ORIGINAL ARTICLE, PHOTOS, AND MORE INFO CAN BE FOUND HERE:
http://onefaceinamillion.com/the-mysteries-of-mankind/1230/

Posted by Graeme Van Rensburg on Aug 9th, 2010

From Black Helicopters to Men in Black, conspiracy theories have always led man around dark corners and into empty basements. Like a constant itch in our psyche we search to soothe the mysteries that plague our minds. Questions unanswered, surrounding strange events from the bemusing Bermuda Triangle, to bizarre UFO encounters, to the surreal Illuminati and The New World Order. Although these topics have popularized many forums and internet chat rooms, there are much older, larger mysteries which have yet remained unsolved.

One of the greatest mysteries of Man's History poses the question "Are we the only technically advanced civilization to have evolved on this planet throughout Earth's 4.5 billion year History?" To answer this we need to delve into an unknown past where shadows still cloud our perceptions of aeons gone by.

Over recent years there have been a growing number of scholars who claim the existence of ancient civilizations that scattered the earth thousands of years before we were here. Societies more scientifically advanced by today's standards, cultures who harnessed the energy of crystals instead of oil to fuel their thriving cities. A world where telepathy was commonplace, and where Gods walked the Earth. Tales of lost continents like Lemuria and Mu. The most popular however of these 'myths' has to be that of Atlantis, which was thought to have existed around 10 000- 15 000 BC, and which according to legend now lies dormant under our oceans, consumed by nature tens of thousands of years ago. Mainstream scholars disclaim this theory, saying it belongs with Pseudoscience; "The practice of science that is claimed to be scientific, but lacks supporting evidence and therefore lacks scientific status."

Although proof is lacking on the subject, many cultures have written about Atlantis throughout the ages, from The Egyptians, to Ancient Greeks, to modern explorers, all with the common theme that the 'myth' is real.

The classical Greek Philosopher Plato, wrote about Atlantis extensively in his dialogues, The Timaeus and The Critias, written around 360 BC. Historians claim it is a work of fiction, a tale about an advanced society through the eyes of the great Philosopher, but many believe the work to be fact. With detailed descriptions and maps of Atlantis, the dialogues describe a society that had soared to the peak of its scientific prowess, a culture that eventually succumbed to its own dizzying heights of power, torn apart by war because of its own greed and consumption with materialism, and in the end consumed by great floods, forever lost beneath our oceans.

In his time, Plato was cited as a heretic by the church because his Atlantean scripts were not mentioned in the Bible and that continent supposedly predated Gods creation of the world by several thousand years.

Scholars have searched for the whereabouts of Atlantis for hundreds of years, but there is no proof that it ever existed. Many say it was situated between North America, Europe and Africa. This idea comes from a map of Atlantis which was drawn in 1665 (copied from much older maps), which placed the lost continent in the North Atlantic. Researchers like Charles Hapgood and Rand Flem-Ath have popularized another theory that states the relics of this entire civilization are buried underneath two miles of ice in Antarctica. Hapgood's book, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, cited many ancient maps that showed Antarctica as an ice free landmass, depicting rivers and mountain ranges on the continent. One of these archival maps is the Piri Reis Map, drawn in 1513 by a Turkish Admiral, Piri Ri'is. The map depicts the western coast of Europe and North Africa, the coast of Brazil and what is believed to be the northern coastline of Antarctica (ice free), with some accuracy.

According to science the last time Antarctica was free of ice was 6,000 - 10,000 years ago. The earliest known modern civilization was The Sumerians, circa 6th millennium BC, found in Mesopotamia. Whatever culture drew these detailed maps were far older and more advanced than our Sumerian brothers, they were sea-faring people with a great knowledge of map making. Historians have long since debunked this and other ancient maps, saying they are not accurate or they do no depict Antarctica. Another case of Pseudoscience?

Why do we find ancient relics around the world? From the Pyramids in Egypt and South America, to the statues of Easter Island, to Stonehenge and the various megalithic structures found in Britain (which coincidently all fall on a straight line/ Ley line, extending the breath of the island.) Many researchers now say that all these great monuments were built by the survivors of the calamities that engulfed places like Atlantis, descendants of various ancient civilizations, who spread across the globe, to places like Egypt and South America and built these structures as a homage to their lost cultures.

