Graham Hancock Quotes

It is clear that Bhu Mandala, as described in the Bhagvatam, can be interpreted as a geocentric map of the solar system out ot Saturn. But an obvious and important question is: Did some real knowledge of planetary distances enter into the construction of the Bhu Mandala system, or are the correlations between Bhu Mandala features and planetary orbits simply coincidental?
Being a mathematician interested in probability theory, Thompson is better equipped than most to answer this question and does so through computer modelling of a proposed 'null hypothesis' — i.e.,
'that the author of the Bhagvatam had no access to correct planetary distances and therefore all apparent correlations between Bhu Mandala features and planetary distances are simply coincidental.'
However, the Bhu Mandala/solar system correlations proved resilient enough to survive the null hypothesis. 'Analysis shows that the observed correlations are in fact highly improbable.' Thompson concludes:
'If the dimensions given in the Bhagvatam do, in fact, represent realistic planetary distances based on human observation, then we must postulate that Bhagvata astronomy preserves material from an earlier and presently unknown period of scientific development ... [and that] some people in the past must have had accurate values for the dimensions of the planetary orbits. In modern history, this information has only become available since the development of high-quality telescopes in the last 200 years. Accurate values of planetary distances were not known by Hellenistic astronomers such as Claudius Ptolemy, nor are they found in the medieval Jyotisa Sutras of India. If this information was known it must have been acquired by some unknown civilization that flourished in the distant past.

Iboga is intimately associated with death; the plant is frequently anthropomorphised as a supernatural being, a ‘generic ancestor’ who can so highly value or despise an individual that it can carry him away to the land of the dead.5

It concerns the growing body of evidence that 12,800 years ago a giant comet traveling on an orbit that took it through the inner solar system broke up into multiple fragments, and that many of these fragments, some more than a mile (2.4 kilometers) in diameter, hit the earth. It is believed that North America was the epicenter of the resulting cataclysm with several of the largest impacts on the North American ice cap causing floods and tidal waves and throwing a vast cloud of dust into the upper atmosphere that enshrouded the earth, preventing the sun's rays from reaching the surface and thus initiating the sudden, mysterious global deep freeze that geologists call the Younger Dryas. We will go into the evidence for all this, and how it relates to "Bretz's flood"

An Ojibwa tradition seems relevant. It speaks of a comet that 'burned up the earth' in the remote past and that is destined to return:
'The star with the long, wide tail is going to destroy the world some day when it comes low again. That's the comet called Long-Tailed Heavenly Climbing Star. It came down here once, thousands of years ago. Just like the sun. It had radiation and burning heat in its tail ...
Indian people were here before that happened, living on the earth. But things were wrong with nature on the earth, and a lot of people had abandoned the spiritual path. The Holy Spirit warned them a long time before the comet came. Medicine men told everyone to prepare. ... The comet burnt everything to the ground. There wasn't a thing left ...
There is a prophecy that the comet will destroy the earth again. But it's a restoration. The greatest blessing this island [Turtle Island/America] will ever have. People don't listen to their spiritual guidance today. There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars when the comet comes down again.

Egyptian Book of the Dead, it had been given to him by

After weaning the indigenous people's of Egypt: 'from their miserable and barbarous manners, [Osiris] taught them how to till the earth, and how to sow and reap crops, he formulated a code of laws for them, and made them worship the gods and perform service to them. He then left Egypt and traveled over the rest of the world teaching the various nations to do what his own subjects were doing. He forced no man to carry out his instructions, but by means of gentle persuasion and an appeal to their reason, he succeeded in inducing them to practice what he preached.

The black mat formed on top of the layer of proxies,' Allen replies. 'Down here it has a lot of charcoal in it. But it also has algal remains so it's not just fire. The Younger Dryas changed the climate and made the area much wetter. Algae began to grow along the edges of the lakes.' He puts a hand on the black stripe along the arroyo wall: 'So the remains of about 1,000 years of dead algae, charcoal, and a lot of other stuff are all embedded in here, and at the bottom of it, where the impact happened, we find iridium, platinum, and a layer of melted spherules where the temperatures must have been so high that they would have melted a modern car into a pool of metal.

Indian thought has traditionally regarded history and prehistory in cyclical rather than linear terms. In the West time is an arrow — we are born, we live, we die. But in India we die only to be reborn. Indeed, it is a deeply rooted idea in Indian spiritual traditions that the earth itself and all living creatures upon it are locked into an immense cosmic cycle of birth, growth, fruition, death, rebirth and renewal. Even temples are reborn after they grow too old to be used safely — through the simple expedient of reconstruction on the same site.
Within this pattern of spiralling cycles, where everything that goes around comes around, India conceives of four great epochs of 'world ages' of varying but enormous lengths: the Krita Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Davapara Yuga and the Kali Yuga. At the end of each yuga a cataclysm, known as pralaya, engulfs the globe in fire or flood. Then from the ruins of the former age, like the Phoenix emerging from the ashes, the new age begins.

