The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (67 page)

All of this is obviously legend. But the
Oera Linda Book
then goes on to describe historical events.

In the year 2193
BC
, a great catastrophe of some sort struck Atland, and it was overwhelmed by the sea. Logic suggests that the same catastrophe must have struck the British Isles, since they were so close; but if Atland was as low and flat as Holland, we can understand why it was submerged. (The Dogger Bank, where Atland would have been situated, is the shallowest area of the North Sea.)

According to Plato, Atlantis had been destroyed in a great catastrophe more than nine thousand years earlier. But one modern authority, Professor A. G. Galanopoulos, has argued that all the figures associated with Atlantis (which were recorded by Egyptian priests) were about ten times too great – for example, Plato says that the moat around the royal city was ten thousand stades (more than a thousand miles) long, which would make the royal city about three hundred times larger than Greater London or Los Angeles. If we divide nine thousand years by ten, we get nine hundred. The Egyptian priests told the Athenian lawgiver Solon about Atlantis around 600
BC
, which would make the date for the destruction of Atlantis about 1500
BC
(nine hundred years earlier). This is roughly the date of the explosion of the volcano of Santorini (north of Crete) that devastated most of the Mediterranean, and Galanopoulos argues that the island of Santorini was Atlantis. The only problem is that Plato placed Atlantis beyond the Pillars of Hercules – in which case, Atland is certainly a contender.

Another reason for the relative neglect of the
Oera Linda Book
is that its narrative seems so unfamiliar and its names are so strange; in this respect it resembles the
Book of Mormon
or that extraordinary work entitled
Oahspe
, which was “dictated” to an American medium named J. B. Newbrough at roughly the same time the
Oera Linda Book
was published. But these two documents claim some kind of “divine” origin, while the
Oera Linda Book
purports to be a historical document.

Nevertheless, the people mentioned in it are not pure invention. A later book speaks at length about a warrior named Friso, an officer of Alexander the Great (born 356
BC
), who is described in other Nordic chronicles. (The
Oera Linda Book
also speaks at length of Alexander the Great.) These chronicles state that Friso came from India. The
Oera Linda Book
says that Friso was descended from a Frisian colony that settled in the Punjab about 1550
BC
; moreover, the Greek geographer Strabo mentions this strange “Indian” tribe, referring to them by the name
Germania
. The
Oera Linda Book
even mentions Ulysses and recounts how he went in search of a sacred lamp – a priestess had
foretold that if he could find it, he would become king of all Italy. After an unsuccessful attempt to buy the lamp from its priestess-custodian, the “Earth Mother” (using treasures looted from Troy), he sailed to a place named Walhallagara (which sounds oddly like Valhalla) and had a love affair with a priestess named Kalip (obviously Calypso), with whom he stayed for several years “to the scandal of all who knew it”. From Kalip he obtained a sacred lamp of the kind he wanted, but it did him no good, for he was shipwrecked and had to be picked up, naked and destitute, by another ship.

This fragment of Greek history, tossed into the
Oera Linda Book
is interesting for two reasons. It dates this adventure of Ulysses about 1188, which is about fifty years later than modern archaeology would date the fall of Troy (see chapter 23). But the
Oera Linda Book
could be correct. And it states that the nymph Calypso was actually a
burgtmaagd
(a word meaning “borough maid” – literally, a virgin priestess in charge of vestal virgins). This is consistent with the central claim of the
Oera Linda Book
: that after the “deluge”, the Frisians sailed the globe and became the founders of Mediterranean civilization, as well as settling in India. It is obvious why scholars have ignored the book. To take it seriously would mean virtually rewriting ancient history. If, for example, we accept that Calypso’s island, Walhallagara, was the island of Walcheren, in the North Sea (as the commentary on the
Oera Linda Book
claims it was), then Ulysses sailed right out of the Mediterranean. It is certainly simpler to accept Homer’s version of the story.