The Pyramid builders of Egypt have always been questioned by many scholars. Egyptologists say without doubt that the Ancient Egyptians built these monuments somewhere between 2600 BC to 1500 BC, but other researchers say they were built thousands of years before, by a different culture, a culture with supreme technical knowledge, an ancient culture. In his bestselling book Fingerprints of the Gods, Graham Hancock argued why the Egyptians of old simply could not have built these magnificent structures,(Which even by today's technology would be hard to match). Hancock's theory makes for an intriguing argument, with detailed investigation that could turn the most ardent sceptic into a believer. Amongst his theories lies the very interesting fact of the Great Sphinx, which has a traditional date of around 2500 BC. Hancock says that the Sphinx is indeed much older. This theory was first published in an article entitled "The Riddle of the Sphinx" by geologist David Coxill. His investigations found precipitation wethering on the blocks of stone that make up the Great Sphinx and the Sphinx enclosure. The last time Egypt had enough rainfall to induce such weathering dates to well before the coming of the deserts and therefore the original proposed date of 2500 BC. Coxill's theory has since gained momentum with years of investigation by John Anthony West and geologist Robert M.Schoch, who have come up with the same conclusion as Coxill: 'The Sphinx is thousands of years older than Egyptology says it is and therefore could not have been built by the Egyptians', so who built them?

When we look at the Egyptian Pyramids there are many mysteries to whom the builders were and when it was built. Many have argued that it would have been physically impossible to carry some of the 70 ton blocks no matter how many workers were used. How these colossal blocks were hoisted more than twenty feet up in the air to be placed on top of each other remains another mystery. Researcher Will Hart has spent more than 30 years investigating ancient civilizations and stated that if any of these massive blocks were placed in the sand, they would have sunk. This therefore compounds the fact that stone roads would needed to have been built in order to bring these huge stone blocks to the area. Where are the signs of the roads around the Pyramids? And even if there were roads, the weight of the blocks (sometimes up to 200 tons) would have been be too much for any stone road to withstand and would have sunk any boat, if they had brought the stones via the Nile River on barges. So how did these massive blocks of stone get there?

So many logical questions which have remained unanswered by mainstream academics, it's as if Egyptologists have turned a blind eye to the many facts that are staring them in the face, it's as if the mainstream paradigm must not be altered, if it ain't broke don't fix it, but it seems that a lot of traditional Egyptology crumbles into fiction when we look at it from a concrete perspective.

One theory into the pyramid builders is found in a volume of books entitled The Law of One. It turns the whole argument upside down and gives the theory a more obtuse angle. It states that the pyramids, both in Egypt and South America, were built by a group of beings known as RA. This "Social Memory Complex" (Which is a group of souls) apparently came to us from a higher dimension and walked the earth 11 000 years ago. These masters of destiny apparently made the pyramids to ring the earth, and they made them all through thought alone. They were essentially used for balancing and healing purposes, to teach man the Law of One; which speaks of unity of love and understanding, to gain "Intelligent Infinity." I felt these books took a whole new slant on the subject, one which hasn't been replicated since. The Law of One volumes also give an insight into the Bermuda triangle, saying that a pyramid from Atlantean days is buried beneath the sea in this area, causing fluctuations in time and space around the whole Bermuda Triangle. Pinch of salt anyone?

Many of these theories are at the deep end of conspiracies, the far end of a spectrum that can be altogether hazy, with mirages making assumptions look like the real thing. Were there ancient civilizations that existed before us? Did Atlantis really exist? Who really knows? One thing is for certain, without hard evidence of a lost civilization, mainstream Scientists, Historians and Theologians will never accept such theories. If there is one thing to be learnt from these 'myths' is that if these cultures did indeed exist, they, like us, were a parasitic society, eating away at their own resources, killing the environments which they inhabited and in the end ruined the Garden of Eden that was once theirs, only to be remembered by future generations as legends and myths. Can we afford to let the same thing happen to us?