front of the double doors.

“That must be Dr. Vasquez,” said Grace, pointing.

A silver-haired man in a tweed blazer was speaking to a small group of college students assembled near the entrance to the exhibit. He gestured wildly as he spoke, jabbing at the air with a fountain pen.

Madison and Grace skirted around the group and parked themselves against the wall within earshot of Dr. Vasquez’s talk.

“The consensus view of modern anthropology,” said Dr. Vasquez, “is that modern man emerged in Africa approximately one hundred thousand years ago, spread outward into Asia as a primitive hunter-gatherer, and migrated into Europe some thirty-five thousand years ago. He started farming around the end of the last Ice Age, about 8000
BC
, and began building cities a few thousand years later. But—”

“There’s always a but,” said a young coed.

Laughter rippled through the group.

Vasquez smiled. “Quite. And the ‘but’ in this case is this: just because scientists have reached a consensus does not necessarily mean that they have reached the truth.”

Vasquez retrieved his leather backpack from the floor at his feet, opened it, and withdrew a white human skull. A ragged hole on the crown of the skull suggested that the life of this particular
Homo sapiens
had met with an untimely end. He held it up for everyone to see.

“Most college textbooks on anthropology categorically state that the first modern humans appear in the fossil record about a hundred thousand years ago. But this claim, that no anatomically modern humans existed prior to a hundred thousand years ago, is contradicted by numerous finds.”

Dr. Vasquez paused and contemplated the skull.

“John—heads up…”

Without warning, Vasquez tossed the skull like a softball at a male student in the group. Startled, John managed to raise his hands in time to catch the flying fossil.

“Nice catch,” said Dr. Vasquez.

John grinned nervously. He held the skull at arm’s length as if it might bite.

“Now pay attention,” said Dr. Vasquez. “A human skull fragment was unearthed at Vertesszollos, Hungary, which carbon-dated to between two hundred fifty thousand and forty-five thousand years ago. Two skeletons found in England, at Ipswich and Galley Hill, and a human jaw and paleoliths found at Moulin Quignon in France, were carbon-dated as at least three hundred thousand years old.”

Dr. Vasquez saw that he had captured the group’s attention. He noticed Grace and Madison standing next to the wall and smiled.

“A human footprint was discovered at Terra Amata, France, that dates back four hundred thousand years,” said Dr. Vasquez. “This obviously suggests that modern man was in Europe more than a hundred thousand years before he was supposed to have left Africa.

“Even Louis Leakey, whose towering reputation and famous African discoveries serve as the bedrock for much of the consensus view, reported finds of human skull fragments and paleoliths in Kenya, and in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, dated between four hundred thousand and seven hundred thousand years ago. Astoundingly, the clear implications of these finds have been ignored. The consensus view holds that since these incredible discoveries contradict the established view of human evolution, they
must
be misdated or inaccurate.”

Vasquez called out to Grace and Madison.

“Please, join us,” he said, waving them over.

“The evidence gets even more interesting,” said Vasquez, as Madison and Grace joined the group.

“If we look closely, we begin to see cracks in the foundation of the consensus view,” said Dr. Vasquez. “Consider the existence of a fossil record suggesting the existence of modern humans
one million years ago
!”

One million years ago?

“An anatomically modern human skull was discovered in Buenos Aires and was carbon-dated at between one million and one-point-five million years old. Eoliths at Monte Hermoso, Argentina, are believed to be between one and two-point-five million years old. A human tooth at Trinil in Java was dated at one to one-point-nine million years old.”

John was incredulous. “I’m sorry, but are you suggesting that modern humans were around over a million years ago?”

Dr. Vasquez smiled.

“I’m not suggesting anything. Not yet, anyway. I’m just asking you to consider the evidence with an open mind. These discoveries raise some very interesting questions, don’t they?”

He jabbed in the air with his fountain pen.

“Followed to their logical conclusion, these findings would seem to suggest that our entire view of human evolution is remarkably off base.”

He paused.

“They would seem to suggest that humans have been around for a very, very long time.”

Dr. Vasquez addressed the young man holding the skull. “John, could you toss our friend back to me, please?”

John hefted the skull and pitched it in Dr. Vasquez’s direction. Dr. Vasquez deftly snatched it out of the air and held the fossil aloft in a macabre display.

“This interesting skull is actually a replica of a find which is even more staggering than the ones I’ve already articulated. According to current thinking, the ancestors of modern humanity, the hominids, diverged from apes somewhere between five and eight million years ago. The Miocene Period, an extremely ancient geological period, began some twenty-five million years ago. Consensus science says that no human beings, in any form, walked the planet during the Miocene.”

Dr. Vasquez patted the skull and grinned.

“But our friend here is a replica of a skull that was discovered with a
Homo sapiens
skeleton at Table Mountain, California, that dates back
at least thirty-three million years ago.
A human skeleton found in Switzerland has been carbon-dated to
thirty-eight million years ago
.”