After nearly a century of neglect, the
Oera Linda Book
was rediscovered by an English scholar named Robert Scrutton. In his fascinating book
The Other Atlantis
, Scrutton tells how, in 1967, he and his wife – a “sensitive” with strong psychometric powers
¹⁸
– were walking over Dartmoor when she experienced a terrifying vision of a flood: great green waves higher than the hills pouring across the land.

Eight years later he found legends of a great deluge in ancient poetry known as the Welsh Triads (which also speak of King Arthur). The Triads explain that long before the Kmry (the Welsh) came to Britain, there was a great flood that depopulated the entire island. One ship survived, and those who sailed in it settled in the “Summer Land” peninsula (which Scrutton identifies as the Crimea – still called Krym – in the Black Sea). These peoples decided to seek other lands, because their peninsula was subject to flooding. One portion went to Italy and
the other across Germany and France and into Britain. (In fact, this account does not contradict the little we know about the mysterious people called the Celts, whose origin is unknown.) So the Kmry came back to Britain – probably around 600
BC
– and brought their Druidic religion, which involved human sacrifice.

Scrutton went on to uncover many other legends concerning a great catastrophe in ancient Welsh poetry and in the Icelandic Eddas (where it was known as Ragnarok). It is worth mentioning that Ignatius Donnelly, whose book
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
¹⁹
caused a sensation in 1882, went on to write another classic,
Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Ice
in the following year; in this volume he attempted to study catastrophe legends of the northern hemisphere and created a remarkable theory of continental drift that later proved to be totally accurate.

Scrutton’s research led him to rediscover the
Oera Linda Book
and to become absorbed in its strange yet credible account of ancient history. The first question he asked himself was: what was the precise nature of the catastrophe that destroyed Atland and depopulated Britain? In
The Other Atlantis
(1977) he suggests that it was a giant meteor or asteroid that struck the earth somewhere in the region of the North Pole; the force of the explosion had the effect of tilting the earth’s axis into a more upright position, so lands that had formerly had long, hot summers now developed arctic conditions. The Greeks have their legends of the Hyperboreans, a people who live in idyllic conditions in the far north, and Scrutton identifies these with the Atlanders.

This projectile, Scrutton suggests, produced the crater known as the Arctic Ocean – which, he claims, would look like one of the enormous craters of the moon if its water was drained away. Many stones and rocks that modern scientists believe were moved by glaciers were actually, Scrutton suggests, hurled by the explosion. But this part of his theory is open to a simple objection. The opening section of the
Oera Linda Book
says that during the whole summer before the flood “the sun had been hid behind the clouds, as if unwilling to look upon the earth”. There was perpetual calm, and “a damp mist hung like a wet sail over the houses and marshes”. Then, “in the midst of this stillness, the earth began to tremble as if she was dying. The mountains opened to vomit forth fire and flames”.

That seems clearly to be a description of a volcanic catastrophe of the kind that is supposed to have destroyed Atlantis, not a tidal wave caused
by a meteor. Does this mean that the meteor theory must be abandoned? Not necessarily. A meteor that struck in the region of the North Pole would certainly have produced a tidal wave, but if the polar cap itself was covered with ice, it may not have been great enough to cause a tidal wave that would submerge Britain and Atland. But the volcanic activity that would almost certainly follow such an impact
could
produce a mighty tidal wave, like the one caused by the explosion of Santorini (and later of Krakatoa).

Scrutton also mentions a description in the Finnish epic the
Kalevala
of a time when the sun vanished from the sky and the world became frozen and barren, and quotes a modern introduction that places this at a period when the Magyars (Hungarians) and the Finns were still united – at least three thousand years ago.

Scrutton believes that the “maps of the ancient sea kings” described by Professor Charles Hapgood (and discussed in chapter 49) confirm his view of the catastrophe that destroyed Atland. Once again, there is an objection. Core samples taken in Queen Maud Land (in the Antarctic) show that the last time the South Pole was unfrozen was around 4000
BC
So the great maritime civilization that Hapgood believes was responsible for the “ancient maps” must have flourished before then.

