Our Haunted Planet
History demonstrates that men have always built imposing, elaborate cities, flourished in them for thousands of years, then deserted them to live in simple grass huts on their perimeters. Wars and natural calamities often played a part in this pattern, of course. Great cultures have risen and then died out. Men returned to simpler ways of life. It is a natural order of things. A thousand years from now people may be living in thatched shacks in New Jersey and on Long Island within full view of the decaying towers of Manhattan. They may tell the children about the peculiar ancients who built towers as part of the strange religion which worshiped the great god Money.
The Earth has two histories: the history taught in our colleges and schools, and the real but ignored history of a very ancient people and strange forces which have often supervised human events. Ten thousand years ago that unknown civilisation carefully mapped the entire surface of the globe. Known as the Piri Re’is maps, they were originally found among the relics in the former imperial palace of the Sultan of Constantinople in 1929. These maps were incredibly detailed and as accurate as latest charts. Antarctica, for example, was not discovered until Captain Cook reached it in 1773, and it was not fully explored until 1950s. But the frozen continent is laid out with almost pinpoint accuracy on the Piri Re’is maps, including mountain ranges that were not even known to us until 1952!
Even more astonishing, these maps outline glaciers and land areas which are known to have existed in the Ice Age…before the last great shift of the earth’s crust an estimated ten thousand years ago.
Modern scientists can’t seem to agree on the age of mankind. Each year produces a new bit of bone and a new controversy. But all seem to share the same notion that our ancestors were embarrassingly primitive ten thousand years ago. They certainly were developed enough to sail and chart the earth!
It would have been impossible for anyone to contrive the maps in 1929, the year they were found in Constantinople. It would have been even more impossible for someone to hoax them in 1513. And it is downright ridiculous to think that someone could have surveyed the earth before the Ice Age. Modern scientists have a very scientific method for coping with such humiliating discoveries. They put them in the basements of their museums and forget about them. The museums are filled with such erratics, as they are called.
Although this sort of evidence is superabundant, it has never been systematically studied by trained scholars. Instead, this material has fallen into the hands of assorted cultists and students of fringe pseudosciences. It has been used to advance belief in everything from lost Atlantis to extraterrestial visitants from some distant planet. To subscribe to any one of these multitudinous beliefs is to exclude all other possibilities. We should consider every possibility, avoid belief, and accept only the hard facts.
Two key facts are already clear: 1) There have always been strange objects in the skies above this planet. They were seen by early man and have been constantly ever since, as the Bible and other records still firmly attest. 2) Somebody mapped the earth before the Ice Age.
At some point in early history the higher culture was either destroyed by monumental catastrophe or withdrew in some fashion, leaving hardly a trace behind. So, our entire record of that superculture comes from the observations of primitive man. There are even indications that members of that superculture actually appeared before primitive man and took over as kings and god-kings to direct his early development. Such appearances helped to generate many of man’s first religious beliefs.
Everything is up for grabs. We have in all likelihood contructed a false history of our own race. And most humiliating of all, although we have lived on this planet for at least forty thousand years, we really don’t know much about it. Worse still, we haven’t even explored it!
Vast sections of this planet encompassing hundreds of thousands of square miles have never been surveyed. There are enormous regions that still have not been visited by a single scientifically trained man. Seasoned travelers are wearily familiar with the problem of locating accurate maps. In many countries in Africa, Asia, and South America detailed maps are simply unobtainable because no surveys have ever been made. Even in the United States precisely detailed maps of many areas just don’t exist. there are blank spots in Maine and even in New Jersey.
We have, of course, flown over a great part of the earth. Back in 1930s Charles Lindbergh flew over Brazil and reported seeing an enormous stone wall deep in the jungle. A wall that stretched for miles. No explorers have ever penetrated to that wall overland. Other fliers in other parts of the world have reported similar oddities and most of them remain unexplored mysteries.
In 1970 the united Nations issued a report which stated that four-fifths of the earth’s surface was inadequately charted. The cartographers who drew up the original Piri Re’is maps probably knew more about our planet than we do.
Despite all these facts, most of us like to pretend that our planet is fully explored and that all of its many mysteries have been solved. We believe our history books. In fact, many millions of people still cling to the thoroughly discredited religious belief that mankind is only four thousand years old. Science labours to ignore the mounting evidence that we may not be the only intelligent life form on this planet. Yet historians have always carefully recorded the events which indicate that a para-human race does exist alongside us. Millions of people have encountered them and thousands of books have been written about those encounters.
Now that we are zooming headlong into the Age of Aquarius, it is time for us to take a new look at the world around us; time for us to study those despicable erratics of archeology and history; time for us to think about the unthinkable. Our much-touted technology has led us down the road to ruin, poisoned our environment, and given us the implements for destroying the earth itself.
If there was a great superculture thousands of years ago, perhaps it followed the same tragic course. Perhaps even the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas and their North American counterparts will inherit the earth, and ten thousand years from now their descendants will be studying a frayed copy of an old road map and speculating about us. Naturally, there will be scientists among them who will sneer at the whole thing… and then they will get back to the business of trying to split the atom!
The Atlantis story seems to acquire another meaning in view of all this. Atlantis could be a part of our future instead of our past. Perhaps we are the Atlanteans now…
(This article contains exerpts from John A.Keel’s book “Our Haunted Planet”, 1971)
Mag.