“Thirty-eight million years ago?” asked John. “That’s almost as old as the dinosaurs. How can that be possible?”

Dr. Vasquez held up a hand.

“Hold on a second. We know that dinosaurs became extinct about sixty-five million years ago. There is no fossil record of dinosaurs, not even the slightest trace, more recent than sixty-five million years old. Clearly there is no way that humans could have evolved on this planet more than sixty-five million years ago. Right?”

“Why do I have the feeling you’re going to tell us otherwise?” asked John.

Dr. Vasquez held up a finger.

“One. In 1938, Professor W. G. Burroughs, head of the Department of Geology at Berea College, Kentucky, reported the discovery of human footprints ‘sunk into the horizontal surface of an outcrop of hard massive gray sandstone’ at the O. Finnel farm in Kentucky. Dr. C. W. Gilmore, curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Smithsonian, confirmed the discovery. The footprints were made on what was once a sandy beach.”

Vasquez held up a second finger.

“Two. In 1960, H. L. Armstrong wrote in the prestigious scientific journal
Nature
about fossilized human footprints found near Glen Rose, Texas. Dinosaur footprints were found in the same strata.”

He held up a third finger.

“Three. In 1968, a fossil collector named William J. Meister split open a block of shale near Antelope Springs, Utah, and found a fossilized human
shoe
print. There were trilobite fossils in the same stone. Dr. Clarence Coombs of Columbia Union College and geologist Maurice Carlisle of the University of Colorado confirmed that the find was a genuine fossil.”

A fourth finger joined the previous three.

“And four. In 1983, the
Moscow News
reported the discovery of a fossilized human footprint next to the fossil footprint of a three-toed dinosaur in the Turkmen Republic, part of what was then the southwestern USSR.”

Dr. Vasquez paused.

“What do these four discoveries have in common? They all date back well beyond the watershed of dinosaur extinction. Some of them date back very, very far. The Turkmen print is from the Jurassic Period. The Meister’s shoe print is Triassic. And the Kentucky find dates back to the Carboniferous, which makes it more than two hundred and eighty-six million years old.”

He smiled.

“Clear evidence that human beings walked the earth two hundred and eighty-six million years ago.”

The Field Museum of Natural History
Chicago, Illinois

As the students dispersed, Grace and Madison approached the professor.

“Dr. Vasquez? I’m Grace Nguyen. This is Christian Madison. We spoke on the phone?”

Dr. Vasquez tugged open the flap on his leather backpack and slid the skull inside.

“Yes, of course,” said Vasquez.

“We’re interested in learning more about the ancient Maya. Dr. Bowman suggested that you would be an excellent resource.”

“Joshua Ambergris’ father and I were colleagues, you know. Joshua developed quite an interest in the Maya and other ancient cultures this past year. His enthuisiasm must be contagious.”

Madison forced a smile.

“I assume you are interested in the same lines of inquiry that Joshua pursued?” asked Vasquez.

Grace and Madison exchanged a glance.

“Yes, we are,” said Grace.

“I thought you might,” said Vasquez. “Actually, I believe that our new exhibit may be of great interest to you. It is titled ‘Mysteries of the Ancients.’”

The Field Museum of Natural History
Chicago, Illinois

“I’ve developed a reputation for working at the fringes of my field,” said Vasquez, as he led them through the set of double doors beneath a sign that read:

MYSTERIES OF THE ANCIENTS

“I’ve always had a keen interest in the more unconventional schools of thought in archaeology and anthropology. I think that most people are far too willing to blindly accept whatever version of facts are spoon-fed to them by mainstream academia.”

Madison raised an eyebrow.

“The University of Chicago and the Board of Trustees of the Field Museum tolerate me provided that I don’t publicly discuss the more radical notions I’ve explored. They don’t want to be embarrassed, you see,” said Vasquez.

Beyond the set of double doors granting entrance to the Mysteries of the Ancients was a darkened hallway about forty feet long. Along each wall, recessed display cases housed relics from thousands of years of human history. Overhead spotlights illuminated each artifact.

“According to them, such unconventional theories are the exclusive domain of conspiracy theorists and crackpots. Not an appropriate line of inquiry for a proper scholar.”

Toward the far end of the hall the room became a jungle. The design was elaborate, even by world-class-museum standards. The artificial tropical jungle was filled with towering trees, rising into the darkness above. Branches overhead were densely covered with exotic plants and tied together with liana vines.

“This is amazing,” said Grace.

On either side of a raised central walkway was the jungle floor—a bright green carpet of broad ferns on a thin layer of fallen leaves, seeds, fruits, and branches. Simulated sunlight filtered through the dense canopy above. The howls of monkeys and screeches of macaws echoed through the air.