This, of course, does not rule out a catastrophe some two thousand years later – perhaps the civilization of Atland lasted for two thousand years, like that of the Egyptians. But if Hapgood is correct, and his great maritime civilization existed more than six thousand years ago and then was either forgotten or destroyed in a great catastrophe, it certainly becomes difficult to reconcile the two theories.

There is, however, one way of reconciling them that is no bolder – or more absurd – than the theories themselves. Hapgood believed that the ancient maps were evidence of a
worldwide
maritime civilization that existed long before Alexander the Great. Let us, then, posit the existence of such a civilization that began sometime after the last great ice age – say, around 10,000
BC
. Six thousand years later this civilization is highly developed in the Antarctic and in Atland. In other parts of the world – like the Middle East – it is less highly developed, although there are already cities, and the plow has been developed. For unknown reasons – no one knows what causes ice ages – the cold returns, and the Antarctic civilization freezes up, so its peoples are forced to go elsewhere – notably to Egypt. The Atland civilization, being in more temperate latitudes, is not affected. Then, in 2192
BC
, comes the “great catastrophe” that tilted the earth’s axis. Now, like the inhabitants of the South Pole, the Atlanders are also forced to move – and of course they
move south, to regions that have not been affected by the great catastrophe – like India and the Mediterranean. If this scenario is correct, then both Hapgood and Scrutton could be right.

One thing seems clear: that the ancient maps prove the existence of a great maritime civilization that flourished before Alexander the Great. Like the maps, the
Oera Linda Book
also points to the existence of such a civilization. Even if the
Oera Linda Book
proved to be a forgery, the evidence of the maps would be unaffected. But at the present time, there is no evidence that it is a forgery. In this case, it deserves to be reprinted in a modern edition and carefully studied by historians – as well as read by the general public for its fascinating tales of murder and battle. If it proves to be genuine, the
Oera Linda Book
could revolutionize our view of world history.

40

The “People of the Secret”

Early in 1883 a book called
Esoteric Buddhism
caused an immediate sensation, and quickly went into a second edition. It was by a slender, balding little man called Alfred Percy Sinnett, editor of India’s most influential newspaper the
Pioneer
. What caused the excitement was Sinnett’s claim, on the very first page, that he had obtained his information from “hidden masters”, men who lived in the high mountains of Tibet and who were virtually immortal. Coming from the editor of a newspaper that was regarded as the mouthpiece of the British government in India, this could not be dismissed as “occultist” lunacy. Such a man deserved serious attention when he declared:

Many people took Sinnett very seriously indeed. The poet W.B. Yeats read the book and handed it to his friend Charles Johnston, who was so impressed that he rushed off to London for permission to set up a Dublin branch of the Theosophical Society, the publisher of Sinnett’s book.

It was almost three years later that the general public learned how Sinnett had obtained his “hitherto secret teaching”, and the sceptics felt confirmed in their cynicism. In October 1880 Sinnett and his wife had played host to that remarkable lady Madame Blavatsky, who told him that most of her knowledge had been obtained from her “secret Masters” who lived in the Himalayas. She convinced Sinnett of her genuineness by a series of minor miracles. On a picnic, when an
unexpected guest had turned up, she ordered another guest to dig in the hillside with a table knife; he unearthed a cup and saucer of the same pattern as the rest of the china. When a woman remarked casually that she wished she could find a lost brooch Madame Blavatsky told the other guests to go and search in the garden; the missing brooch was found in a flower-bed wrapped in paper. And when Sinnett expressed his desire to correspond directly with the “Masters” Madame Blavatsky promised to do what she could, and a few days later Sinnett found lying in his desk the first of what were to become known as “the Mahatma letters”. It was from this series of letters that Sinnett obtained his knowledge of “esoteric Buddhism”.