So what was going on in Malta that led to all this? Why did the first megalithic temple-builders in the world choose to make things so difficult for themselves? Why didn't they start with small megaliths (if that is not too serious a contradiction in terms)? Why didn't they start simple? Why did they plunge straight into the very complicated stuff, like Gigantija and the Hypogeum? And, having plunged, how did they manage to produce such magnificent results? Was it beginner's luck? Or were their achievements as humanity's pioneering architects the product of some sort of heritage?
Beginner's luck is possible, but having studied the earliest temples, and their level of perfection, archaeologists agree that heritage is the right answer. The only problem is what heritage? And where is it to be looked for? Since it is the received wisdom that no human beings lived on Malta before 5200 BC, and since this is a 'fact' that is at present unquestioned anywhere within conventional scholarship, archaeologists from roughly the mid-twentieth century onwards have simply seen no reason to explore the possibility that the heritage of the Maltese temples might be older than 5200 BC. To do so would be the research equivalent of an oxymoron — like breeding dodos, trying to conduct an interview with William Shakespeare or seeking evidence that the earth is flat — and would invite the ridicule of one's peers.

While spinning daily on its own axis, the earth also orbits the sun (again in an anti-clockwise direction) on a path which is slightly elliptical rather than completely circular. It pursues this orbit at truly breakneck speed, travelling as far along it in an hour – 66,600 miles – as the average motorist will drive in six years. To bring the calculations down in scale, this means that we are hurtling through space much faster than any bullet, at the rate of 18.5 miles every second. In the time that it has taken you to read this paragraph, we have voyaged about 550 miles farther along earth's path around the sun.3

[At Gunung Padang] First, the drill cores contained evidence — fragments of worked columnar basalt — that more man-made megalithic structures lay far beneath the surface. Secondly, the organic materials brought up in the drill cores began to yield older and older dates — 3000 BC to 5000 BC, then 9600 BC as the drills bit deeper, then around 11,000 BC, then 15,000 BC and finally, at depths of 27.5 meters (90 feet) and more, an astonishing sequence of dates of 20,000 BC to 22,000 BC and earlier.

the evidence suggested that the Incas had often functioned as the restorers of these structures rather than their original builders.

At the entrance of one of the Hypogeum's painted rooms, the faint engraved impression of a large human hand, also arbitrarily assigned to the Neolithic, may still be seen. It 'has parallels in similar designs in Palaeolithic sites at Gargas, El Castillo, and particularly with Montespan in the Franco-Cantabrian region.' The impression shows a hand with six fingers [a condition known as Polydactyly that is also seen on at least one of the 'Fat Lady' figures on show in the National Museum of Archaeology].

The essence of this knowledge was the ability to `see all' and to `know all'. Was this not precisely the ability Adam and Eve acquired after eating the forbidden fruit, which grew on the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'? · Finally, just as Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, so were the four First Men of the Popol Vuh deprived of their ability to `see far'. Thereafter `their eyes were covered and they could only see what was close ...' Both the Popol Vuh and Genesis therefore tell the story of mankind's fall from grace. In both cases, this state of grace was closely associated with knowledge, and the reader is left in no doubt that the knowledge in question was so remarkable that it conferred godlike powers on those who possessed it. The Bible, adopting a dark and muttering tone of voice, calls it `the knowledge of good and evil' and has nothing further to add. The Popol Vuh is much more informative. It tells us that the knowledge of the First Men consisted of the ability to see `things hidden in the distance', that they were astronomers who `examined the four corners, the four points of the arch of the sky', and that they were geographers who succeeded in measuring `the round face of the earth'. 7 Geography is about maps. In Part I we saw evidence suggesting that the cartographers of an as yet unidentified civilization might have mapped the planet with great thoroughness at an early date. Could the Popol Vuh be transmitting some garbled memory of that same civilization when it speaks nostalgically of the First Men and of the miraculous geographical knowledge they possessed? Geography is about maps, and astronomy is about stars. Very often the two disciplines go hand in hand because stars are essential for navigation on long sea-going voyages of discovery (and long sea-going voyages of discovery are essential for the production of accurate maps). Is it accidental that the First Men of the Popol Vuh were remembered not only for studying

I believe we are a species with amnesia, I think we have forgotten our roots and our origins. I think we are quite lost in many ways. And we live in a society that invests huge amounts of money and vast quantities of energy in ensuring that we all stay lost. A society that invests in creating unconsciousness, which invests in keeping people asleep so that we are just passive consumers or products and not really asking any of the questions.