Madison shook his head. “I don’t recall field trips to any museums like this when I was a kid.”

“Thank you,” said Vasquez. “Dr. Madison, these days museum exhibits have to pack a punch to draw the crowds. Sterile displays behind glass just can’t compete with the multimedia entertainment of the modern world. To draw in a fickle public, museums are becoming entertainment venues as well as centers of learning.”

Ahead were the crumbling remnants of a moss-covered faux stone wall, barely visible under dense jungle foliage. Behind it, the entrance to a cave yawned like a black hole in the jungle.

“Perhaps a bit overdramatic, but overall a nice effect,” Vasquez said with a chuckle. “The ancient Maya believed that caves were entrances to Xibalba, the underworld,” said Vasquez.

He led them through the cavern’s wide mouth.

Vasquez smiled.

“Our cave, however, leads only to the first gallery of the exhibit.”

The first room was a wide gallery ringed by tall glass display cases containing fully articulated human skeletons. The room was dark. Narrow beams of light illuminated the grinning skeletons from above in pools of ghostly white light. The effect was quite dramatic.

“Before our ancestors invented the written word,” said Vasquez, “early humans, like the ones in this room, passed information from one generation to the next by telling stories. Each new generation learned the accumulated knowledge of those that lived before through the oral histories told to them as children. Do you know what the scholars of today call those oral histories?”

“Myths,” said Grace.

“Precisely. Myths and legends. Modern scholarship doesn’t consider myths and legends to be historical evidence. References to human experience prior to the invention of writing around five thousand years ago are largely omitted from what we consider history.”

Vasquez looked around the gallery, pleased with his work.

“But there are many examples of myths we dismissed as fantasy that were later proven to be entirely accurate. The city of Troy from Homer’s
Iliad
is one example. Homer based the
Iliad
on stories he was told as a child. Until the late nineteenth century, scholars dismissed Troy as a mythical city, a figment of Homer’s imagination. But in 1871, the German explorer Heinrich Schliemann followed the geographical clues contained in the
Iliad
and discovered the remains of the city of Troy in western Turkey, exactly where Homer had said it was.”

“That’s one of the problems with the modern world,” said Madison. “There’s so much information out there that we tend to specialize in very narrow areas of expertise. As a geneticist, I’m completely ignorant when it comes to ancient history or archaeology. No one can be an expert in everything, so we never see any synthesis across different disciplines.”

“I’ve got another example,” said Vasquez. “Before British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans came along, historians thought that the Minoan civilization on Crete existed only in legend. Then Evans excavated the remains of a highly advanced ancient culture on Crete, now firmly identified as that of the Minoans.”

Vasquez led them toward a door across the room.

“Dr. Ambergris believed,” he said, “that many ancient myths show evidence of advanced knowledge that should have been unknown to humans at that point in our development. Myths that can be found in a wide range of ancient cultures that presumably had absolutely no contact with one another.”

“What sort of advanced knowledge?” asked Madison.

“This line of thought was actually the inspiration for this exhibit. I’ll give you some examples,” said Vasquez, leading them into the next room.

“Ancient Egypt.”

The recreation was tremendous in its scale. A winding walkway snaked across the room through dunes of desert sand. Enormous scale models of Egyptian pyramids from the Giza Plateau rose high above their heads. Columns and obelisks rose from beneath the sand. Near the center of the room, a broad stone plaza displayed statues of Isis and Ra, an elaborately decorated sarcophagus, and a complete Egyptian mummy.

Dr. Vasquez stopped and turned to face Grace and Madison.

“Are you familiar with the precession of the equinoxes?”

Grace’s eyes grew wide. “As a matter of fact, we were recently discussing that very topic. As I understand it, precession is basically the wobble of the earth as it spins. Once every twenty-five thousand years or so.”

Madison felt a strong sense of déjà vu as he recalled their conversations with Dr. Bowman about the Mayan calendar and its prediction that the current Age of Man would end in 2012.

“Good. Then you may also know that precession through sixty degrees along the ecliptic takes 4,320 years.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Grace.

“It does—4,320 is a very significant number, astronomically speaking.”

“Okay.”

“What if I told you that the number 4,320, and derivations of that number such as 43,200, 432,000, and 4,320,000, also appear in ancient mythological accounts throughout the world?”

“I’d say you were crazy,” said Madison.

“But it’s true,” responded Vasquez. “The number 432,000 occurs in the both the Babylonian and Christian great flood stories. In the Babylonian story, there were ten kings who lived very long lives from creation to the time of the great flood—a total of 432,000 years.

“In the biblical account, there were ten patriarchs between Adam and Noah, who also lived long lives. Noah was 600 years old at the time of the landing of the Ark on the mountains of Ararat. The total years add up to 1,656, or 86,400 weeks. Half the number of weeks is 43,200.”

“I find this very difficult to believe,” said Madison.

“Your closed-mindedness does not become you, Dr. Madison. Variations of the number 43,200 pop up in other mythological belief systems too. Viking Ediotic poems found in Iceland tell the story of the Day of Ragnorook, the Doomsday of the Gods. Eight hundred Divine Warriors will come out of each of the 540 Doors of Valhalla. Eight hundred times 540 equals 432,000.

“In India, the number of years assigned to a Great Cycle, or Mahayuga, of cosmic time is 4,320,000.

“A Chaldean priest, Berossos, writing in Greek around 289
BC
, reported that according to Mesopotamian belief, 432,000 years elapsed between the crowning of the first earthly king and the coming of the deluge.

“The Chinese Imperial Library is said to contain a vast work consisting of 4,320 volumes handed down from ancient times,” said Vasquez.

Madison shook his head in disbelief.

“Kind of hard to get your mind around, isn’t it?” asked Vasquez. “Clearly, these numbers were of great importance to all of these civilizations long before they should have had any advanced knowledge of astronomical concepts like precession. And it was evidently very important to them to communicate these numbers to future generations.”

He paused.

“Joshua Ambergris, like his father, wanted to know why,” said Vasquez.

He walked over to the scale recreation of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

“Some ancient civilizations, like the Egyptians and the Mayans, also encoded advanced knowledge into their architecture.”

“What?” exclaimed Madison. “That isn’t possible. I’ve never heard that.”

“This is a scale model of the Great Pyramid of Giza,” Vasquez said, pointing.

“The Great Pyramid is gigantic. It weighs about six million tons and covers over thirteen acres. Napoleon’s surveyors calculated that the three pyramids on the Giza Plateau contained enough stone to build a wall three meters high by one meter thick around the entire perimeter of France. Now, let’s assume that we have measured both the height of the Great Pyramid and the perimeter around its base.”

Vasquez gave them the pyramid’s dimensions.

“If you divide the pyramid’s perimeter by twice the value of its height, you get an interesting result.”

“What?” asked Grace.

Madison did the calculation in his head.

“Jesus Christ—3.1415. The value of pi.”

“The Egyptians knew about pi?” asked Grace.

“Not according to any textbook or modern-day historian,” said Vasquez. “According to the mainstream view taught on every college campus, Archimedes was the first man to calculate pi correctly at 3.14. In the third century
BC
.”

“But this can’t be a coincidence,” said Madison. “It’s statistically impossible. I just can’t believe that the ancient Egyptians understood pi and deliberately encoded its value in their architectural calculations.”

“Your disbelief does not erase the evidence, Dr. Madison. You can also find advanced mathematics and astronomy encoded in Mayan structures. The Mayan Temple of the Sun, the structure I’ve recreated as the entrance to this exhibit, is a great example.”

Madison again recalled the evidence that the Maya had incorporated an understanding of precession into their Long Count calendar, and used it to calculate the end of the current Age of Man in 2012.

“Let’s assume that we’ve taken the same measurements of the Temple of the Sun that we took of the Great Pryamid of Giza. If you divide the measurement of the perimeter around the base of the temple by four times the value of the temple’s height, you get—”

“Pi,” finished Madison.

“Precisely. But wait. If you take the temple’s perimeter and multiply that number by two, you get a length that is precisely equal to the length of one minute of latitude as measured at the earth’s equator.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Grace.

“Do the calculation yourself,” said Vasquez. “These structures have been measured thousands of times. The measurements are verifiable. Do the math yourself, and you’ll see I’m right.”

Grace was speechless.

“Ready for more?”

Grace nodded.

“You’ll recall that 4,320 is an important number related to precession. It and its derivations appear in the mythology of many ancient civilizations. Now, if you take the height of the Temple of the Jaguar and multiply it by 43,200, you get 20,796,260 feet, 3,938.685 miles, which is a pretty close estimate of the polar radius of the earth.”

“No way.”

“Likewise, if you take the temple’s perimeter at the base and multiply by 43,200, then you get 130,600,483 feet, or 24,734 miles—a result that is within 170 miles of the true equatorial circumference of the earth. That’s a minus-error of only three quarters of a single percent.”

Madison struggled to digest what he was hearing.

“This is what Dr. Ambergris was studying,” said Vasquez. “Knowledge that our ancient forefathers never should have possessed. Where did it come from? How was it obtained? Joshua Ambergris picked up his father’s work where Maximillian left off. He had two questions.”

He paused, then stuck up a finger.

“One, how did these relatively primitive ancient cultures, with no contact between them, learn these advanced concepts?”

A second finger joined the first.

“And two, why was it so important to them to preserve this knowledge in their mythology and architecture?”

For a moment, Madison and Grace stood in silence.

“Dr. Ambergris figured it out, didn’t he?” asked Madison.

Vasquez smiled.

“Yes, Christian,” he said. “I believe he did.”